USENIX: Pico: No More Passwords!

Frank Stajano, from the University of Cambridge, talked about the growing password problem Many years ago, when we all only had one or two passwords to remember, memorizing one or two simple 8 character passwords was very simple to do.

Nowadays, we like have 20-30 (or more?) accounts, all with different password policies, and we just can't memorize them all - and the things we're coming up with that we believe have high entropy, are actually very easily cracked - as illustrated by this recent xkcd.

The little shortcuts we take, like reusing our "good" passwords, means that once it is compromised on one site (through no fault of the user), the attacker has access to many more sites. This was demonstrated recently with the Sony password leaks.

Because we forget passwords, all websites have a method for recovering your password - which can be attacked.

Stajano says that passwords are both unusable and insecure, so why on earth are we still using them?

Perhaps we can start over? Let's get rid of passwords! That's where Pico comes in. The goals of Pico are:

• no more passwords, passphrases or PINs
• scalable to thousands of vendors
• no less secure than passwords (trivial)
• usability benefits
• security benefits

He wants to make sure we stay away from trying to make the user remember things, so that eliminates things like remembering pictures, shapes, etc.

Other requirements for Pico are it must be scalable, secure, loss-resistant, theft-resistant, works-for-all, works from anywhere, no search, no typing, continuous.

Pico would have a camera, display, pairing button and main button, as well as radio to communicate. The device could look like a smart phone, a keyfob, watch, etc, but it is a dedicated device. It shouldn't be on multipurpose device, like an actual smart phone, as it would then be opened up to too many forms of attack.

The camera would use a visual code in order to know what it is trying to authenticate. The radio device would be used to communicate to the computer over an encrypted channel. The main button is used to authenticate, and the pairing button would be used for initialization of an authentication pairing. Obviously, this type of system would not just be an extension of existing systems, but would require hardware extensions.

Pico would initialize by scanning the application's visual code, get the full key via radio and check it against the visual code and stores it. Pico would respond, then, with an ephemeral public key, then challenges the application to prove ownership of the application's secret key. Once all of those challenges are passed, then Pico will come up with it's on keypair for that application and share a long term public key with the application. The application will store that and then would know your Pico the next time you try to connect to that application.

While you're connected to the application, your Pico would be continually talking to the application, via the radio interface.

Of course, simply having the Pico cannot be enough - otherwise someone could take your Pico and impersonate you. This is where the concept of "picosiblings" comes into play. Picosiblings would be things like a watch, belt, ring, cellphone, etc (things you often have with you), and the device would only work with those things nearby. [VAF: Personally, I'd hate to think I wouldn't be able to get money out of the ATM simply because I'd forgotten to wear my Java ring that day].

If you lose your Pico, you'd need to use some of your picosiblings to regenerate it - so don't lose all of your picosiblings as well! It seems that you want to have enough picosiblings, but not too many. I'm not sure how you determine that correct level :)

Pico access can't be tortured out of you, as it can't be unlocked by anything that you know (there's no PIN or password).

"Optimization is the process of taking something that works and replacing it with something that almost works, but costs less." - Roger Needham

With that in mind, Stajano notes that if he actually wants people to adopt this, he would likely need to think of a smart phone client.

There were a lot of interesting ideas in this talk, but the thought of carrying around yet another device is not appealing, and the burden of replacement and function (with all the picosiblings) makes this seem untenable to me - but, if it gets people thinking, then it's definitely a step in the right direction!

The audio and video of this presentation are now online.

This article is syndicated from Thoughts on security, beer, theater and biking!