Generation of Secure and Reliable Honeywords, Preventing False Detection
TL;DR: This work proposes new and more practical honeyword generation techniques, which achieve ‘approximate flatness’, implying that the honeywords generated using these techniques are indistinguishable from passwords with high probability, and proposes a new attack model called ‘Multiple System Intersection attack considering Input’.
Abstract: Breach in password databases has been a frequent phenomena in the software industry. Often these breaches go undetected for years. Sometimes, even the companies involved are not aware of the breach. Even after they are detected, publicizing such attacks might not always be in the best interest of the companies. This calls for a strong breach detection mechanism. Juels et al. (in ACM-CCS 2013) suggest a method called ‘Honeywords’, for detecting password database breaches. Their idea is to generate multiple fake passwords, called honeywords and store them along with the real password. Any login attempt with honeywords is identified as a compromise of the password database, since legitimate users are not expected to know the honeywords corresponding to their passwords. The key components of their idea are (i) generation of honeywords, (ii) typo-safety measures for preventing false alarms, (iii) alarm policy upon detection, and (iv) testing robustness of the system against various attacks. In this work, we analyze the limitations of existing honeyword generation techniques. We propose a new attack model called ‘Multiple System Intersection attack considering Input’. We show that the ‘Paired Distance Protocol’ proposed by Chakraborty et al., is not secure in this attack model. We also propose new and more practical honeyword generation techniques and call them the ‘evolving-password model’, the ‘user-profile model’, and the ‘append-secret model’. These techniques achieve ‘approximate flatness’, implying that the honeywords generated using these techniques are indistinguishable from passwords with high probability. Our proposed techniques overcome most of the risks and limitations associated with existing techniques. We prove flatness of our ‘evolving-password model’ technique through experimental analysis. We provide a comparison of our proposed models with the existing ones under various attack models to justify our claims.
Citations
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TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper proposed the notion of honey PAKE (HPAKE) that allows the authentication server to detect the password leakage and achieve the security beyond the traditional bound of aPAKE.
Abstract: Password-only authentication is one of the most popular secure mechanisms for real-world online applications. But it easily suffers from a practical threat - password leakage, incurred by external and internal attackers. The external attacker may compromise the password file stored on the authentication server, and the insider may deliberately steal the passwords or inadvertently leak the passwords. So far, there are two main techniques to address the leakage: Augmented password-authentication key exchange (aPAKE) against insiders and honeyword technique for external attackers. But none of them can resist both attacks. To fill the gap, we propose the notion of honey PAKE (HPAKE) that allows the authentication server to detect the password leakage and achieve the security beyond the traditional bound of aPAKE. Further, we build an HPAKE construction on the top of the honeyword mechanism, honey encryption, and OPAQUE which is a standardized aPAKE. We formally analyze the security of our design, achieving the insider resistance and the password breach detection. We implement our design and deploy it in the real environment. The experimental results show that our protocol only costs 71.27 ms for one complete run, within 20.67 ms on computation and 50.6 ms on communication. This means our design is secure and practical for real-world applications.
TL;DR: A comprehensive survey of the relevant research and technological developments in honeyword-based authentication techniques is presented to understand how honeyword based security mechanism works in practice, and identify the existing gaps that are yet to be filled and the emergent research opportunities.
Abstract: Honeyword (or decoy password) based authentication, first introduced by Juels and Rivest in 2013, has emerged as a security mechanism that can provide security against server-side threats on the password-files. From the theoretical perspective, this security mechanism reduces attackers’ efficiency to a great extent as it detects the threat on a password-file so that the system administrator can be notified almost immediately as an attacker tries to take advantage of the compromised file. This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of the relevant research and technological developments in honeyword-based authentication techniques. We cover twenty-three techniques related to honeyword, reported under different research articles since 2013. This survey paper helps the readers to (i) understand how honeyword based security mechanism works in practice, (ii) get a comparative view on the existing honeyword based techniques, and (iii) identify the existing gaps that have yet to be filled and the emergent research opportunities.
TL;DR: This study will demonstrate numerous previous honeyword generating strategies, describe the proposed methodology, examine the experimental results, and compare the new honeyword production method to those proposed in previous research.
