Protecting Passwords & DataIn a Post-Quantum Computing Era Using Military-Grade Crypto

Carlos A. Villegascv127.0.0.1[at]gmail[dot]com

● Northrop Grumman employee for 20 years

● Programming since age 13, professionally for 25 years

● Master of Science in Computer Science, Cybersecurity – NYU, 2016

● Master of Science in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence – USC

● Designing cyber resilient military drones (current job)

About Me

https://github.com/CarlosVilleags/CryptographicSecureMessagingSteganographyhttps://github.com/CarlosVilleags/Linux-Logs

Open Source Contributions:

About Me (cont.)

● Participated in five Capture The Flag (CTF) cyber offensive competitions

● Nationally ranked 37th place in National Cyber League 2014, silver brkt

● CompTIA Security+ certification

● Mentoring ~50 high school students since 2014 in CyberPatriot

● Attended U.S. Cyber Challenge 2014 in San Jose, California

● Attended U.S. Cyber Challenge 2015 in Cedar City, Utah

● Honorary Girl Scout Member, GenCyber 2015/2016 @ CSUSB

● Ideal Job: Designing cyber resilient military drones (current job!)

● Technical Interests:

○ Active Defense

○ Evading Anti-Viruses

○ Cracking Passwords

○ Intersection of Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence

● Favorite Programming Language: Go

● Non-Technical Interests:

○ Rueda de Casino

Interests

● Fanless PC, 4GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2GBit Ethernet ports

● pfSense = industrial firewall/router/proxy

● FreeBSD - best network stack implementation

Latest Project:

The Cybersecurity Problem

● Cybersecurity has become a global threat and a global challenge

● Cybersecurity cuts across every segment of the United States

● Cybersecurity is not a just a military problem

Drug-Dispensing-Robots Education RetailHealth CareBanking

Cities Homes Electrical Grid Entertainment Transportation H20 Sanitation

The Cybersecurity Problem

Most Recently Targeted: Medical Equipment

"Enriquez says his team found malware planted on several types of medical devices including an x-ray printer, an oncology unit's MRI scanner, a surgical center's blood gas analyzer and a health care provider's PACS-picture archiving and communication system."

src: http://abc7news.com/technology/san-mateo-cyber-security-firm-uncovers-malware-on-medical-devices/1757268/

● Cybercrime damage costs to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021 worldwide

● Cybersecurity spending to exceed $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021

● Unfilled cybersecurity jobs will reach 1.5 million by 2019

● Human attack surface to reach 4 billion people by 2020

● Up to 200 billion IoT devices will need securing by 2020

Cybersecurity - Why Is It a Big Deal?

Answer the question correctly and this YubiKey 4 is yours (a $40 value)

I am not associated in any way with Yubico. I just picked-up an extra one of these from Yubico's booth at BlackHat USA.

src: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/

World's Biggest Data Breaches - Visualization

New Era of Quantum Computing

Quantum ComputingA quantum computer (QC) uses qubits instead of classic binary digits, and each qubit is in a quantum state between zero and

one. QCs can perform a huge number of calculations simultaneously by harnessing this superposition phenomenon

along with quantum entanglement.

src: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/13/quantum_computer_billions_of_times_faster_than_todays_binary_computers/

Quantum Computer Chips

IBM’s five qubit processor uses a lattice architecture that scale to create larger, more powerful quantum computers.

A quantum computing chip made by Rigetti Computing with three quantum bits.

Moore's Law"Mr. Gordon Moore made a prediction in 1965 that every 18 months for the next 10 years, the number

of components on a integrated circuit doubles."

src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

His prediction continues to hold after 52 years.

src: http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/97468-d-wave-systems-previews-2000-qubit-quantum-processor/

Quantum Computing and Moore's Law ?

Quantum Computing's Threat To Encryption

● As of Jan 2016, NSA realized that popular forms of Asymmetric Encryption can be brute forced by powerful Quantum Computers (QC) by 2030.

