Off-the-Hook: An Efficient and Usable Client-Side Phishing Prevention Application

Phishing is a major problem on the Web. Despite the significant attention it has received over the years, there has been no definitive solution. While the state-of-the-art solutions have reasonably good performance, they suffer from several drawbacks including potential to compromise user privacy, difficulty of detecting phishing websites whose content change dynamically, and reliance on features that are too dependent on the training data. To address these limitations we present a new approach for detecting phishing webpages in real-time as they are visited by a browser. It relies on modeling inherent phisher limitations stemming from the constraints they face while building a webpage. Consequently, the implementation of our approach, Off-the-Hook, exhibits several notable properties including high accuracy, brand-independence and good language-independence, speed of decision, resilience to dynamic phish and resilience to evolution in phishing techniques. Off-the-Hook is implemented as a fully-client-side browser add-on, which preserves user privacy. In addition, Off-the-Hook identifies the target website that a phishing webpage is attempting to mimic and includes this target in its warning. We evaluated Off-the-Hook in two different user studies. Our results show that users prefer Off-the-Hook warnings to Firefox warnings.Phishing is a major problem on the Web. Despite the significant attention it has received over the years, there has been no definitive solution. While the state-of-the-art solutions have reasonably good performance, they suffer from several drawbacks including potential to compromise user privacy, difficulty of detecting phishing websites whose content change dynamically, and reliance on features that are too dependent on the training data. To address these limitations we present a new approach for detecting phishing webpages in real-time as they are visited by a browser. It relies on modeling inherent phisher limitations stemming from the constraints they face while building a webpage. Consequently, the implementation of our approach, Off-the-Hook, exhibits several notable properties including high accuracy, brand-independence and good language-independence, speed of decision, resilience to dynamic phish and resilience to evolution in phishing techniques. Off-the-Hook is implemented as a fully-client-side browser add-on, which preserves user privacy. In addition, Off-the-Hook identifies the target website that a phishing webpage is attempting to mimic and includes this target in its warning. We evaluated Off-the-Hook in two different user studies. Our results show that users prefer Off-the-Hook warnings to Firefox warnings.Non Peer reviewe

OmniShare : Encrypted Cloud Storage for the Multi-Device Era

Two attractive features of cloud storage services are (1) the automatic synchronization of files between multiple devices and (2) the possibility of sharing files with other users. However, many users are concerned about the security and privacy of data stored in the cloud. Client-side encryption is an effective safeguard, but it requires all client devices to have the decryption key. Current solutions derive these keys from user-chosen passwords, which are easily guessed. We present OmniShare, the first scheme to combine strong client-side encryption with intuitive key distribution mechanisms to enable access from multiple client devices and sharing between users. OmniShare uses a novel combination of out-of-band channels (including QR codes and ultrasonic communication), as well as the cloud storage service itself, to authenticate new devices. We describe the design and implementation of OmniShare and explain how we evaluated its security (using formal methods), its performance (benchmarks), and its usability (cognitive walkthrough).Two attractive features of cloud storage services are (1) the automatic synchronization of files between multiple devices and (2) the possibility of sharing files with other users. However, many users are concerned about the security and privacy of data stored in the cloud. Client-side encryption is an effective safeguard, but it requires all client devices to have the decryption key. Current solutions derive these keys from user-chosen passwords, which are easily guessed. We present OmniShare, the first scheme to combine strong client-side encryption with intuitive key distribution mechanisms to enable access from multiple client devices and sharing between users. OmniShare uses a novel combination of out-of-band channels (including QR codes and ultrasonic communication), as well as the cloud storage service itself, to authenticate new devices. We describe the design and implementation of OmniShare and explain how we evaluated its security (using formal methods), its performance (benchmarks), and its usability (cognitive walkthrough).Peer reviewe