COMPUTING RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK [April 29 - May 6, 2011]
Passwords that are Harder to Hack
Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institut fur Physik komplexer Systeme and from Axioma Research have devised a new method to create passwords that are harder to hack, but easier to remember.
In a paper called, "The weak password problem: chaos, criticality, and encrypted p-CAPTCHAs", the authors T.V. Laptyeva, S. Flach, K. Kladko say:
Vulnerabilities related to weak passwords are a pressing global economic and security issue. We report a novel, simple, and effective approach to address the weak password problem. Building upon chaotic dynamics, criticality at phase transitions, CAPTCHA recognition, and computational round-off errors we design an algorithm that strengthens security of passwords. The core idea of our method is to split a long and secure password into two components. The first component is memorized by the user. The second component is transformed into a CAPTCHA image and then protected using evolution of a two-dimensional dynamical system close to a phase transition, in such a way that standard brute-force attacks become ineffective. We expect our approach to have wide applications for authentication and encryption technologies.
The researchers say that their method can be "readily and straightforwardly implemented on a wide variety of existing computer systems and devices," and they believe that this technology would be a significant step toward better protecting confidential data whereas current methods may not be as strong. I for one hope that we'll start seeing this technology in Websites like Facebook and Gmail.
Researchers:
Tetyana V. Laptyeva (MPI für Physik komplexer Systeme, TU, Dresden, Germany)
S. Flach (MPI für Physik komplexer Systeme, TU, Dresden, Germany)
K. Kladko (Axioma Research)
Agencies/Institutions (that have supported the research):
Axioma Research, MPI für Physik komplexer Systeme, TU, Dresden, Germany
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Computing Research Highlight of the Week is a service of the Computing Community Consortium and the Computing Research Association designed to highlight some of the exciting and important recent research results in the computing fields. Each week a new highlight is chosen by CRA and CCC staff and volunteers from submissions from the computing community. Want your research featured? Submit it!.
