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Transec, a Secure Authentication Tag Library

Posted by kdawson on Wed Nov 15, 2006 04:58 AM
from the no-keystrokes-to-capture dept.
Security Java Programming
Lado Kumsiashvili writes, "Micromata has placed Transec, a secure authentication JSP tag library, under the GPL. While developing the Polyas (German) online voting system, Micromata invented a component for secure PIN/password input via untrusted, insecure browsers. Transec is freely embeddable and redistributable for non-commercial projects; a commercial license is also available. Spyware in the form of Browser Helper Objects and keyloggers can capture user keyboard input even if it is encrypted. Transec enables user authentication using a 100% server-side control — only images and coordinates are transferred to the untrusted browser. The browser sends coordinate information of each click on this imagemap directly back to the server, and the server responds with a new image. If the browser is infected by malware, it can't give up the PIN/password since the browser doesn't know this information. The Java code and a demo application are available at the Transec homepage." I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?
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  • Lots o mouse clicks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by null etc. (524767) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:05AM (#16849884)
    I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?


    If so, the malware must go after specific types of clicks - for example, maybe it looks at the URL and form action to determine whether it's worth capturing the images. Otherwise, a typical day of perusing Digg articles could result in megabytes upon megabytes of captured images. And unlike text data, image data is hard to sieve for gold.

    • Current malware is already able to discriminate between "interesting" and "non interesting" sites. Even keyloggers only steal from pages that interest them. It is (not would be) the same for screenshot taking malware.

  • Heh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:06AM (#16849890)
    "I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?"

    Well, it does now.

  • I'm skeptic (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cucucu (953756)
    This is assumed to counter keyloggers.
    But if the bad guys have enough control of your the machine to install a keylogger, then what's going to stop them from installing a "screen logger" that keeps successive screenshots in a special directory on the hard disk.

    This "new" product does not work around the principle that software cannot secure a computer for which you adversary has physical access.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox (87712)
      I imagine the threat from that could be reduced by having the user select a sequence of images that could comprise his "password" and then presenting a random subset of those images for him to select each time. You could also intersperse a one time image that you could instruct the user to select each time it occurs, then use that as one of the number of random choices of which image is the correct one for a few days. If the user uses the same compromised machine for several days in a row his password might

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by idlake (850372)
        To do what? It's a onetime 'password' it's useless to store no matter where.

        It's not a one-time password. If it were a one-time password, they wouldn't need to keep it secret.

  • I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?

    I've heard about it many times as well and even seen a proof-of-concept.

    Anyway, it could easily be implemented, and that's the point. I think a good solution would be Deja Vu [zdnet.com] or something similar, with lots of information (tens of known pictures), so that you need to grab lots of screenshots before actually having a chance.

    But even in Deja Vu, you'r

    • Re:Screen Capture (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ultranova (717540) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @06:01AM (#16850080)

      Why can't we have a TCB that is really Trusted? A secure operating system is all that takes to divert these attacks (granted it's easier said than done).

      How do you know the operating system in a particular machine is actually the Trusted version, and not a hacked version that's masquerading as the trusted one ?

      • Perhaps you should read what [bldrdoc.gov] a [cam.ac.uk] TCB [everything2.com] is [answers.com].

        In the TCB concept, all security mechanisms (including hardware) should be trusted and easily auditable. TCB != Trusted OS AND != TC [wikipedia.org].
  • Here's their demo app [micromata.de].

    I don't understand why this has made it's way onto Slashdot? It's an image map. With a PIN pad. Besides the fact it looks like a solution looking for a problem, I don't see the innovation. This could very easily be replicated in praticially any web scripting language of your choice.

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrjb (547783) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:38AM (#16849988)
      This could very easily be replicated in praticially any web scripting language of your choice.
      Exactly. It doesn't require any client-side processing. That's the beauty of it. This means you can TURN OFF javascript and it will still work.

      As for the innovation- it allows a user to enter their pin while reducing the chance that it's snooped by malware, which is a Good Thing. It also makes it a lot harder for said malware to replicate the response compared to keyboard entry- because in addition to protecting your code, it also acts as a (primitive) captcha, making reasonably sure that whoever is entering the code is human.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XorNand (517466) *
        Right, but what's with all the hype about Java and the GPL? Server-size image maps don't need Javascript to work. Unless I'm totally missing something here (which is possible) I could cook together a PHP class that does this exact same thing in less than an hour.
        • But you haven't done that, whiz kid. Nobody cares that you can do this in a hour, because so can everyone else that knows PHP. The point is that nobody else has done it before, and this is a new security technique. Who are you trying to impress by telling Slashdot that you could copy someone else's idea in less than an hour?