Abstract: : Honeywords are fake passwords that serve as an accompaniment to the real password, which is called a “sugarword.” The honeyword system is an effective password cracking detection system designed to easily detect password cracking in order to improve the security of hashed passwords. For every user, the password file of the honeyword system will have one real hashed password accompanied by numerous fake hashed passwords. If an intruder steals the password file from the system and successfully cracks the passwords while attempting to log in to users’ accounts, the honeyword system will detect this attempt through the honeychecker. A honeychecker is an auxiliary server that distinguishes the real password from the fake passwords and triggers an alarm if intruder signs in using a honeyword. Many honeyword generation approaches have been proposed by previous research, all with limitations to their honeyword generation processes, limited success in providing all required honeyword features, and susceptibility to many honeyword issues. This work will present a novel honeyword generation method that uses a proposed discrete salp swarm algorithm. The salp swarm algorithm (SSA) is a bio-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm that imitates the swarming behavior of salps in their natural environment. SSA has been used to solve a variety of optimization problems. The presented honeyword generation method will improve the generation process, improve honeyword features, and overcome the issues of previous techniques. This study will demonstrate numerous previous honeyword generating strategies, describe the proposed methodology, examine the experimental results, and compare the new honeyword production method to those proposed in previous research.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper proposed Password Reuse Detection (PRD) protocol for detecting password reuse using a secure two party private set intersection; ii) Breach Detection (BD) protocol that detects credential stuffing attacks using two-party private set inclusion protocol based on random oblivious transfer.
Abstract: Considering password-based authentication technique, password memorability is a real challenge on users. Hence, password reuse across different web applications is a common trend among users which makes websites vulnerable to credential stuffing attack. A solution as password manager helps the users to create random passwords for different websites on the user machine. However, it has practical challenges. Password database breach detection is another related and challenging task. Among recent developments for breach detection, honeyword-based approach is much appreciated by the research community. However, honeyword generation itself is a challenging part of the solution. In this work, we propose i) Password Reuse Detection (PRD) protocol for detecting password reuse using a secure two party private set intersection; ii) Breach Detection (BD) protocol that detects credential stuffing attacks using two party private set inclusion protocol based on random oblivious transfer. Both the proposals are designed for the authentication servers of the respective applications and need communication between multiple websites following the work by wang et al. Through analysis we show that our PRD protocol is around 2.8 times faster, and space efficient than existing works for 5000 honeywords. Our near to real-time BD protcol is around 2 times faster than existing works.
25 Mar 2022
TL;DR: The harmony search algorithm (HSA), a metaheuristic intelligence algorithm inspired by music, is used in this article to offer a novel method for generating honeyword that will enhance the generating process, enhance honeyword characteristics, and address prior approaches’ shortcomings.
Abstract: The honeyword system is a password cracking detection technique that aims to improve the security of hashed passwords by making password cracking simpler to detect. Many honeywords (false passwords) accompany the sugarword (true password) to form the sweetwords (false and true passwords) for every user. If the attacker signs in using a honeyword, a silent alarm trigger shows that the honeyword system might be compromised. Many honeyword generation techniques are presented; each one has a flaw in the generating process, a lack of support for all honeyword characteristics, and a slew of honeyword problems. The harmony search algorithm (HSA), a metaheuristic intelligence algorithm inspired by music, is used in this article to offer a novel method for generating honeyword. The suggested honeyword generation technique will enhance the generating process, enhance honeyword characteristics, and address prior approaches’ shortcomings. This paper will show several previous honeyword generation techniques, explain the suggested one, discuss the experimental findings, and compare the new honeyword generation method with the previous ones.
References
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08 May 2007
TL;DR: The study involved half a million users over athree month period and gets extremely detailed data on password strength, the types and lengths of passwords chosen, and how they vary by site.
