Image-Based Server Authentication Using Visual Secrets
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing computer authentication systems primarily focus on user authentication, leaving a gap in authenticating computer systems and networks, especially in distributed networks like the Internet, where users may unknowingly interact with spoofed servers, leading to security breaches.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that uses a shared secret between a user and a server to authenticate both parties by generating and modifying images based on this secret, ensuring that only authenticated systems and users can recognize and modify the images correctly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional username and password authentication is used, then user authentication is achieved, but computer system authentication to the user is not provided
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional authentication approach by having the server prove its identity to the user through image generation, rather than only having the user prove identity to the server. The server generates an image containing a visual secret that only the authentic server can create, allowing the user to verify the server's identity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an image as an intermediary carrier of authentication information. The image contains a visual secret that mediates between the server's identity proof and the user's verification capability, enabling bidirectional authentication without requiring direct cryptographic exchange visible to the user.
2Ease of operation
If visual secrets are made recognizable to users, then users can authenticate the server, but the secrets become vulnerable to interception and spoofing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by making only specific portions of the image (the visual secret elements) recognizable to users, while other portions remain encrypted or obscured. The user can verify the presence of correct visual secret elements without being able to read or extract the complete authentication data from the entire image.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions authentication from a one-dimensional text-based secret to a two-dimensional visual secret embedded in an image. This dimensional change allows the secret to be distributed across spatial elements in the image, making interception and reproduction more difficult while maintaining user verifyability through visual pattern recognition.
Data Source
AI summary
Computers can be authenticated using automatically combined images. During an authentication process, a server transmits an image to a client. The transmitted image is combined with a stored image using a randomly selected logical operator to generate a combined image. The combined image is transmitted back to the server. The server has a copy of the transmitted image and the stored image and generates a series of template combined images using different logical operators selected from a set of logical operators to determine whether any of the template combined images match the received combined image. If the received combined image matches one of the template combined images, the user is authenticated.