Killing the Password and Preserving Privacy with Device-Centric and Attribute-based Authentication
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Date Issued
2020
DOI
10.1109/TIFS.2019.2958763
Abstract
Current authentication methods on the Web have serious weaknesses. First,
services heavily rely on the traditional password paradigm, which diminishes
the end-users' security and usability. Second, the lack of attribute-based
authentication does not allow anonymity-preserving access to services. Third,
users have multiple online accounts that often reflect distinct identity
aspects. This makes proving combinations of identity attributes hard on the
users.
In this paper, we address these weaknesses by proposing a privacy-preserving
architecture for device-centric and attribute-based authentication based on: 1)
the seamless integration between usable/strong device-centric authentication
methods and federated login solutions; 2) the separation of the concerns for
Authorization, Authentication, Behavioral Authentication and Identification to
facilitate incremental deployability, wide adoption and compliance with NIST
assurance levels; and 3) a novel centralized component that allows end-users to
perform identity profile and consent management, to prove combinations of
fragmented identity aspects, and to perform account recovery in case of device
loss. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort towards fusing the
aforementioned techniques under an integrated architecture. This architecture
effectively deems the password paradigm obsolete with minimal modification on
the service provider's software stack.
services heavily rely on the traditional password paradigm, which diminishes
the end-users' security and usability. Second, the lack of attribute-based
authentication does not allow anonymity-preserving access to services. Third,
users have multiple online accounts that often reflect distinct identity
aspects. This makes proving combinations of identity attributes hard on the
users.
In this paper, we address these weaknesses by proposing a privacy-preserving
architecture for device-centric and attribute-based authentication based on: 1)
the seamless integration between usable/strong device-centric authentication
methods and federated login solutions; 2) the separation of the concerns for
Authorization, Authentication, Behavioral Authentication and Identification to
facilitate incremental deployability, wide adoption and compliance with NIST
assurance levels; and 3) a novel centralized component that allows end-users to
perform identity profile and consent management, to prove combinations of
fragmented identity aspects, and to perform account recovery in case of device
loss. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort towards fusing the
aforementioned techniques under an integrated architecture. This architecture
effectively deems the password paradigm obsolete with minimal modification on
the service provider's software stack.