[Authentication] "Wallet" security analysis

[Anders Rundgren]

Hi,
Since I'm working with similar stuff but for PKI a security analysis would
maybe be of some value?

There are essentially two attacks that you want to protect from:
1. Key theft
2. Key misuse

For asymmetric keys, it is enough to make the container "strong" in
various ways to thwart key theft since crypto-operations are indirect.

Protecting against key misuse (trojans authenticating to services) is much
harder since it more or less assumes that the key-using app is authenticating
to the crypto store.  Since the app is running in user-mode it means that
you have to rely on a potentially untrusted application.  Since I'm not a
Linux-person I don't know how to do this authentication in a good way.
Would "root" ownership of the calling ".EXE" be a possible way to
characterize a trusted application?  Pardon me if I'm off here due to my
Linux incompetence...

Anyway, I'm a bit puzzled about the security offered by "wallets" for
shared secrets, particularly when there is an open API involved.

Comments?

Cheers,
Anders
http://android-keystore-v2.webpki.org