Advanced Topic: Verifier Impersonation Resistance
What is verifier impersonation resistance?
Verifier impersonation resistance is a security property in authentication systems that ensures that an attacker impersonating a legitimate verifier. This ensures that the authentication process cannot be compromised by an adversary pretending to be the legitimate endpoint for authentication.
Why is verifier impersonation resistance important?
Verifier impersonation resistance is important because it makes your authentication protocol highly resistant to Adversary-in-the-Middle (AitM) attacks. This resistance is typically achieved through:
- Cryptographic binding of user and device: a secure link between the user's credentials and their device ensures authentication requests are genuine and originate from the device
- Origin Validation: The authentication server should only accept requests from legitimate domains, recognized domains. This prevents adversaries from directing requests to a fraudulent authentication server.
Beyond Identity and verifier impersonation resistance
Beyond Identity's MFA solution was designed with verifier impersonation resistance as a pivotal component of our phish-resistance. We cryptographically bind identities to devices and ensure each authentication has proof of origin validation, making our solution resistant to AitM (Adversary-in-the-Middle) attacks.
Explore a demo of how our authentication solution is resistant to AitM (Adversary-in-the-Middle) attacks.
Phish-resistance is a crucial part of a zero trust architecture, check out our zero trust assessment for a full analysis on your authentication and device management practices and how to reach an optimal level of zero trust.