Neuroscience meets cryptography
Abstract
Cryptographic systems often rely on the secrecy of cryptographic keys given to users. Many schemes, however, cannot resist coercion attacks where the user is forcibly asked by an attacker to reveal the key. These attacks, known as rubber hose cryptanalysis , are often the easiest way to defeat cryptography. We present a defense against coercion attacks using the concept of implicit learning from cognitive psychology. Implicit learning refers to learning of patterns without any conscious knowledge of the learned pattern. We use a carefully crafted computer game to allow a user to implicitly learn a secret password without them having any explicit or conscious knowledge of the trained password. While the trained secret can be used for authentication, participants cannot be coerced into revealing it since they have no conscious knowledge of it. We performed a number of user studies using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to verify that participants can successfully re-authenticate over time and that they are unable to reconstruct or even robustly recognize the trained secret.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2014
- Source ID
- 10.1145/2594445
Entities
People
- Dan Boneh
- Daniel Sanchez
- Hristo Bojinov
- Patrick Lincoln
- Paul Reber
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- Northwestern University
- SRI International
- Stanford University
- United States Department of Defense