I've been thinking a lot recently about information security and passwords. It's widely agreed that two-factor authentication, which combines something-you-know (a password) with something you have (eg. a smart card or some one-time-password) is superior to using a password by itself. Most solutions I've seen, short of client-side certificates, both require a trusted third party and provide little auditability.I'm working on a project which attempts to address those problems. Basically, the idea is that you attempt to perform an action on a website, like logging in, moving some money between accounts, or restarting a cluster. Then, your mobile device ((iPhone used in the graphic to the right because a SVG was handy. Image adapted from work by Virgile Pypaert [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons)) (Android, iPhone, or some custom hardware) starts buzzing, displaying the text of the action. When you approve or deny the action, your device uses a locally stored private key to sign the text of the approval and send it back to the server. The server checks that you approved the same transaction number and text, then allows the action. The server can store the approval notice to allow auditors later to determine that somebody in possession of the private key signed the action request.
So far, I've written a small Django server application, and a Python CLI device and client. They're not yet ready for a public release; I need to write up installation instructions and test it a bit more, but I'll publish them soon on Launchpad. On the usability side of things, I plan to conduct some trials in January comparing it to things like Google Authenticator.
This should be less susceptible to MITM attacks than one-time-passwords, since you can authenticate specific transactions, rather than entire sessions.
On the other hand, I'm no security researcher. Dear lazyweb, are there any problems with the above approach? Also, if I'm going to release this (as I plan to once I get something working), I need a name. Ideas?
