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Chris J Mitchell

Publications and source records attributed to Chris J Mitchell.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2019

Beyond Cookie Monster Amnesia: Real World Persistent Online Tracking

Browser fingerprinting is a relatively new method of uniquely identifying browsers that can be used to track web users. In some ways it is more privacy-threatening than tracking via cookies, as users have no direct control over it. A number of authors have considered the wide variety of techniques that can be used to fingerprint browsers; however, relatively little information is available on how widespread browser fingerprinting is, and what information is collected to create these fingerprints in the real world. To help address this gap, we crawled the 10,000 most popular websites; this gave insights into the number of websites that are using the technique, which websites are collecting fingerprinting information, and exactly what information is being retrieved. We found that approximately 69\% of websites are, potentially, involved in first-party or third-party browser fingerprinting. We further found that third-party browser fingerprinting, which is potentially more privacy-damaging, appears to be predominant in practice. We also describe \textit{FingerprintAlert}, a freely available browser extension we developed that detects and, optionally, blocks fingerprinting attempts by visited websites.

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arXiv2019

OAuthGuard: Protecting User Security and Privacy with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect

Millions of users routinely use Google to log in to websites supporting OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect; the security of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect is therefore of critical importance. As revealed in previous studies, in practice RPs often implement OAuth 2.0 incorrectly, and so many real-world OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect systems are vulnerable to attack. However, users of such flawed systems are typically unaware of these issues, and so are at risk of attacks which could result in unauthorised access to the victim user's account at an RP. In order to address this threat, we have developed OAuthGuard, an OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect vulnerability scanner and protector, that works with RPs using Google OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect services. It protects user security and privacy even when RPs do not implement OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect correctly. We used OAuthGuard to survey the 1000 top-ranked websites supporting Google sign-in for the possible presence of five OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect security and privacy vulnerabilities, of which one has not previously been described in the literature. Of the 137 sites in our study that employ Google Sign-in, 69 were found to suffer from at least one serious vulnerability. OAuthGuard was able to protect user security and privacy for 56 of these 69 RPs, and for the other 13 was able to warn users that they were using an insecure implementation.

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arXiv2018

The Hsu-Harn-Mu-Zhang-Zhu group key establishment protocol is insecure

A significant security vulnerability in a recently published group key establishment protocol is described. This vulnerability allows a malicious insider to fraudulently establish a group key with an innocent victim, with the key chosen by the attacker. This shortcoming is sufficiently serious that the protocol should not be used.

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arXiv2018

Web password recovery --- a necessary evil?

Web password recovery, enabling a user who forgets their password to re-establish a shared secret with a website, is very widely implemented. However, use of such a fall-back system brings with it additional vulnerabilities to user authentication. This paper provides a framework within which such systems can be analysed systematically, and uses this to help gain a better understanding of how such systems are best implemented. To this end, a model for web password recovery is given, and existing techniques are documented and analysed within the context of this model. This leads naturally to a set of recommendations governing how such systems should be implemented to maximise security. A range of issues for further research are also highlighted.

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arXiv2018

Mitigating CSRF attacks on OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect

Many millions of users routinely use their Google, Facebook and Microsoft accounts to log in to websites supporting OAuth 2.0 and/or OpenID Connect-based single sign on. The security of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect is therefore of critical importance, and it has been widely examined both in theory and in practice. Unfortunately, as these studies have shown, real-world implementations of both schemes are often vulnerable to attack, and in particular to cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. In this paper we propose a new technique which can be used to mitigate CSRF attacks against both OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.

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arXiv2017

AutoPass: An Automatic Password Generator

Text password has long been the dominant user authentication technique and is used by large numbers of Internet services. If they follow recommended practice, users are faced with the almost insuperable problem of generating and managing a large number of site-unique and strong (i.e. non-guessable) passwords. One way of addressing this problem is through the use of a password generator, i.e. a client-side scheme which generates (and regenerates) site-specific strong passwords on demand, with the minimum of user input. This paper provides a detailed specification and analysis of AutoPass, a password generator scheme previously outlined as part of a general analysis of such schemes. AutoPass has been designed to address issues identified in previously proposed password generators, and incorporates novel techniques to address these issues. Unlike almost all previously proposed schemes, AutoPass enables the generation of passwords that meet important real-world requirements, including forced password changes, use of pre-specified passwords, and generation of passwords meeting site-specific requirements.

