Abstract:The current authentication protocol based on username and password has been difficult to meet the increasing security requirements. Specifically, users choose different passwords to access different online services, which greatly increases the user’s memory burden. In addition, password authentication has low security and faces many known attacks. To solve such problems, this study proposes a user-centric two-factor authentication key agreement protocol UC-2FAKA based on the Pointcheval-Sanders signature. Firstly, to prevent the leakage of authentication factors, passwords, and biometric two-factor credentials are constructed based on the Pointcheval-Sanders signature. The identity is authenticated to the service provider (SP) in a zero-knowledge proof manner. Secondly, using a user-centric single sign on (SSO) architecture, users can request identity credentials by registering with an identity provider (IDP) to log in different SPs to avoid IDP or SP tracking or linking users. Thirdly, the Diffie-Hellman key exchange is used to authenticate SP identities and negotiate communication keys to ensure subsequent communication security. Finally, comprehensive security analysis and performance comparison of the proposed protocol are carried out. The results show that the proposed protocol can resist various known attacks, and the proposed protocol performs better in communication overhead and computational overhead.