  • Doesn't ING direct already do something like this? (Score:3, Informative)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:25AM (#16849934) Homepage Journal
    When I log on to my account, instead of typing in a PIN, I press buttons on a "virtual" keypad, ie a bunch of images. They will also randomly assign letters to each number(different every time you log in) so you can still type them if you want without a keylogger figuring out what your pin is.
    • They also don't ask you to enter the whole PIN, but only a few randomly selected digits ("Please enter the 3rd and 5th digit of your PIN"), so an attacker who grabs the screen only once still doesn't have enough information. I think that's pretty smart.
      • Something like that delays the attack until the attacker knows enough numbers to make a qualified guess (attempt it and hope that one of the 3 attempts he has is for numbers he already logged). I wouldn't read too much into that kind of security.
        • You are taking a very binary view of security(either it is secure or it is not). According to that view than anything that anyone could concievably access isn't secure because a determined enough attacker can potentially get access to it. It's like saying "I could put a lock on my front door, but a master locksmith could open it in seconds, therefore it is useless to put a lock on my door" While that may be true, the number of master locksmiths who want to get in and want to take my stuff is very, very s
          • The difference between real and virtual burglary is that the virtual trespasser is everywhere at the same time. One master locksmith with malicious intent can only pose a threat to a very limited amount of targets, those that are in his vicinity. With the internet, every computer is in your vicinity. And since the attack is automated, he doesn't have the time problem either. He can actually attack everywhere at the same time.

            So yes, the amount of people able to do this (and willing to go criminal) isn't tha
        • It works if you have a little gadget that generates you a new PIN every time,
          like we do over here. But then getting random digits instead of the whole
          PIN makes no difference :)

    • One time pads. The only solution. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by plierhead (570797) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @06:37AM (#16850236) Journal
      When I log on to my account, instead of typing in a PIN, I press buttons on a "virtual" keypad, ie a bunch of images. They will also randomly assign letters to each number(different every time you log in) so you can still type them if you want without a keylogger figuring out what your pin is.

      The trouble is, anyone who owns your PC and has installed a keylogger can just as easily spy on your display and see what you are clicking.

      Sometimes I would swear my brain explodes at our slowness to learn.

      The only true solution is one time pads. They are unhackable, and only a minor inconvenience.

      I would give blood to be able to use a one time pad for my online banking. The trouble is, the industry, and Joe Public, still don't take IT security seriously. And this is totally a mindset. Some marketing guru should wake up to the possibilities of the one time pad - potentially the greatest chick puller since the circular waterbed - and get us the hell out of this horrendous hacky world.

      • Um, if the attacker has complete access to your screen(and takes enough screenshots to monitor every mouse click, a hell of a lot of bandwidth I might add) then what is to prevent him from looking at your one time pad? I know one time pads are "algorithmically secure" but they are only as secure as your pad. If they control your computer, it wouldn't be all that hard to look at your pad. How big is your pad? If it starts to repeat then it is no longer secure. Are you asking the bank to store a huge pad

        • You, my friend, are overly rooted in the electronic world. A reading of ancient cryptographic techniques would be useful.

          You do not "install" a one time pad on your computer. You keep it in your pocket.

          The classic implementation of a one time pad really is a pad - a pad of sheets of paper. You use one, you throw it away. Concerned about surveillance cameras? A blank sheet between every page obscures the next key. It may also be an electronic device that gives you the keys. But it is NOT your computer.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by antifoidulus (807088)
            First, I know what one time pads are, and I have read a lot of material on old cryptography techniques, but you still missed the very point! Supposed you have a one time pad and an attacker manages to get a keylogger onto your computer(this is the situation we are talking about, ING Direct is an online bank end of story, if you didn't know that then you really should not have hit the reply button because it's offtopic). So you carefully type in your one time pad into the computer. Guess what, since the a
            • So you carefully type in your one time pad into the computer. Guess what, since the attacker has all your keystrokes, he can easily put himself in the middle and take the pad you so careflly entered and give them to the bank himself and boom, he has access with minimal effort.

              This won't work if you enter only small bits of the pad at a time ... one bit for each login.

      • One-time-pads are not a panacea either.

        Let's assume you had a booklet of codes, a true OTP, that you used to log in to your bank. For each login you'd tear off the top sheet and use the next code.

