4/15/25

Motivation
İTÜ Fresh Cyberattack Waves and Latest Statistics on
COVID-19
Network Security

Authentication

Dr. Şerif Bahtiyar

[email protected] Attackers are using malicious websites, phishing emails, and illicit markets that use COVID-19
vaccines as a lure to target people.
https://cyware.com/news/fresh-cyberattack-waves-and-latest-statistics-on-covid-19-64cdfab7
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Outline Basics of Authentication

Authentication is the binding of an identity to a principal.
• Basics of Authentication
• Message authentication is a procedure that allows communicating
parties to verify that received or stored messages are authentic.
• Remote User Authentication • User authentication is the process of verifying an identity claimed by
or for a system entity. (RFC2828)
• Kerberos
Some slides are based on book of William Stallings, “Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice”, 7th edition, 2017

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Basics of Authentication Basics of Authentication

User authentication is the fundamental building block and the primary User authentication is the basis for many types of access
line of defense. control and user accountability.
Steps of an authentication process:
• Identification: specify identifier

Web authentication is a Layer 3 security feature that causes the

controller to not allow IP traffic from a particular client until that client • Verification: bind the entity and the identifier
has correctly supplied a valid username and password. (Cisco)

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Basics of Authentication Basics of Authentication

Electronic User Authentication
Electronic User Authentication is the process of establishing confidence
in user identities that are presented electronically to an information
system. (NIST SP 800-63-2: Electronic Authentication Guideline)

Digital Authentication or E-Authentication may be used synonymously

when referring to the authentication process that confirms or certifies a
person’s identity and works.
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Basics of Authentication Basics of Authentication

Electronic User Authentication Electronic User Authentication
• Subscriber or Claimant: The party to be authenticated.
• Registration Authority (RA): It is a trusted entity that establishes and
• Verifier: The party verifying the identity of a subscriber. vouches for the identity of an applicant to a credential service
provider.
• Credential Service Provider (CSP): CSP issues some sort of electronic
credential to the subscriber.
• Relying Party (RP): It can use the authenticated information provided
by the verifier to make access control or authorization decisions.
• Credential: A data structure that authoritatively binds identity and
additional attributes to a token possessed by a subscriber that can be
Note that current network systems may have more complex
verified by the verifier in an authentication transaction.
authentication models, but they contains at least these entities.
• Token: can be an encryption key or an encrypted password that
identifies the subscriber.
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Basics of Authentication Basics of Authentication

The initial requirement of user authentication is registration.
Four (five) factors of user authentication based on individual:
1- Knows: password, PIN

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Basics of Authentication Basics of Authentication

Four (five) factors of user authentication based on individual:
Four (five) factors of user authentication based on individual:
2-Possesses (token): electronic keycards, smart cards, physical keys 3-Is (static biometrics):
fingerprint, retina, face

4-Does (dynamic biometrics):

voice pattern, handwriting
characteristic

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Basics of Authentication Mutual Authentication

Four (five) factors of user authentication based on individual: • Mutual authentication protocols enable communicating parties to
5-Location satisfy themselves mutually about each other’s identity and to
exchange session keys.
• Problems of authenticated key exchange
1. Confidentiality
§ To prevent masquerade and compromise of session keys, identification
and session-key information must be communicated in encrypted form.
2. Timeliness
§ A successful replay can disrupt operations by presenting parties with
messages that appear genuine but are not.
Each of these methods has problems.

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Mutual Authentication Mutual Authentication

Countermeasures against Replay Attacks
Some Replay Attacks
• Attach sequence number to each message used in an authentication
1. Opponent simply copies a message and replays it later.
exchange
2. Opponent replays timestamped message within valid time window.
• requires each party to keep track of last sequence number
3. Opponent replays timestamped message within valid time window,
• generally not used for authentication and key exchange
but in addition, opponent suppresses the original message.
• General approaches used
-The repetition cannot be detected
1. Timestamps
4. A backward replay without modification.
- requires that clocks among various participants be synchronized
-Possible if symmetric encryption is used and the sender cannot
easily recognize the difference between messages sent and 2. Challenge/response between A and B
messages received - requires that response received from B contain the correct nonce value

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Mutual Authentication Mutual Authentication

Timestamps Challenge-Response
• It should not be used for connection-oriented applications because of Challenge-response approach is unsuitable for a connectionless type of
the inherent difficulties: application
1. Require synchronization among various processor clocks • Requires the overhead of a handshake before any connectionless
o Be fault tolerant transmission
o Cope with network errors
o Cope with hostile attacks

• Effectively negating the chief characteristic of a connectionless

2. Opportunity for successful attack will arise if there is temporary transaction.
loss of synchronization resulting from fault in the clock • For such applications, reliance on some sort of secure time server
mechanism of one of the parties and a consistent attempt by each party to keep its clocks in
o unpredictable nature of network delays, distributed clocks cannot be synchronization is a good approach.
expected to maintain precise synchronization
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Remote-User Authentication Remote-User Authentication

Symmetric Encryption Symmetric Encryption
Needham and Schroeder Protocol

• This strategy uses trusted Key Distribution Center (KDC)

• Each party in the network shares a secret key, known as a master key,
with the KDC.
• KDC generates keys to be used for a short time over a connection
between two parties, known as session keys, and for distributing
those keys using the master keys to protect the distribution.
• A common approach.

