[VoT] Security Problem with Primary Credential Usage

[Chris <[e-mail]>]

Hi All,

I think there is a critical flaw in section 3.2 of https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-richer-vectors-of-trust-02 (Primary Credential Usage)

Mutual-authentication is missing.  When no provision is made to prevent man-in-the-middle, credential harvesting, spoof, phishing, malware, or other common threats, this renders all possible vectors C0, Ca, Cb, Cd, Ce, Cf, and others equally untrustworthy.

We should consider inclusion either for the overall strength of the authentication process, or some breakdown of either all the techniques used or the strength of protection employed to thwart at least common attack scenarios.

This problem gets tricky quite fast:

Do we identify the authentication technology vendor? (if yes - who works out their resistance strength to common attacks?  what about different modes?)
Do we broadly identify the techniques (whos opinions count as to whether or not the technique is effective and against what threats?)
Do we identify or classify the threats and indicate which ones were mitigated (who should be trusted to decide if these really were mitigated?)

For example - tamper-proof hardware digital certificate devices with biometrics unlocks are totally useless, if the user paid no attention to a broken SSL warning, or has malware.  They're also equally useless in most corporate environments that use deep-packet inspection firewalls - and "unexpected certificates" (eg. from DPI or malicious) carry their own privacy problems (eg: passwords are not as "protected" as you think).  Much more common authentication "protection" of course, are two-step or sms one time codes - which are equally useless when an end user can be tricked into revealing them to spoof sites.

91% of successful break-ins start from phishing.  Right now, every vector is pointing one way - we need at least one "Vector of Trust" to point back the other way!  

How about a 5th vector - "S" for "Security", which somehow allows an RP a level of confidence in the protection afforded to the user's actual authentication process, in terms of (or at least considering) a wide range of (and all common) modern threats.

Chris.