Here are the discussions that are mentioned in P19 of "Fend Off Cyberattack with Episodic Memory" https://www.slideshare.net/HitoshiKokumai/fend-off-cyberattack-with-episodic-memory-24feb2023

1. More Issues on Digital Identity
1
- Phishing Deterrence
- Cryptography and Digital Identity
- AI and Quantum-Computing
- Login under Duress
- 2-Channel Expanded Password System
- Secure Brain-Machine-Interface
- Security-Destructive Passwordless schemes
- Misused Biometrics
- Stopgap Hybrid Text Password
- Dementia and Identity
- FIDO and Expanded Password System
- Transparency and Integrity
- How We Position Our Proposition
- Competition or Opportunity
- Overcoming Head Wind
24th February, 2023
Hitoshi Kokumai, Chief Architect
Mnemonic Identity Solutions Limited
I would like to talk about some more topics related to our endeavor of building a solid
and sustainable digital identity platform.

2. Phishing Deterrence
On Text Password Platform
Damage limited only to one targeted account even in the worse case:
No password needs to be re-used across multiple accounts where
Mnemonic Gateways password manager is deployed
On Expanded Password Platform
Costs inflicted on phishers of preparing the same Images for each
target
Costs of ‘Cat & Mouse’ process in which phishers cannot have the
initiative “Detection of Phishing by Episodic Image Memory”
https://www.slideshare.net/HitoshiKokumai/detection-of-phishing-by-episodic-image-memory-
243182482
The title reads ‘Phishing Deterrence’ , not ‘Phishing Prevention’.
Expanded Password System could make a meaningful contribution to deterrence of
phishing attacks, although it alone cannot prevent phishing.

3. Cryptography and Digital Identity
Protection by cryptography can’t be above protection by login credential
Shall we consider a very typical case that a message is encrypted by a cryptographic
module that can stand the fiercest brute forces attacks for trillions of years, while the
digital identity of the recipient who is to decrypt the encrypted message is protected
by a password that a PC can break in a matter of hours or even minutes?
Protection by cryptography can’t be above protection by login credential, passwords in
most cases. The lower of the two decides the overall protection level.
This observation urges us to make the secret credentials the most solid and reliable
where the data to protect is classified. Here we propose that we can make use of
operators’ episodic memory that is firmly inscribed deep in their brains for their secret
credentials.

4. Impact of AI and Quantum Computing
https://aitechtrend.com/quantum-computing-and-password-authentication/
In its publication in autumn 2021 USA’s NSA said “We ‘don’t know when or even if’ a
quantum computer will ever be able to break today’s public-key encryption”
In view of that observation, in an article “Quantum Computing and Password
Authentication” I wrote
“Let us assume, however, that quantum computing has suddenly made a quantum leap
and becomes able to break today’s public key schemes. Would we have to despair?
We do not need to panic. Bad guys, who have a quantum computer at hand, would
still have to break the part of user authentication, that is NOT dependent on the public-
key scheme, prior to accessing the target data, in the normal environment where
secret credentials, that is, remembered passwords, play a big role.”
My article , published in early October 2021, became the ‘most trending’ at NY-based
aiTech Trend in February 2022 and still retains that status.
This phenomenon probably tells much on how concerned artificial intelligence people
are about the issue of passwords and identity assurance with respect to the
uncontrolled progress of AI and Quantum Computing.

5. Login under Duress
The issue of Login under Duress is taken care of
since 2003 . Watch this video - “High-Security
Operation on PC for managers”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_1fEp2jFo
The bad guy who is forcing the user to make a login under duress
without knowing how many images the user had registered, would
have no idea of whether the user selected an extra image or not,
whereas the software would detect it, allow the login and guide the
bad guy to a dummy data section while silently sending a real-time
alarm to security personnel.
The issue of Login under Duress is already taken care of since 2003 . Watch this video -
“High-Security Operation on PC for managers”
At 2 minutes 40 seconds, you will be watching the registration page, on which you find
a box for ‘Yes or No ‘ for “Emergency PassSymbol”. Click ‘Yes’ and you will be able to
register an extra image as a duress code.
The bad guy who is forcing the user to make a login under duress without knowing how
many images the user had registered, would have no idea of whether the user selected
an extra image or not, whereas the software would detect it, allow the login and guide
the bad guy to a dummy data section while silently sending a real-time alarm to
security personnel.
This function had been implemented a decade before Japan’s Army talked to us; We
did not assume that such duress alarming function would be rarely appreciated outside
the military but anticipated that the more digital assets are piled up in the digital
space, the more frequently the cases of forced login under duress will happen.

