SafeCurves: Introduction. Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Boffins: How to generate crypto-keys using a smartphone – and quantum physics. Your smartphone can be used to generate cryptographic keys from truly random numbers "of a quantum origin", according to bods at the University of Geneva.
The Swiss research claims, quite simply, that illuminating the camera of a device like the Nokia N9 can cause quantum effects, which ultimately can be used to generate strong keys for encryption and decryption; in effect making the smartphone a quantum random number generator (QRNG). That's a lot cheaper than the QRNG kit currently on offer – although it's more expensive than visiting the ANU's online QRNG site. The attraction of using quantum effects is simple: quantum noise is truly random, and unlike pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs), they're not weakened by how the maths of PRNGs work.
The trick is in the implementation – how quantum noise is detected, isolated, and digitised as a number, which is why QRNGs are expensive. Until now, if the work presented in this Arxiv paper is borne out. Secure Remote Password protocol. The Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) is an augmented password-authenticated key agreement (PAKE) protocol, specifically designed to work around expired[citation needed] patents.[1] Like all PAKE protocols, an eavesdropper or man in the middle cannot obtain enough information to be able to brute force guess a password without further interactions with the parties for each guess. This means that strong security can be obtained using weak passwords.
Furthermore, being an augmented PAKE protocol, the server does not store password-equivalent data. This means that an attacker who steals the server data cannot masquerade as the client unless they first perform a brute force search for the password. Overview[edit] The SRP protocol has a number of desirable properties: it allows a user to authenticate themselves to a server, it is resistant to dictionary attacks mounted by an eavesdropper, and it does not require a trusted third party. Protocol[edit] Carol → Steve: M1 = H(A | B | SCarol). About Secure Password Hashing « Stack Exchange Security Blog. An often overlooked and misunderstood concept in application development is the one involving secure hashing of passwords.
We have evolved from plain text password storage, to hashing a password, to appending salts and now even this is not considered adequate anymore. In this post I will discuss what hashing is, what salts and peppers are and which algorithms are to be used and which are to be avoided. Hashing Hashing is a type of algorithm which takes any size of data and turns it into a fixed-length of data. This is often used to ease the retrieval of data as you can shorten large amounts of data to a shorter string (which is easier to compare). The main difference between hashing and encryption is that a hash is not reversible. It is easy to compute the hash value for any given message. The hash function should be resistant against these properties: Modern Hashing Algorithms Some hashing algorithms you may encounter are: Strong passwords To show the importance of the length of a password: Hardware security module. Electronic Fund Transfer HSM for Payment Systems Modern hardware security module with cryptographic acceleration Design[edit] HSMs may possess controls that provide tamper evidence such as logging and alerting and tamper resistance such as deleting keys upon tamper detection.
[citation needed] Each module contains one or more secure cryptoprocessor chips to prevent tampering and bus probing. Many HSM systems have means to securely backup the keys they handle either in a wrapped form via the computer's operating system or externally using a smartcard or some other security token. Because HSMs are often part of a mission-critical infrastructure such as a public key infrastructure or online banking application, HSMs can typically be clustered for high availability. A few of the HSMs available in the market have the ability to execute specially developed execution modules within the HSM's secure enclosure. Uses[edit] The functions of an HSM are:[citation needed] PKI environment (CA HSMs)[edit] Appsec - How to securely hash passwords? - Information Security Stack Exchange. We need to hash passwords as a second line of defence. A server which can authenticate users necessarily contains, somewhere in its entrails, some data which can be used to validate a password.
A very simple system would just store the passwords themselves, and validation would be a simple comparison. But if a hostile outsider were to gain a simple glimpse at the contents of the file or database table which contains the passwords, then that attacker would learn a lot. Unfortunately, such partial, read-only breaches do occur in practice (a mislaid backup tape, a decommissioned but not wiped-out hard disk, an aftermath of a SQL injection attack -- the possibilities are numerous).
