Lecture 4 - Authentication and Access
CSE497b - Spring 2007
Introduction Computer and Network Security
Professor Jaeger
www.cse.psu.edu/~tjaeger/cse497b-s07/
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professors Jaeger
Why authenticate?
• Why do we want to verify the identity of a user?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Control Access
• An identity permits access to resources
• In computer security this is called
– Access control
– Authorization
• In authorization, we talk about:
– Subjects (for whom an action is performed)
– Objects (upon what an action is performed)
– Operations (the type of action performed)
• Authorization limits a subject’s access perform an
operation on an object
– The combination of object and operations allowed are
called a permission
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page 3
“Project” 1
• Login to Playpen VM
– We will send you your username, password, IP
• Change your password
– Do *not* change the root password
• Need to do some minor Linux administration
• Customize your VM
– You have sudo privilege
– You are the administrator
• Posted on the calendar (due next Th, Feb 1)
– If it’s good enough for the President...
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page 4
A Brief History
• Early computing systems had no isolation
– Shared memory space
– Shared file space
• Some physical limitations made this OK
– Batch processing
– Load the tape/disk for the application
– Network? What network?
• In the mid-60s people started to work on ‘multiuser’
or ‘time-sharing’ systems
– What about a bug?
– What about my data?
• Mostly about protection
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Multiprogrammed Systems
• Multics project
– AT&T, MIT, Honeywell, etc.
– General purpose, multi-user
system
– Comprehensive security
• Hardware protection
• Subject labeling
• Permission management
• UNIX project
– Arose from the ashes of
Multics
– A stripped-down multiuser
system
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Authentication and Access
• Authenticate user
– E.g., login and ssh
– Verify password or ...
• Create processes with appropriate identity (subject)
– E.g., UNIX user id
• Limit access of these processes using subject
– E.g., Access control of files based on subject
• Protect one user from another
• Q: Is that enough for enforcing security?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Security vs. Protection
• Protection
– Focus on process isolation and user separation
• Security Requires
– Confidentiality: Don’t leak your secret files
– Integrity: Don’t overwrite your important data
– Availability: Don’t prevent an operation
• System Protection Mechanisms are Not Enough!
– Do NOT ensure security of user’s data against an attacker
– Functional demands result in system compromise
– Does not scale beyond a single system
• Current access control mechanisms fail to enforce
security goals
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Your Programs
• What permissions are available to programs that you
run?
– Email
– Web browser
– Game
– A little program that you downloaded from the web
• What can these programs do with your permissions?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Your Programs
• They can do anything that you can
– Use any permission that you have
– Including the owner permission
• They can give anyone access to your files
• Worse yet, traditional access control is not
comprehensive
– A program can send a file anywhere
• What does this mean to the secrecy of your data?
• And it gets even worse...
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Security Model
• Adversaries
– Who?
• Threats
– What can they do?
• Vulnerabilities
– What vulnerabilities can the adversaries leverage?
• Trust model
– What are you trusting (implicit in the discussion so far)?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Security Model
• Adversaries
– Other system users
– Program developers
– Web responses, emails
– Remote parties
• Threats
– Code running on same system
– Input malicious code
• Vulnerabilities
– User can be tricked
• Lots of applications enable the user to run downloaded code
– Application vulnerabilities
– Misconfigured policy
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Email Clients
• In addition to reading emails,
– Execute attachments (run with your privileges)
– May even run a malicious script w/o opening an
attachment (run with your privileges)
• What kind of attachments can you open?
– From Granny: May be a forged address
– Word or Excel: May contain viruses
• But, I’ve really gotta see it
– Plain text
– Signed emails
– Anti-virus may catch some, but no guarantee
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Access Matrix
• Describe all possible accesses
– Operations of (S2,O2)
– E.g., read, write, execute O1 O2 O3
• Specify which users’ processes
can access which files S1 Y Y N
• Necessary to specify policy to
protect users S2 N Y N
S3 N Y Y
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Manage the Access Matrix
• How do you give someone
access to your file?
O1 O2 O3
• Access matrix also has
management permissions
– owner permission S1 Y Y N
• A subject with owner
permission can S2 N Y N
– Give another user permissions to
an object
S3 N Y Y
– Even the owner permission itself
• This seems necessary, right?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
The Door Is Open
• Suppose that you want to download new software
– Or a software update
• Typically, users lack the permissions to overwrite
system files
– Why update a system file?
– “Penetrate and patch”
• For convenience, users run with administrative
privileges (e.g., Windows)
– Now, the downloaded code (and the email attachment)
runs with full privilege
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Tip of the Iceberg
• Viruses
• Worms
• Spyware
• Keyloggers
• What’s next?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Remote Access
• Suppose you are building a service for remote clients
– E.g., a web application
• How are you going to authenticate identity?
• What rights are you going to assign to which identity?
• Q: What are your vulnerabilities now?
– Consider the network and the remote computer
Name/Password
Client Your Server
Services
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Remote Access
• Client selects a name and password
– How does the client protect the password?
• Server stores state on client for ease of use
(cookies)
– How do we ensure that attacker can’t use this state?
• What other forms of authentication are used in e-
commerce?
Name/Password
Client Your Server
Services
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Single Signon
• Nice feature for users:
– Login once, then use any number of remote services
• A centralized service provides authenticated users
with tokens
Name/ SSO
Password Server
SSO Token
Client Your Server
Services
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Single Signon
• As a remote service provider
– What is the basis for trust for the single signon?
– Can you trust the token?
• Can we run a business-to-business on such trust?
– Is there a second-factor for authentication?
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
Take Away
• We have just looked at the most common
mechanisms
– Passwords
– User-based Access Control
• There are a slew of problems with each
• But, this is what the world uses
– What can we do?
That Is the Topic of This Course
CSE497b Introduction to Computer and Network Security - Spring 2007 - Professor Jaeger Page
