3/23/14

Extending SRP's guarantees to validated registration


This post is about work done jointly with Michael Sanders and Jacob Hurwitz for 6.858 (One of MIT's Computer System's Security courses).

The Stanford Remote Password Protocol is a really amazing little piece of cryptography. Like almost every great crypto-system, it provides seemingly impossible guarantees. Namely, it allows a server to recognize a client without having any real usable information about them.

In most authentication systems, the server is at some point in time privy to sufficient information to impersonate the user: perhaps you send your password to Google, Microsoft, or Facebook, or perhaps you send a hash. Regardless, as some point in the process, the server sees enough information about your password to fake a login later. With SRP, this isn't the case. To quote the SRP website:
SRP is a secure password-based authentication and key-exchange protocol. It solves the problem of authenticating clients to servers securely, in cases where the user of the client software must memorize a small secret (like a password) and carries no other secret information, and where the server carries a verifier for each user, which allows it to authenticate the client but which, if compromised, would not allow the attacker to impersonate the client. In addition, SRP exchanges a cryptographically-strong secret as a byproduct of successful authentication, which enables the two parties to communicate securely.
 Still, there is a slight problem with SRP, if you're willing to crimp down your tinfoil hat a little.

3/21/14

It's been a while!

I haven't forgotten about this blog! I've just been a tad busy recently.

I've got a bunch of projects (mostly classwork, I confess) I plan to post soon, so check back in a week or so!

~Ninjinuity