[Cryptography] SRP for mutual authentication - as an alternative / addition to certificates?

[Jerry Leichter]

> By a quick reading, and by peeking at the implementation, it provides
> strong mutual authentication of both client and server through a
> "shared secret", which is stored as a one way hash on the server, and
> never exchanged on the wire.  ...Has drawbacks - but certainly sounds like an improvement compared to
> existing protocols?  ... Are there / why are not similar technologies used for web?
There's a history of issues involving patents with SRP and similar protocols.  (The underlying EKE patents were owned by Lucent, which didn't seem to want to make them broadly available.  SRP was allegedly designed to avoid the EKE patents, but there were enough doubts about whether it did to keep people away.)

The EKE patents have recently expired, so perhaps its time to go look at this again.
                                                        -- Jerry