Seeing-Is-Believing: Using Camera Phones for Human-Verifiable Authentication McCune, J.M., Perrig, A., Reiter, M.K IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Presented by: Rui Peng
Outline Public Key and Secret Key Cryptography Motivation Solution Scenarios Comments and conclusion
Public Key Cryptography
Secret Key Cryptography
Man-in-the-middle Attack
Motivation Problem: a user wants to connect his wireless device to that another device. Challenges No centralized authority No prior context How to do authentication between wireless devices?
Solution Use a side channel for key exchange Visual channel: camera phones! Requirements: Camera (read barcodes) Display (display barcodes) Result: very strong authentication
Authenticating a public key with SiB
Bidirectional authentication Both parties must have camera and display. Users take turns displaying and taking snapshots of their respective barcodes. Alice gets a digest of Bob’s public key and vice versa. These digests serve as commitments to their respective public keys. Subsequent communication can begin with any well-known public key protocol.
Unidirectional authentication Camera-less devices cannot authenticate other devices with SiB. If equipped with display, they can still generate barcodes so they can be authenticated.
Unidirectional authentication
Advantages The idea of using visual channel is novel and interesting. Provide strong authentication for wireless devices Enables the security of public key protocols without dependence of a central authority.
Limitations Not all devices have cameras and displays. Still cumbersome to use the protocol. Need to point the camera to a device and take snapshots every time you want to communicate.
Thank you! Questions?