Floating in the Two-Factor Authenticator Tsunami?
gmerideth asks: "Working as a security consultant, I have access to a multitude of clients' networks through physical and VPN connections. Recently, due to the on-going issues of data theft, our clients have started implementing two-factor authentication using different providers. The result is a keychain that I carry around with our company key, clients keys, and a key for online access to my local area bank. I am slowly drowning in a sea of two-factor authenticators with sticky tape on the back of them, so that I can remember which key belongs to whom. What alternatives are there? Are there open projects or private products that provide a remote, secure, trusted authentication service that can provide for network/VPN authentication for Windows and Linux, using a single key among separate, private networks? If not, will step up to the plate and make it, or at least point me to a site that sells big keychains?"
RSA does offer the RSA SecurID Token for BlackBerry Handhelds - multiple tokens from one device may be possible..
http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=O CN700
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
This fellow pointed a web cam at all his keychains. Problem solved: http://fob.webhop.net/
Instead of using sticky-tape, have each one engraved with an approprate ID. If nothing else, you won't have to worry about the tape coming off. Your clients can't even really complain, because how's engraving less secure than what you're already doing?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The biggest problem at the moment and the reason we have so many tokens floating around is that these tokens need a 'seed record' stored somewhere secure. The seed record is used to authenticate the numbers you type from the token each time you login . Noone gives out these seed records as they're essentially the 'keys to the kingdom', so we're stuck with one token per service. Theoretically, if your token issuer would give you a copy of your seed file, you could then pass it on to anyone else so you could use that token with their service. Usually, they're reluctant to do this (security reasons, ownership isses, impractical, too difficult etc) so noone really shares tokens at the moment...
Verisign want to take that token store and centralise it - essentially outsourcing part of the token management. This means you can re-use your token with anyone else who uses the Verisign system.
Sounds great in theory, but the real challenge will be getting enough people to switch over. Its a real 'who jumps first problem', not to mention who fronts the cost of the tokens initially ('why should I pay for your token when you're going to use it with 10 other companies, and probably my competitors?' kind of thing). Anyone had any experiences with it, good bad or ugly?
Oddly enough, I'm at a Identity Management conference in Tempe AZ right now. Although in practice, getting all of your service providers (customers, bank, etc) into a single federation is probabably near impossible, getting them into a smaller number of bridged federations may happen through business needs and market pressure within the next few years. Check out technologies like Shibboleth (http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/) or Liberty Alliance.
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
Right, nevermind that The Cartoon Network network thought there was enough awareness of the word to use it as a pun for a block of shows called Toonami. Or do you think the named it after the disaster?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Just because you didn't hear the word used don't extrapolate that to mean that no one else knew it either. Most people who lived on the ring of fire were probably already familar with the term, as well as anybody who was decently well read, even if you didn't see it in the media. Some of us acually learn things from other sources than TV.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Now? Absolutely nobody I should think.
Eighteen months ago? Probably at least 3/4 of the entire planet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Leave your tokens at the office/home and call your coworker/wife. Won't work in an underground data center though, unless you can run fast. I don't think I'd recommend a webcam.
Isn't tsunami the default cisco wireless access point SSID? or is it Extreme?
I forget....
Karnal
> And, before last year, calling something 'a tsunami' outside of oceanographic
> circles probably would get you a lot of strange looks
All educated persons in the English-speaking world know what a tsunami is. This has not changed since the events last year. Granted, a lot of vocabulary-impoverished people have _also_ picked up the word now, but that's a temporary effect. The phonemics of the word are sufficiently foreign to the English-speaking ear that in a couple of years many people will go back to calling it a "tidal wave". This is neither here nor there. This is slashdot, so we assume you know how to use the internet: if somebody uses a word you don't know, you can head over to dictionary.com or Wikipedia or someplace and look it up.
> A tsunami is a giant wave, you're talking about drowning in a sea of tokens.
A sea is stationary. He appears to be implying that he's been suddenly deluged with tokens, overcome by a plethora, inundated under a veritable torrent, buried under an avalanche of tokens. Sure, there's a bit of hyperbole going on, but we understood what he was saying. Well, some of us did.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Participants who use two-factor authentication, and supposedly there are a few, only need one token card.
See http://www.projectliberty.org/
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Disclaimer: I work for this company.
Take a look at Corillian Intelligent Authenication. It performs 2-factor authentication without the need for a token. While it won't help you keep track of your existing key fobs, it's a good alternative to using those when you have a choice.
It's been Toonami for years. It's their japanese animation and anime-esque block. I think most people knew what the pun was and those who didn't probably didn't care because it was a cartoon block.
That's the basics. It could be simplified or expanded in numerous ways. You could have a single camera, for instance, and a stepper-motor controlled by the server rotating a turntable on which the fobs are mounted, to take the pictures of the fobs automatically in-turn. Add in a high-contrast lighting scheme, couple the camera with some edge-detection and/or OCR software, and have the computer interpret the numbers (or enhance the image) so that you know exactly what to type (when I went to the site it was difficult to read the fob image). Put the whole thing inside a modified safe or lockbox, inside a locked room, for better physical security (even better than carrying them around, I would think).
The server itself would have to have its own 2-factor security token fob to access it, so the user of all the fobs would only have to carry around a single fob, instead of a "keychain" of fobs. Also, though I don't know if this is practiced where these fobs are used (or if it breaks the system and isn't?), if multiple users need access to all the fobs, then they each can carry their own fob to get to the fobcam system, which can be set up to allow this (I would imagine). Perhaps in certain setups, a 4-factor auth scheme could be done - with the user's fobcam access fob, and the "fobcam" stored fobs providing the numbers (would prove who access which system).
Please note: here is a niche problem in need of a solution - I have just outlined step 2 of the business plan above - we all know what steps one and three are, of course...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
commercial site, open source site & sourceforge site
We are currently killing bugs in the OSS system, adding more app support and adding mutual authentication. Then we will make it less 'rpm-based' for other distros. feedback is very welcome. disclosure: i am with the company.
Why not just use smart cards? One card could handle multiple keys anyway. Combine that with a PIN and you have 2-factor auth without the hassle of having to manually type in long strings of random numbers every time.