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MyFitnessPal Breach – Take-Aways

It was recently announced that MyFitnessPal suffered a breach of around 150 million records (https://www.cnet.com/news/millions-of-myfitnesspal-accounts-hacked-under-armour-says/). The breach affected usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords. There are no reports that any other personal information, such as SSN or credit card info has been impacted. It is always important for us to understand the actual types of data exposed as it changes how we look at the risk created to the users. It is important to point out that while the site may allow purchases using credit cards, the way they are processing them doesn’t actually store them.

I don’t know what process is followed in this particular instance, but many applications now use 3rd party payment processors so there is no need for the site to store credit card numbers. Instead, the payment process is offloaded to the 3rd party, which in turn helps provide better protection for the information.

If we look at what type of information was released by the organization, we can make some assumptions about things we can do to help strengthen our own applications from this type of breach. The purpose is not to berate the group that got breached, but instead to learn from their experience. We already took a quick look at processing credit cards and how taking proper steps to not store them locally helps add a layer of protection. The next most important part of the information actually breached were the passwords. Well, hashed passwords. It was interesting that the statement in the article and the email sent by MyFitnessPal to its users stated that a majority of the passwords were hashed using bCrypt. This indicates that not all of the passwords were hashed this way. Of course, we don’t know how they were hashed, or even if they were hashed, so let’s focus on the fact that the ones that were hashed were hashed with bCrypt. When we talk about storing passwords, the two most commonly recommended algorithms are bCrypt and PBKDF2.

These algorithms combine both a unique salt per hash and a work factor. Hashing algorithms are perfect for storing passwords, because we rarely ever need to reverse the password back to its original value. Instead, we can hash the user supplied password at login and then compare it to the stored original hash. Unfortunately, hashing algorithms are fast, which makes them easier to brute force because a program can generate a large number of hashes very quickly. This is why the work factor is important. It slows down the hash process to reduce the number of hashes that can be created in a specified timeframe.

When we see a breach where it is announced that the passwords were stored using bCrypt or PBKDF2, there is a better chance that the passwords won’t actually be compromised. There are some exceptions and things to think about with this.

  • First, don’t make the mistake of announcing you used a certain algorithm when you didn’t. There are plenty of people that will get their hands on that data and if it is determined that the information provided was inaccurate, the fallout could be much worse than having just been honest up front.
  • Second, just because the passwords are properly hashed, poorly chosen passwords are still not very protected.

Passwords are a simple, yet complex beast. Determining what a good password is can be difficult and we see all sorts of rules about them on every site. We are taught that longer passwords are better passwords. And this is usually true. But we also have to realize that using common passwords, even if long, is a bad practice. Users that choose passwords like ‘Winter 2018’ are much more susceptible to having their password cracked, even if it was hashed with these recommended algorithms. I don’t recommend blocking users from using any random password that has been breached in the past, not associated with their account. However, you could block passwords that are on the “top 1000” type lists of commonly used passwords. For those users using password managers, this shouldn’t be a problem since they can be creating long randomly generated passwords.

The other part of the breach process I want to touch on is around the response to a breach. When we think about our SDLC, we should have a part where we start thinking about response plans. This is where we think about what types of events may occur, and more importantly, who will need to be involved if those events occur. Having the right response can have a huge impact on how the organization is perceived following a breach.

The type of information provided to the customers or end users and how it is provided is critical. We have seen with other breaches where if it appears the breach was covered up, or the information is inaccurate, people will have a very negative view of the organization. Make sure your organization has taken steps to identify the right people to have involved when getting ready to send out alerts. For example, you may want to have legal, marketing, HR, or other resources available. Each has their own specialty that can help make a smooth announcement.

As developers, as we identify potential breach scenarios, we can start to consider processes to handle them. For example, if your credentials database gets breached, what steps might you take to help protect the users. FIrst and foremost, containing the breach and making sure it is over. Then, how would you force a password reset to make sure that any passwords breached are no longer useful.

Use this recent breach as an excuse to review some of your internal processes.

How are you storing passwords?

How would you handle a password breach?

