CS363

1. Week 7 - Wednesday CS363

2. Last time • What did we talk about last time? • Targeted malicious code • Controls against program threats • Memory protection

3. Questions?

4. Project 2

5. Assignment 3

6. Security Presentation Cody Kump

7. OS Security

8. Access control • Memory is not the only thing we want to protect access to • Other important objects: • Files • Directories • Hardware devices • OS internals • Passwords • The protection mechanism itself

9. Access control goals • Check every access • The user may no longer have rights to a resource • The user may have gained rights • Enforce least privilege • Least privilege means you get the bare minimum to get your job done • Verify acceptable usage • Access to an object is not enough: Some actions might be legal and others illegal

10. Directory based approaches • Create a directory that lists all the objects a given user can access and their associated rights: • Examples: read, write, execute, own • The own write gives the user the ability to grant others rights to that object • Problems: • Directories can become large • How is access revoked? • What if two files in different locations in the system have the same name?

11. Access control lists • Listing all the objects a user can access can take up too much space • An alternative is to list all the users that have rights for a specific object • Most objects only have a few legal users • Wild cards can make the situation easier • Read access can be granted to everyone

12. Access control matrices • Both directories and access control lists are equivalent • Different implementations are used for different kinds of efficiency • We can also imagine a matrix that holds all subjects and all objects • Although it is far too inefficient for most systems to be implemented this way, security researchers sometimes use this model for theoretical purposes • Can you determine if some sequence of operations could leak read access to your file? • Nope, it’s impossible!

13. Access control matrix example

14. Rights • A few possible rights: • Read • Write • Execute • Own • Anything else that is useful? • Some rights allow users to change the rights of others

15. Blackboard system • What would the access control matrix look like for the Blackboard gradebook system?

16. Extended Unix example • Unix has users, groups, and processes • A user has a unique UID • A group has a unique GID • A process has a unique PID • Each user can belong to many groups • Access is controlled on: • Files • Directories

17. File permissions • Reading • Writing • Executing • Ownership is also important

18. Directory permissions • Reading • Execution allows moving through the directory • Writing and executing are needed to create and delete files in a directory • There is also a “sticky bit” for directories • If the sticky bit is set, only the directory owner can rename, move, or delete files owned by other people

19. Permission example drwxr-xr-x • First character: directory or not • Next three characters: owner permissions • Next three characters: group permissions • Next three characters: other permissions

20. chmod example • We can change permissions using the Unix command chmod • Examples: • chmoda+r wombat.txt • chmodg+rw combat.txt • chmod 664 ramjet.txt • Whoa! 664? What’s that? • Would it help if I pointed out that 664 can be written 110110100?

21. sudo • It is possible to temporarily use another user’s permissions in Unix using the command sudo • Users can be given special access to files or commands they normally could not access • An administrator can run at a normal privilege level and only occasionally run commands using higher privileges • This strategy prevents the whole system from being corrupted if the administrator gets a virus

22. Role-based access control • Role-based access control makes an effort to abstract away from specific subjects • The idea is that you should have access based on your role • Examples: • Secretaries have access to mailboxes • Department heads have access to performance reports • Provosts have access to salaries

23. RBAC definitions • A role is a collection of job functions • Each role is authorized to perform one or more transactions • The active role of a subject is the role that s is currently performing • The authorized roles of a subject make up the set of roles that the subject is authorized to assume

24. Authentication

25. Definition of authentication • Authentication is the binding of an identity to a subject • Example: Bill Gates (external entity) is a registered user whose identity on this system is gatesw (identity of system subject) • The external identity must provide information to authenticate based on • What the entity knows (passwords) • What the entity has (security badge) • What the entity is (fingerprints or voice ID) • Where the entity is (using a particular terminal)

26. Passwords

27. Passwords • Passwords are one of the most common forms of authentication mechanisms based on what the entity knows • The password represents authentication information that the user must know • The system keeps complementation information that can be used to check the password • As you now know, real systems generally do not store passwords in the clear but store hashes of them • Unix chooses one of 4,096 different hash functions, hashes the password into an 11-character string, and then prepends 2 characters specifying which hash function was used

28. Attacking a password system • A dictionary attack is an attack based on guessing the password from trial and error • A dictionary attack can work on the complementary information (hashes of passwords) • If this information is unavailable, a dictionary attack can directly attack the authentication functions (literally trying to log in repeatedly) • Let P be the probability that an attacker guesses the password over a certain span of time • Let G be the number of guesses that can be made per unit time • Let T be the number of time units of guessing • Let N be the number of possible passwords • Then,

29. Random passwords • One way of protecting against attacks is by making an attacker search the largest possible number of passwords • You can maximize this time by making all passwords in the set of possible passwords equally likely • To do this, you use a strong source of randomness to generate your password • Advantages and disadvantages?

