ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss various mechanisms that allow one user to “prove” their identity to another user. Among the techniques they describe are passwords and challenge-and-response protocols, some of which involve “zero-knowledge” techniques. The topic of this chapter is identification, which is also known as entity authentication. Roughly speaking, the goal of an identification scheme is to allow someone’s identity to be confirmed. A hashed password is often referred to as a fingerprint, and the authors follow this terminology\. First, the authors explore the idea of building secure identification schemes from simpler cryptographic primitives, namely, message authentication codes or signature schemes. The authors discuss two identification schemes that are built "from scratch". Knowledge is often used for identification when the person being identified is not in the same physical location as the person or entity performing the identification.
