A year ago the edu-ID account management and login pages got a new look. Next is the Discovery Service, also known as WAYF (Where Are You From) service to wear some new colours and also be more user-friendly.
Author: Lukas Hämmerle
I'm a member of the SWITCHaai team and the SWITCH edu-ID team.
Two new identifier attributes: subject-id and pairwise-id
The new identifier attributes gain more and more traction in the SAML-based identity federations. Find out what issues they address, what characteristics they have and who can use them in which scenarios.
Continue reading “Two new identifier attributes: subject-id and pairwise-id”
Hacking for Good
In July this year the edu-ID account management was reimplemented almost from scratch. Not only did the design change but so did much of the technology behind it, including the programming framework. Because we take security and data privacy very seriously, we asked our colleagues from the Switch security team to do a preliminary penetration test before the launch. This first penetration test provided us with the confidence to release the new account management into the wild. But to be doubly sure, we decided to run also a second penetration test after launch with an external company. And so we did.
Two-Step Login Changes
An increasing number of services and universities require edu-ID users to verify their identity with an additional factor in a process called Two-Step Login or Two-Factor Authentication.
One year ago, about 5% of all users had enabled this secure login method. As of today, this number has tripled to 15% of all 930’000 edu-ID users.
This is great news from a security point of view and has led to the following two changes that were introduced end of August 2023.
700’000 reasons to celebrate
Just in time for the yearly Trust and Identity Workgroup meeting the barrier was broken mid May. To celebrate the 700’000th edu-ID user account the trust and identity team had, however, to wait a few more weeks, because several team members were on vacation at that time. But it’s never too late for cake 😀
We hope to soon celebrate the cake for 800’000 accounts when University of Zurich, ETHZ, EPFL and other universities adopt edu-ID in the coming months.
The life of an edu-ID account
Lifelong learning benefits from lifelong user accounts. SWITCH edu-ID accounts are such lifelong user accounts. However, lifelong sometimes does not mean forever, which may be a surprise in this context. Why is that so?
Due to data privacy laws a life long account is – like a lifelong prison sentence – not for all eternity. At some point an account is deleted or archived even though its owner is still alive and well.
Graphical Statistics and Service Restriction Features
In December and January two new features were silently introduced for edu-ID organisation administrators. One provides graphical statistics and one allows restricting technical accounts to certain services. This blog post provides a short overview on what is new.
Continue reading “Graphical Statistics and Service Restriction Features”The Right Way to Create an Account
Like described in the blog post Sending Users on the Right Path, it sometimes is in everybody’s interest to guide end-users on a certain path to achieve a goal. Such helpful nudges are also used during account creation when end-users choose how to create their SWITCH edu-ID account.
Continue reading “The Right Way to Create an Account”e-Mail Address Spring Cleaning
In SWITCH edu-ID the e-mail addresses play a crucial role not only for communication with an edu-ID user but also for authentication. Every e-mail address associated to an edu-ID account also serves as login name. An e-mail address can also be used to reset the password of an edu-ID account. And unless Two-Step login is activated, this would be sufficient to gain control of an account.
Unfortunately, many e-mail addresses don’t belong permanently to the same person. When a student finishes her studies, she will loose her university e-mail address after some time. When a staff member changes jobs, he won’t keep his company e-mail address either.
In case of popular names, some organisations re-assign e-mail addresses to persons with the same name, hopefully only after a long grace-period. If such a “recycled” e-mail address is still associated to a user account of the original holder of this address in a system like SWITCH edu-ID, this might cause severe security problems.
Therefore, SWITCH edu-ID has some automated mechanisms to detect, remove, replace and inform about e-mail addresses that no longer work. How do these processes work?
Behind the Scenes of SLSP and SWITCH
As we have announced in our blog post “SWITCH edu-ID as door opener for libraries”, SLSP officially launches its new library service in December 2020, which relies on SWITCH edu-ID for user authentication and user management. With several hundred thousand expected users it is likely that the SLSP service will become one of the most widely used services with edu-ID/AAI in Switzerland. Therefore, the SWITCH edu-ID team is actively supporting the SLSP colleagues to optimally integrate it with edu-ID.
In this blog post we describe a few technical details and extensions that the edu-ID team implemented with and for SLSP. Last but not least, there is also a hint on what organisations can do to facilitate access to the SLSP service for their users.
Secrets of the edu-ID passwords
Since a few months now, edu-ID users can secure their account with multi-factor authentication (Two-Step Login). However, currently 99.5% of all edu-ID accounts still rely exclusively on username and password authentication. It is unlikely to quickly change soon in the near future, despite the death of the password has been announced time and time again. The password remains the easiest, best known and – in many cases – the cheapest authentication solution. Therefore, the edu-ID team invests a lot of effort into assisting users to choose a strong password and to store it securely. Continue reading “Secrets of the edu-ID passwords”
Multi-Factor Authentication Reinforced
Since December 2018 the edu-ID login has supported multi-factor authentication in form of a two-step login that relies on SMS codes. However, receiving one-time SMS codes requires a mobile phone. Not all users want to add a mobile phone number to their edu-ID account. Furthermore, SMS messages generally cannot be securely sent. There is always the risk that somebody else intercepts SMS messages. Some edu-ID users also want to use multi-factor authentication for all their edu-ID logins but without entering a one-time code several times per day.
To address the above issues reported by the community, we extended the edu-ID two-step login in the following three areas…
Managing User Affiliation with the Organisation Administrator Interface
The edu-ID is a user-centric system in which users generally manage their account data themselves. And yet, some data relates to and is thus asserted by organisations like universities. Therefore, the edu-ID system provides several APIs for organisations so that they can manage data about users they are authoritative for. A new way to manage this data is the edu-ID administration interface for organisations, which is presented in this blog post.
Continue reading “Managing User Affiliation with the Organisation Administrator Interface”
Two or More Factors for edu-ID
A representative from a larger higher education organisation in Switzerland recently stated that they identify roughly 40 compromised user accounts on average per month. Extrapolating this number for all Swiss AAI users, this number would grow to more than 1’000 compromised accounts per month. Many of them are probably not even detected. Many of them probably belong to young students who may not always take proper care of their credentials. But every now and then, also staff members and professors learn about the nightmares of impersonation of their digital identity. So, how can edu-ID support SWITCHaai services to enhance authentication security? Continue reading “Two or More Factors for edu-ID”
Break and Enter
Have you ever invited professional burglars to break into your home to steal your valuables? For the edu-ID service we have done exactly that, and we even paid for it. The valuables in our case is identity data from all edu-ID users. However, the “professional burglars” were actually very kind, professional and skilled security experts from Compass Security.