A Secure Mobile-based Authentication System

Financial information is extremely sensitive. Hence, electronic banking must provide a robust system to authenticate its customers and let them access their data remotely. On the other hand, such system must be usable, affordable, and portable.We propose a challengeresponse based one-time password (OTP) scheme that uses symmetric cryptography in combination with a hardware security module. The proposed protocol safeguards passwords from keyloggers and phishing attacks. Besides, this solution provides convenient mobility for users who want to bank online anytime and anywhere, not just from their own trusted computers.La informació financera és extremadament sensible. Per tant, la banca electrònica ha de proporcionar un sistema robust per autenticar als seus clients i fer-los accedir a les dades de forma remota. D'altra banda, aquest sistema ha de ser usable, accessible, i portàtil. Es proposa una resposta al desafiament basat en una contrasenya única (OTP), esquema que utilitza la criptografia simètrica en combinació amb un mòdul de maquinari de seguretat. Amés, aquesta solució ofereix mobilitat convenient per als usuaris que volen bancària en línia en qualsevol moment i en qualsevol lloc, no només des dels seus propis equips de confiança.La información financiera es extremadamente sensible. Por lo tanto, la banca electrónica debe proporcionar un sistema robusto para autenticar a sus clientes y hacerles acceder a sus datos de forma remota. Por otra parte, dicho sistema debe ser usable, accesible, y portátil. Se propone una respuesta al desafío basado en una contraseña única (OTP), esquema que utiliza la criptografía simétrica en combinación con un módulo hardware de seguridad hardware. Además, esta solución ofrece una movilidad conveniente para los usuarios que quieren la entidad bancaria en línea en cualquier momento y en cualquier lugar, no sólo des de sus propios equipos de confianza

End to End Encrypted Smart Lock Using RSA based on Opinion from Social Media Review Comments

In the modern era, from big apartments to small houses, startups to corporate buildings, protecting assets or preventing unauthorized persons are crucial problems. Often traditional locks like padlocks are prone to security risks since they can be easily bypassed. Existing smart lock systems are prone to Man in middle Attacks where digital keys can easily be duplicated. The review comments about prevailing smart locks technologies have been collected from various sources such as blogs and microblogs.  The data set is analyzed to discover the opinion of the people about the smartlock product. In this proposed system, an innovative smartlock system prototype is designed using current technologies. A smart lock system has been proposed which is encrypted end-to-end using the RSA algorithm. This system uses a one-time password sent to registered users combined with the master code to unlock the door. This system is designed as such only the users who are connected to a wireless local area network are able to access the smart lock system, this adds an additional layer of security. It is connected to the cloud and logs all the activity from booting to shutting down. The breach detection system along with image capture is also included to detect forced intrusions. The client functionality can be easily ported to any platform which supports HTTP protocol which tends to be the major advantage of the proposed work

An investigation into the usability and acceptability of multi-channel authentication to online banking users in Oman

Authentication mechanisms provide the cornerstone for security for many distributed systems, especially for increasingly popular online applications. For decades, widely used, traditional authentication methods included passwords and PINs that are now inadequate to protect online users and organizations from ever more sophisticated attacks. This study proposes an improvement to traditional authentication mechanisms. The solution introduced here includes a one-time-password (OTP) and incorporates the concept of multiple levels and multiple channels – features that are much more successful than traditional authentication mechanisms in protecting users' online accounts from being compromised. This research study reviews and evaluates current authentication classes and mechanisms and proposes an authentication mechanism that uses a variety of techniques, including multiple channels, to resist attacks more effectively than most commonly used mechanisms. Three aspects of the mechanism were evaluated: 1. The security of multi-channel authentication (MCA) was evaluated in theoretical terms, using a widely accepted methodology. 2. The usability was evaluated by carrying out a user study. 3. Finally, the acceptability thereof was evaluated by asking the participants in study (2) specific questions which aligned with the technology acceptance model (TAM). The study’s analysis of the data, gathered from online questionnaires and application log tables, showed that most participants found the MCA mechanism superior to other available authentication mechanisms and clearly supported the proposed MCA mechanism and the benefits that it provides. The research presents guidelines on how to implement the proposed mechanism, provides a detailed analysis of its effectiveness in protecting users' online accounts against specific, commonly deployed attacks, and reports on its usability and acceptability. It represents a significant step forward in the evolution of authentication mechanisms meeting the security needs of online users while maintaining usability

Continuous and transparent multimodal authentication: reviewing the state of the art

Individuals, businesses and governments undertake an ever-growing range of activities online and via various Internet-enabled digital devices. Unfortunately, these activities, services, information and devices are the targets of cybercrimes. Verifying the user legitimacy to use/access a digital device or service has become of the utmost importance. Authentication is the frontline countermeasure of ensuring only the authorized user is granted access; however, it has historically suffered from a range of issues related to the security and usability of the approaches. They are also still mostly functioning at the point of entry and those performing sort of re-authentication executing it in an intrusive manner. Thus, it is apparent that a more innovative, convenient and secure user authentication solution is vital. This paper reviews the authentication methods along with the current use of authentication technologies, aiming at developing a current state-of-the-art and identifying the open problems to be tackled and available solutions to be adopted. It also investigates whether these authentication technologies have the capability to fill the gap between high security and user satisfaction. This is followed by a literature review of the existing research on continuous and transparent multimodal authentication. It concludes that providing users with adequate protection and convenience requires innovative robust authentication mechanisms to be utilized in a universal level. Ultimately, a potential federated biometric authentication solution is presented; however it needs to be developed and extensively evaluated, thus operating in a transparent, continuous and user-friendly manner

A Survey on Smart Home Authentication: Toward Secure, Multi-Level and Interaction-based Identification

With the increased number and reduced cost of smart devices, Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as smart home (SHome) are increasingly popular. Owing to the characteristics of IoT environments such as resource constrained devices, existing authentication solutions may not be suitable to secure these environments. As a result, a number of authentication solutions specifically designed for IoT environments have been proposed. This paper provides a critical analysis of existing authentication solutions. The major contributions of the paper are as follows. First, it presents a generic model derived from an SHome use-case scenario. Secondly, based on the model, it performs a threat analysis to identify possible means of attacks. The analysis leads to the specification of a set of desirable security requirements for the design of authentication solutions for SHome. Thirdly, based on the requirements, existing authentication solutions are analysed and some ideas for achieving effective and efficient authentication in IoT environments are proposed

0E2FA: Zero Effort Two-Factor Authentication

Smart devices (mobile devices, laptops, tablets, etc.) can receive signals from different radio frequency devices that are within range. As these devices move between networks (e.g., Wi-Fi hotspots, cellphone towers, etc.), they receive broadcast messages from access points, some of which can be used to collect useful information. This information can be utilized in a variety of ways, such as to establish a connection, to share information, to locate devices, and to identify users, which is central to this dissertation. The principal benefit of a broadcast message is that smart devices can read and process the embedded information without first being connected to the corresponding network. Moreover, broadcast messages can be received only within the range of the wireless access point that sends the broadcast, thus inherently limiting access to only those devices in close physical proximity, which may facilitate many applications that are dependent on proximity. In our research, we utilize data contained in these broadcast messages to implement a two-factor authentication (2FA) system that, unlike existing methods, does not require any extra effort on the part of the users of the system. By determining if two devices are in the same physical location and sufficiently close to each other, we can ensure that they belong to the same user. This system depends on something that a user knows, something that a user owns, and—a significant contribution of this work—something that is in the user’s environment