Honeypot Validator Access Recovery for Expired Admin Certificates
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing certificate-based authentication systems for administrator access in identity and access management systems are prone to failures due to expired certificates, leading to unauthorized access denials, and existing recovery methods lack sufficient security and efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A voting engine is employed to reinstate administrator access by distributing a secret into shares, which are verified by tenant administrators and applications through diverse identity tests, using Shamir's Secret Sharing and honeypot validators to detect malicious attempts, ensuring secure and efficient certificate installation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If certificate-based authentication is used for administrator access, then security is improved, but access recovery becomes difficult when certificates expire
Solution Approach 1:
A voting engine is introduced as an intermediary component that coordinates the certificate installation process. The voting engine receives requests from locked-out administrators, performs identity tests, and manages the secret sharing verification process, thereby enabling secure access recovery without requiring direct administrator access to the identity store.
Solution Approach 2:
The secret used for certificate installation is divided into multiple shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing scheme. These shares are distributed to different validators (tenant administrators and applications). This segmentation ensures that no single point of failure exists and that the system can recover access even if some validators are unavailable, while maintaining security through distributed verification.
2Ease of operation
If traditional access recovery methods are used, then access can be restored, but the system is vulnerable to unauthorized access and attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary identity tests and validation checks before allowing certificate installation. The voting engine executes diverse identity tests (such as verifying administrator credentials, checking tenant administrator approval, and validating application permissions) to preemptively block unauthorized access attempts before they can compromise the system.
Solution Approach 2:
The secret is pre-divided into shares and distributed to multiple validators before any access recovery event occurs. This preliminary setup ensures that when an access recovery request is made, the system can immediately begin the verification process with multiple independent validators, reducing recovery time while maintaining security through the pre-established distribution of secret shares.
3Reliability
If multiple validators are used for identity verification, then security is improved, but the complexity of the recovery process increases
Solution Approach 1:
The voting engine serves multiple functions: it receives access recovery requests, coordinates identity tests, manages secret share verification, and installs certificates. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional component, the system achieves high security through multiple validators while avoiding the complexity that would arise from coordinating separate specialized components for each function.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments relate to reinstating access to a system of an admin whose certificate is invalid or expired and to detecting an attack on the system. A requestor, who may be an admin whose certificate is expired or invalid, may send a request for reinstatement to validators. The system may provide honeypot validators in addition to legitimate validators. When the request is received by a honeypot validator or if the honeypot validator is requested to provide their share of a secret, the requestor is determined to be malicious and a protective operation or action is performed.