● Shor's algorithm can efficiently factor numbers, breaking RSA. ● A Shor's algorithm variant can break Diffie-Hellman and other discrete

log-based cryptosystems, including those that use elliptic curves.● Some leading cryptographers disagree with NSA on the timespace, far

beyond 2030.● Secrets run risk of being recorded today and decrypted later by QC

src: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/08/nsa_plans_for_a.html

https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/ia-solutions-for-classified/algorithm-guidance/cnsa-suite-and-quantum-computing-faq.cfm

https://threatpost.com/cryptographers-dismiss-ai-quantum-computing-threats/123723/

Passwords

A) D0g........

B) r*<d2Gs%Er

Which Password is Harder to Brute Force?

Which Password is Harder to Brute Force?

● Passwords are encoded using Cryptographic functions

● Cryptographic functions are special mathematical functions that

cannot be reversed ( one-way functions )

● Properties

○ One-way functions (mathematically irreversible)

○ Collision free

Mechanics of Passwords

Src: https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=example_hashes

Plethora of cryptographic hash function

this

is a

par

tial l

ist.

..

● Automate Authentication

○ Identify privileges with passwords

○ i.e. "Can I read this or write that?"

● Integrity Protection

○ Detect if anyone tampered with this data or program

Passwords, What Are They Good For?

● Passwords should never be stored in plaintext

● New guidelines: NIST Special Pub 800-63b

○ Make password policies user friendly; put the burden on verifier.

○ Size matters, allow long passphrases with all printable ASCII chars.

○ Check new passwords against a dictionary of known-bad choices.

● Should be individually salted (next slide) when stored on

the server side

Passwords - Best Practices

Src: https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html

Salt, What is it?

● Salt makes hashed password more complex○ Imagine a single password file that contains hundreds of usernames and passwords. Without a salt, I could

compute "md5(attempt[0])", and then scan through the file to see if that hash shows up anywhere. If salts are present, then I have to compute "md5(salt[a] . attempt[0])", compare against entry A, then "md5(salt[b] . attempt[0])", compare against entry B, etc. Now I have n times as much work to do, where n is the number of usernames and passwords contained in the file.

● Salt makes more resilient against rainbow table attacks○ A rainbow table is a large list of pre-computed hashes for commonly-used passwords. Imagine again the

password file without salts. All I have to do is go through each line of the file, pull out the hashed password, and look it up in the rainbow table. I never have to compute a single hash. If the look-up is considerably faster than the hash function (which it probably is), this will considerably speed up cracking the file.

UNSAFE a) ECDH and ECDSA with NIST P-256

UNSAFE b) RSA with 2048-bit keys

UNSAFE c) Diffie-Hellman with 2048-bit keys

UNSAFE d) SHA-256

UNSAFE e) AES-128

Quantum Computing Threat to Encryption

src: https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/ia-solutions-for-classified/algorithm-guidance/cnsa-suite-and-quantum-computing-faq.cfm

a) Symmetric Encryption short rotating key schedule

b) RSA 3072-bit or larger

2) Diffie-Hellman (DH) 3072-Bit or larger

3) ECDH with NIST P-384

4) ECDSA with NIST P-384

5) SHA-384

6) AES-256

NSA Recommended Cryptographic Algorithms

src: https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/ia-solutions-for-classified/algorithm-guidance/cnsa-suite-and-quantum-computing-faq.cfm

NSA NIST Quantum docs + Paper

● NIST Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography April2016 http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.8105.pdf

● CNSA Quantum Computing FAQhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwMw6ipu4nPzVmNFQ3pPTnpnSDA

● Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) Suite Factsheet by NSAhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwMw6ipu4nPzMWlKaVZTTUt5clU

● A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma by Neal Koblits and Alfred J. Menenzeshttps://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwMw6ipu4nPzRW9zd09lMC14eTA

Sample Quantum-Proof Messaging App Here's why this app is Quantum Proof:

● CCA is regarded as the most lethal attack against a cryptosystem.

