The Hacker News - Most Trusted Cyber Security and Computer Security Analysis: Authentication

A group of academics at South Korea's Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) have utilized natural silk fibers from domesticated silkworms to build an environmentally friendly digital security system that they say is "practically unbreachable." "The first natural physical unclonable function (PUF) […] takes advantage of the diffraction of light through natural microholes in native silk to create a secure and unique digital key for future security solutions," the researchers said . Physical unclonable functions or  PUFs  refer to devices that leverage inherent randomness and microscopic differences in electronics introduced during manufacturing to generate a unique identifier (e.g., cryptographic keys) for a given set of inputs and conditions. In other words, PUFs are non-algorithmic one-way functions derived from uncopiable elements to create unbreakable identifiers for strong authentication. Over the years, PUFs have been widely used in smartca

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new passwordless mechanism that allows users to access their accounts without a password by using Microsoft Authenticator, Windows Hello, a security key, or a verification code sent via SMS or email. The change is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks. "Except for auto-generated passwords that are nearly impossible to remember, we largely create our own passwords,"  said  Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Security, Compliance, and Identity. "But, given the vulnerability of passwords, requirements for them have gotten increasingly complex in recent years, including multiple symbols, numbers, case sensitivity, and disallowing previous passwords." "Passwords are incredibly inconvenient to create, remember, and manage across all the accounts in our lives," Jakkal added. Over the years, weak passwords have emerged as the entry point for a vast majority of attacks across enterprise and cons

Zero Trust is increasingly being adopted as the best strategy to maintain application security and prevent data breaches. To help achieve progress on Zero Trust, there is now a new, easy way to implement continuous user verification by connecting directly to the authentication systems used by mobile operators – without the overhead of processing or storing user data.  Before we show you how it works and how to integrate it, let's start with the fundamental challenge. Zero Trust and Authentication The Zero Trust model of identity verification essentially means never trusting that a returning user is whom they claim to be, regardless of their location or previous successful attempts. Zero Trust is a strategic approach to access management that is vital for keeping out bad actors.  As the world moves to the cloud, with an increasingly distributed network of employees, partners, and clients, tighter auth journeys become even more important.  But with greater security comes greate