Improved hash and transmission method for larger packets in the RADIUS protocol
Young-Se Kim, Ung Heo, Keecheon Kim · Security and Communication Networks · 2016
Abstract Remote Authentication Dial‐In User Service (RADIUS) is a popular protocol for authenticating users. If the size of the request packet sent by a client is larger than a specific size, the current RADIUS protocol silently discards the request. However, request packets that use an Extensible Markup Language scheme, which contain security‐related attributes, are also available. These packets are classified as larger packets, which we define as being larger than 4096 bytes. Accordingly, a packet may result in an authentication failure on account of the large packet size. In this paper, TCP is used as a transport layer protocol for the RADIUS protocol. We propose a hash and transmission method to reduce the problem of the authentication failure when the packet exceeds 4096 bytes. Through an experimental evaluation, we prove that attaching a nonce value to the user–password field with an SHA‐1, and sending this information to the server, guarantees more security than the conventional RADIUS protocol. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.