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Security Question
A security question is a form of shared secret used as an authenticator. It is commonly used by banks, cable companies and wireless providers as an extra security layer. History Financial institutions have used questions to authenticate customers since at least the early 20th century. In a 1906 speech at a meeting of a section of the American Bankers Association, Baltimore banker William M. Hayden described his institution's use of security questions as a supplement to customer signature records. He described the signature cards used in opening new accounts, which had spaces for the customer's birthplace, "residence," mother's maiden name, occupation and age. Hayden noted that some of these items were often left blank and that the "residence" information was used primarily to contact the customer, but the mother's maiden name was useful as a "strong test of identity." Although he observed that it was rare for someone outside the customer's family to try to withdraw money fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shared Secret
In cryptography, a shared secret is a piece of data, known only to the parties involved, in a secure communication. This usually refers to the key of a symmetric cryptosystem. The shared secret can be a PIN code, a password, a passphrase, a big number, or an array of randomly chosen bytes. The shared secret is either shared beforehand between the communicating parties, in which case it can also be called a pre-shared key, or it is created at the start of the communication session by using a key-agreement protocol, for instance using public-key cryptography such as Diffie–Hellman or using symmetric-key cryptography such as Kerberos. The shared secret can be used for authentication (for instance when logging in to a remote system) using methods such as challenge–response or it can be fed to a key derivation function to produce one or more keys to use for encryption and/or MACing of messages. To make unique session and message keys the shared secret is usually comb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-service Password Reset
Self-service password reset (SSPR) is defined as any process or technology that allows users who have either forgotten their password or triggered an intruder lockout to authenticate with an alternate factor, and repair their own problem, without calling the help desk. It is a common feature in identity management software and often bundled in the same software package as a password synchronization capability. Typically users who have forgotten their password launch a self-service application from an extension to their workstation login prompt, using their own or another user's web browser, or through a telephone call. Users establish their identity, without using their forgotten or disabled password, by answering a series of personal questions, using a hardware authentication token, responding to a notification e-mail or, less often, by providing a biometric sample such as voice recognition. Users can then either specify a new, unlocked password, or ask that a randomly generat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Authentication Methods
Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicating a person or thing's identity, authentication is the process of verifying that identity. Authentication is relevant to multiple fields. In art, antiques, and anthropology, a common problem is verifying that a given artifact was produced by a certain person, or in a certain place (i.e. to assert that it is not counterfeit), or in a given period of history (e.g. by determining the age via carbon dating). In computer science, verifying a user's identity is often required to allow access to confidential data or systems. It might involve validating personal identity documents. In art, antiques and anthropology Authentication can be considered to be of three types: The ''first'' type of authentication is accepting proof of identity given by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Password Fatigue
Password fatigue is the feeling experienced by many people who are required to remember an excessive number of passwords as part of their daily routine, such as to log in to a computer at work, undo a bicycle lock or conduct banking from an automated teller machine. The concept is also known as password chaos, or more broadly as identity chaos. Causes The increasing prominence of information technology and the Internet in employment, finance, recreation and other aspects of people's lives, and the ensuing introduction of secure transaction technology, has led to people accumulating a proliferation of accounts and passwords. According to a survey conducted in February 2020 by password manager Nordpass, a typical user has 100 passwords. Some factors causing password fatigue are: * unexpected demands that a user create a new password * unexpected demands that a user create a new password that uses a particular pattern of letters, digits, and special characters * demand that the us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knowledge-based Authentication
Knowledge-based authentication, commonly referred to as KBA, is a method of authentication which seeks to prove the identity of someone accessing a service such as a financial institution or website. As the name suggests, KBA requires the knowledge of private information from the individual to prove that the person providing the identity information is the owner of the identity. There are two types of KBA: ''static KBA'', which is based on a pre-agreed set of shared secrets, and ''dynamic KBA'', which is based on questions generated from a wider base of personal information.K. Skračić, P. Pale and B. Jeren,Knowledge based authentication requirements" ''2013 36th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO)'', Opatija, Croatia, 2013, pp. 1116-1120. Static KBA (shared secrets) Static KBA, also referred to as "shared secrets" or "shared secret questions," is commonly used by banks, financial services companies and e- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Password
