Outline

• User authentication
– Password authentication, salt
– Challenge-Response
– Biometrics
– Token-based authentication
• Authentication in distributed systems (multi
service providers/domains)
– Single sign-on, Microsoft Passport
– Trusted Intermediaries
 Password authentication
• Basic idea
– User has a secret password
– System checks password to authenticate user
• Issues
– How is password stored?
– How does system check password?
– How easy is it to guess a password?
• Difficult to keep password file secret, so best if it is hard to
guess password even if you have the password file
 Basic password scheme

User Password file

kiwifruit
exrygbzyf
kgnosfix
hash function ggjoklbsz
…
…
 Basic password scheme
• Hash function h : strings  strings
– Given h(password), hard to find password
– No known algorithm better than trial and error
• User password stored as h(password)
• When user enters password
– System computes h(password)
– Compares with entry in password file
• No passwords stored on disk
 Unix password system
• Hash function is 25xDES
– 25 rounds of DES-variant encryptions
• Password file is publicly readable
– Other information in password file …
• Any user can try “dictionary attack”
– User looks at password file
– Computes hash(word) for every word in dictionary
• “Salt” makes dictionary attack harder
R.H. Morris and K. Thompson, Password security: a case
history, Communications of the ACM, November 1979
 Salt
• Password line
walt:fURfuu4.4hY0U:129:129:Belgers:/home/walt:/bin/csh

Compare
Salt
Input
Constant, Key
Ciphertext
A 64-bit block of 0 25x DES
Plaintext

When password is set, salt is chosen randomly

12-bit salt slows dictionary attack by factor of 212
 Dictionary Attack – some numbers
• Typical password dictionary
– 1,000,000 entries of common passwords
• people's names, common pet names, and ordinary words.

– Suppose you generate and analyze 10 guesses per second

• This may be reasonable for a web site; offline is much faster

– Dictionary attack in at most 100,000 seconds = 28 hours, or 14 hours

on average

• If passwords were random

– Assume six-character password
• Upper- and lowercase letters, digits, 32 punctuation characters

• 689,869,781,056 password combinations.

• Exhaustive search requires 1,093 years on average

Challenge-response Authentication

Goal: Bob wants Alice to “prove” her identity to

him
Protocol ap1.0: Alice says “I am Alice”

“I am Alice”
Failure scenario??
 Authentication
Goal: Bob wants Alice to “prove” her identity to
him
Protocol ap1.0: Alice says “I am Alice”

in a network,
Bob can not “see”
Alice, so Trudy simply
“I am Alice” declares
herself to be Alice
 Authentication: another try
Protocol ap2.0: Alice says “I am Alice” in an IP packet
containing her source IP address

Alice’s
IP address
“I am Alice”

Failure scenario??
 Authentication: another try
Protocol ap2.0: Alice says “I am Alice” in an IP packet
containing her source IP address

Trudy can create

a packet
Alice’s
“spoofing”
IP address
“I am Alice” Alice’s address
 Authentication: another try
Protocol ap3.0: Alice says “I am Alice” and sends her
secret password to “prove” it.

Alice’s Alice’s
“I’m Alice”
IP addr password

Alice’s Failure scenario??

OK
IP addr
 Authentication: another try
Protocol ap3.0: Alice says “I am Alice” and sends her
secret password to “prove” it.

Alice’s Alice’s
“I’m Alice”
IP addr password
playback attack: Trudy
Alice’s records Alice’s packet
OK
IP addr and later
plays it back to Bob

Alice’s Alice’s
“I’m Alice”
IP addr password
 Authentication: yet another try
Protocol ap3.1: Alice says “I am Alice” and sends her
encrypted secret password to “prove” it.

Alice’s encrypted
“I’m Alice”
IP addr password

Alice’s Failure scenario??

OK
IP addr
 Authentication: another try
Protocol ap3.1: Alice says “I am Alice” and sends her
encrypted secret password to “prove” it.

Alice’s encryppted
“I’m Alice” record
IP addr password
and
Alice’s
OK playback
IP addr
still works!

Alice’s encrypted
“I’m Alice”
IP addr password
 Authentication: yet another try
Goal: avoid playback attack
Nonce: number (R) used only once –in-a-lifetime
ap4.0: to prove Alice “live”, Bob sends Alice nonce, R.
Alice
must return R, encrypted with shared secret key
“I am Alice”

R
KA-B(R) Alice is live, and
only Alice knows
key to encrypt
nonce, so it must
Failures, drawbacks? be Alice!
 Authentication: ap5.0
ap4.0 doesn’t protect against server database reading
• can we authenticate using public key techniques?
ap5.0: use nonce, public key cryptography
“I am Alice”
Bob computes
R + -
- KA(KA (R)) = R
K A (R) and knows only Alice
could have the private
key, that encrypted R
such that
+ -
K (K (R)) = R
A A
 Biometrics
• Use a person’s physical characteristics
– fingerprint, voice, face, keyboard timing, …
• Advantages
– Cannot be disclosed, lost, forgotten
• Disadvantages
– Cost, installation, maintenance
– Reliability of comparison algorithms
• False positive: Allow access to unauthorized person
• False negative: Disallow access to authorized person

