Objective Passwords, passphrases and PINs have become a usability disaster. Even though they are convenient for implementers, they have been over-exploited, and are now increasingly unmanageable for end users, as well as insecure. The demands placed on users (passwords that are unguessable, all different, regularly changed and never written down) are no longer reasonable now that each person has to manage dozens of passwords. This project will develop and evaluate an alternative design based on a hardware token called Pico that relieves the user from having to remember passwords and PINs. Besides relieving the user from memorization efforts, the Pico solution scales to thousands of credentials, provides ``continuous authentication'' and is resistant to brute force guessing, dictionary attacks, phishing and keylogging. To promote adoption and interoperability, the Pico design has not been patented. The Principal Investigator has been invited to speak about Pico in three continents (including at USENIX Security 2011) since releasing the first draft of his design paper. Programme(s) FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) ERC-SG-PE6 - ERC Starting Grant - Computer science and informatics Call for proposal ERC-2012-StG_20111012 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant Coordinator THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Address Trinity lane the old schools CB2 1TN Cambridge United Kingdom See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Francesco Stajano (Dr.) Administrative Contact Renata Schaeffer (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window EU contribution No data Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom EU contribution € 1 350 000,00 Address Trinity lane the old schools CB2 1TN Cambridge See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Francesco Stajano (Dr.) Administrative Contact Renata Schaeffer (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Other funding No data