A cognitive password is a form of knowledge-based authentication that requires a user to answer a question, presumably something they intrinsically know, to verify their identity. Cognitive password systems have been researched for many years and are currently commonly used as a form of secondary access. They were developed to overcome the common memorability vs. strength problem that exists with the traditional password. Cognitive passwords, when compared to other password systems, can be measured through the usage of a memorability vs. guessability ratio. History Research on passwords as an authentication method has struggled between memorability and strong security. Passwords that are easily remembered are easily cracked by attackers. On the other hand, strong passwords are difficult to crack but also difficult to remember.Zviran and Haga, 1990a When passwords are difficult to remember, users may write them down, and the secrecy of the password is compromised. Early resear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as of November, 2013. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and The Tor Project; and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast. Early life and education Bruce Schneier is the son of Martin Schneier, a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, attending P.S. 139 and Hunter College High School. After receiving a physics bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1984, he went to American University in Washington, D.C., and got his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letter Case
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper- and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters: each in the majuscule set has a counterpart in the minuscule set. Some counterpart letters have the same shape, and differ only in size (e.g. ), but for others the shapes are different (e.g., ). The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are typically treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order. Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper and lowercase letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often denoted by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. In ortho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Probabilistic Record Linkage
Record linkage (also known as data matching, data linkage, entity resolution, and many other terms) is the task of finding records in a data set that refer to the same entity across different data sources (e.g., data files, books, websites, and databases). Record linkage is necessary when joining different data sets based on entities that may or may not share a common identifier (e.g., database key, URI, National identification number), which may be due to differences in record shape, storage location, or curator style or preference. A data set that has undergone RL-oriented reconciliation may be referred to as being ''cross-linked''. Naming conventions "Record linkage" is the term used by statisticians, epidemiologists, and historians, among others, to describe the process of joining records from one data source with another that describe the same entity. However, many other terms are used for this process. Unfortunately, this profusion of terminology has led to few cross-r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phishing
Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim navigates the site, and transverses any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, it is the most common type of cybercrime, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center reporting more incidents of phishing than any other type of cybercrime. The term "phishing" was first recorded in 1995 in the cracking toolkit AOHell, but may have been used earlier in the hacker magazine '' 2600''. It is a variation of ''fishing'' and refers to the use of lures to "fish" for sensitive information. Measures to prevent or reduce the impact of phishing attacks include legislation, user educa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brute-force Attack
In cryptography, a brute-force attack or exhaustive key search is a cryptanalytic attack that consists of an attacker submitting many possible keys or passwords with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. This strategy can theoretically be used to break any form of encryption that is not information-theoretically secure. However, in a properly designed cryptosystem the chance of successfully guessing the key is negligible. When cracking passwords, this method is very fast when used to check all short passwords, but for longer passwords other methods such as the dictionary attack are used because a brute-force search takes too long. Longer passwords, passphrases and keys have more possible values, making them exponentially more difficult to crack than shorter ones due to diversity of characters. Brute-force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded making it more difficult for an attacker to recognize when the code has been cracked or by ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keystroke Logging
Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored. Data can then be retrieved by the person operating the logging program. A keystroke recorder or keylogger can be either software or hardware. While the programs themselves are legal, with many designed to allow employers to oversee the use of their computers, keyloggers are most often used for stealing passwords and other confidential information. Keystroke logging can also be utilized to monitor activities of children in schools or at home and by law enforcement officials to investigate malicious usage. Keylogging can also be used to study keystroke dynamics or human-computer interaction. Numerous keylogging methods exist, ranging from hardware and software-based approaches to acoustic cryptanalysis. History In the mid-1970s, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
