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Viewing posts tagged Mutual Authentication

Mozilla specifies two-factor authentication for CAs

The Mozilla team is cracking down on the lax security of certificate authorities.  They have sent an email to CAs requesting information confirming security practices including two-factor authentication:

Cloud Security and Two-factor authentication

We've recently partnered with VM Racks, Inc a secure virtual hosting specialist for their HIPAA-compliant ESX VMware Hosting service.   There are three take-aways from this news:

Traditional two-factor authentication is dead.

At Bsides Atlanta last week, Eric Smith (@infosecmafia) and Dave Kennedy (@dave_rel1k) demonstrated a real-time attack against a Juniper SSL-VPN that by-passes the authentication method used including time-bound one-time passcodes.  (Dave's post on "Traditional Penetration Testing is DEAD" on their BSidesAtlanta talk inspired my title. ;)

This type of attack against SSL and DNS has been predicted for some time, taking advantage of user's willingness to accept any SSL certificate.  Kudos to Eric and Dave for showing how this type of attack combined with a strategically aimed penetration test can really wreak havoc on an enterprise.

A world without static passwords

I wanted to quickly clarify my brief twitter rant about SMS authentication.  This was all started by Chris Wysopal's tweet about Zeus's new mobile MiTM attacks and that "phones are not secure enough for 2 factor".  Zeus is now targeting the text messages that banks are using for authenticating transactions.

Javelin Strategy on Business Banking

Read this post on "Business Bank Accounts: The missing features that no one is talking about" for a great summary of the missing features that online banking needs to provide a secure solution for their customers, including one-time passwords.  I find this to be a little dis-heartening as I believe that online banking needs for more than the features on this list. We have often gone on about mutual https authentication and transaction authentication, but it turns out banks are a long way from providing these "advanced features".   Perhaps I should be more positive: Think how easy it should be for a bank to increase their security.

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