30. Pronounceable passwords • Because it is difficult to memorize truly random passwords, randomly generating pronounceable passwords is sometimes used instead • A pronounceable password is one made up of a string of random syllables that can be pronounced together • helgoret • juttelon • It is not difficult to write a computer program to produce a string of pronounceable phonemes • Advantages and disadvantages?

31. User selection of passwords • Instead of either of the previous methods for randomly generating passwords, most systems allow users to pick their own passwords • Unfortunately, users are notoriously bad at picking passwords • Everyone picks "babygirl" or, worse, "password" • Proactive password checkers allow users to pick passwords but reject them if they violate certain conditions

32. Easy to guess passwords • Passwords based on account names • Passwords based on user names • Passwords based on computer names • Dictionary words (and reversed versions) • Dictionary words with some or all letters capitalized (and reversed versions) • Dictionary words with some letters turned into control characters or 1337 substitutions • Conjugations of dictionary words • Keyboard patterns • Passwords shorter than 6 characters • Passwords containing only digits • Passwords containing just letters, letters and numbers, or letters and punctuation • Passwords that look like license plate numbers • Acronyms • Past passwords • Concatenations of dictionary words • Dictionary words with digits, punctuation, or spaces preceding or following • Dictionary words with all vowels deleted • Dictionary words with white spaces deleted • Passwords too similar to the previous password

33. Good passwords • A password should have at least one digit, one letter, one punctuation symbol, and (ideally) one control character (not possible in many environments) • Relatively strong passwords can be generated by taking an unusual phrase or line of a poem and taking (say) the third letter out of each word, leaving in punctuation, and capitalizing some letters according to a rule

34. Proactive password checker criteria • To be a solid proactive password checker, research suggests it must meet certain criteria: • It must always be used • It must be able to reject easily guessed passwords • It must discriminate on a per-user basis (checking family names and birthdays, etc.) • It must discriminate on a per-site basis (no commonly used site acronyms) • It should have a pattern matching facility to catch bad passwords like "aaaaa" • It needs the ability to execute other programs as subroutines • It should be easy to set up

35. Salting • Some attackers are looking for any password instead of trying to find a specific password • If they have access to the file with the hashes of passwords, they have much less searching to do if the total number of accounts is large (some hash will match, even if the password doesn't) • For this case, salting is used • Salting adds random data to the password in stored form so that an attacker cannot immediately recognize the password • In Unix, this is a random choice of 4,096 different hashing functions (the specific choice is recorded with the password) • Other systems can simply add random bits to the end of the password before hashing (which can all be tried at authentication time) • Salting has little or no impact on an attack against a single password

36. Attacking authentication functions • In many cases, attackers do not have access to the complementation functions (the raw hash values or the hash functions) • Instead, they must attack the authentication functions themselves • In these situations, authentication functions can be protected by one of several common techniques

37. Defending authentication functions • Backoff • Force the user to wait longer and longer between failed authentication techniques • Exponential backoff means that the first time waits 1 second before allowing a user to log in, the second waits 2 seconds, the third waits 4 seconds, etc. • Disconnection • If the connection is remote and requires significant time to connect (dialing, VPN, etc.), the system can simply break connection after a number of failed attempts • Disabling • With n failed attempts, an account is locked until an administrator resets the account • Jailing • In jailing, the user is allowed to enter a fake system that looks like the real one • In theory, jailing can be used to learn more about an attacker's goals • Attractive data (called honeypots) can be made available, tempting the attacker to spend more time on the system (until he can be caught)

38. Password aging • Password aging is the idea that passwords should be changed in approximately the amount of time it would take to guess them • This concept fuels the requirement that we change our Outlook Web Mail passwords frequently • In principle, this is a sound security idea • In practice, over-frequent (or unwarned) password expirations cause user discontent and unconstructive behavior (changing passwords minimally or writing new passwords on Post-It notes)

39. Challenge Response

40. Pass Algorithms • Some systems have a special function f a user (or user's system) must know • Thus, the system will give the user a prompt, and the user must respond • Perhaps the system would issue a random value to the user, who must then encrypt it with his secret key and send it back to the user • Perhaps it's just some other way of processing the data • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge hand puzzle

41. One-Time Passwords • A one-time password is invalidated as soon as it is used • Thus, an attacker stealing the password can do limited damage • He can only log in once • He has to act quickly before the legitimate user logs in first • How do you generate all these passwords? • How do you synchronize the user and the system?

42. One-time password implementations • RSA SecurID's change the password every 30 or 60 seconds • The user must be synchronized with the system within a few seconds to keep this practical • Using a secure hash function, we start with a seed value k, then • h(k) = k1, h(k1) = k2, …, h(kn-1) = kn • Then passwords are in reverse order • p1 = kn, p2 = kn-1, … pn-1 = k2, pn = k1

43. Quiz

44. Upcoming

45. Next time… • More on authentication • Biometrics • Taylor Ryan presents

46. Reminders • Read Chapter 5 for after Spring Break • Get started on Project 2 • Get started on Assignment 3