Usable Security

Since August 2018, I have been working on multiple technologies to improve the human side of security, with a focus on authentication and voting. Most of this work has been with Ted Selker, with occasional assistance from Clément Malaingre, Eli Sennesh, Levi Gabasova, Xavier Coquand, Florentin Waligorski and Siargey Kachanovich.

Our work so far includes research on:

• Passphrases.

• Mental password managers.

• How people use mental algorithms;

• Improved single-used codes for manual transcription.

• Eye biometrics for authentication.

• Everlasting cryptography using pornography.

• How hashing is done in practice.

• Typo correction for passwords, theoretically and practically, with the journal article summarizing this and the previous empirical paper.

• A new security primitive based on visual recognition, with an application to low-tech voting.

• Ideas for privacy by default through minimalism for surveys, related to a software we’re currently developing.

I’ve also given a talk on Human Computable Passwords in the Stanford EE:380 seminar in December 2018 ( video, slides), and a similar talk at MIT CSAIL ( slides).