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    Home Cybersecurity
    • Cybersecurity

    Is Two-Factor Authentication Being Oversold?

    Written by

    Larry Seltzer
    Published March 15, 2005
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      If youre exchanging sensitive data online and youre not worried about identity theft, you should be. Several new attacks are released every day to steal your data or co-opt your account.

      There are no shortage of products to protect you, even if the most important ingredient in personal security has, frighteningly, always been education. But now the security industry has a new set of products its selling to protect consumers: two-factor authentication.

      Corporate IT departments have relied on two-factor identification, a market dominated by RSA with its SecurID products, for years. But corporate network log-ins are one thing; consumers accessing an ISP (as in AOLs SecurID-based PassCode service) or a Web-based service (such as the E*Trade Complete Security System with Digital Security ID) is another.

      In fact, as Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, argues in a piece just published in Communications of the ACM, obviously its no solution. The obviousness of this is the really stunning thing.

      Schneier asks the question: What are the identity problems facing Internet consumers, and what does two-factor authentication do to mitigate them? Schneier identifies two broad classes of attack: man-in-the-middle attacks and Trojan horse software.

      Two-factor authentication would defeat the sort of phishing where the Web site just collects user names and passwords, but imagine a phishing site (this is not novel, its been done a lot) where a fake page is put up but acts as a conduit to the real site. The user is actually working on the bank or commerce site or whatever it is they think they are working on, and everything goes through the fake site on its way between the user and the site.

      Its the fake site in the middle that has the actual authenticated session with the commerce site, not the user. Therefore, the site can piggyback on the users provided authentication to conduct other transactions, such as purchases or transfers of funds. Two-factor authentication doesnt stop this.

      The Trojan horse attack involves a program the user is tricked into running and that remains on his or her system, monitoring it for the opportunity to attack. You could call this a form of spyware. The Trojan waits for the user to connect to one or more commerce sites and uses the authenticated connection to perform transactions. Once again, since the user actually logs in, two-factor authentication is no problem for the attack.

      Its tempting to think that there must be something to it, but as Schneier argues, the industry can have a herd mentality when it comes to security. And this particular fad has all the earmarks of being marketing-driven; its a way to enhance the security prestige of a brand and a way to sell premium services.

      Local network log-on, the problem solved by two-factor authentication, was a real problem a long time ago when RSA solved it. But attackers have moved on to develop attacks that are more appropriate to the Internet. Just because a solution looks professional and enterprise-class doesnt make it an appropriate solution for consumers—far from it. In fact, its just another Internet scam.

      Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983.

      Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest security news, reviews and analysis. And for insights on security coverage around the Web, take a look at eWEEK.com Security Center Editor Larry Seltzers Weblog.

      More from Larry Seltzer

      Larry Seltzer
      Larry Seltzer
      Larry Seltzer has been writing software for and English about computers ever since—,much to his own amazement— He was one of the authors of NPL and NPL-R, fourth-generation languages for microcomputers by the now-defunct DeskTop Software Corporation. (Larry is sad to find absolutely no hits on any of these +products on Google.) His work at Desktop Software included programming the UCSD p-System, a virtual machine-based operating system with portable binaries that pre-dated Java by more than 10 years.For several years, he wrote corporate software for Mathematica Policy Research (they're still in business!) and Chase Econometrics (not so lucky) before being forcibly thrown into the consulting market. He bummed around the Philadelphia consulting and contract-programming scenes for a year or two before taking a job at NSTL (National Software Testing Labs) developing product tests and managing contract testing for the computer industry, governments and publication.In 1991 Larry moved to Massachusetts to become Technical Director of PC Week Labs (now eWeek Labs). He moved within Ziff Davis to New York in 1994 to run testing at Windows Sources. In 1995, he became Technical Director for Internet product testing at PC Magazine and stayed there till 1998.Since then, he has been writing for numerous other publications, including Fortune Small Business, Windows 2000 Magazine (now Windows and .NET Magazine), ZDNet and Sam Whitmore's Media Survey.

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