COEN 351 Authentication
Authentication Authentication is based on What you know What you have Passwords, Pins, Answers to questions, … What you have (Physical) keys, tokens, smart-card What you are Biometrics: fingerprints, Iris, voice, … Where you are IP-address (not very secure), … Who else trusts you Certification by trusted third party, …
Authentication Passwords, Pins, … threatened by External disclosure Looking over the shoulder, social engineering Guessing Brute forcing, dictionary attack, … Snooping Finds unencrypted passwords Circumvention through replay Host compromise That hands out password file.
Authentication Password protection mechanisms Transformation: Password presented by user to client is hashed, hash is sent to server. Server compares with hash of password. UNIX Salting: Each hash is different. Challenge-response Protects against replay attacks. Time stamps Authentication request from client to server depends on time. Protects against replays. One-time passwords Digital Signature with every request. Zero-Knowledge techniques
Authentication Kerberos: Authentication system based on symmetric cryptography For patent reasons
Kerberos Every user / client / server shares a key with the authentication server. Authentication server hands out tickets to all other servers.
Kerberos First exchange between user and Authentication Server establishes a session key. This way, the same key is used only sparingly.
Key Distribution Center KDC: Database of keys for all users Invents and hands out keys for each transaction between clients. Alice KDC Bob Alice wants Bob KAlice{ KAB for Bob } KBob{KAB for Alice}
Personal Tokens Small hardware devices that use a pin to unlock. Storage Token: contains a secret value. Synchronous one-time password generator Generates a new password once a minute. Challenge Response: Implements the calculation of the response from a challenge according to a secret algorithm. Digital Signature Token: Calculates digital signature from message MAC.
Personal Tokens Human Interface Token. Smartcard PCMCIA card USB token Handheld with digital display (and keyboard). Smartcard Dimensions and contacts standardized by ISO/IEC. PCMCIA card USB token
Biometrics Fingerprint recognition Voice recognition Handwriting recognition Face recognition Retinal scan Hand geometry recognition