Reviewing these situations every once in a while is a healthy way to ensure that your applications are up-to-date in these protections.

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OWASP 2017 Changes

When I talk to people about application security, the most recognized topics is the OWASP Top 10. If you haven’t heard of the top 10, or need a refresher, you can get the full list at:

https://www.owasp.org/images/7/72/OWASP_Top_10-2017_%28en%29.pdf.pdf

The OWASP Top 10 is on a three year update cycle. We had the list in 2010, 2013 and now the latest is 2017. You may be wondering why it is 2017 rather than 2016. I think that is a question a lot of people had. In any case, the list made it out to final release after the initial draft was rejected. Now that it is here, we can analyze it and see how it affects us and our organizations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfDuxwFScOE

What I think sticks out more to me this update over previous updates is the removal of some pretty common flaws based on my experience. In the past we have seen flaws move up or down on the risk level, or get combined, but not as much removed. In 2017, we saw two items get removed:

  • Cross-site Request Forgery
  • Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

I find these items interesting because I see them on most of the assessments I do. Let’s take a quick look at them.

Cross-site Request Forgery

CSRF can be a pretty serious flaw based on its context. It is the ability to force the victim’s browser to make requests to another site they are authenticated too without their knowledge. An example of a higher-risk context is the ability to change the victim’s email address on their profile. If the system doesn’t have two factor authentication or other safe guards, changing the email address can lead to the ability to request a password reset. In many situations, this can lead to easily taking over the victim’s account.
This is just one example of how CSRF can be used. The good news is that many newer frameworks provide some level of CSRF protection built-in. So in many applications it is not as prevalent. However, based on my experience, not everyone is using the latest frameworks. Due to this, I still find this on a lot of the assessments I do.

Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

Unvalidated Redirects is often viewed as a low risk issue. In many cases, it may represent a low risk. There are some situations that make unvalidated redirects fairly dangerous. A good example is the redirect often performed by login forms. A common feature of many applications is to redirect the user to a specific resource after logging in. To do this, a parameter in the URL specifies the path to be sent to. If the application allows redirecting to external sites, it is simple to set up a malicious site with the same look and feel as the expected site. If the victim uses your link with the reference to your malicious site they may be presented with your fake login page after successfully logging into the real site. The victim may believe they have mistyped their password and just login again without checking the URL, leading to account takeover.

We also saw to access control findings get merged into one. This change makes a lot of sense when you look at each item. They are both regarding access control issues.

With the removal and merging, the list has brought on three new vulnerabilities:

  • XML External Entities (XXE)
  • Insecure Deserialization
  • Insufficient Logging and Monitoring

XML External Entities (XXE)

XML External Entities is a vulnerability that takes advantage of how XML Parsers interpret the supplied XML. In this case, it is possible to reference other resources outside of the XML document. A common scenario is the ability to read other files on the web server, such as the /etc/passwd file. This vulnerability also may allow a denial of service attack to occur due to embedding specific entities. This vulnerability obviously relies on the application parsing XML data. If your application is parsing XML, it is recommended to make sure the parser is ignoring or blocking DTDs. If your parser doesn’t have that option, or you need to allow some DTDs, make sure your input validation is limiting those to only acceptable ones.

Insecure Deserialization

Insecure Deserialization occurs when you are deserializing data that has not been properly sanitized. This occurs because we assume that the data serialized has not been modified. When the data is modified, it could be executed during the deserialization process to perform commands. To help prevent this, make sure you are enforcing strict data checks on the objects that have been serialized. I do not see this very often in many of the assessments I do. Just depends on the application as many do not use much serialization.

Insufficient Logging and Monitoring

When I talk to people and ask them about logging, the first response, or usually the only response, is related to troubleshooting. There is no doubt that troubleshooting is critical for any application. If the application is not running as expected, users may leave, transactions may get lost, or a myriad of other issues may occur. Logging is for much more than just troubleshooting. Proper logging of security related events can help identify an attack while it is occurring as well as help identify what happened after the fact. It can be very difficult to identify what data was accessed or how if there are no logs indicating such information. It is good that we are seeing more attention called to this practice, although it can be a complex one to implement and verify. Don’t forget that once you start logging security events, they must be monitored to take action.

