alt Hacker NewsMy first paper: A practical implementation of Rubiks cube based passkeys
I'm not super experienced with cryptography but I had some spare time on my hands so I decided to make CubeAuthn and turn it into a paper.
Repo here: https://github.com/Acorn221/CubeAuthn. Feel free to ask questions!
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Abstract:
We present a novel authentication system that transforms a Rubik's cube into a physical key for digital authentication. By reading the cube's specific arrangement among 43 quintillion possible configurations, our system generates FIDO2-compatible credentials on-demand. Unlike traditional security tokens that store credentials, the cube itself becomes part of the key with its physical state forming a deterministic seed for keypair generation. Our proof-of-concept, CubeAuthn, demonstrates this concept with a browser extension that authenticates users on WebAuthn-enabled sites using the cube's physical state as the cryptographic seed.
Comments
Cool demo, but this is only log2(43 quintillions) = 65 bit security.
Kind of related is DiceKeys, with 192 bit security: https://www.crowdsupply.com/dicekeys/dicekeys
If you add orientation arrows to the center squares, you can add a couple of bits to the strength.
There are multiple ways to solve the cube, if orientation of the center pieces is made visible and significant.
So my cube-key will look to anybody else as a regular scrambled cube. If my kid finds it and solves it, I'm kind of doomed, right? So what's the plan, I'm supposed to remember the state of the cube?
A admit I'm dumb and lazy - I didn't read the paper, maybe it's covered there - but this sounds quite vulnerable to dictionary attacks, like those phone unlock paass where everybody puts a Z, the cube-keys will mostly be "Solved with red/yellow middles swapped"
We've already established that pattern based passcodes are terrible for security. I expect this to be worse than patterns because people can not easily remember or know how to fix mistakes which will result in most people picking simple ones.
Awesome! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768459
Couldn't you "just" use a webcam to scan any particular cube? Seems like you could "easily" detect when you've seen all 6 unique faces and there should be libraries around that will read cubes.
this sounds cool!
Why leave the paper out of the git repo?
If you are the author could you link to a copy of the paper?
This is a great example of the "I wonder if I could"-kind of research. It doesn't have to be practical. I doubt the authors intend it as a viable security product. It is the kind of "just playing around" thinking that can sometimes lead to brilliant insights. Keep up the good work.