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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Brigham Young University

Theses/Dissertations

2FA

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Usability-Driven Security Enhancements In Person-To-Person Communication, Tarun Kumar Yadav Feb 2024

Usability-Driven Security Enhancements In Person-To-Person Communication, Tarun Kumar Yadav

Theses and Dissertations

In the contemporary digital landscape, ensuring secure communication amid widespread data exchange is imperative. This dissertation focuses on enhancing the security and privacy of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) applications while maintaining or improving usability. The dissertation first investigates and proposes improvements in two areas of existing E2EE applications: countering man-in-the-middle and impersonation attacks through automated key verification and studying user perceptions of cryptographic deniability. Insights from privacy-conscious users reveal concerns about the lack of E2EE support, app siloing, and data accessibility by client apps. To address these issues, we propose an innovative user-controlled encryption system, enabling encryption before data reaches the …


Managing Two-Factor Authentication Setup Through Password Managers, Jonathan William Dutson Apr 2020

Managing Two-Factor Authentication Setup Through Password Managers, Jonathan William Dutson

Theses and Dissertations

Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides online accounts with protection against remote account compromise. Despite the security benefits, adoption of 2FA has remained low, in part due to poor usability. We explore the possibility of improving the usability of the 2FA setup process by providing setup automation through password managers. We create a proof-of-concept KeePass (a popular password manager) extension that adds browser-based automation to the 2FA setup process and conduct a 30-participant within-subjects user study to measure user perceptions about the system. Our system is found to be significantly more usable than the current manual method of 2FA setup for multiple …


User Attitudes About Duo Two-Factor Authentication At Byu, Jonathan Dutson Dec 2018

User Attitudes About Duo Two-Factor Authentication At Byu, Jonathan Dutson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Simple password-based authentication provides insufficient protection against increasingly common incidents of online identity theft and data loss. Although two-factor authentication (2FA) provides users with increased protection against attackers, users have mixed feelings about the usability of 2FA. We surveyed the students, faculty, and staff of Brigham Young University (BYU) to measure user sentiment about DUO Security, the 2FA system adopted by BYU in 2017. We find that most users consider DUO to be annoying, and about half of those surveyed expressed a preference for authentication without using a second-factor. About half of all participants reported at least one instance of …