6. 6
2-Channel Expanded Password System
Using physical onetime tokens is said to be more secure than using phones for
receiving onetime code via Short Message Service as one of the two authentication
factors. However, the use of physical tokens brings its own headache. What shall we
do if we have dozens of accounts that require two factor schemes?
Carrying around a bunch of dozens of physical tokens? Or, re-using the same tokens
across dozens of accounts? The former would be too cumbersome and too easily
attract attention of bad guys, physically creating a single point of failure, while the
latter would be very convenient but brings the similar single point of failure in another
way.
Well, what if random onetime numbers or characters are allocated to each image on
the matrix shown on a user’s second device. Recognizing the registered images, the
user will feed these numbers or characters on a main device. From those onetime
data, the authentication server will tell the images that user is supposed to have
registered as the credential.
All that is needed at the users’ end is just a web browser on a second device. With all
different sets of images for all different accounts, a single phone can readily cope with
dozens of accounts without creating a single point of failure.
This is not a hypothesis. We actually have a use case of commercial implementation.

7. Secure Brain-Machine-Interface
Ask the users to focus their attention
on the numbers or characters given to
the registered images.
Random numbers or characters allocated to the images.
Neuro signals are monitored via a separate channel.
A simple brain-monitoring has a security problem. The data, if wiretapped by
criminals, can be replayed for impersonation straight away. The monitored brain
data should be a onetime disposable code.
An idea is that the authentication system allocates random numbers or characters to
the images shown to the user. The user focuses their attention on the numbers or
characters given to the images they had registered.
The monitoring system will collect the brain-generated onetime signals corresponding
to the registered images. Incidentally, the channel for showing the pictures is
supposed to be separated from the channel for brain-monitoring.
Even if intercepting successfully, criminals would be unable to impersonate the user
because the intercepted data was onetime and disposed upon use.

8. Have a Break
Published in 2005
This comic looks more relevant now than 18 years ago when it was published. Please
have this 2-minute break with the comic.

9. Security-Destructive ‘Passwordless’ Schemes
Here is a one-stop reference paper on this problem “How to not see our weak digital identity further weakened”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-see-our-weak-digital-identity-further-weakened-hitoshi-kokumai/
Where removing the password increase security of digital identity, we would find such
picture at every ATM .
We would also hear “Remove the army and we will have a stronger national defense”
We could accept “Passwordless” authentication without losing sanity if it comes with a
transparent statement that it brings ‘better availability’ at the cost of losing security,
helping people where availability and convenience, not security, matters most.
The problem is that the “passwordless” promoters are adamantly alleging that the
passwordless schemes are to increase security, thus spreading a false sense of security.
The false sense of security is not only weakening the defence of democratic nations
from within when we have to cope with the yet increasing cybersecurity threats from
aggressive anti-democracy regimes, but also preventing global citizens from being
better prepared against the threats by making good use of the defence surface of the
password and its expanded developments.

10. More on ‘Passwordless’ Authentication
(1) Password-less + nothing else; the least secure
(2) Password-less + something else; securer than (1)
(3) Password + something else: point of arguments
(1) Token-less + nothing else; the least secure
(2) Token-less + something else; securer than (1)
(3) Token + something else: point of arguments
Let me try a breakdown of the passwordless concept.
(1) Password-less + nothing else; the least secure
(2) Password-less + something else; securer than (1)
(3) Password + something else: here is the point of arguments
By our criteria, the security increases from 1 to 3. However, by the “passwordless”
folks’ criteria, the security of (2) is viewed as higher than (3), presumably because an
attack surface of the password is removed in (2) whereas there is an attack surface on
the password in (3).
Well, let me try the same for “token-less” login.
(1) Token-less + nothing else; the least secure
(2) Token-less + something else; securer than (1)
(3) Token + something else: here is the point of arguments
By our criteria, the security increases from 1 to 3. However, by the “passwordless”
folks’ criteria, the security of (2) should be viewed as higher than (3) because an attack
surface of the token is removed in (2) whereas there is an attack surface on the token
in (3).
Did you find it fun or very worrying?

11. More on ‘Passwordless’ Authentication
Posts on this issue are collected at “LOSS of Security Taken for GAIN of Security”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/loss-security-taken-gain-hitoshi-kokumai/
The ‘passwordless’ promoters might have been trapped in a cognitive pitfall. From my
experience of debating with them, We suspect that there are three possible scenarios -
(1) They may have taken 'what is not good and helpful enough' for 'what is ‘bad and
harmful’.
(2) They may have failed to notice that a token, whether PKI-based or otherwise, also
carries the attack surface of being stolen or otherwise compromised.
(3) They may have assumed that a defense surface is a part of an attack surface in the
case of password.
We wish that the ‘passwordless’ folks had listened to our advice.