        That would still be susceptible to phishing. I could set up a site purporting to be your bank, and convince you to log into it. In doing so, you'd give me your next OTP code, which I could then use to log into your account and steal your money.

        It would be a step up over conventional passwords, granted, but I'm not
  • Probably a mistake in the article... but if they just randomly rotate the keypad, then
    take (mouse x-min(mouse x))/key size, and you get 10 possible pins. Try 10, and you are done.

    If they randomly permute, then things would be a bit harder. If they randomly permute and have OCR-resistant digits, the pin would be very secure (though, if enough money is involved, a cracker would probably be ready to actually look at the image...)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by leehwtsohg (618675)
        You are right to some degree, but also wrong.

        Their idea seems to be that the computer might be compromised, but the server is secure - so if the server creates the images, you can at least be secure against automated attacks - i.e. without human intervention. (because the attacker does not have access to the algorithm that created the images) This can work for as long as there are some tasks that humans can do and computers not.

        If the computer is the last step in the authentication, then you are right. If y

  • OPIE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sonicattack (554038) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:53AM (#16850044) Homepage
    Using images as a PIN-code isn't making things much more secure, if the same images are used every time. The credentials are still sent in a way that can be logged. It's just an extra annoyance for those who want to steal your password.

    I use one-time passwords for accessing my home computer over SSH. Anyone can log my keystrokes, or look over my shoulder how much they want. The password is generated by an OPIE client running on my cell phone, and is valid only once.

    OPIE clients run on virtually any kind of device. Just as long as you don't run it on the actual computer which you use to access the server, this is a more secure solution.

    Using OPIE on untrusted servers would still present the security problem of initial passphrase synchronization between server and OPIE client - unless the passphrase is sent to the user by some secure channel, unlikely to be snooped.

  • Yes, such a threat exists (Score:5, Informative)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @05:57AM (#16850070)
    Without breaking NDAs I can verify that such malware exists, in the wild. So far this functionality (taking screenshots) has not been used widely, but the necessary functions are there, screenshots are taken, it's just not been necessary to use them.

    Picture shots would certainly increase security and raise the bar for malware writers. Current BHOs are able to manipulate the data stream on the fly, so you can never be sure what you send to your bank, and whether the data your bank sends to you is actually also displayed. With a picture, this becomes harder to manipulate.

    Harder. Not impossible. Many malware BHO families are already prepared for this kind of defense and are working on a way around it (or already found a way around it). Any claim to make malware impossible is a lot of smoke screen and even more snake oil. The best defense against such attacks are still:

    1. Using non-mainstreamy software. Malware is a business, target is the mass market. So the further you're from the "masses", the higher the chance that the malware can't strike you. Using Firefox instead of the omnipresent IE is a good step. Defeats a good deal of malware. Taking a step further and using a Mac or Linux almost eliminates the threat. That doesn't mean MacOS or Linux are more secure (I'll spare you and me the discussion), that simply means that their market share is smaller and thus it is less interesting for malware writers.

    2. Using a brain when connecting to the 'net. Clicking everything and using mainstream apps is a surefire way to catch some kind of infection. Even with current anti-malware tools installed. No antivirus is able to catch everything (and they usually are at least one day behind the malware writers). No security tool is able to intercept all invasion attempts (Windows simply offers way too many entry points). Software is no replacement for brains and common sense.

  • Broken by design. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by drolli (522659)
    At least in their demo the entropy in the assignment between the coordinates and the numbers input is completely missing. Not a good "encryption" or "security" scheme.

  • Not secure (Score:2, Informative)

    by dk.r*nger (460754)
    The image is a map, when you click it, coordinates are POSTed to the server, that replies with a new image.
    Grab the coordinates and the image, and you can stich together the password with close to no effort.
    • One assumes they're doing this over SSL, so grabbing the coordinates and the image shouldn't be trivial. If you can do that, then you can conduct a MITM attack and basically the whole system is hosed; I don't think they're claiming (or, if they are, they're foolish) to be secure against that.

      I'm still not convinced that you can do any kind of secure authentication if the client machine into which you type the password (whether it's typed as text or onto an imagemap or via any other means) is assumed to be u

  • And the blind... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are supposed to log in how?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pacinpm (631330)
      Provide them randomly generated hash table: 1234567890 JBFAHECGID Then ask them to enter letters instead of numbers (J instead of 1, B instead of 2 and so on). Should work OK on Braile screens. PS. I think I need to patent this.
  • At the risk of starting another flame war about why we should care about the blind...This system is unusable by the blind using a screen reader. You are unable to detect the location of the "buttons". I tested it with both the MacOS built in screen reader (VoiceOver) and a window add on (Jaws) screen reader.

