Authentication by Email Reception

This paper describes the use of email addresses as an authentication mechanism for public access servers. Intended for untrusted and low-risk environments, this mechanism provides reasonable security at very low cost to both user and server administrator. In particular, the initial and subsequent registrations are totally automated, and problem detection/resolution is highly automated. Keywords: security, authentication, email reception, email address Introduction In this paper, I describe the use of email reception as an authentication mechanism for public access servers, such as email- and Web-based servers in untrusted and low-risk environments [DoD]. Even the simplest implementation provides security that is significantly better than trust and requires significant power to crack. Despite its security limitations, this type of authentication should be attractive for a large percentage of servers that are now currently trust-based. In particular, the system administration cost..