Improving Biometric-Based Authentication Schemes with Smart Card Revocation/Reissue for Wireless Sensor Networks

User authentication in wireless sensor networks is more difficult than in traditional networks owing to sensor network characteristics such as unreliable communication, limited resources, and unattended operation. For these reasons, various authentication schemes have been proposed to provide secure and efficient communication. In 2016, Park et al. proposed a secure biometric-based authentication scheme with smart card revocation/reissue for wireless sensor networks. However, we found that their scheme was still insecure against impersonation attack, and had a problem in the smart card revocation/reissue phase. In this paper, we show how an adversary can impersonate a legitimate user or sensor node, illegal smart card revocation/reissue and prove that Park et al.’s scheme fails to provide revocation/reissue. In addition, we propose an enhanced scheme that provides efficiency, as well as anonymity and security. Finally, we provide security and performance analysis between previous schemes and the proposed scheme, and provide formal analysis based on the random oracle model. The results prove that the proposed scheme can solve the weaknesses of impersonation attack and other security flaws in the security analysis section. Furthermore, performance analysis shows that the computational cost is lower than the previous scheme.