PKI: A Technology Whose Time Has Come in Higher Education EDUCAUSE National October 21, 2004 Copyright Mark Franklin, 2004. This work is the intellectual.

PKI: A Technology Whose Time Has Come in Higher Education

EDUCAUSE National

October 21, 2004

Copyright Mark Franklin, 2004. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

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Our Systems Are Under Constant Attack

• Trojan horses• Worms• Viruses• Spam• Hackers• Disgruntled

insiders• Script kiddies• Sinister

Proxies

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Some of These Attacks Succeed Spectacularly• Loss of personal data• Outages• Potentially huge costs:

– Productivity loss(user and IT staff)

– Remediation

– User notification

– Bad publicity, loss of credibility

– Lawsuits?

• See “Damage Control: When Your Security Incident Hits the 6 O’Clock News”

www.educause.edu/ir/library/ra/EDU0307.ram

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IT Security Risks Escalate• More and more important information and

transactions are online:– Personal identity information – Financial transactions – Course enrollment, grades– Tests, quizzes administered online– Licensed materials– Confidential research data

• We must comply with increasingly strict regulations:– Health information - HIPAA:

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/– Educational records - FERPA:

http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

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• Spoofing email is trivial – Spoofed message from professor postponing a final– Inappropriate message seemingly from College President

• Email is like a postcard written in pencil– Others on network can see (or even modify) contents if not

encrypted (really easy on wireless!)

• Wayward email archives

Specific Example: Email

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Specific Example: Student Information System

• Online enrollment, schedule, grades• FERPA protected information• Available to hackers

Q: What if someone hacks your authentication system and potentially downloads grades from thousands of students?

A: You are probably obligated by law to notify every individual whose grades may have been exposed!

Problems Current Password Solutions

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Users Hate Passwords

• Too many to manage, so users:– Re-use same password– Use weak (easy to remember) passwords– Rely on “remember my password” crutches– Write them on post-it notes

• Password help desk calls cost $25 - $200 each (IDC)

• As we put more services online, it just gets worse…

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Admininstrators Hate Passwords

• Each application is different:– Password resets– Backups, synchronization– Revoking access– Provisioning new accounts

• Unrewarding, repetitious work

• Expensive learning curve for each application

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Addressing Password Woes

• Traditional approaches– Single password– Single sign-on, fewer sign-ons

• PKI– Local password management by end user– Two factor authentication

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Single Password• Users like it, but…

• Inherently less secure

• Requires synchronizing passwords – problematic and costly

• Passwords databases exposed on network and to administrators – single username/password is single point of failure and as vulnerable as your weakest application

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Single Sign-on, Fewer Sign-ons• More secure than single password & provides some

relief for users, but…

• Requires infrastructure (e.g. WebISO or Kerberos sidecar)

• Synchronization issues• Kerberos sidecar: problems with address translation

and firewalls and not widely supported• Cookie-based SSO vulnerabilities• Password database still exposed on network and to

administrators

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Password Sharing

• Corrupts value of username/password for authentication

• Users do share passwords: PKI Lab survey of 171 undergraduates revealed 75% of them did, and fewer than half changed afterwards

• We need two factor authentication to address password sharing

• Human engineering is a huge vulnerability!

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PKI’s Answer to Password Woes

• PKI can authenticate clients too

• Users manage own (single or few) passwords

• Cost-effective two factor authentication

• Widely supported in all sorts of applications (web-based and otherwise)

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PKI Passwords Stay on the Client

• No user passwords on network servers

• Local password only unlocks PKI credentials

• One password per set of credentials (likely only one or two total)

• Password used for many apps => forgotten less

• Only one forgotten password process for many applications

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PKI Enables Single Passwordand Single Sign-on

• One password to unlock user’s PKI credentials

• Credentials authenticate user to many services using PKI standards

• No need for password synchronization

• No additional infrastructure other than standard PKI and standard PKI authN hooks in apps

• Typically less effort to enable PKI authentication than other SSO methods

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Underlying Key Technology• Asymmetric key encryption: each key only way to decrypt data encrypted by the

other.• Private key kept secret and carefully protected by its holder. Public key freely

distributed.

