A Certificate-Free Grid Security Infrastructure Supporting Password-Based User Authentication

Password-based authentication is still the most widelyused authentication mechanism, largely because of the ease with which it can be understood by end users and implemented. In this paper, we propose a security infrastructure for grid applications, in which users are authenticated using passwords. Our infrastructure allows users to perform single sign-on based only on passwords, without requiring a public key infrastructure. Nevertheless, our infrastructure supports essential grid security services, such as mutual authentication and delegation, using public key cryptographic techniques. Moreover, hosting servers in our infrastructure are not required to have public key certificates, meaning mutual authentication and delegation of proxy credentials can be performed in a lightweight and efficient manner.