White Papers
Existing Authentication Techniques and the Rise of VPOTP
Existing authentication techniques are limited in the security that they provide. At a future date it is likely that biometrics will become a viable solution but the implications of these on human rights and personal freedom is still to be resolved. A solution is needed that fills the security void and VPOTP provides the answer.
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A Theory of POTP
The One-Time Pad is a well established cryptographic tool for enciphering messages. If the one-time pad remains uncompromised then the enciphered message is highly resilient to attack. Using a one-time pad to encipher a user password confers a similar level of security for authentication systems but carries with it the disadvantage that the user needs keep their own OTP secret. In this paper we describe a probabilistic variation of the one-time pad in which a set of one-time pads are transmitted en clair for each encryption. The user and system agree beforehand which of the one-time pads to use for which parts of the message. The method described is probabilistically resilient to attack in a well defined manner and finds many applications including personal authentication.
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Visual Applications of POTP
The probabilistic one-time password may be used to provide personal authentication in a manner which is secure against shoulder surfing and man-in-the-middle attacks. The technique is particularly suited to visual applications in which symbols, pictures or patterns on a computer screen are used to display the one-time pads. In this paper we describe the space of visual authentication applications of the probabilistic one-time password; we illustrate a few practical instantiations of the method and analyze their properties.
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Experiments with VPOTP
The visual probabilistic one-time password has been proposed as a means of personal authentication. In this paper we describe a set of preliminary user experiments undertaken to assess the likely reaction to the introduction of such a system for ATM transactions. Although this preliminary trial was on a relatively small scale a number of important insights were gained.
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