Outline for October 20, 2023

Reading: text, §12.4, 13
Due: Homework 2, due October 23; Background Research, due October 27


  1. Privacy-enhanced email
  2. Authentication
    1. Validating client (user) identity
    2. Validating server (system) identity
    3. Validating both (mutual authentication)
    4. Basis: what you know/have/are, where you are

  3. Passwords
    1. Problem: common passwords, easy to guess passwords
    2. Best: use passphrases: goal is to make search space as large as possible, distribution as uniform as possible

  4. Attacks
    1. Exhaustive search
    2. Guessing
    3. Scavenging: passwords often typed where they might be recorded as login name, in other contexts, etc.
    4. Ask the user: very common with some public access services

  5. Defenses
    1. For trial and error at login: dropping or back-off
    2. For thwarting dictionary attacks: salting

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Matt Bishop
Office: 2209 Watershed Sciences
Phone: +1 (530) 752-8060
Email: mabishop@ucdavis.edu
ECS 235A, Computer and Information Security
Version of October 20, 2023 at 6:08PM

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