5 ms·

How about displaying an identicon, that is rendered from the domain, in the address bar? People might soon learn what the icons of their important sites look li

by pvorb 8y ago

How about displaying an identicon, that is rendered from the domain, in the address bar? People might soon learn what the icons of their important sites look like and will easily detect if somebody is trying to phish their bank account.

masswerk 8y ago
We might even call it "favicon", for the fun of it… :-)
- kba 8y ago
  Any fake-Facebook website can copy Facebook's favicon, so that wouldn't add any security at all. An identicon is a hash value represented as an icon. "facebook.com", for instance, may hash to a red image with a yellow line through it. While you wouldn't remember the icon initially, over time you would – or at least your subconsious would. If you ever visisted a fake-Facebook, you'd immediately notice that something was wrong if the icon suddenly was green with a blue dot in it, for instance.
  - amygdyl 8y ago
    deliver the Favicon from a USPTO server, and I think you should nail the most amazing proportion of fraudsters, overnight.
- mrec 8y ago
  Not sure if serious, but no. Anyone can copy a favicon; the point of an identicon is that it's generated from the domain name, so subverting it would require an attacker to find a hash collision with a visually similar domain.
  - masswerk 8y ago
    Sorry, I mistook "that is rendered from the domain" for "rendered from a resource from the domain". However, teach users to read domain names! If users do not grasp the general concept, e.g., if the supposed identity is just "example" (possibly with some decoration considered insignificant) and not "example.com", how are they supposed to survive? Domains have been around for more than a quarter of a century, the Internet is actually part of our lives… There is no excuse, and there is no sense in pretending that there was no harm in not understanding the basics. That said, there are real ambiguities that have to be addressed.
    - pvorb 8y ago
      Yes, it would be nice if every child would learn these basics in school.
      - eecc 8y ago
        Yes, learning to be good consumers is way more important than basic skills such as maths, reading, writing and general critical thinking /s
        krotton 8y ago
        We do teach kids not to talk to strangers in the street and consider it quite important, I think. What's so much different about teaching them how not to get robbed on-line? It's not about being a good consumer, but about minding your own feet.
      - amygdyl 8y ago
        I am expanding the idea that I posited above, to use the USPTO, for one canonical answer for every query concerning the identity of business services on the Internet... This involves providing both clear identity confirmation and the Favicon, to the browser, from USPTO managed servers, to visually green light to the user, the correct online correspondent. Schools are a excellent arbiter of the quality and integrity of known correspondents online. Nota bene, I say known correspondents, I am limiting this idea to whitelist sites and services only. Color borders surrounding each Favicon, can briefly flash. I want as a parent, to need only glance at the top left corner of the browser that my son is using. Kids don't want my criticism of what they find a engaging experience. My colleagues don't want my analytical views of their Economist newspaper reading, for that matter...But I think it would be great to see really one look response to a parent's concern. This animation can be enlivened by a cursor across the toolbar or similar gesture. "No worries, dad" is a great positive action to encourage. Because it's not about censorship, it's about learning what authenticity is. I imagine a nice modern pulsating heartbeat that's restful, for a positive identification of a trusted correspondent, and a fluttering and increasingly flashy, insistent nagging for a warning. I will add to my wishlist, the ability to sign a local whitelist sites database, complete with ticketing system, to which the kids are able to submit the arguments for, for example, sites and blogs that are not within the penumbral enclave of this identity umbrella.
  - amygdyl 8y ago
    if you could identify the site as a trademark holders place of business, surely, the Favicon could be stored encrypted as SVG with the browser application distribution?
  - wstuartcl 8y ago
    Yeah, cause moving from a text domain with no collision possible to some sort of collision prone visual system to ensure are able to understand the domain they are viewing seems like a great idea. FFS, if users cant see that somedomainname.com is different than somedomanname.com how does a randomized image of the domain name based on a hash solve this.
    - mrec 8y ago
      I'm not saying it's a good idea. I don't think it is. But it's not just a favicon.
waterhouse 8y ago
The space of easily visually distinguishable images has a certain size. Let's assume there's a deterministic, pseudorandom mapping from domains to images. For a given domain, how many plausible impostor domains are there? What's the chance that there's at least one impostor domain that happens to get the same image? If you have 1000 distinct images, but a given domain has 5 letters that could each be replaced with any of 3 visually identical Unicode characters, then, well, the chances are very high that there exists a plausible impostor domain with the same image. I don't think this is a very workable approach.
- pvorb 8y ago
  Yes, I admit it's hard to get something like this secure. It's in the same problem space like hash functions and might require some research.
DCoder 8y ago
FWIW, OpenSSH already does this and calls it "randomart".
- pvorb 8y ago
  Right, didn't think of this.
michaelmrose 8y ago
How is the identicon designed such that its difficult to spoof? I know of at least one site which users a user selected image in the login screen to thwart phishing attempts. Because its user selected its memorable, I think more so than a password for example. It would be hard for a scammer to spoof as well because they don't know the image the user selected when they created the account. Unfortunately this would probably be less notable and thus memorable if everyone did it.
pvorb 8y ago
I dedicated a blog post to this idea: https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security-identicons.html https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security-identicons.html Here is the discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947467

