After years of the attempt to replace password with other alternatives such as biometrics and smart cards, password is still the most pervasive user authentication mechanism. The password checking authentication is widely used for financial services, online social networks, and many other applications. This paper aims to analyze the security of a password checker qualitatively and quantitatively, and show how to improve it. Qualitative security analysis, in which it does not allow any information flow from secret date to public data, considers that the password checker is not a secure process. Therefore, an alternative analysis for the password checker is to analyze quantitatively, i.e., quantifying its information flow and determining how much secret information has been leaked. This method can be used to decide whether we can tolerate small leakages. A quantitative security analysis can be seen as a generalization of a qualitative one. To improve the security of the password checker, we propose a noisy-output policy, i.e., a situation where a system operator is able to add noise to the output: instead of always producing the exact outcomes, the system sometimes reports noisy outcomes. The noisy outcomes reduce the correlation between the output and the input, and thus reduce the leakage.
| Published in | Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems (Volume 12, Issue 4) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12 |
| Page(s) | 108-113 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Password Checker, Noisy-Output Policy, Quantitative Security Analysis
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APA Style
Ngo, T. M. (2024). How to Improve the Security of Password Checkers. Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems, 12(4), 108-113. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12
ACS Style
Ngo, T. M. How to Improve the Security of Password Checkers. Autom. Control Intell. Syst. 2024, 12(4), 108-113. doi: 10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12
AMA Style
Ngo TM. How to Improve the Security of Password Checkers. Autom Control Intell Syst. 2024;12(4):108-113. doi: 10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12
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Download@article{10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12,
author = {Tri Minh Ngo},
title = {How to Improve the Security of Password Checkers},
journal = {Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems},
volume = {12},
number = {4},
pages = {108-113},
doi = {10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.acis.20241204.12},
abstract = {After years of the attempt to replace password with other alternatives such as biometrics and smart cards, password is still the most pervasive user authentication mechanism. The password checking authentication is widely used for financial services, online social networks, and many other applications. This paper aims to analyze the security of a password checker qualitatively and quantitatively, and show how to improve it. Qualitative security analysis, in which it does not allow any information flow from secret date to public data, considers that the password checker is not a secure process. Therefore, an alternative analysis for the password checker is to analyze quantitatively, i.e., quantifying its information flow and determining how much secret information has been leaked. This method can be used to decide whether we can tolerate small leakages. A quantitative security analysis can be seen as a generalization of a qualitative one. To improve the security of the password checker, we propose a noisy-output policy, i.e., a situation where a system operator is able to add noise to the output: instead of always producing the exact outcomes, the system sometimes reports noisy outcomes. The noisy outcomes reduce the correlation between the output and the input, and thus reduce the leakage.},
year = {2024}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - How to Improve the Security of Password Checkers AU - Tri Minh Ngo Y1 - 2024/12/18 PY - 2024 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12 DO - 10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12 T2 - Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems JF - Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems JO - Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems SP - 108 EP - 113 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2328-5591 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.acis.20241204.12 AB - After years of the attempt to replace password with other alternatives such as biometrics and smart cards, password is still the most pervasive user authentication mechanism. The password checking authentication is widely used for financial services, online social networks, and many other applications. This paper aims to analyze the security of a password checker qualitatively and quantitatively, and show how to improve it. Qualitative security analysis, in which it does not allow any information flow from secret date to public data, considers that the password checker is not a secure process. Therefore, an alternative analysis for the password checker is to analyze quantitatively, i.e., quantifying its information flow and determining how much secret information has been leaked. This method can be used to decide whether we can tolerate small leakages. A quantitative security analysis can be seen as a generalization of a qualitative one. To improve the security of the password checker, we propose a noisy-output policy, i.e., a situation where a system operator is able to add noise to the output: instead of always producing the exact outcomes, the system sometimes reports noisy outcomes. The noisy outcomes reduce the correlation between the output and the input, and thus reduce the leakage. VL - 12 IS - 4 ER -
The University of Danang - University of Science and Technology, Danang, Vietnam
