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Date:      Tue, 19 Mar 2002 23:38:28 +0100
From:      Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com>
To:        Richard Ward <mh@homenetweb.com>
Cc:        Chris Johnson <cjohnson@palomine.net>, security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Safe SSH logins from public, untrusted Windows computers
Message-ID:  <3C97BDE4.8040301@nisser.com>
References:  <20020319144538.A42969@palomine.net> <001401c1cf81$b12976e0$0101a8c0@noc2>

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Richard Ward wrote:
> Chris Johnson,
> ...
> If I could shoot a really crazy idea your way: What about using the
> "Character Map" program included with Windows to slowly "type" out your
> password? Though that would probably be cached long before you overwrite the
> Clipboard.


Since we're talking about wacky ideas, whatever happened to the one I'm
about to state: "keypress timing". Well, maybe nobody ever thought of it,
could happen, but I remember it as a way to recognize individuals. Like a
signature. A hand drawn one, of course.

What I mean is, can't a person be identified by having them type in some
reasonable, well known, sentence. A simple program should suffice to calc
some statistic which could then be used as a key to see if that person is
likely to know the password when asked.

So you take, say, 'Mary had a little lamb' as test sentence and then both
that sentence as well as the timing digest or even the individual samples
get transmitted as the "user ID".

It could be beaten by a recording device, but not by a paste from the
clipboard.

Zany enough?

Roelof

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