New 'Active Cookie' Invention Helps Protect Internet Users From Cyber Crooks

A new technique developed by an Indiana University School of Informatics scientist provides a strong shield against identity theft and cyber attacks. Cybersecurity expert Markus Jakobsson and the start-up RavenWhite Inc., of which Jakobsson is a co-founder, have developed an "active cookie," a countermeasure designed to protect against online scams such as pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Pharming is obtaining personal or private (usually financial) information through domain spoofing. Rather than spamming with malicious and mischievous e-mail requests for users to visit fake Web sites which appear legitimate, pharming "poisons" a domain name server by planting false information in the server, resulting in a user's request being redirected elsewhere. The browser, however, tells users they are at the correct Web site."There are no reliable commercial tools currently available to protect users from such attacks," said Jakobsson, associate professor of informatics and associate director of the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. "We believe that active cookies can provide such protection."

RavenWhite provides a new use of cookies, which are coded pieces of information stored on a person's computer that identify that computer during the current and subsequent visits to a Web site. Active cookies can be used in some situations where traditional cookies are not practical. Jakobsson's invention helps protect against known types of pharming attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks, but also against new and threatening versions such as two new attacks discovered by Mark Meiss and Alex Tsow, both computer science doctoral students at IU.