Wrap Up

Changes to the OWASP Top 10 isn’t something new. We know it will happen and it may require some adjustment to what we are doing internally. While we do see items drop or get added, it just highlights that the top 10 is a mere starting point of security. Every organization should have their list of top 10 risks. Don’t limit yourself to these short lists. They are to help identify the highest risks and implement them in a feasible way. Application security doesn’t happen overnight. There has to be a starting point and then a path to mature.

Listen to the podcast on this topic. http://podcast.developsec.com/developsec-podcast-91-owasp-top-10-2017-thoughts

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Two-Factor Authentication Considerations

There was a recent article talking about how a very small percentage of google users actually use 2-factor authentication. You can read the full article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/17/no_one_uses_two_factor_authentication/

Why 2-Factor

Two-factor authentication, or multi-factor authentication, is a valuable step in the process to protect accounts from unauthorized users. Traditionally, we have relied just on a username/password combination. That process had its own weaknesses that many applications have moved to improve. For example, many sites now require “complex” passwords. Of course, complex is up for debate. But we have seen the minimum password length go up and limitations on using known weak passwords go up. Each year we see lists of the most common passwords to not use, some being 123456 or Password. I hope no one is using these types of passwords. To be honest, I don’t know of any sites I use that would allow this type of password. So many these days require a mix of characters or special characters.

The above controls are meant to help reduce the risk of someone just guessing your password, there are other controls to help try to limit brute forcing techniques. Many accounts offer account lockout after X number of invalid attempts. There are other controls that we also see implemented around protecting the username/password logic. None of these controls help protect against a user reusing passwords on another site that may be compromised. They also do not protect against a user falling for a social engineering attack to trick them into sharing their passwords. To help combat this, many sites will implement a second factor beyond username/password.

The idea of the second factor is that even if you have the username and password, you will not have this other piece of information. In most cases, it is a value that changes every 60 seconds or so, and is delivered over a protected channel. For example, the token used may be sent via SMS, a voice call, or created through a phone application like the Google Authenticator application. So even if the attacker is able to get your password, via a breach, brute force, or just lucky guessing, in theory they would not have access to that second factor.

Why Are People Not Using It?

So why do people not enable the second factor on their Google accounts? Unfortunately, the presentation didn’t appear to explain that, which makes sense since it is difficult to know why people do or do not do certain things. I think there may be a few reasons for it that we will briefly touch on.

First, I think many people just are not aware of enabling the second factor. To be fair, it is sort of buried down in settings that may be difficult to find if you are not really looking for it. If it is not front and center, then there is a much smaller chance people will go seeking it out. To add to the issue, many people really don’t understand what 2-factor authentication means or how it really helps them. Sure, in security we get it, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does. How do we make it more prominent that this is a positive security feature? Many users will already be aware of 2-factor if they use online banking as most of those have started enforcing it.

Many people think that two factor authentication is a burden or it will slow their access down. This is usually not the case unless the application has implemented it poorly. Many sites will allow you to save your computer so you don’t need to enter the 2nd factor every time you access the site. However, it will require it if you access from a different computer.

To complicate things, other applications may not support signing in with 2 factors, like your email client. In these cases, you have to generate an app password which can be very confusing to many users, especially those that are not technically savvy.

There may be a chance that users don’t think they need to protect their email accounts, that it is not sensitive. If you just use email to communicate with friends and receive junk mail, what could be so bad, right? Most people forget that things like password resets are performed using an email account. Having control of an email account provides a lot of control over a lot of things. While it may seem small, email is an important function to protect.

If you are using Gmail, I recommend configuring 2-factor authentication. The following video walks through setting it up using SMS (Although there are other options as well):

Demo- Google 2 factor

If you are developing applications, I recommend looking into providing the option of 2-factor authentication. When you do this, make sure that you are promoting its use in a positive way. If you already have 2-factor with your application, can you run a report to determine what percentage of users are actually using it? If that number is low, what steps can you take to increase them?

