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Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

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491–500 of 525 posts

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#491

So their vision of the future is that to do anything online, one MUST have a phone (ahem, portable wiretap)? And they're going to be keeping my secrets for me, for my own good? I'm not sure I'm down with any of that.

It's literally the opposite. You "must" have a cryptographic device (a dongle) that is only doing that one thing, authentication. Doesn't have a built in radio (unless for NFC, if you want it), doesn't have any microphone or camera, doesn't store any data beyond what's needed to authenticate, doesn't communicate except to authenticate - bi-directionally, so phishing is no longer a thing, or at least it's a lot harder…

A password has every single one of these features and it isn't hard to make a privacy case against it at all.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very hard to make a privacy case against FIDO. With username and password, I have full control over my privacy in a very easy to understand fashion: If I randomly generate them I know I cannot be tracked (as long as I ensure my browser doesn't allow it by other means). With those keys I have a opaque piece of hardware which transfers an opaque set of data to each website I use and I have NO idea what data that…

> Which is rather likely, because why else would big tech companies push this if it didn't benefit them in some way? They switched to this internally a long time ago which basically eliminated phishing attacks against employees. There are security teams inside those megacorps that have a general objective of reducing the number of account takeovers, and non trivial resources to accomplish that. Not everything is a co…

Yes, they also track the behavior of their employees. It is security for them and not for the user in many cases. In a perfect world those incentives align but they don't have to.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they'll do away with tools like smart cards or Yubikeys any time soon. Laptops and modern computers also contains a TPM so you don't necessarily need to have a phone for secrets storage. If push comes to shove, I'm sure someone will develop a lightweight Android emulation layer you can run in the cloud that pretends to be a phone enough that you can use it.

> Laptops and modern computers also contains a TPM The root of trust for which extends to who knows where, and you're not allowed to look at the source code or learn how it works because that would threaten Hollywood's profit margins. We're basically building a system of DRM for access to human beings, and making the whole world dependent on these unaccountable entities.

Which is a pretty big security threat that is constantly ignored. It just isn't acknowledged when people talk positively about TPM even if remote attestation is completely build-in by now. Security for whom becomes the question here.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#494
post #213
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you need to invent a password manager that can be properly used? The one I have runs on my computer and trusts everything else I've ever installed not to have put in a mechanism to observe memory allocated to my browser.

Is that how most credentials are stolen these days?

Users opening shady attachments or going to amarzön.se and logging in are probably 99% of cases.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#496
post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To securely store device-specific authentication credentials such as WebAuthN those used by WebAuthN/FIDO, for example. > The only uses I can think for it are nefarious, i.e. allowing outside services to track the user and violate their privacy. A smartcard would be one of the worst or at least most complicated ways to implement tracking: It can communicate with the rest of the system only through an extremely limite…

But if I never adopt TPM these compromises aren't necessary. Doing so would only give me negatives.

But there isn't a compromise.

You can use the "smartcard part" of a TPM. This gives you secure/non-extractable key storage.

You can use the attestation/trusted computing part of a TPM. This gives you trusted computing, which can be used for DRM, if you install software or use a service using DRM and grant it access to your system. If you don't like that, just don't do that. (Today's DRM solutions don't even use TPMs anymore, for what it's worth.)

If you want/need neither, just use neither!

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#497
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much more than a non-rememberable password: One of the most important attributes of WebAuthN/FIDO is that it's fundamentally impossible to fall victim to phishing. Assuming your browser isn't itself compromised, it is impossible to authenticate using a key for service.com on evil.com. Passwords can't do that. (PAKEs or other challenge/response protocols theoretically could, if implemented in the browser and not…

However it will be weaker to malware compares to the original one. Because if you can export or sync the key, then malware probably also can if your device is compromised. The guarantee that key is never cloned unknowingly even machine fully compromised isn't in this new model.

> The guarantee that key is never cloned unknowingly even machine fully compromised isn't in this new model.

True, that was my concern with the new specification as well. But I believe the main problem will be account takeovers, not malware.

> Because if you can export or sync the key, then malware probably also can if your device is compromised.

Not necessarily. There are ways to still keep these keys only in secure hardware while allowing synchronization if the secure hardware supports service-provider mediated attestation.

HSMs usually support a similar process, where keys can be copied to a different HSM by the same vendor, preserving all of their usage and authentication restrictions (i.e. only the same set of authenticated and authorized users are able to use them).

This conceptually works by e.g. a new and old device, or a service-provider side HSM-secured backup and a new device, establishing a secured channel, attesting their state to each other and then copying the credentials over that secured channel.

By necessity, this includes the service provider (or at least their HSM code) as a trusted party: They are the one that ultimately gets to decide which new devices get added to the synchronization set, and under what circumstances (running a recent hardware and software version, multifactor authentication, providing a high or low entropy shared secret).

Of course, all of this also vastly increases the trusted computing base, and this might well not be appropriate for high security organizational environments.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally the opposite. You "must" have a cryptographic device (a dongle) that is only doing that one thing, authentication. Doesn't have a built in radio (unless for NFC, if you want it), doesn't have any microphone or camera, doesn't store any data beyond what's needed to authenticate, doesn't communicate except to authenticate - bi-directionally, so phishing is no longer a thing, or at least it's a lot harder…

> It's very hard to make a privacy case against FIDO. With username and password, I have full control over my privacy in a very easy to understand fashion: If I randomly generate them I know I cannot be tracked (as long as I ensure my browser doesn't allow it by other means). With those keys I have a opaque piece of hardware which transfers an opaque set of data to each website I use and I have NO idea what data that…

I'm not familiar with FIDO, but passwords place a lot of effort into the user (must avoid repeating them, must avoid simple sequences, etc). After years of warnings, this has berely changed - people use lousy passwords and repeat them.

So I'm all up for considering different approaches.

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#499

Does anyone here know what privacy/tracking issues are with this standard?

FIDO2 privacy is actually pretty good and well thought out. There's a theoretical risk of a website sending authentication challenges for two different accounts and having both assertions signed by the same credential, basically correlating those accounts together, but this is unlikely to weaken collective privacy at scale.

What is collective privacy?

Also, why not allow uncertified devices to generate keys? Why do I have to implement secure boot or TPM?

Re: Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard

#500
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I never adopt TPM these compromises aren't necessary. Doing so would only give me negatives.

But there isn't a compromise. You can use the "smartcard part" of a TPM. This gives you secure/non-extractable key storage. You can use the attestation/trusted computing part of a TPM. This gives you trusted computing, which can be used for DRM, if you install software or use a service using DRM and grant it access to your system . If you don't like that, just don't do that. (Today's DRM solutions don't even use TPMs…

If everyone were forced to use TPM it probably would still be used as a DRM mechanism. My problem is with enabling the usage in the first place whereas I only have negligible security improvements.

The only think that kept DRM from leveraging it was indeed the low usage in consumer spaces.

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