My first paper: A practical implementation of Rubiks cube based passkeys

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11280260

42•acorn221•1d ago

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

ramses0•1d ago

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.

acorn221•1d ago

Thanks! You absolutely could just use the webcam and identify the faces on the cube - I just thought my bluetooth cube would be cooler to integrate but there's not much stopping me from adding that in. I had the cube for a little while but I struggled to decode the messages for a long time, so I made a little npm package based off of the work from CsTimer. Here's the package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gan-i3-356-bluetooth

ramses0•22h ago

There's a bunch of libraries and some webapps: https://rubiks-app-psi.vercel.app/

midldei•1d ago

Why leave the paper out of the git repo?

If you are the author could you link to a copy of the paper?

acorn221•1d ago

I've signed over the copyright to IEEE so I think I've got to ask them before I put it there - that is a great point though, I'll see if I can drop it in there.

elbci•1d ago

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"

midldei•1d ago

It's a novelty. Something more tuned for a scene in a movie than providing security for an individual.

But, the way I see it, you have the traditionally "solved" state cube on your desk(all faces complete), and when you want to use it as a key you "solve" the cube to the state that represents your key.

With a rubiks cube this means you only need to remember the steps of the algorithm that leads you to your key state.

avadodin•22h ago

It would be interesting if I could take your scrambled cube add my message, scramble it, and then tell you a way to descramble it only on the original unscrambled cube.

ecesena•1d ago

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

warkdarrior•22h ago

Yeah, this explains why this cryptography paper was published in a ML conference. Any reasonable reviewer would reject this as not providing sufficient security.

0manrho•20h ago

It's pretty upfront about being a novelty project done by a self-described non-crypto expert, and I don't see any assertions of it guaranteeing any degree of sufficiency/security or claiming any such NextBigThing(TM) hype.

Just because a paper is published doesn't mean it wasn't done for fun/the hell of it.

acorn221•10h ago

Yeah this is bang on. I messaged my old supervisor from uni about turning CubeAuthn into a paper and she suggested I submit the paper to that conf.

charcircuit•22h ago

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.

nritchie•22h ago

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.

acorn221•14h ago

Thanks!

kazinator•22h ago

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.