Don’t assume that any application is not worthy of the extra security. Many applications are already providing 2-factor and that number will just increase. While we still have the password, we will always be looking for ways to add more protection. When implemented properly, it is simple for the end user, but effective in increasing security. If your user base is not taking advantage of the option, take the time to assess why that is and how it can be improved.

As I was writing this up, I ran into an interesting situation with 2-factor that sparked some more thoughts. When looking to support 2-factor authentication and not using SMS, take careful consideration to the applications you may choose to support. On the Apple App Store alone there are over 200 different authenticator apps available. Some are interchangeable while others are not. This can be another barrier in users choosing to enable 2-factor authentication.

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Tinder Mobile Take-Aways

While browsing through the news I noticed an article talking about the Tinder mobile app and a privacy concern. You can read the article at https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/tinder-app-security-flaws-put-users-privacy-at-risk/. To summarize what is considered the issue is that the mobile application does not transmit the photos that you see using HTTPS. This means that anyone on the same connection can see the traffic and, ultimately, see the photos you are presented. From my understanding, it doesn’t appear the potential attacker can tell who the user is that is viewing these photos as the rest of the traffic is properly using HTTPS.

We have discussed the move to all HTTPS multiple times on this blog and we are seeing a lot of sites making the switch. With web applications it is easy to see if the site is using HTTPS or not with the indicators near the address bar. Of course, these indicators are often confusing to most, but at least we have the ability to see the status. With a mobile application it is much more difficult to tell if data is transmitted using HTTPS or not because there is no visible indicator. Instead, one needs to view the raw traffic or use a web proxy to see how the data is transmitted. This can be misleading to many people because the assumption is that the data is protected because it is hidden under more layers.

In this instance, the ability to see these photos may not be considered that sensitive by many. Assuming that anyone can create an account and see the photos doesn’t make them a secret. People have opted to post their images for others to find them on the network. Of course, level of sensitivity is in the eye of the beholder these days. Another issue that is potentially possible in this situation is that the attacker could manipulate that image traffic to show a different image. This could lead to the end user seeing a different image than the one expected. The usefulness of this could be called into question at any type of large scale.

The take-away here is that when we are building applications we must take care in understanding how we are transmitting all of our data to determine what needs to be protected. As I mentioned, there is already a push to make everything HTTPS all the time. If you have decided not to use HTTPS for your connections, have you documented the reasons? What does your threat model tell you about the risks with that data and its communication. How does that risk line up with your acceptance procedures.

Another interesting tidbit came out of the article mentioned above. In addition to seeing the actual photos, they found it was possible to identify whether or not the end user liked or disliked the photo by comparing the network traffic. The interesting part about this part is that those decisions were encrypted when transmitted. The key point here is that the traffic for each decision was a set size and the sizes were different for like and dislike. By viewing the traffic after seeing a photo, it is possible to determine which ones were liked based on the size of the requests. In this case, it still doesn’t identify the end user that is using the application.

We don’t typically spend a lot of time analyzing the size of the requests we send in the event someone may try to determine what actions we are taking over an encrypted channel. Most of the time these actions are not possible to determine, or the level of effort is way above what is realistic. The easy solution would be to make sure all traffic was encrypted and we wouldn’t be able to know what images were liked or disliked. Maybe it would be possible to still see the difference, but with no way to tie it to specific images. The other option is to attempt to pad the requests so that they are all the same size. This would be for highly sensitive systems as the complexity may not be worth the benefit.

Of course, all of this is based on the attacker being on the same network as the end user so they can intercept or view the traffic in the first place. In the case of a public place, it might just be easier to hover over your shoulder and watch you use the app then intercept the traffic and guess at who is using it.

Both of these topics are good conversation starters within your organization. They help us realize that even just one request that doesn’t use HTTPS may be seen and could raise an issue. It also helps us to see that sometimes even encrypted data can be determined, but that doesn’t mean it is a high risk. Each situation is different and should be properly analyzed to determine the risk it creates for the company and the organization.

