An Improved Privacy-Preserving Multi-factor Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have garnered significant attention for their ability to collect and transmit data in various applications. However, ensuring secure communication in WSNs poses significant challenges due to resource constraints and the inherent vulnerability of WSNs to various attacks. Recently, Renuka et al. proposed a multi-factor authentication protocol for WSNs. In this paper, we thoroughly examined Renuka et al. protocol, and several vulnerabilities are demonstrated, which namely comprise privileged insider attacks, stolen smart card attacks, and ephemeral secret leaking attacks. In addition, this paper proposes an improved protocol to increase communication security in WSNs.