A secure and reliable authentication mechanism for users of microsoft cardspace framework

The development of web applications on Cloud computing platform has given rise to various concerns about the private data of the consumers of cloud. The traditional form of security tokens like username/password used to access cloud services are prone to phishing attacks and hence do not provide complete security. Card Space (formerly known as Info Card) is a Digital Identity Management system that has recently been adopted by Microsoft. In this paper identification of two security flaws in Card Space that may lead to a serious privacy violation have been detected. The first flaw is the reliance on Internet user judgements of the trustworthiness of service providers, and the second is the reliance of the system on a single layer of authentication. A multi-level solution is designed to address both flaws using biometric authentication techniques. Solution is compatible with the currently deployed Card Space identity metasystem, and should enhance the privacy of the system with minor changes to the current Card Space framework.