Patent ID: 8230219

Claim:
A network device comprising a transceiver; a processor; and a machine readable medium, wherein said processor performs an authentication procedure between said network device and a second network device, said procedure comprising: a Diffie-Hellman key exchange between said network device and said second network device to create a shared secret key; computing two hashes based on said secret key, two different combinations of publicly known information, and a secret password; keeping one of said hashes secret resulting in a secret hash and a non-secret hash; exchanging said non-secret hash one bit at a time with a non-secret hash of said second network device; comparing bits received from said second network device to the corresponding bits within said secret hashes; stopping exchange of said non-secret hash whenever an exchanged bit fails to match corresponding secret hash bit and sending a next bit of said non-secret hash when an exchanged bit matches its corresponding secret hash bit; and completing said authentication procedure once all desired bits of said non-secret hashes have been exchanged and no exchanged bits have failed to match the corresponding secret hash bits.