12. Misused Biometrics
12
30-second Video YouTube
Surprisingly many people are promoting, selling and adopting biometrics as a tool of
identity authentication without the basic knowledge of the very technology.
Get graphs to talk the nature of biometrics
- By nature, whether static or behavioural, all the biometrics technologies are
'probabilistic' since it measures unpredictably variable body features of living animals
in ever changing environments.
- False Acceptance and False Rejection are not the variables that are independent
from each other, but are dependent on each other.
- The lower a False Acceptance Rate is, the higher the corresponding False Rejection
Rate is. The lower a False Rejection Rate, the higher the corresponding False
Acceptance Rate.
- When a False Acceptance Rate is close to Zero, the corresponding False Rejection
Rate is close to One. When an False Rejection Rate is close to Zero, the corresponding
False Acceptance Rate is close to One.
- The presence of False Rejection, however close to Zero, would require a fallback
means against the False Rejection unless the user can forget the availability.

13. More on ‘Biometrics’ Authentication
More discussions on this subject collected at “Biometrics Unravelled | password-dependent password-killer”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/biometrics-unravelled-password-dependent-hitoshi-kokumai/
This house has added a new door with biometrics with near-zero false acceptance
besides an old door with a weak password that the biometrics vendor ridiculed harshly.
The client asks “The new door looks very impressive. But why does the old door stay?”
The vendor replies “The new door rejects criminals so effectively that you might also
be rejected occasionally” Shortly thereafter, a burglar is delighted to utter “Very
convenient! I can attack both of the two”
As such, biometrics used with a fallback password brings down the security that the
password has provided. However powerful and influential the biometrics vendor may
be, like Apple, Google and Microsoft are, they cannot change this fact.
Incidentally, there would be nothing wrong in deploying biometrics with a
default/fallback password if vendors state transparently that the benefit of biometrics
used for authentication in cyberspace is ‘better availability’ obtained by sacrificing the
security that the password on its own somehow provides.
What is wrong is that they mislead the public to believe that it contributes to ‘better
security’, thus spreading a false sense of security and thereby weakening the defence
line of democratic nations from within when we have to face fierce cyberattacks from
adversaries of democracy.

14. Stopgap Hybrid Text Password
Factor 1 – Password Remembered
(what we know/remember)
Factor 2 – Password Written Down or Physically Stored
(what we have/possess)
14
Effect - A ‘boring legacy password system’ turning into a no-cost
hybrid password system made of ‘what we know’ and ‘what we
have’.
The problems that are caused by ‘hard-to-manage’ passwords will be drastically
mitigated when we come up with “Mnemonic Gateways” password manager driven by
Expanded Password System (EPS) and other EPS-based solutions with which the secret
credentials for login can be generated and re-generated from non-volatile citizens
episodic image memory.
While we have to wait for it to happen, we are suggesting a stopgap measure of
combining two kinds of passwords - one that we can easily remember and recall , with
the other that is truly random and complex for electronical storage on a device. When
in use, we recall and type the former and copy&paste the latter.
We call it ‘Hybrid Text Password’. It is not as safe and simple as remembering the
whole of it but much safer than storing the whole of it. But, would you be interested
to talk about the size of a cake that we know is not edible?
The hybrid password is what I myself have long been practicing for high-security
accounts that accept only text-passwords.

15. Dementia and Authentication
When people become unable to
recognise the unforgettable images of
their episodic memory that they had
volitionally registered as login credentials,
it is probably the time that guardianship should be
considered for them.
“Your solution, Expanded Password System powered by citizens’ non-volatile episodic
memory, has a big drawback of being useless for the authentication of people with
advanced dementia.” - This is what I kept hearing over 20 years, mostly from the
people who promote passwordless and biometrics authentication schemes.
“When people become unable to recognise the unforgettable images of their episodic
memory that they had volitionally registered as login credentials, it is probably the
time that guardianship should be considered for them.
While it’s possible to get them ‘identified’, getting them ‘authenticated’ should be
viewed as a crime in a democratic society”. - This is what I kept answering over the 20
years.

