7 ms·
HSTS wouldn't help users clicking through warnings, but it's a good thing to have (myetherwallet doesn't use HSTS). CAA record would only help in remaining TTL
by bklyn11201 8y ago
HSTS wouldn't help users clicking through warnings, but it's a good thing to have (myetherwallet doesn't use HSTS).
CAA record would only help in remaining TTL. Once expired, then it doesn't matter.
So yeah, these seem like decent steps to help protect but certainly not going to 100% prevent an attack like this one.
- DividableMiddle 8y agowait, myetherwallet doesn't use HSTS? I thought they had a vulnerability analysis done a few months ago. I feel like this should have been something that was caught.
- Cshelton 8y agoWow, that's scary. I even told someone recently, jokingly of course, they forgot to add HSTS for their mvp app. But MEW doesn't have HSTS? I would never use it personally on a public Wifi, but many people will for sure and they have no idea they'd be MITM'd.
- tekstar 8y ago> But MEW doesn't have HSTS? I would never use it personally on a public Wifi, but many people will for sure and they have no idea they'd be MITM'd. Even without HSTS a bad actor would have to either trick a user to install a root cert or trick a certificate authority to generate a cert for the domain. Both of these are possible and have happened in the past, but they're also are a requirement for the attack you mention that you seemed to have completely forgotten about.
- C4K3 8y agoNo they wouldn't, without HSTS a bad actor (public wifi) could just do an SSL strip attack. Sure, observant users would notice that the page isn't over https, and with browsers adding warnings on all http pages, that'll become more obvious, but it's still not something most people notice. Are you thinking of HPKP?
- tekstar 8y agoah, yes, I was confusing HSTS with HPKP. Now I need to re-read the whole thread with this context. Thanks for the correction!
- f2n 8y ago>HSTS wouldn't help users clicking through warning Actually it would have! Chrome and possible other browsers do not allow clicking throw certificate validation issues on sites with HSTS. For example, try to get to https://badssl.finn.io https://badssl.finn.io in Chrome.
- cft 8y agoSorry how does that help if the attackers purchase a new "valid" SSL certificate since they control the DNS and thus email?
- f2n 8y agoIt does not help for that scenario, but it forces the attackers to jump through another hoop, and publish that a new cert was issued for the domain.
- rocqua 8y agoOnce you control DNS, it doesn't require email, you can just use lets-encrypt. The lets-encrypt verification does not check HSTS. Makes sense because it keeps HSTS from the lockout scenario that makes HPKP so scary.
- cft 8y agoIs it possible to get a TLD registrar to set a very short TTL like 5min on your NS record? Then you can switch to a backup DNS hosted on another network fast.
- rocqua 8y agoYes, you can set a short TTL on your NS record, but that would not keep this attack from hijacking your site. This attack intercepts the clients DNS lookup, so the DNS a browser is talking to is ill-behaved. No amount of correct setup here will work because the ill-behaved DNS server will just replace your setup with whatever that server wants. There is no strong defense against this as a website. With an app the solution would be certificate pinning. You could try HPKP but that comes with a host of issues and I think it is being deprecated.
- C4K3 8y agoI'm seeing HSTS on https://www.myetherwallet.com/ https://www.myetherwallet.com/ curl -I https://www.myetherwallet.com/ strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload
- pfg 8y agoPresumably that's fairly new. The domain hasn't made it on the HSTS preload list shipped by browsers yet, so my guess would be they started using HSTS in response to this attack.