• In authentication, server challenges client to encrypt or decrypt something with private key. Ability to do so proves client identity.

• Private key and password always stay in the user’s possession.

Plain Text Encrypted Text

Encrypt

Decrypt

(anyone with public key)

(possessor of private key only)

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PKI Provides Two Factor Authentication

1) Something the user has (credentials stored in the application or a smartcard or token)

2) Something a user knows (password to unlock credentials).

• Significant security improvement, especially with smartcard or token

• Post-it next to the screen no longer major security hole

• Can’t hijack a token via the network

• Reduces exposure to password sharing (token is difficult to share)

But Wait There’s More…

Benefits of PKIBeyond Authentication

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PKI Benefit:Digital Signatures

• Our computerized world still runs by handwritten signatures on paper.

• PKI enables digital signatures– Improved assurance of electronic transactions (e.g. really know who

that email was from)– Recognized by Federal Government as legal signatures– Reduce paperwork via electronic forms– Faster, more traceable business processes– Fundamental building block of Web Services

Federal digital signature information:http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/timeline/item.cfm?itemId=78

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How Digital Signatures Work• Signer computes content digest, encrypts with own private

key.• Reader decrypts with signer’s public key.• Reader re-computes content digest and verifies match with

original – detects modification of signed data.• Only signer has private key, so no one else can spoof their

digital signature.

Plain Text Encrypted Text

Compute digest, sign & date,encrypt

Verify signature, check digest

(possessor of private key only)

(anyone with public key)

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PKI Benefit:Encryption

• “For your eyes only” encryption without prior exchange of keys

• Strong encryption with extensible number of bits in key• Same PKI digital credentials as authentication and digital

signatures• More leverage of the PK Infrastructure

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How PKI Encryption Works• Asymmetric encryption eliminates shared secrets• Anyone encrypts using public key of recipient• Only the recipient can decrypt using their private key• Private key is secret and protected, so “bad guys” can’t

read encrypted data

Plain Text Encrypted Text

Encrypt

Decrypt

(anyone with public key)

(possessor of private key only)

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PKI Benefit: User Convenience

• Fewer passwords!

• Single, consistent authentication mechanism. (UT Houston Medical Center users now request that all network services use PKI authentication.)

• Same user credentials for authentication, digital signatures, and encryption – big payback for user’s effort to acquire and manage the credentials.

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PKI Benefit: Coherent Enterprise-Wide Security Administration

• Same authentication mechanism for all network services

• Centralized issuance and revocation of user credentials (dovetails with identity management)

• Consistent identity checking when issuing certificates (not per application)

• Leverage investment in infrastructure and tokens or smart cards across many applications

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Inter-institutional Trust• Authentication, digital signatures, and encryption

using credentials issued by a trusted collaborating institution– Signed forms and documents for business process (e.g.

grant applications, financial aid forms, government reports)

– Signed and encrypted email from a colleague at another school

– Authentication to applications shared among consortiums of schools

– Peer to peer authentication for secure information sharing http://wiki.osafoundation.org/twiki/bin/view/Chandler/DartmouthPkiProposal

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Standards Based Solution• Interoperability among multiple vendors and

open source components and applications

• Wide variety of implementations available and broad coverage of application space

• Level playing field for open source and new vendors – promotes innovation and healthy competition

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PKI Enjoys Unequaled Client, Server, and Application Support

• All major platforms

• Software and hardware key storage

• Commercial and open source

• Development libraries, toolkits and applications

• Certificate Authority, directory, escrow, revocation, and other infrastructure tools

• Major server platforms

• Vendors include Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, IBM, BEA, RSA, Verisign, DST, Entrust, AOL, Adobe, Infomosaic, Aladdin, Schlumberger

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Momentum Outside Higher Education

• Industry support for PKI

• Federal and State governments major adopters

• Microsoft, Sun, Johnson and Johnson, Disney, heavy industry adopters

• Major deployment in Europe

• Web Services (e.g. SAML uses PKI signed assertions)

• China pushing WAPI wireless authentication that requires PKI

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Likely Federal Opportunities• FBCA, HEBCA bridges

• Proof of concept NIH EDUCAUSE project to demonstrate digitally signing documents for submission to the Federal government

• Possible DOE, NSF, NIH applications for Higher Education?