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New Year’s Resolutions

Here we are, the start of another year. As we reflect on 2017, this is where we really start to focus on what lies ahead in 2018. The new year is always interesting because it usually doesn’t affect our build cycles or releases. With the exception of accounting for vacations. Yet, this is the time of year where many people get re-focused and motivated to change old habits or try something new.

Listen to the Podcast:

As I look back on 2017, there were a lot of news headlines that focused around security. So many of them highlighting breaches, many termed “mega” breaches. The trend of hyped up headlines glorifying monster breaches will likely continue through 2018 and beyond. We know that breaches can, or will, happen. We have seen examples of different techniques used to gain unauthorized access to data. This won’t change, and will most likely become more prevalent going forward. The amount of information available to potential attackers is enormous, making our job of application security that much more important.

One of the biggest lessons to take away from 2017 is that privacy is important. In addition, private data is not limited to PCI or HIPAA. All sorts of data can be considered private and require the custodian to take proper steps to protect it. It doesn’t matter if the data is held by a Fortune 500 company or a one-person shop. To someone, that data is worth something. As we look into 2018, this reminds us that we must understand what data we have. We must know what type of regulations it may fall under, what applications contain it, and how we are protecting it. Just because data may not fall under a regulation doesn’t mean it should be overlooked. In the end, it is the expectation of our customers and clients that we will handle their data responsibly.

Protecting this data is not about how much money you spend or what tools you buy. Every organization is different. Every application development team is different. I encourage everyone to take the time to research and understand what your team needs to be successful. As in the past, throughout the year I will be posting thoughts on different application security topics. If you have any questions or topics, feel free to share them with me. Looking for someone to talk to about application security? Reach out. I have services available to help organizations and individuals reach new heights and solve problems.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions when it comes to application security?

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XSS in a Script Tag

Cross-site scripting is a pretty common vulnerability, even with many of the new advances in UI frameworks. One of the first things we mention when discussing the vulnerability is to understand the context. Is it HTML, Attribute, JavaScript, etc.? This understanding helps us better understand the types of characters that can be used to expose the vulnerability.

In this post, I want to take a quick look at placing data within a <script> tag. In particular, I want to look at how embedded <script> tags are processed. Let’s use a simple web page as our example.

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "<a href=test.html>test</a>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

The above example works as we expect. When you load the page, nothing is displayed. The link tag embedded in the variable is rated as a string, not parsed as a link tag. What happens, though, when we embed a <script> tag? 

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "<script>alert(9)</script>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

In the above snippet, actually nothing happens on the screen. Meaning that the alert box does not actually trigger. This often misleads people into thinking the code is not vulnerable to cross-site scripting. if the link tag is not processes, why would the script tag be. In many situations, the understanding is that we need to break out of the (“) delimiter to start writing our own JavaScript commands. For example, if I submitted a payload of (test”;alert(9);t = “). This type of payload would break out of the x variable and add new JavaScript commands. Of course, this doesn’t work if the (“) character is properly encoded to not allow breaking out.

Going back to our previous example, we may have overlooked something very simple. It wasn’t that the script wasn’t executing because it wasn’t being parsed. Instead, it wasn’t executing because our JavaScript was bad. Our issue was that we were attempting to open a <script> within a <script>. What if we modify our value to the following:

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "</script><script>alert(9)</script>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

In the above code, we are first closing out the original <script> tag and then we are starting a new one. This removes the embedded nuance and when the page is loaded, the alert box will appear.

This technique works in many places where a user can control the text returned within the <script> element. Of course, the important remediation step is to make sure that data is properly encoded when returned to the browser. By default, Content Security Policy may not be an immediate solution since this situation would indicate that inline scripts are allowed. However, if you are limiting the use of inline scripts to ones with a registered nonce would help prevent this technique. This reference shows setting the nonce (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Security-Policy/script-src).

When testing our applications, it is important to focus on the lack of output encoding and less on the ability to fully exploit a situation. Our secure coding standards should identify the types of encoding that should be applied to outputs. If the encodings are not properly implemented then we are citing a violation of our standards.