Secure Modular Password Authentication for the Web Using Channel Bindings

Abstract

Secure protocols for password-based user authentication are well-studied in the cryptographic literature but have failed to see wide-spread adoption on the internet; most proposals to date require extensive modifications to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, making deployment challenging. Recently, a few modular designs have been proposed in which a cryptographically secure password-based mutual authentication protocol is run inside a confidential (but not necessarily authenticated) channel such as TLS; the password protocol is bound to the established channel to prevent active attacks. Such protocols are useful in practice for a variety of reasons: security no longer relies on users' ability to validate server certificates and can potentially be implemented with no modifications to the secure channel protocol library. We provide a systematic study of such authentication protocols. Building on recent advances in modeling TLS, we give a formal definition of the intended security goal, which we call password-authenticated and confidential channel establishment (PACCE). We show generically that combining a secure Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia channel protocol, such as TLS, with a password authentication or password-authenticated key exchange protocol, where the two protocols are bound together using the transcript of the secure channel's handshake, the server's certificate, or the server's domain name, results in a secure PACCE protocol. Our prototypes based on TLS are available as a cross-platform client-side Firefox browser extension as well as an Android application and a server-side web application that can easily be installed on servers.

SoK

“…Since EKE's conception, debate has continued on the best target applications for PAKE. Many arguments have suggested replacing password authentication in web applications, including to address phishing, but to little effect-apparently due to major deployment barriers and the inertia of incumbent web authentication password protocols (see Manulis et al [75]). Strong arguments have likewise been made for integrating PAKE into TLS, prompting a 2019 IETF PAKE selection process; an earlier 2007 TLS-SRP effort (based on SRP-6) supported by RFC 5054 failed to result in wide adoption [31].…”

Implementation and Evaluation of a Secure and Efficient Web Authentication Scheme using Mozilla Firefox and WAMP

“…Our prototype is not the only one using the standard notification API to create a trusted path to the private password window. Menalis et al [14] also used this concept.…”

“…Despite its widely studied security problems [1]- [13], password authentication through an HTML form is the dominant mechanism for authenticating users in modern web applications [4], [14], [15]. More specifically, the lack of authentication standard HTML form and the limited security background of webmasters have created a set of unique design and implementation choices that contain multiple security vulnerabilities [3], [12].…”

Lighting Two Candles With One Flame: An Unaided Human Identification Protocol With Security Beyond Conventional Limit

“…Being usable, this factor of authentication has been challenged under different kind of threats over the times (Marechal, 2008) (Pinkas and Sander, 2002) (Kim et al, 2016) (Pan et al, 2016) (Halevi and Saxena, 2015) . Though most of these threats have been successfully handled (Manulis et al, 2016) (Kontaxis et al, 2013), there are a few, particularly those which involve human intelligence factor, are continuously challenging researchers in developing some efficient algorithm to tackle the breaches. Recording attack is one such security threat (on client side) which has severe impact on the password based authentication (Yan et al, 2015).…”