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arXiv2016

On the security of 2-key triple DES

This paper reconsiders the security offered by 2-key triple DES, an encryption technique that remains widely used despite recently being de-standardised by NIST. A generalisation of the 1990 van Oorschot-Wiener attack is described, constituting the first advance in cryptanalysis of 2-key triple DES since 1990. We give further attack enhancements that together imply that the widely used estimate that 2-key triple DES provides 80 bits of security can no longer be regarded as conservative; the widely stated assertion that the scheme is secure as long as the key is changed regularly is also challenged. The main conclusion is that, whilst not completely broken, the margin of safety for 2-key triple DES is slim, and efforts to replace it, at least with its 3-key variant, should be pursued with some urgency.

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arXiv2016

Password Generators: Old Ideas and New

This paper considers password generators, i.e. systems designed to generate site-specific passwords on demand. Such systems are an alternative to password managers. Over the last 15 years a range of password generator systems have been described. This paper proposes the first general model for such systems, and critically examines options for instantiating this model; options considered include all those previously proposed as part of existing schemes as well as certain novel possibilities. The model enables a more objective and high-level assessment of the design of such systems; it has also been used to sketch a possible new scheme, AutoPass, intended to incorporate the best features of the prior art whilst also addressing many of the most serious shortcomings of existing systems through the inclusion of novel features.

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arXiv2016

Retrofitting mutual authentication to GSM using RAND hijacking

As has been widely discussed, the GSM mobile telephony system only offers unilateral authentication of the mobile phone to the network; this limitation permits a range of attacks. While adding support for mutual authentication would be highly beneficial, changing the way GSM serving networks operate is not practical. This paper proposes a novel modification to the relationship between a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and its home network which allows mutual authentication without changing any of the existing mobile infrastructure, including the phones; the only necessary changes are to the authentication centres and the SIMs. This enhancement, which could be deployed piecemeal in a completely transparent way, not only addresses a number of serious vulnerabilities in GSM but is also the first proposal for enhancing GSM authentication that possesses such transparency properties.

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arXiv2015

Analysing the Security of Google's implementation of OpenID Connect

Many millions of users routinely use their Google accounts to log in to relying party (RP) websites supporting the Google OpenID Connect service. OpenID Connect, a newly standardised single-sign-on protocol, builds an identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol, which has itself been widely adopted to support identity management services. It adds identity management functionality to the OAuth 2.0 system and allows an RP to obtain assurances regarding the authenticity of an end user. A number of authors have analysed the security of the OAuth 2.0 protocol, but whether OpenID Connect is secure in practice remains an open question. We report on a large-scale practical study of Google's implementation of OpenID Connect, involving forensic examination of 103 RP websites which support its use for sign-in. Our study reveals serious vulnerabilities of a number of types, all of which allow an attacker to log in to an RP website as a victim user. Further examination suggests that these vulnerabilities are caused by a combination of Google's design of its OpenID Connect service and RP developers making design decisions which sacrifice security for simplicity of implementation. We also give practical recommendations for both RPs and OPs to help improve the security of real world OpenID Connect systems.

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arXiv2015

Improving Air Interface User Privacy in Mobile Telephony

Although the security properties of 3G and 4G mobile networks have significantly improved by comparison with 2G (GSM), significant shortcomings remain with respect to user privacy. A number of possible modifications to 2G, 3G and 4G protocols have been proposed designed to provide greater user privacy; however, they all require significant modifications to existing deployed infrastructures, which are almost certainly impractical to achieve in practice. In this article we propose an approach which does not require any changes to the existing deployed network infrastructures or mobile devices, but offers improved user identity protection over the air interface. The proposed scheme makes use of multiple IMSIs for an individual USIM to offer a degree of pseudonymity for a user. The only changes required are to the operation of the authentication centre in the home network and to the USIM, and the scheme could be deployed immediately since it is completely transparent to the existing mobile telephony infrastructure. We present two different approaches to the use and management of multiple IMSIs.

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