by pvorb 8y ago

masswerk 8y ago

We might even call it "favicon", for the fun of it… :-)

kba 8y ago
Any fake-Facebook website can copy Facebook's favicon, so that wouldn't add any security at all. An identicon is a hash value represented as an icon. "facebook.com", for instance, may hash to a red image with a yellow line through it. While you wouldn't remember the icon initially, over time you would – or at least your subconsious would. If you ever visisted a fake-Facebook, you'd immediately notice that something was wrong if the icon suddenly was green with a blue dot in it, for instance.
- amygdyl 8y ago
  deliver the Favicon from a USPTO server, and I think you should nail the most amazing proportion of fraudsters, overnight.
mrec 8y ago
Not sure if serious, but no. Anyone can copy a favicon; the point of an identicon is that it's generated from the domain name, so subverting it would require an attacker to find a hash collision with a visually similar domain.
- masswerk 8y ago
  Sorry, I mistook "that is rendered from the domain" for "rendered from a resource from the domain". However, teach users to read domain names! If users do not grasp the general concept, e.g., if the supposed identity is just "example" (possibly with some decoration considered insignificant) and not "example.com", how are they supposed to survive? Domains have been around for more than a quarter of a century, the Internet is actually part of our lives… There is no excuse, and there is no sense in pretending that there was no harm in not understanding the basics. That said, there are real ambiguities that have to be addressed.
  - pvorb 8y ago
    Yes, it would be nice if every child would learn these basics in school.
    - eecc 8y ago
      Yes, learning to be good consumers is way more important than basic skills such as maths, reading, writing and general critical thinking /s
      - krotton 8y ago
        We do teach kids not to talk to strangers in the street and consider it quite important, I think. What's so much different about teaching them how not to get robbed on-line? It's not about being a good consumer, but about minding your own feet.
    - amygdyl 8y ago
      I am expanding the idea that I posited above, to use the USPTO, for one canonical answer for every query concerning the identity of business services on the Internet... This involves providing both clear identity confirmation and the Favicon, to the browser, from USPTO managed servers, to visually green light to the user, the correct online correspondent. Schools are a excellent arbiter of the quality and integrity of known correspondents online. Nota bene, I say known correspondents, I am limiting this idea to whitelist sites and services only. Color borders surrounding each Favicon, can briefly flash. I want as a parent, to need only glance at the top left corner of the browser that my son is using. Kids don't want my criticism of what they find a engaging experience. My colleagues don't want my analytical views of their Economist newspaper reading, for that matter...But I think it would be great to see really one look response to a parent's concern. This animation can be enlivened by a cursor across the toolbar or similar gesture. "No worries, dad" is a great positive action to encourage. Because it's not about censorship, it's about learning what authenticity is. I imagine a nice modern pulsating heartbeat that's restful, for a positive identification of a trusted correspondent, and a fluttering and increasingly flashy, insistent nagging for a warning. I will add to my wishlist, the ability to sign a local whitelist sites database, complete with ticketing system, to which the kids are able to submit the arguments for, for example, sites and blogs that are not within the penumbral enclave of this identity umbrella.
- amygdyl 8y ago
  if you could identify the site as a trademark holders place of business, surely, the Favicon could be stored encrypted as SVG with the browser application distribution?
- wstuartcl 8y ago
  Yeah, cause moving from a text domain with no collision possible to some sort of collision prone visual system to ensure are able to understand the domain they are viewing seems like a great idea. FFS, if users cant see that somedomainname.com is different than somedomanname.com how does a randomized image of the domain name based on a hash solve this.
  - mrec 8y ago
    I'm not saying it's a good idea. I don't think it is. But it's not just a favicon.

waterhouse 8y ago

The space of easily visually distinguishable images has a certain size. Let's assume there's a deterministic, pseudorandom mapping from domains to images. For a given domain, how many plausible impostor domains are there? What's the chance that there's at least one impostor domain that happens to get the same image? If you have 1000 distinct images, but a given domain has 5 letters that could each be replaced with any of 3 visually identical Unicode characters, then, well, the chances are very high that there exists a plausible impostor domain with the same image. I don't think this is a very workable approach.

pvorb 8y ago
Yes, I admit it's hard to get something like this secure. It's in the same problem space like hash functions and might require some research.

DCoder 8y ago

FWIW, OpenSSH already does this and calls it "randomart".

pvorb 8y ago
Right, didn't think of this.

michaelmrose 8y ago

How is the identicon designed such that its difficult to spoof? I know of at least one site which users a user selected image in the login screen to thwart phishing attempts. Because its user selected its memorable, I think more so than a password for example. It would be hard for a scammer to spoof as well because they don't know the image the user selected when they created the account. Unfortunately this would probably be less notable and thus memorable if everyone did it.

pvorb 8y ago

I dedicated a blog post to this idea: https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security-identicons.html https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security-identicons.html Here is the discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947467