Passwords: If we're so smart, why are we still using them?

While a lot has changed in Internet security in the last 10 years, a lot has stayed the same - such as the use of alphanumeric passwords. Passwords remain the dominant means of authentication on the Internet, even in the face of significant problems related to password forgetting and theft. In fact, despite large numbers of proposed alternatives, we must remember more passwords than ever before. Why is this? Will alphanumeric passwords still be ubiquitous in 2019, or will adoption of alternative proposals be commonplace? What must happen in order to move beyond passwords? This note pursues these questions, following a panel discussion at Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2009

A second look at the usability of click-based graphical passwords

Click-based graphical passwords, which involve clicking a set of user-selected points, have been proposed as a usable alternative to text passwords. We conducted two user studies: an initial lab study to revisit these usability claims, explore for the first time the impact on usability of a wide-range of images, and gather information about the points selected by users; and a large-scale field study to examine how click-based graphical passwords work in practice. No such prior field studies have been reported in the literature. We found significant differences in the usability results of the two studies, providing empirical evidence that relying solely on lab studies for security interfaces can be problematic. We also present a first look at whether interference from having multiple graphical passwords affects usability and whether more memorable passwords are necessarily weaker in terms of security

Influencing users towards better passwords: Persuasive cued click-points

Usable security has unique usability challenges because the need for security often means that standard human-computerinteraction approaches cannot be directly applied. An important usability goal for authentication systems is to support users in selecting better passwords, thus increasing security by expanding the effective password space. In click-based graphical passwords, poorly chosen passwords lead to the emergence of hotspots ' portions of the image where users are more likely to select click-points, allowing attackers to mount more successful dictionary attacks. We use persuasion to influence user choice in click-based graphical passwords, encouraging users to select more random, and hence more secure, click-points. Our approach is to introduce persuasion to the Cued Click-Points graphical password scheme (Chiasson, van Oorschot, Biddle, 2007). Our resulting scheme significantly reduces hotspots while still maintaining its usability

Persuasive cued click-points: Design, implementation, and evaluation of a knowledge-based authentication mechanism

This paper presents an integrated evaluation of the Persuasive Cued Click-Points graphical password scheme, including usability and security evaluations, and implementation considerations. An important usability goal for knowledge-based authentication systems is to support users in selecting passwords of higher security, in the sense of being from an expanded effective security space. We use persuasion to influence user choice in click-based graphical passwords, encouraging users to select more random, and hence more difficult to guess, click-points

Mercury: Recovering forgotten passwords using personal devices

Instead of allowing the recovery of original passwords, forgotten passwords are often reset using online mechanisms such as password verification questions (PVQ methods) and password reset links in email. These mechanisms are generally weak, exploitable, and force users to choose new passwords. Emailing the original password exposes the password to third parties. To address these issues, and to allow forgotten passwords to be securely restored, we present a scheme called Mercury. Its primary mode employs user-level public keys and a personal mobile device (PMD) such as a smart-phone, netbook, or tablet. A user generates a key pair on her PMD; the private key remains on the PMD and the public key is shared with different sites (e.g., during account setup). For password recovery, the site sends the (public key)-encrypted password to the user's pre-registered email address, or displays the encrypted password on a webpage, e.g., as a barcode. The encrypted password is then decrypted using the PMD and revealed to the user. A prototype implementation of Mercury is available as an Android application

Simple Nudges for Better Password Creation

Recent security breaches have highlighted the consequences of reusing passwords across online accounts. Recent guidance on password policies by the UK government recommend an emphasis on password length over an extended character set for generating secure but memorable passwords without cognitive overload. This paper explores the role of three nudges in creating website-specific passwords: financial incentive (present vs absent), length instruction (long password vs no instruction) and stimulus (picture present vs not present). Mechanical Turk workers were asked to create a password in one of these conditions and the resulting passwords were evaluated based on character length, resistance to automated guessing attacks, and time taken to create the password. We found that users created longer passwords when asked to do so or when given a financial incentive and these longer passwords were harder to guess than passwords created with no instruction. Using a picture nudge to support password creation did not lead to passwords that were either longer or more resistant to attacks but did lead to account-specific passwords

Tight Time-Space Lower Bounds for Finding Multiple Collision Pairs and Their Applications

We consider a collision search problem (CSP), where given a parameter $C$, the goal is to find $C$ collision pairs in a random function $f:[N] \rightarrow [N]$ (where $[N] = \{0,1,\ldots,N-1\})$ using $S$ bits of memory. Algorithms for CSP have numerous cryptanalytic applications such as space-efficient attacks on double and triple encryption. The best known algorithm for CSP is parallel collision search (PCS) published by van Oorschot and Wiener, which achieves the time-space tradeoff $T^2 \cdot S = \tilde{O}(C^2 \cdot N)$ for $S = \tilde{O}(C)$. In this paper, we prove that any algorithm for CSP satisfies $T^2 \cdot S = \tilde{\Omega}(C^2 \cdot N)$ for $S = \tilde{O}(C)$, hence the best known time-space tradeoff is optimal (up to poly-logarithmic factors in $N$). On the other hand, we give strong evidence that proving similar unconditional time-space tradeoff lower bounds on CSP applications (such as breaking double and triple encryption) may be very difficult, and would imply a breakthrough in complexity theory. Hence, we propose a new restricted model of computation and prove that under this model, the best known time-space tradeoff attack on double encryption is optimal

An alternate explanation of two BAN-logic “failures”

Boyd and Mao (“On a Limitation of BAN Logic”, in these proceedings) suggest that it is easy to use the authentication logic of Burrows, Abadi and Needham to approve protocols that are in practice unsound, and present two examples. We illustrate that the problem in the first example can be traced to a violation of pre-conditions in the BAN analysis (involving ill-founded trust in a trusted server), while in the second the idealization is simply incorrect. For the latter, a general guideline is proposed to avoid similar problems in the future

Science, security, and academic literature: Can we learn from history?

A recent paper (Oakland 2017) discussed science and security research in the context of the government-funded Science of Security movement, and the history and prospects of security as a scientific pursuit. It drew on literature from within the security research community, and mature history and philosophy of science literature. The paper sparked debate in numerous organizations and the security community. Here we consider some of the main ideas, provide a summary list of relevant literature, and encourage discussion within the Moving Target Defense (MTD) sub-community