– Privacy?
– If forged, how do you revoke?
 Biometrics
• Common uses
– Specialized situations, physical security
– Combine
• Multiple biometrics
• Biometric and PIN
• Biometric and token
 Token-based authentication
Smart Card
• With embedded CPU and memory
• Various forms
– PIN protected memory card
• Enter PIN to get the password

– Cryptographic challenge/response cards

• A cryptographic key in memory
• Computer create a random challenge
• Enter PIN to encrypt/decrypt the challenge w/ the card

– Cryptographic Calculator
• No electronic connection to the terminal
 Smart Card Example
Initial data

Time Challenge Time

function

• Some complications
– Initial data shared with server
• Need to set this up securely

• Shared database for many sites

– Clock skew
 Outline
• User authentication
– Password authentication, salt
– Challenge-Response
– Biometrics
– Token-based authentication
• Authentication in distributed systems
– Single sign-on, Microsoft Passport
– Trusted Intermediaries
 e.g. Securant, Netegrity,
Single sign-on systems Oblix

LAN

Rules Database

user name,
password, Authentication Application
other auth

Server
• Advantages
– User signs on once
– No need for authentication at multiple sites, applications
– Can set central authorization policy for the enterprise
 Microsoft Passport
• Launched 1999
– Claim > 200 million accounts in 2002
– Over 3.5 billion authentications each month
• Log in to many websites using one account
– Used by MS services Hotmail, MSN Messenger or
MSN subscriptions; also Radio Shack, etc.
– Hotmail or MSN users automatically have Microsoft
Passport accounts set up
• Passport may continue to evolve; bugs have been
uncovered
 Four parts of Passport account
• Passport Unique Identifier (PUID)
– Assigned to the user when he or she sets up the account
• User profile, required to set up account
– Phone number or Hotmail or MSN.com e-mail address
– Also name, ZIP code, state, or country, …
• Credential information
– E-mail address or phone number
– Minimum six-character password or PIN
– Four-digit security key, used for a second level of
authentication on sites requiring stronger sign-in credentials
• Wallet
– Passport-based application at passport.com domain
– E-commerce sites with Express Purchase function use wallet
information rather than prompt the user to type in data
Passport log-in
 Trusted Intermediaries
Symmetric key problem: Public key problem:
• How do two entities • When Alice obtains
establish shared secret Bob’s public key (from
key over network? web site, e-mail,
diskette), how does she
Solution: know it is Bob’s public
• trusted key distribution key, not Trudy’s?
center (KDC) acting as
Solution:
intermediary between
entities • trusted certification
authority (CA)
 Key Distribution Center (KDC)
• Alice, Bob need shared symmetric key.
• KDC: server shares different secret key with each
registered user (many users)
• Alice, Bob know own symmetric keys, KA-KDC KB-KDC , for
communicating with KDC.
KDC

KA-KDC KP-KDC
KX-KDC
KP-KDC KB-KDC
KY-KDC

KZ-KDC
KA-KDC KB-KDC
 Key Distribution Center (KDC)
Q: How does KDC allow Bob, Alice to determine shared
symmetric secret key to communicate with each other?

KDC
generates
KA-KDC(A,B)
R1

Alice KA-KDC(R1, KB-KDC(A,R1) )

Bob knows to
knows use R1 to
R1 KB-KDC(A,R1) communicate
with Alice

Alice and Bob communicate: using R1 as

session key for shared symmetric encryption
 Certification Authorities
• Certification authority (CA): binds public key to
particular entity, E.
• E (person, router) registers its public key with CA.
– E provides “proof of identity” to CA.
– CA creates certificate binding E to its public key.
– certificate containing E’s public key digitally signed by CA
– CA says “this is E’s public key”
Bob’s digital
+
public signature KB
+
key KB (encrypt)
CA
certificate for
K-
Bob’s private
identifying key CA Bob’s public key,
information signed by CA
 Certification Authorities
• When Alice wants Bob’s public key:
– gets Bob’s certificate (Bob or elsewhere).
– apply CA’s public key to Bob’s certificate, get
Bob’s public key
+ digital Bob’s
KB signature public
+
(decrypt) K B key

CA
public +
K CA
key
 Single KDC/CA
• Problems
– Single administration trusted by all principals
– Single point of failure
– Scalability
• Solutions: break into multiple domains
– Each domain has a trusted administration
 Multiple KDC/CA Domains
Secret keys:
• KDCs share pairwise key
• topology of KDC: tree with shortcuts
Public keys:
• cross-certification of CAs
• example: Alice with CAA, Boris with CAB
– Alice gets CAB’s certificate (public key p1), signed by CAA
– Alice gets Boris’ certificate (its public key p 2), signed by
CAB (p1)
Backup Slides
 Advantages of salt
• Without salt
– Same hash functions on all machines
• Compute hash of all common strings once
• Compare hash file with all known password files

• With salt
– One password hashed 212 different ways
• Precompute hash file?
– Need much larger file to cover all common strings

• Dictionary attack on known password file

– For each salt found in file, try all common strings