16. FIDO and Expanded Password System
We might be watching two FIDOs;
(1) Password-receptive FIDO
(2) Password-rejective FIDO
A password-repelled (passwordless) FIDO-specified product should
not be recommend to the people who need a good security,
although it might be acceptable for low-security use cases where
availability and convenience matter more.
The subject of FIDO frequently pops up in our digital identity discussions. We might be
watching two FIDOs;
(1) Password-receptive FIDO
(2) Password-rejective FIDO
We deem that the FIDO specification on its own is (1), although some FIDO people
sound as if (2) is the case.
A password-repelled (passwordless) FIDO-specified product should not be recommend
to the people who need a good security, although it might be acceptable for low-
security use cases where availability and convenience matter more.
On the other hand, irrespective of how friendlily or unfriendlily FIDO people look at us,
we are certain that Expanded Password System powered by citizens’ non-volatile
episodic memory is perfectly compatible with the device-based FIDO specification for
providing very solid two/multi-factor authentication solutions.
Furthermore, such two/multi-factor solutions would be truly robust when the post-
quantum cryptography is incorporated. The same reasoning applies to other forms of
device-based authentication schemes.

17. Transparency and Integrity
Let me talk about the moral responsibility of those of us who have awoken
Firstly, It would not be very wise to get the defence line weakened from within when
facing formidable adversaries who are known to be making every effort to destroy the
values of democracy.
What I mean is the lack of transparency and integrity over the “passwordless” and
“biometrics” authentication schemes that quite a few security professionals and big IT
players are touting, as discussed earlier.
We have been trying to stay tenacious since we awoke to this consequential problem,
probably as one of the first few to have awoken to it.
We do not want to be among those who knowingly turn a blind eye to the ongoing
erosion of the democratic values due to a wrong design of digital transformation when
facing the dreadful democracy-destroyers.
Secondly, once we are awake to what role the power and merits of citizens’ non-
volatile episodic memory can play for solid digital identity, it cannot be an option for us
to be hesitant to press ahead proactively and energetically, especially in the current
perilous circumstances.
We would like to believe that our endeavour is viewed as worth the support of all the
good citizens.

18. How We Position Our Proposition
The underpinning principle of Expanded Password System
will not go away so long as people want their own volition
and memory to remain involved in identity authentication.
18
It’s Legitimate Successor to Seals and Autographs
More on the Power of Citizens’ Non-Volatile Episodic Memory
Starting with the perception that our continuous identity as human being is made of
our autobiographic memory, we are making identity authentication schemes better by
leveraging the time-honored tradition of seals and autographs
The underpinning principle of Expanded Password System shall not go away so long
as people want our own volition and memory to remain involved in identity
assurance.

19. Competition or Opportunity
Password-managers, single-sign-on service?
Passwords required as the master-password: Opportunity.
Two/multi-factor authentication?
Passwords required as one of the factors: Opportunity.
Pattern-on-grid, emoji, conventional picture passwords?
Deployable on our platform: Opportunity.
Biometrics?
Passwords required as a backup means: Opportunity.
What can be thought of as competition to Expanded Password System?
1. Password-managers and single-sign-on services require passwords as the master-
password.
2. Two/Multi-factor authentications require passwords as one of the factors.
3. Pattern-on-grid, conventional picture passwords and emoji-passwords can all be
deployed on our platform.
4. Biometrics requires passwords as a fallback means.
As such, competition could be thinkable only among the different products of the
family of Expanded Password System.
By the way, some people claim that PIN can eliminate passwords, but logic dictates that
it can never happen since PIN is no more than a weak form of numbers-only password.
Neither can Passphrase, which is no more than a long password.
There are also some people who talk about the likes of PKI and onetime passwords as
an alternative to passwords. But it is like talking about a weak door and proposing to
enhance the door panel as an alternative to enhancing the lock and key.

20. Exciting Scenery of Digital Identity
Overcoming Head Wind
“LOSS of Security Taken for GAIN of Security” -
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/loss-security-taken-gain-hitoshi-kokumai/
We look tiny and sound feeble. They look massive and sound mighty. We are made of
logical fact-based non-flammable graphene. They are made of illogical fallacy-based
inflammable paper.
‘We’ mean the forces who advocate the digital identity for which citizens’ volition and
memory play a critical role, supporting the solid identity security and the values of
democracy.
‘They’ mean the forces who advocate the digital identity from which citizens’ volition
and memory are removed, damaging the identity security and the values of
democracy. Big names like GAFAM are found as part of the paper elephant, which
make them look really massive and sound extremely loud.
Whether looking tiny or massive, whether sounding feeble or mighty, it does not
matter. It’s fact and logic that decides the endgame. We will prevail in due course.