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Strengthening Public Key Authentication Against Key Theft (Short Paper)

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Conference Object

Change log

Authors

Irwin, Conrad 

Abstract

Authentication protocols based on an asymmetric keypair provide strong authentication as long as the private key remains secret, but may fail catastrophically if the private key is lost or stolen. Even when encrypted with a password, stolen key material is susceptible to offline brute-force attacks. In this paper we demonstrate a method for rate-limiting password guesses on stolen key material, without requiring special hardware or changes to servers. By slowing down offline attacks and enabling easy key revocation our algorithm reduces the risk of key compromise, even if a low-entropy password is used.

Description

Keywords

4606 Distributed Computing and Systems Software, 46 Information and Computing Sciences, 4604 Cybersecurity and Privacy

Journal Title

Technology and Practice of Passwords

Conference Name

9th International Conference on Passwords

Journal ISSN

0302-9743
1611-3349

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer International Publishing