Have you ever forgotten your password, or lost access to your accounts? I know I have. The process of getting your access back can range from very easy to quite difficult. In one case, I had an account that required that a pin code be physically mailed to me in 7-10 days. Of course, this was a financial account that required extra protections.

I came across this article (https://www.wired.com/story/myspace-security-account-takeover/) that identified that MySpace’s process for regaining access to an account was easily by-passable with just a few pieces of information that is commonly easily found.

According to the issue reported, the following details were needed to gain control of an account:

• Account Holder’s Name
• UserName
• Date of Birth

In addition, the email address was part of the form, but was not actually validated.

With the amount of information available on social media platforms, and even though past breaches, it is very difficult to come up with good questions to help validate a user is who they say they are. In this case, the first 2 pieces of information are reportedly available on a user’s account page and are not difficult to find. It is critical that we give great consideration to the way we attempt to validate a user’s identity.

Security or secret questions have been known to be weak for a long time. While they can help provide some assistance in identifying the user, they should not be used alone. One recommendation is to include a side channel for some verification. For example, requiring a user to receive an email at the address on record before answering these questions helps reduce some of the risk. This method now requires that an attacker gain access to the user’s email account to receive a temporary account reset link. Although this is possible, it adds another hurdle to help protect the user’s account.

Similarly, you could look to send a code to a phone number that is currently on record. Like email, it would then require the interception of the phone message, adding difficulty to the process. One of the points here is that you only want to send to email or phone that is already on record. Never allow the user to provide a new email address or phone number as they could add an untrusted phone number and easily take over the account.

There was another piece of this that should be considered, the unvalidated email address. The request for the email address in this reset process may have been meant as another verification of account information. However, as commonly seen, the value wasn’t actually validated on the server. This is an easy oversight to make when working with web forms.

Remember that validation should always be performed on the server. This is because it is simple to bypass client-side validation with the use of simple add-ins or a web proxy.

Validation of data fields should be a standard part of QA testing. Ensure that when testing forms, such as the account recovery, that the form reacts accordingly with many types of inputs. This includes what happens if a field is not provided or if it does not line up with the expected answer. This same situation has been seen on other sites where the current password may be required to update the password, but is not actually verified.

These types of stories help remind us to review these types of functions and features within our application. For older applications, it may have been a while since we have touched these features and how they were designed initially is no longer recommended. Take a moment to look back at your account recovery process to make sure it is up to par with your current requirements.

Looking for some help with your application security program? Just want someone to talk to about these types of topics? Reach out to us. We are here to help and offer a wide range of services to help make your day easier. Reach out to james@developsec.com for more information.