Enhancing Password Security Through Combinatorial Group Theory - Part 1 of 5

Benjamin Fine (Fairfield University). Title: Password Security Using Combinatorial Group Theory Abstract. Joint with: Gilbert Baumslag and Doug Troeger. Over the past decade and a half there has been a concerted effort to apply combinatorial group theoretic methods to cryptographic protocols. In this talk we briefly explain how group theoretic techniques are applied to cryptology and then consider a method to apply group theoretic techniques to password security. Challenge response methods are increasingly used to enhance password security. In particular we present a very secure method for challenge response password verification using combinatorial group theory. This method, which relies on the group randomizer system, a subset of the MAGNUS computer algebra system, handles most of the present problems with challenge response systems. Theoretical security is based on several results in asymptotic group theory and these will be explained as well. For more information regarding the colloquium, please visit: https://sites.google.com/site/nyalg2/