● It consists in that the adversary can choose an arbitrary ciphertext and obtain the corresponding plaintext using a decryption oracle.

● This application uses AES-256 in CBC mode. AES is an encryption algorithm (aka Rijndael) approved by NIST as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 on November 26, 2001.

● AES-256 in CBC mode uses an Initialization Vector (IV) of 128-bits pseudo-random data suitable for cryptographic purposes, created by Python’s os.urandom() properly seeded with time to a precision of microseconds (1 millionth of a second). It also uses 64-bits of salt which is pseudo-random data also to the microsecond precision.

● Each message is encrypted with a unique IV and salt, therefore, it is virtually impossible for the same plaintext to yield the same ciphertext.

https://github.com/CarlosVilleags/CryptographicSecureMessagingSteganography

Make Your Passwords Uncrackable!

a. Not be in any dictionary of any language

b. If using compound words, make sure to use at least 4 words

c. Contain at least 1 of each of the four character sets: upper, lower,

number, symbol

d. At least 12 in length

e. Use a computationally expensive cryptographic hash algorithm, such as

those that use 64-bit logic because (GPUs are 32 bit based)

f. Know nothing about the semantic format of the password. Anything goes.

Bruteforcing a Password

Password Cracking Box - Favorite Past ProjectAMD Radeon HD 7990

amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/7000/7990

Raw computing power

Creating a strong cryptographic hash value using ‘mkpasswd’ via command line interface (CLI)

Demo

● U.S. Cyber Challenge (deadline 04/23/17 11:59pm EDT)○ http://uscc.cyberquests.org/

● CTFs (“Capture The Flag”) hacking competitions

● Security+, SSCP, CEH, CISSP, GISP, GSEC, GCFE, CEH○ https://niccs.us-cert.gov/featured-stories/cybersecurity-certifications

● Cybersecurity degree? Online vs. In-person

● What to Expect in an Online Cybersecurity Degree Program○ http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2016-11-28/what-to-expect-in-an-online-cybersecurity-degree-program

How to get into Cybersecurity?

https://github.com/CarlosVilleags/Linux-Logs https://github.com/CarlosVilleags/CryptographicSecureMessagingSteganography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxaSTZv5k-8 https://youtu.be/tnGKRfJhlYkhttp://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8105 http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2016-11-28/what-to-expect-in-an-online-cybersecurity-degree-program http://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/ http://www.csoonline.com/article/3083798/security/cybersecurity-spending-outlook-1-trillion-from-2017-to-2021.html http://www.cybersecurityventures.com/jobs http://blogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2016/01/27/the-emerging-era-of-cyber-defense-and-cybercrime/%20target=http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/23/iot-stocks-what-to-watch-in-2017.aspx http://abc7news.com/technology/san-mateo-cyber-security-firm-uncovers-malware-on-medical-devices/1757268/ http://www.uscyberchallenge.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/dt10-quantum-computing-will-make-your-pc-look-like-a-graphing-calculator/ http://www.globalfuturist.org/2017/02/scientists-publish-a-breakthrough-architecture-for-the-worlds-first-quantum-computer/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/13/quantum_computer_billions_of_times_faster_than_todays_binary_computers/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130894-000-revealed-googles-plan-for-quantum-computer-supremacy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600711/the-tiny-startup-racing-google-to-build-a-quantum-computing-chip/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/01/10/this-company-sold-google-a-quantum-computer-heres-how-it-works/?utm_term=.b76a4450ef60 http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/97468-d-wave-systems-previews-2000-qubit-quantum-processor/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8985989/#.WKjOYld74_t https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html https://threatpost.com/cryptographers-dismiss-ai-quantum-computing-threats/123723/

References

Thank You for

Your Time and Attention

Carlos A. Villegascv127.0.0.1[at]gmail[dot]com