Abstract: We report the results of a large scale study of password use andpassword re-use habits. The study involved half a million users over athree month period. A client component on users' machines recorded a variety of password strength, usage and frequency metrics. This allows us to measure or estimate such quantities as the average number of passwords and average number of accounts each user has, how many passwords she types per day, how often passwords are shared among sites, and how often they are forgotten. We get extremely detailed data on password strength, the types and lengths of passwords chosen, and how they vary by site. The data is the first large scale study of its kind, and yields numerous other insights into the role the passwords play in users' online experience.
1,068 citations
"Generation of Secure and Reliable H..." refers background in this paper
...Humans have a tendency to choose the same password for multiple websites [17]....
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...This attack is also motivated by the tendency of humans to choose the same password for multiple websites [17]....
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...It is common human tendency to use the same password for multiple sites [17]....
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TL;DR: The present design of the password security scheme was the result of countering observed attempts to penetrate the system and is a compromise between extreme security and ease of use.
Abstract: This paper describes the history of the design of the password security scheme on a remotely accessed time-sharing system. The present design was the result of countering observed attempts to penetrate the system. The result is a compromise between extreme security and ease of use.
1,015 citations
"Generation of Secure and Reliable H..." refers methods in this paper
...‘Dictionary attack’ [2] is the most widely used attack technique for retrieving a password from its hash value....
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17 Aug 2003
TL;DR: A new way of precalculating the data is proposed which reduces by two the number of calculations needed during cryptanalysis and it is shown that the gain could be even much higher depending on the parameters used.
Abstract: In 1980 Martin Hellman described a cryptanalytic time-memory trade-off which reduces the time of cryptanalysis by using precalculated data stored in memory. This technique was improved by Rivest before 1982 with the introduction of distinguished points which drastically reduces the number of memory lookups during cryptanalysis. This improved technique has been studied extensively but no new optimisations have been published ever since. We propose a new way of precalculating the data which reduces by two the number of calculations needed during cryptanalysis. Moreover, since the method does not make use of distinguished points, it reduces the overhead due to the variable chain length, which again significantly reduces the number of calculations. As an example we have implemented an attack on MS-Windows password hashes. Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes (237) in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the parameters used.
524 citations
"Generation of Secure and Reliable H..." refers background in this paper
...Use of salt prevents specialized attacks like the rainbow table attack [3], when considering a large collection of hashes....
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17 May 2009
TL;DR: This paper discusses a new method that generates password structures in highest probability order by automatically creating a probabilistic context-free grammar based upon a training set of previously disclosed passwords, and then generating word-mangling rules to be used in password cracking.
Abstract: Choosing the most effective word-mangling rules to use when performing a dictionary-based password cracking attack can be a difficult task In this paper we discuss a new method that generates password structures in highest probability order We first automatically create a probabilistic context-free grammar based upon a training set of previously disclosed passwords This grammar then allows us to generate word-mangling rules, and from them, password guesses to be used in password cracking We will also show that this approach seems to provide a more effective way to crack passwords as compared to traditional methods by testing our tools and techniques on real password sets In one series of experiments, training on a set of disclosed passwords, our approach was able to crack 28% to 129% more passwords than John the Ripper, a publicly available standard password cracking program
491 citations
"Generation of Secure and Reliable H..." refers methods in this paper
...The work [24] suggests a method to compute the probability based on the frequency of each token in the password....
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...quencies of each password enlisted in an existing database and also computes the frequency of each individual tokens (alphabets-strings, digitsstrings, special-characters-strings) of the password following the technique suggested in [24]....
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...To match the frequency considering the tokens, we follow the technique proposed in [24], where the probability of the honeyword is the product of the probabilities of the tokens used to derive it....
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TL;DR: Five design principles help provide insight into the tradeoffs among different possible designs in the Multics system and several known weaknesses in the current protection mechanism design are discussed.
Abstract: The design of mechanisms to control the sharing of information in the Multics system is described. Five design principles help provide insight into the tradeoffs among different possible designs. The key mechanisms described include access control lists, hierarchical control of access specifications, identification and authentication of users, and primary memory protection. The paper ends with a discussion of several known weaknesses in the current protection mechanism design.
444 citations
"Generation of Secure and Reliable H..." refers background in this paper
...User selected passwords are mostly predictable, since humans have a tendency to choose non-random and easy to remember passwords [1]....
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