The UX of 2FA could be improved considerably, and security along with it, by using a circles of trust model.

Take the example of a code forge, hosting the canonical version of some crucial piece of kit like the Linux kernel, OpenSSL, or GnuPG. You would want a maintainer to be 100% authenticated before they can commit changes to these repositories. Basic security culture.

But ...

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#2FA #authentication

Phishing means that an adversary *claiming to be* someone you know (including friends and family) convinces you to click on a link.

The purpose of a certificate, telling a receiver *WHO* (human readable) owns the associated private key (the last resort to distinguish between fake and authentic), now has completely vanished.

As if phishing is not already the nr. 1 problem on the internet.

Note: I'm fine with the idea provided that browsers clearly inform users about the reliability of authenticity (I've read your article, did you read https://infosec.exchange/@ErikvanStraten/113079966331873386 ?)

@letsencrypt

#Phishing#LetsEncrypt#DNS#DomainNames#Identification#Authentication

Just released: #swad 0.11 -- the session-less swad is done!

Swad is the "Simple Web Authentication Daemon", it adds cookie/form #authentication to your reverse #proxy, designed to work with #nginx' "auth_request". Several modules for checking credentials are included, one of which requires solving a crypto challenge like #Anubis does, to allow "bot-safe" guest logins. Swad is written in pure #C, compiles to a small (200-300kiB) binary, has minimal dependencies (zlib, OpenSSL/LibreSSL and optionally libpam) and should work on many #POSIX-alike systems (#FreeBSD tested a lot, #Linux and #illumos also tested)

This release is the first one not to require a server-side session (which consumes a significant amount of RAM on really busy sites), instead signed Json Web Tokens are now implemented. For now, they are signed using HMAC-SHA256 with a random key generated at startup. A future direction could be support for asymmetric keys (RSA, ED25519), which could open up new possibilities like having your reverse proxy pass the signed token to a backend application, which could then verify it, but still not forge it.

Read more, grab the latest .tar.xz, build and install it ... here: 😎

https://github.com/Zirias/swad

Just released: #swad 0.10

https://github.com/Zirias/swad/releases/tag/v0.10

Swad is the "Simple Web Authentication Daemon". If you're looking for a way to add #authentication (and/or proof-of-work access as known from #anubis) to your #nginx reverse proxy -- without adding yet another reverse proxy -- swad could be for you! It's written in pure #C, has few external dependencies (just zlib, and optionally OpenSSL/Libressl and/or libpam) and compiles to a pretty small binary. It's designed for usage with nginx' 'auth_request'.

Swad is tested on #FreeBSD, some basic functionality tests were also done on #Linux and #illumos (descendant from #solaris). It should build and work on most #POSIX-alike systems.

This release mainly brings performance improvements and a few bugfixes. It's now stress-tested with Apache jmeter, verifying it can deal with at least 1000 requests per second on my personal (somewhat limited) FreeBSD host machine.

Good morning! ☕

Now that I can't find any other bugs in #swad any more, I'm thinking again about how I could improve it.

Would anyone consider deploying it on a busy site right now? Either as a replacement for #Anubis (proof-of-work against bots), or for simple non-federated #authentication, or maybe even both?

I'm currently not sure how well it would scale. The reason is the design with server-side sessions, which is simple and very light-weight "on the wire", but needs server-side RAM for each and every client. It's hard to guess how this would turn out on very busy sites.

So, I'm thinking about moving to a stateless design. The obvious technical choice for that would be to issue a signed #JWT (Json Web Token), just like Anubis does it as well. This would have a few consequences though:

* OpenSSL/LibreSSL would be a hard build dependency. Right now, it's only needed if the proof-of-work checker and/or TLS support is enabled.
* You'd need an X509 certificate in any case to operate swad, even without TLS, just for signing the JWTs.
* My current CSRF-protection would stop working (it's based on random tokens stored in the session). Probably not THAT bad, the login itself doesn't need it at all, and once logged in, the only action swad supports is logout, which then COULD be spoofed, but that's more an annoyance than a security threat... 🤔
* I would still need some server-side RAM for each and every client to implement the rate-limits for failed logins. At least, that's not as much RAM as currently.

Any thoughts? Should I work on going (almost) "stateless"?

Just released: #swad 0.7! 😎

Swad is the "Simple Web Authentication Daemon". If you're looking for a solution to add cookie/form #authentication to your #nginx reverse proxy, or maybe even a #lightweight alternative to #Anubis which leaves the actual proxying to nginx, this might be for you! It is designed for use with nginx' auth_request, written in pure C, with minimal dependencies (zlib and, depending on build options, openssl/libressl and/or libpam), and compiles to a small binary (currently between 150kiB and less than 300kiB depending on compiler and target platform).

Swad should work on many #posix (and almost) systems. It's actually tested on #FreeBSD (in "production" use, but on a very low-traffic private site), and quick functionality tests also done on #Debian (#Linux) and #OpenIndiana (#Illumos, open-source #Solaris descendant).

As announced, this release doesn't bring any new features (in terms of WHAT it can do), but great improvements "under the hood", that should help performance at least on some platforms, see release notes for swad 0.7.

Read more, and download the .tar.xz (to build and install it 😆) here:
https://github.com/Zirias/swad

Just released: #swad v0.3!

https://github.com/Zirias/swad/releases/tag/v0.3

swad is the "Simple Web Authentication Daemon", your tiny, efficient and (almost) dependency-free solution to add #cookie + login #form #authentication to whatever your #reverse #proxy offers. It's written in pure #C, portable across #POSIX platforms. It's designed with #nginx' 'auth_request' in mind, example configurations are included.

This release brings a file-based credential checker in addition to the already existing one using #PAM. Also lots of improvements, see details in the release notes.

I finally added complete build instructions to the README.md:

https://github.com/Zirias/swad

And there's more documentation available: manpages as well as a fully commented example configuration file.