Graphical Passwords with Integrated Trustworthy Interface TIPPI Workshop June 19, 2006 Patricia Lareau V P Product Management

Authentication Design Goals Consider Security and Usability

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Security Requirements Usability Security Randomly assigned Unique to the application Robust against known attacks Simple Reliable – no fallback needed Not sharable casually or easily Lacks social vulnerabilities Useable anywhere Two-way AuthN

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Usability Requirements Graphical User Interface Intuitive to use No user rules Independent of user’s aptitude, training or attentiveness No on-going training EASY to use Portable Fun! Usability Security

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Successful AuthN is Both or Neither Design Leverages: Secret Interface Protocol UsabilitySecurity

Passfaces Meets the Challenge Secure and Usable

The Secret Based on Cognitive Science

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ The Brain Deals with Faces Differently than Any Other Image Face recognition is a dedicated process which is different from general object recognition. Source: Face Recognition: A Literature Survey. National Institute of Standards and Technology

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ In the Beginning… Science has proven that we are genetically predisposed with a unique talent. We all have the innate ability to easily recognize human faces. There was a time that recognizing another's face could mean LIFE or DEATH. Today that need is not so great, but the ability is still there. There is a special place in the brain dedicated to facial recognition and facial recognition only. Thinking Outside of the Box Approach…. “Let’s Authenticate the Person”

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Recall vs. Recognize You must RECALL a passwordYou simply RECOGNIZE a face Remember High School ….What kind of test did your prefer? Fill in the Blank Multiple Choice g f w y

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ We Never Forget a Face “Haven’t used Passfaces in 6 months. I decided to take another look at it and, amazingly, I logged right in!” In one major government installation, there have been no forgotten Passfaces in over three years. The more its used, the easier it gets. Think about how many people you already recognize. Why wouldn’t you remember your Passfaces?

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Our approach Familiarize the user with a randomly-selected set of faces and check if they can recognize them when they see them again It’s as easy as recognizing an old friend

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Authentication Session The secret is Random Easy to recognize but Difficult to describe/share No “cribsheets” needed Always Available Intuitive - Independent of user age, language or education Not socially vulnerable

The Interface Reinforce the Design Objectives

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ How Passfaces Works Users Are Assigned a Set of 5* Passfaces User Interface Library of Faces * Typical implementation – 3 to 7 possible as standard

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ How Passfaces Works 5 Passfaces are Associated with 40 associated decoys Passfaces are presented in five 3 by 3 matrices each having 1 Passface and 8 decoys

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ New Users are Familiarized with their Passfaces Users enroll with a 2 to 4 minute familiarization process Using instant feedback, encouragement, and simple dialogs, users are trained until they can easily recognize their Passfaces The process is optimized and presented like an easy game Let’s Practice Action Click On Your Passface It’s Moving (There is only One on this Page)

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Familiarization Puts Cookies in the Brain Like a mindprint or brain cookie But, unlike fingerprints, Passfaces require no special hardware And, unlike browser cookies, Passfaces authenticate the actual user

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Authentication Session The interface… Graphical Self-prompting User cannot choose or reuse NO burden of recall 3X3 grid Ergonomic Maps to keypad, phone, pinpad More entropy than a user chosen secret

The Protocol Maximize Defenses – Maximize Usability

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Grid set is random per user Grids need not be secret but must be correct AUTHENTICATION IS NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT PRESENTATION OF CORRECT GRIDS Mutual Authentication is implicit- user attentiveness unnecessary Phishing today is stopped Phishing tomorrow is hard work Blacklisting is possible Configuration Data John Doe sparky123

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Grid Presentation Multiple Grids Random display within grid Familiar order of grids for user comfort Library Use Thousands of random sets available Shoulder surfing deterrent Anti phishing strategies Mutual AuthN enhanced

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ A New Class of Authentication Passfaces represents a new, 4 th class of authentication: Cognometrics Recognition-Based Authentication

Thank you! Questions? Patricia Lareau V P Product Management

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Authentication Risks Mitigation Options Risk written down Inadvertent Exposure shared multiple applications Social Engineering phishing pharming phoning Malware keylogging screen scraping etc. session hijacking Fallback to Personal Information procedure vulnerabilities user habituation static data (not sustainable) Other guessing capture OTP tokens smartcard calculators crypto-cookies PIN/TAN sheets virtual keypads “secret” images “trusted” logos/symbols user training SMS OTP phone OTP real-time risk assessment IP address blacklisting database protection

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Passfaces as Primary Factor Mitigation Options Inadvertent Exposure shared multiple applications Social Engineering phishing pharming phoning Malware key logging screen scraping etc. Risk Fallback to Personal Information attack on procedure user habituation not sustainable Other guessing Transmission protocols real-time risk assessment IP address blacklisting database protection can’t be written down capture session hijacking can’t be written down can’t be scraped difficult to share unique to application immune to phishing immune to pharming can’t be spoken can’t be logged attack on procedure never forgotten can be changed not guessable

Passfaces Corporation ■ 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive ■ Annapolis, Maryland ■ Random Delivery of Grids