How Safe Is Safety Number? A User Study on SIGNAL’s Fingerprint and Safety Number Methods for Public Key Verification
| Autor: | Hakan Ezgi Kiziloz, Kemal Bicakci, Yusuf Uzunay, Muhammet Sakir Sahkulubey, Enes Altuncu |
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| Přispěvatelé: | TOBB ETU, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computer Engineering, TOBB ETÜ, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Bilgisayar Mühendisliği Bölümü, Bıçakcı, Kemal |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
Authentication
Public key certificate Computer science business.industry Bluetooth 05 social sciences SIGNAL (programming language) Fingerprint (computing) secure communication Usability 02 engineering and technology Communications security Encryption Computer security computer.software_genre Public-key cryptography 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering Key (cryptography) 020201 artificial intelligence & image processing 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences business computer 050107 human factors |
| Zdroj: | Developments in Language Theory ISBN: 9783319986531 ISC |
| DOI: | 10.1007/978-3-319-99136-8_5 |
| Popis: | 21st Information Security Conference, ISC 2018 Communication security has become an indispensable demand of smartphone users. End-to-end encryption is the key factor for providing communication security, which mainly relies on public key cryptography. The main and unresolved issue for public key cryptography is to correctly match a public key with its owner. Failing to do so could lead to man-in-the-middle attacks. Different public key verification methods have been proposed in the literature. The methods which are based on verification by the users themselves are preferable with respect to cost and deployability than the methods such as digital certificates that involve the use of trusted third parties. One of these methods, fingerprinting was recently replaced by a method called safety number in the open source messaging application, SIGNAL. The developers of SIGNAL claimed this change would bring usability and security advantages however no formal user study was conducted supporting this claim. In this study, we compare the usability and security aspects of these two methods with a user study on 42 participants. The results indicate with significance that the safety number method leads to more successful results in less time for public key verification as compared to the fingerprint method. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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