A METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IDENTIFYING AN AUTHORIZED INDIVIDUAL BY MEANS OF UNPREDICTABLE SINGLE-USE PASSWORDS

摘要

A method is described for the identification of a party authorised to have the benefit of a service delivered by a provider party via a telematics network, in which the provider party and each user party are connected to the network by means of a respective electronic communications and processing system (S, C), and the provider party requests a temporary password (PWD) identifying the user party to allow access to the services delivered. The method is characterised in that it involves autonomous execution of a procedure for calculating the password (PWD) in the processing systems (S, C) of both parties on the basis or predetermined algorithms, the above-mentioned calcultaing procedure comprising the operations of: generating a first string of characters (N30) by means of a first pre-established algorithm (ALGN30), on the basis of a random number (RND) and a hidden dynamic variable (n; p) not transmitted over the network, but obtained by the processing systems (S, C) independently; extracting a second string of characters (N3), a subset of the first string (N30), by means of a second preestablished algorithm (ALGN3), as a function of the hidden dynamic variable (n; p) and of said random number (RND); and generating the temporary password (PWD) by means of a third pre-established algorithm (ALGPWD), on the basis of the above-mentioned second string of characters (N3). The authorsed party is identified as a result of the comparison between the password (PWD) calculated by the process­ing system (S) of the provider party and that calculated by the processing system (C) of the user party, whereby access to the service is permitted if this comparison gives a posi­tive result and otherwise is denied. The password thus ob­tained may also be used as a single-use key in a system for encrypting all the information exchanged between the author­ised user party and the service provider party.