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I'm comfortable using passwords <20 characters distributed among a range of sites because I have a realistic view: if one gets compromised, not every account do

I'm comfortable using passwords <20 characters distributed among a range of sites because I have a realistic view: if one gets compromised, not every account does, and most accounts are not critical. Some are luggage keys, some are Medeco. But those are bad comparisons. A key and lock is an asynchronous single use authentication+authorization mechanism. Passwords are just the authentication part, so trying to replace these just requires we have a secure way to authenticate ourselves. We have the benefit that we are using digital systems, so our authentication can be digital, too. We can also rely on multiple factors to improve how authentic this process is. Biometrics, digital files, access to other accounts and networks, offline code generators, and personal information all provide lots of authentication data and multiply the effort needed to defeat the system. By combining all these factors, we can create a new digital key that is far more difficult to defeat than old methods by themselves, and ultimately is more flexible because it can be made up of any of these things. The problem mainly seems to be that we live in a world of different locks, and most locks don't accept this particular kind of digital key. We've hacked around this problem and made some attempts at more compatible solutions, but they really fall short of their true potential. In the future, you should simply be able to use any system and know that it will authenticate you in a way that can't be copied or cracked. Today that just isn't the case. So for now, maybe we should move the goal posts. We can keep making our keys more unwieldy, but we can also get more guard dogs. The guard dogs need to exist not only to protect the locks, but the keys, too. If you go to unlock a door, a thief can knock you out and steal your key. Each aspect of our digital access needs guard dogs. We can no longer accept insecure communication methods, nor insecure computing platforms, to exchange our authentication. I think the real challenge going forward is rethinking how we process data altogether.

dublinben 9y ago
It's a lot easier than all of that. New two-factor authentication standards like U2F achieves most of that with just a simple, inexpensive hardware token.
- Bakary 9y ago
  U2F is cumbersome when you have to travel and change phone numbers frequently. In many cases there is no real way to have a line to one of your authentication methods, since you can never get the SMS confirmation.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    U2F does not require SMS, and that's what it's designed to work around: problems inherent to "traditional" 2nd factor authentication. It does this by a secure connection from your browser (which does a challenge/response with your U2F token) to the server. You can connect your U2F token to your phone and auth on any network without SMS. But U2F is really only a stopgap technology designed to provide a better mechanism than SMS or TOTP. There are still difficulties users will find with this mechanism that are problematic to secure or make less cumbersome, slowing adoption and security in general. And U2F still has several attacks that will work against it, making it somewhat trivial for malware to take over an account. I envision a future where not only are there many factors we can use to authenticate, but that we might never need to "reset" our accounts again. That the majority of attacks on the user could end, and that servers will be more resilient to both general attacks and specifically data exfiltration. And that the data we use to secure accounts on the server can't be reused. An almost secure technological world. This requires implementing strong security measures in all of the computers we use today. It also requires the adoption of universal multi-factor authentication methods, and a methodology to protect them from abuse by attackers. You can't get there by tacking more complicated mechanisms onto computers that are already not secure.
    - Bakary 9y ago
      My bad, I actually confused the U2F acronym with 2FA. You are correct, of course.

dublinben 9y ago

It's a lot easier than all of that. New two-factor authentication standards like U2F achieves most of that with just a simple, inexpensive hardware token.

Bakary 9y ago
U2F is cumbersome when you have to travel and change phone numbers frequently. In many cases there is no real way to have a line to one of your authentication methods, since you can never get the SMS confirmation.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  U2F does not require SMS, and that's what it's designed to work around: problems inherent to "traditional" 2nd factor authentication. It does this by a secure connection from your browser (which does a challenge/response with your U2F token) to the server. You can connect your U2F token to your phone and auth on any network without SMS. But U2F is really only a stopgap technology designed to provide a better mechanism than SMS or TOTP. There are still difficulties users will find with this mechanism that are problematic to secure or make less cumbersome, slowing adoption and security in general. And U2F still has several attacks that will work against it, making it somewhat trivial for malware to take over an account. I envision a future where not only are there many factors we can use to authenticate, but that we might never need to "reset" our accounts again. That the majority of attacks on the user could end, and that servers will be more resilient to both general attacks and specifically data exfiltration. And that the data we use to secure accounts on the server can't be reused. An almost secure technological world. This requires implementing strong security measures in all of the computers we use today. It also requires the adoption of universal multi-factor authentication methods, and a methodology to protect them from abuse by attackers. You can't get there by tacking more complicated mechanisms onto computers that are already not secure.
  - Bakary 9y ago
    My bad, I actually confused the U2F acronym with 2FA. You are correct, of course.