Love And Authentication - Addressing The Problem Of Password Reset

Markus Jakobsson, Xerox PARC

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

One of the most commonly neglected security vulnerabilities associated with typical online service providers lies in the password reset process. By being based on a small number of questions whose answers often can be derived using data-mining techniques, or even guessed, many sites are open to attack. To exacerbate the problem, many sites pose the very same questions to users wishing to reset their forgotten passwords, creating a common "meta password'' between sites: the password reset questions. At the same time, as the number of accounts per user increases, so does the risk for the user to forget her password. Unfortunately, the cost of a customer-service mediated password reset---currently averaging $22 is far beyond possible for most service providers. In this talk, an alternative technique will be presented. It is fast and efficient, compatible with input-constrained devices (such as handhelds), and has low error rates.