[OpenID] Fwd: [OpenID Foundation] New Poll Opened

[John Bradley]

Ben,
<inline>
On 20-Mar-09, at 6:14 AM, Ben Laurie wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 1:32 AM, John Bradley  
> <john.bradley at wingaa.com> wrote:
>> I am going to vote in favor of forming the WG.
>> I have my own deep concerns about phishing attacks.
>> However OP's that support Infocard, x509, OTP tokens,  and
>> other multi-factor authentication techniques should not be  
>> precluded from
>> supporting this.
>> I have has discussions on the discovery part of the proposed spec  
>> with the
>> authors, and am OK with the work on that to this point.
>> I will however vote against the final version if the popup is not  
>> at the
>> OPs discretion via Discovery, and OPs are not required to use
>> phishing resistant authentication in the popup.
>
> Like western civilisation, this would be a very good idea (Gandhi).
> What phishing resistant authentication did you have in mind?

Gee I feel a bit like a student when the master presents a pop quiz:)

When we talk about unphishable there are really two qualities that  
tend to get conflated.
1. The ability of the attacker to get a credential.
2. The ability of the attacker to replay the credential against the  
target site.

In general what we are looking for is a technique that will not over  
repeated attempts not give the attacker enough information to  
successfully impersonate the entity at the target site in this case  
the openID OP.

There are a number of social engineering solutions to this problem  
such as site seal.
My mother taught me not to say bad things about people so I will go no  
further with my opinion on the snake oil class of solution.

The best solution is based on public/private key-pairs,  take your  
pick RSA, DSA,  PSEC-1, or my favorite Lamport signature. (yes there  
is a reason I am not a cryptographer)

There are currently a number of OPs that offer a "conventional" x509  
approach to this:
StartSSL, MyopenID, and Verisign will all issue you with a certificate  
that you can or in one case must use to authenticate yourself to your  
OP.   This is a free service of all three OPs, just to cut off the  
cost of certs argument people are formulating:)

I consider this to be unphisable given that the attacker cannot  
acquire the private key without some major compromise to the users  
computer.  These and other services offer USB token storage for the  
private key, at a cost.

Honestly 5 years ago I would have had this as my number 1 solution,  
but the UX and other issues make this impractical on a large scale.   
Sorry if you are an OP planning to make your fortune on this.

Today I think the UX experience for "Personal" Public Key cryptography  
is better served through Information Cards.  Same great security with  
a user interface,  and none of the x509 cert aftertaste.  The user can  
identify the selves to there OP with a personal card at MyopenID,   
Linksafe, and others.  Verisign's PIP uses a managed card but the  
result is the same.

The major issue with infocards is the ubiquity of the client  
selector.  All current MS products ship with one and MS provides one  
for XP.  The openSource Higgins project has them available for OSX,   
Linux, and Windows.   I have a selector on my Iphone (don't tell Apple  
they will take my phone away)

Just for a fun UCI experience people who want to can check out http://OpenIDbyCard.com/

I am considering the possibility of adding similar functionality  
directly to a openID RP as a way of accepting a openID login without  
any OP.  But I digress into a hopeful world of true User centric  
authentication.

Some people would claim OTP tokens to be unphishable.
http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2007/04/deceit-augmented-man-in-middle-attack.html

Without some sort of PK infrastructure OTP tokens are not.  end of  
argument.

Some people claim that software fingerprinting of clients combined  
with out of band second factor are effectively unphishable.  Examples  
include Vidoop and MyopenID's phone-based two factor authentication.

Out of band works but has known issues with scalability and usability.

I commend Vidoop and Jainrain on there efforts to make phishing  
resistant authentication practical for a large audience.

Once we get into this category of phishing resistant technology things  
become less clear cut.
I think this is the area that most debate will center.

I hope I pass the quiz even if my answers are perhaps not the popular  
ones:)

Regards
John Bradley

>
>> If this is not done correctly it will reenforce bad habits in users,
>>  and potentially negatively impact the perception of openID in  
>> general.
>> I think it is a discussion worth having,  but as most people would  
>> expect I
>> am unconvinced that popups can be used for user-name and password  
>> logins by
>> an OP.
>> But hey Ben Laurie cant always chime in so I will play backup grumpy
>> security guy:)
>
> Thanks :-)
>
>> Regards
>> John Bradley
>> On 19-Mar-09, at 6:11 PM, general-request at openid.net wrote:
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