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Pico: No More Passwords!

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Security Protocols XIX (Security Protocols 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 7114))

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Abstract

From a usability viewpoint, passwords and PINs have reached the end of their useful life. Even though they are convenient for implementers, for users they are increasingly unmanageable. The demands placed on users (passwords that are unguessable, all different, regularly changed and never written down) are no longer reasonable now that each person has to manage dozens of passwords. Yet we can’t abandon passwords until we come up with an alternative method of user authentication that is both usable and secure.

We present an alternative design based on a hardware token called Pico that relieves the user from having to remember passwords and PINs. Unlike most alternatives, Pico doesn’t merely address the case of web passwords: it also applies to all the other contexts in which users must at present remember passwords, passphrases and PINs. Besides relieving the user from memorization efforts, the Pico solution scales to thousands of credentials, provides “continuous authentication” and is resistant to brute force guessing, dictionary attacks, phishing and keylogging.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Frank Stajano

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  1. Frank Stajano
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB, Hatfield, UK

    Bruce Christianson  & James Malcolm  & 

  2. Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences, University of Trento, Via Sommarive 14, 38100, Trento, Italy

    Bruno Crispo

  3. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 15 JJ Thomson Avenue, CB3 0FD, Cambridge, UK

    Frank Stajano

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Stajano, F. (2011). Pico: No More Passwords!. In: Christianson, B., Crispo, B., Malcolm, J., Stajano, F. (eds) Security Protocols XIX. Security Protocols 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7114. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25867-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25867-1_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25866-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25867-1

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