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Remote-User Authentication Remote-User Authentication

Symmetric Encryption Symmetric Encryption
Needham and Schroeder Protocol
T is a timestamp that assures A and B that session key has only just been
• Secret keys Ka and K b are shared between A and KDC and B and KDC. generated. Thus, both A and B know that key distribution is a fresh
• The purpose of the protocol is to distribute securely a session key Ks exchange.
to A and B. Entity A securely acquires a new session key in step 2.

• If opponent captures the message in step 3 and replay it, this may Problem: requires clocks to be synchronized throughout the network.
disrupt operations at B. Distributed clocks can become unsynchronized as a result of sabotage
on or faults in the clocks or the synchronization mechanism. ->
• Despite handshake of steps 4 and 5, the protocol is still vulnerable to suppress-replay attacks possible
a form of replay attack.
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Remote-User Authentication Kerberos

Symmetric Encryption
Counter suppress-replay attacks • Authentication service developed as part of Project Athena
• Enforce the requirement that parties regularly check their clocks at MIT for networks.
against KDC’s clock. • Problem: In distributed environment, a workstation cannot
• Handshaking protocols using nonces -> avoids need for clock be trusted to identify its users correctly to network services
synchronization • Clients and servers trust Kerberos to mediate their mutual
authentication
• In unprotected network environment,
– Risk is impersonation
– Solution: each server must confirm its identity to clients-> but this
is burden -> need a centralized authentication server

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Kerberos Kerberos
Main threats : • Provides a centralized authentication server whose
1. User may gain access to a particular function is to authenticate
workstation and pretend to be another • users to servers
user operating from that workstation.
• servers to users
2. User may alter the network address of a
workstation -> requests sent from altered • Relies exclusively on symmetric encryption, making no use
workstation appear to come from of public-key encryption
impersonated workstation.
• There are two versions, v4 and v5
3. User may eavesdrop on exchanges and
use a replay attack to gain entrance to a
server or to disrupt operations.

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Kerberos Kerberos
• Kerberos is a trusted third-party authentication service
Requirements: based on Needham and Schroeder protocol.
1. Secure
• It is trusted in the sense that clients and servers trust
-strong enough that opponent does not find it to be weak link Kerberos to mediate their mutual authentication
2. Reliable • Build the protocol step by step
3. Transparent
1. In an unprotected network environment, any client can
- user should not be aware that authentication is taking place apply to any server for service
4. Scalable -Risk is impersonation -> Opponent can pretend to be another client
-support large numbers of clients and servers and obtain unauthorized privileges on server machines

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Kerberos Kerberos
• Use an authentication server (AS) that knows passwords of all users
and stores these in a centralized database. 2. Two problems remain
• AS shares a unique secret key with each server. These keys have been -Minimize number of times that user enters passwords
distributed physically or in some other secure manner.
-Plaintext transmission of password

Solution: avoiding plaintext passwords and a new server,

known as the ticket-granting server (TGS)

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Kerberos Kerberos

TGS issues tickets to users who have been authenticated to AS. Thus, the
user first requests a ticket-granting ticket (Tickettgs) from the AS.

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Kerberos Kerberos
• Ticket
– contains User ID, server ID, a timestamp, a lifetime, and a copy of
session key
– reusable
– does not prove anyone’s identity but is used to distribute keys
securely

• Authenticator
– proves client’s identity
– used only once
– has short lifetime

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Kerberos Kerberos
Kerberos Realms
• Realm is an environment,
where
– All users are registered with
the Kerberos server
– Kerberos server shares a
secret key with each server

• Kerberos provides inter-

realm authentication

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Remote-User Authentication Remote-User Authentication

Asymmetric Encryption Asymmetric Encryption

One approach to the use of public-key encryption for the purpose of Use timestamps
session-key distribution -> Not practical.

• The central system is referred to as an authentication server (AS),

because it is not actually responsible for secret-key distribution.
• Timestamps protect against replays of compromised keys.
• Problem: requires the synchronization of clocks.

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Remote-User Authentication Summary

Asymmetric Encryption
Solution: Use nonce • Basics of authentication
• Mutual authentication
• Remote user authentication with symmetric
encryption
• Kerberos
• Remote user authentication with asymmetric
encryption

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Questions?

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