RE: QuizID?

2002-10-17 Thread Trei, Peter
 Branchaud, Marc writes:
 
 Any thoughts on this device?  At first glance, it doesn't seem
 particularly impressive...
 
 http://www.quizid.com/
 
 Lovely idea of two-factor authentication:
 
The user then enters their user name (something they know) and the
8-digit Quizid passcode (something they have) into the login screen
of their application.
 
 BBC NEWS | Technology | Handy future for online security
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2334491.stm
 
 Excerpt from the BBC article:
 
Users are issued with a card and a personal code, based on a set of
colour keys on the card. Each time they wish to conduct a secure
transaction, they punch in the colour code and a random number is
generated.
 
   M.
 
[Note of vested interests: I work on RSA SecurID, which is a
competing product.]

Based on the information at the site, and Quizid's statement 
that their hardware is manufactured by ActivCard, I have to
say that this looks an *awful lot* like the ActivCard Keychain 
Token, repackaged into a bigger form factor. 

Peter Trei

Disclaimer: The above represents only my personal opinion.




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Re: QuizID?

2002-10-17 Thread Adam Shostack
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 02:39:55PM -0400, Rich Salz wrote:
| Marc Branchaud wrote:
| Any thoughts on this device?  At first glance, it doesn't seem
| particularly impressive...
| 
| http://www.quizid.com/
| 
| Looks like hardware S/Key, doesn't it?
| 
| If I could fool the user into entering a quizcode, then it seems like I 
| could get the device and the admin database out of sync and lock the 
| user out of the system.

Aww, Rich, that trick never works!

More seriously, most of the vendors will search forwards and back
through the expected codes to make the attack less likely to work.
(If authentication is centralized, searching backwards may not be a
security risk.)

I think the most interesting part of this is the unit looks cool, and
its spun slightly differently than other tokens have been.

Adam

-- 
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
   -Hume



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Re: QuizID?

2002-10-17 Thread Nicko van Someren
On Thursday, Oct 17, 2002, at 19:39 Europe/London, Rich Salz wrote:


Marc Branchaud wrote:

Any thoughts on this device?  At first glance, it doesn't seem
particularly impressive...
http://www.quizid.com/


Looks like hardware S/Key, doesn't it?

If I could fool the user into entering a quizcode, then it seems like 
I could get the device and the admin database out of sync and lock the 
user out of the system.

[Note: I have an interest, since QuizID use nCipher hardware]

Their device has a neat way of synchronizing the sequence number to the 
server which both avoids the clock drift problems that trouble RSA 
SecurID and mean that you'd have to get the user to pass you a large 
number of codes before you got them out of sync with the server.  It 
also helps them avoid some of RSA's later patents which deal with their 
troublesome clock sync problems.

	Nicko


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Re: QuizID?

2002-10-17 Thread Rich Salz
Marc Branchaud wrote:

Any thoughts on this device?  At first glance, it doesn't seem
particularly impressive...

http://www.quizid.com/


Looks like hardware S/Key, doesn't it?

If I could fool the user into entering a quizcode, then it seems like I 
could get the device and the admin database out of sync and lock the 
user out of the system.
	/r$



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