{"id":157006,"date":"2009-04-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/its-not-what-you-know-but-who-you-know-a-social-approach-to-last-resort-authentication\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T21:24:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T04:24:36","slug":"its-not-what-you-know-but-who-you-know-a-social-approach-to-last-resort-authentication","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/its-not-what-you-know-but-who-you-know-a-social-approach-to-last-resort-authentication\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Not What You Know, But Who You Know: A social approach to last-resort authentication"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Backup authentication mechanisms help users who have forgotten their passwords regain access to their accounts&#8212;or at least try. Today&#8217;s systems fall short in meeting both security and reliability requirements. The security and reliability of today&#8217;s backup authentication mechanisms have significant room for improvement. We designed, built, and tested a new authentication system that employs social-authentication. The system employs trustees previously appointed by the account holder to verify the account holder&#8217;s identity. We ran three experiments to determine whether the system could (1) reliably authenticate account holders, (2) resist email attacks that target trustees by impersonating account holders, and (3) resist phone-based attacks from individuals close to account holders. Results were encouraging: seventeen of the nineteen participants who made the effort to call trustees authenticated successfully. However, we also found that users must be reminded of who their trustees are. While email-based attacks were largely unsuccessful, stronger countermeasures will be required to counter highly-personalized phone-based attacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Backup authentication mechanisms help users who have forgotten their passwords regain access to their accounts&#8212;or at least try. Today&#8217;s systems fall short in meeting both security and reliability requirements. The security and reliability of today&#8217;s backup authentication mechanisms have significant room for improvement. We designed, built, and tested a new authentication system that employs social-authentication. 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