Since the overall contents of a server that can validate passwords are necessarily sufficient to indeed validate passwords, an attacker who obtained a read-only snapshot of the server is in position to make an offline dictionary attack: he tries potential passwords until a match is found. Advantages of PBKDF2: Site:plaintextoffenders.com. User Account Control Prompts on the Secure Desktop - UACBlog.
Imagine stopping at a gas station to fuel up your car, selecting Standard grade unleaded gasoline, and then filling up your gas tank. Imagine then that your car fails to start and that you discover that someone maliciously tampered with the gas pump to make it distribute diesel gasoline instead of unleaded. This is an example of others using faulty information to intentionally mislead people into making bad decisions. And unless you go through great lengths to prove confirmation, there’s no reason to distrust the thing you’re interacting with.
We call that “spoofing” in computer lingo, and that’s the focus of this week’s blog topic. Hi, my name is Jim and I’m a Program Manager working on User Account Control. In previous publicly released builds of Windows Vista™ you saw these prompts show up in near proximity to the window that caused the elevation. See larger image Fig 1. – Links with the UAC Shield indicating privileged tasks So what does this experience look like? C# - How to bring UAC's consent.exe to the foreground programmatically? Win7.uac.ross.pdf. SwitchDesktop function. Three Ways to Inject Your Code into Another Process. Contents Introduction Several password spy tutorials have been posted to The Code Project, but all of them rely on Windows hooks. Is there any other way to make such a utility? Yes, there is. But first, let me review the problem briefly, just to make sure we're all on the same page.
To "read" the contents of any control - either belonging to your application or not - you generally send the WM_GETTEXT message to it. ::SendMessage( hPwdEdit, WM_GETTEXT, nMaxChars, psBuffer ); executed in the address space of another process. In general, there are three possibilities to solve this problem: Put your code into a DLL; then, map the DLL to the remote process via windows hooks. I. Demo applications: HookSpy and HookInjEx The primary role of windows hooks is to monitor the message traffic of some thread. Local hooks, where you monitor the message traffic of any thread belonging to your process. II. Demo application: LibSpy DWORD WINAPI ThreadProc( LPVOID lpParameter ); Interprocess Communications III. Random number generator - How useful is NIST's Randomness Beacon for cryptographic use? I would characterize the service as similar to a trusted time-stamping service.
Except they do not do the time-stamping, but just provide the "key". This allows a user to decide what do to with it, such as using it as a private key to sign something, or an HMAC key, proving the signature is "not older" than the timestamp. If the signature is published to a verifiable record, it can then be proven to be "not newer" than the date of the record.
If the gap is short enough, the applications for a signature or hash with a provable time period of creation are numerous. Other sources of true randomness are available, but having one for free is better if you do not need to use it for a cryptographic purpose. Other non cryptographic uses of random values could be used to prevent bias for things like "random screenings" of airline passengers, jury selection, and collection of census data.
Service Security We can make three types of assumptions from a subterfuge perspective. Other Security Concerns. MediaWiki. P2Pool. Visualization of the P2Pool share chain P2Pool is a decentralized Bitcoin mining pool that works by creating a peer-to-peer network of miner nodes. P2Pool creates a new block chain in which the difficulty is adjusted so a new block is found every 30 seconds. The blocks that get into the P2Pool block chain (called the "share chain") are the same blocks that would get into the Bitcoin block chain, only they have a lower difficulty target. Whenever a peer announces a new share found (new block in the P2Pool block chain), it is received by the other peers, and the other peers verify that this block contains payouts for all the previous miners who found a share (and announced it) that made it into the P2Pool share chain.
Decentralized payout pooling solves the problem of centralized mining pools degrading the decentralization of Bitcoin and avoids the risk of hard to detect theft by pool operators. Miners are configured to connect to a P2Pool node that can be run locally, alongside the miner. BitCoin Git Repositories. Goblin/chronobit.