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Dartmouth PKI Lab• R&D to make PKI a practical component of

campus networks• Multi-campus collaboration sponsored by the

Mellon Foundation• Dual objectives:

– Deploy existing PKI technology to improve network applications (both at Dartmouth and elsewhere).

– Improve the current state of the art.• Identify security issues in current products.

• Develop solutions to the problems.

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Production PKI Applications at Dartmouth• Dartmouth certificate authority

– 1295 end users have certificates, 858 of them are enrolled students

• PKI authentication in production for:– Banner Student Information System– VPN Concentrator (2-factor)– Active Directory smartcard logon– Library Electronic Journals– Tuck School of Business Portal– Blackboard CMS– Software downloads

• We plan to reach all Dartmouth users with PKI

• Starting to require tokens for staff• Large tokens distribution to students

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Investigation and Research• Greenpass: pilot of 802.1x guest access

delegation using PKI authentication credentials– Supported by Cisco

• Wireless authentication– 802.1x authentication EAP-TLS (PKI) on Windows

and Macintosh – WEP or improved WPA encryption– These work well but require up to date drivers (and

sometimes recent hardware/firmware for WPA)

• Works for VPN authentication too

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“Open Source CA in a Box”• Hardened open source Certificate Authority (based on

OpenCA) bundle suitable for trial and simple deployment

• PKI Lab’s “Enforcer” TPM-hardened Linux– Controversial “TCPA” technology turned to use for

good and freedom (secures Linux boot process and provides much enhanced run-time protection against hackers)

• Packaging for easy installation (bootable CD)www.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki/CA/InstallOpenCALiveCD.html

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Deploying PKI• Get buy in and support from management, legal, audit,

others – a little fear of today’s risks is healthy.• Architect carefully, learn from examples of others.• Just do it. Start simple, extend later.• Start with low hanging fruit.• Take a long term view - PKI ROI is excellent when

leveraged broadly, not as strong for individual applications.

Project plan and how to information for deploying PKI: www.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki/deploying/

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Dartmouth’s Experiences• End user PKI is challenging, but not intractable.• Low-key, optional approach works well (but slowly).• Multiple CA options are viable

– Outsource– Open source/homegrown– Commercial package

• Automated web application CA services works well.• Encryption key escrow is a challenge we avoided so far. • Application support for PKI still has rough edges.• PKI tokens for two-factor authentication are easy to justify.

Biometric tokens may finally eliminate passwords?• Users voluntarily adopt optional PKI that’s as easy as the

alternative, but will adopt higher impact PKI (e.g. tokens) only when required.

• Users acknowledge the need for stronger security.

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Outreach• Many presentations

www.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki/events.html

• Educause Live! web seminarwww.educause.edu/live/2004/live045/

• March/April EDUCAUSE Review “New Horizons” articlewww.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0427.pdf

• PKI Deployment Summitwww.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki/summit04

• Working with schools deploying PKI – PKI’s inexpensive 2-factor authentication proving an attractive

proposition

– We can help you too!

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Blatant Advertisement

• Please check out our outreach web at: www.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki

We seek to assist schools deploying PKI for end users, including direct assistance in the planning/justification, implementation, and deployment phases. Please let us know how we can help.

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For More Information• Outreach web:

www.dartmouth.edu/~deploypki

• Dartmouth PKI LabPKI Lab information:

www.dartmouth.edu/~pkilab

Dartmouth user information, getting a Dartmouth certificate:

www.dartmouth.edu/~pki

[email protected]

I’ll happily send copies of these slides upon request.