    So, in the U.S.,unless your looking to have the National Federation of the Blind, American Council of the Blind or the Justice Department come after you in court you would be well advised not to implemen
  • The reason people aren't using this more widely even though it's obvious is that it's also not a very good solution, for many reasons.

    If you want something secure, use one time passwords or an authentication token.

    And if you think you might have spyware on your computer, reinstall, preferably an operating system that is less susceptible.
  • While developing the Polyas (German) online voting system,

    Why do those companies seem to attract the most incompetent developers?

    Micromata invented a component

    [sarcasm]What else did the "invent"? The mouse? Sex? Combining peanut butter and jelly?[/sarcasm] Using these kinds of inputs has a long tradition.

    for secure PIN/password input via untrusted, insecure browsers.

    It's not secure, not even close to it. And it has big usability problems. The approach is of some use in some applications, but for an on
  • I had this idea for a secure keyboard. You could make a keyboard (or adapter dongle) which is capable of encrypting each character you type with a public key (PGP style). Once you browse to a secure site that supports it, a browser plugin would send your keyboard the public key and the keyboard would then encrypt everything you type using that key and the browser will send the result directly back to the website. You'd have to use a protocol that lets you detect a man in the middle attack (and I'm sure they
    • There's probably some massive flaw with this idea that I haven't thought of? :)

      Man in the middle attacks. If they can intercept the keys then they can intercept the encrypted characters and decrypt them.

  • They are still widely in use, but if you are up-to-date in Java web application technologies, you are probably aware that JSP is dead. This is not a troll. JSP is rapidly being pushed out by alternatives like Facelets [java.net] (which is used to define JavaServer Faces [sun.com] views), Tapestry [apache.org], and Wicket [sourceforge.net]. All of these are XML, disallow any logic in the view (thus encouraging proper MVC), and do not require a mountain of boilerplate code to extend [sun.com]. Why anyone would use JSP these days is totally beyond my understanding.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ultranova (717540)

      Seriously now. Are we going to inconvenience ourselves just because a few programs out there do Bad Things?

      I'd imagine this would be most useful to run in my home server, so I could contact it from anywhere without having to trust the computer I'm using. And yeah, I'd rather inconvenience myself with this password entry method than with cleaning up the mess when someone hijacks the server.

      The solution isn't to work around the baddies but to eliminate them altogether.

      Funny you should mention "terro

    • Good luck. No chance in hell. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday November 15 2006, @06:03AM (#16850088)
      You're dealing with people who register a domain in Uzbekistan, run the server in the Ukraine and sit in Moldavia. With these three countries being placeholders for pretty much every country from the former East Block east of Poland. Now try to get ANY kind of help from law enforcement there concerning computer crimes.

      Those law enforcement organisations there have real problems to deal with, they have no spare manpower for petty things like computer crimes. I say that so I don't say they don't want to stand up against organized crime 'cause they have families.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TCM (130219)
      The solution isn't to work around the baddies but to eliminate them altogether.
      A system doesn't get secure by removing the threat but by making the system secure.

      You know why allergies exist? Among other things, because parents try to keep their children as far away from bacteria and dirt as possible.

      The strongest system is the one continuously exposed to threats and adapting to them.
    • Avantages of the Micromata solution:
      - It does not require JavaScript. It just requires a mouse and the browser feature used (input type=image) is available in every graphical web browser since more than 8 years ago.
      - It is quite resistant to HTTP spying, as spying HTTP POST request is not enough to replay
    • That's virtually identical to what ING Direct does, which was discussed in a previous thread. The problem is that a sophisticated keylogger could also capture screenshots and mouse coordinates. From that the PIN could easily be determined.
    • First of all, it's a matter of time to get the whole password. It's nice for one-time pads but then again, why bother asking for only part of it?

      Second, you could redirect the transfer and execute a classic man in the middle, where you simply cut the user off the moment he logged in and take over.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by enbody (472304)
          so the chances of the man in the middle intercepting a code he can re-use are extremely slim.

          That is a correct statement, but misses the point. It would be nice for a man-in-the-middle to get a reusable value, but it isn't necessary for a successful attack. The man-in-the-middle can clean out your account during the session you have successfully set up. I saw a demo of this with a person setting up a man-in-the-middle attack on his own brokerage account using a device which generated one-time passwords f

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