3 ms·

Even if that's the case, though, that actually only mitigates the least problematic issue here (namely, how the passwords are stored on Pandora's end). At least

by aiiane 14y ago

Even if that's the case, though, that actually only mitigates the least problematic issue here (namely, how the passwords are stored on Pandora's end). At least the stored passwords there are behind other forms of security - so regardless of whether they're stored in plaintext or hashed on Pandora's servers, it'd still take an actual breach of Pandora's servers to retrieve them. The real, major issue here is the fact that passwords are loaded into an HTTP-served page and displayed back to the user. It doesn't matter how it happens behind the scenes - the fact that someone can do either of the following is still majorly problematic: 1. Walk up to a computer you're logged into and read your plaintext password. 2. Inject scripts into the main (non-HTTPS) Pandora page and read it out of the DOM. If they did go to the trouble of saving the password into local storage with encryption, one has to wonder what they were thinking, given that it's a lot of effort for a solution that's far less secure than the trivial effort of just storing hashed passwords.

peterwwillis 14y ago
The fact that someone could physically break into your machine to steal your Pandora password is extremely problematic? I'd hate to see your write-up once somebody knocks over the carton of milk... If they used an HMAC and the secret is stored locally, aside some some sort of JavaScript/browser exploit, it's more secure than a non-MAC cryptographically hashed password, and much more secure than the plaintext password you submit in your browser to log into almost every website in the entire world. This Pandora password is just visible to you on your computer. If you're worried about that, please don't have a heart attack, but they have these things called malware now ...
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > The fact that someone could physically break into your machine to steal your Pandora password is extremely problematic? I'd hate to see your write-up once somebody knocks over the carton of milk... For users that use the same few passwords everywhere, it could well be a problem.
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    My reply to that argument here: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4551852 http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4551852
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Blame the user is a bankrupt strategy. Maybe you can deflect the blame, but it does nothing to keep the black hats at bay. In essence, you are admitting you are wrong. (Clearly passwords period are broken for use by non geeks, but that is another can of worms.)
      - peterwwillis 14y ago
        It's not anyone's fault but yours if you reuse a password. But now the straw men will come out of the woodwork, declaring that password reuse is somehow a good thing. All this shit started because someone who does not understand security thought it was horrible that a local program might store a password locally in plain text. There are a billion local programs that store passwords in a reversible way. Know why? Because sending a non-mac password is the same if it's hashed or not. Blame whoever you want to blame, I don't care. But don't tell me Pandora is responsible for the total security of every moron on the internet, either.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        > But don't tell me Pandora is responsible for the total security of every moron on the internet, either. Real security needs to work, even without the education and cooperation of "every moron on the internet" or it isn't going to work. Implementing systems that don't work in the face of this is just failing, then pointing fingers.
cbsmith 14y ago
1) No matter what they do, if someone walks up to a computer that you're logged in to, they have a very good shot at getting your plaintext password (there's a distinct chance it's in a memory buffer somewhere). With a minor bit of effort, they can get access to any future password you use. This is a basic principle of security for anything other than MAC style security systems (and even then...) 2) I think there is a very real risk there, but of course, unless they use HSTS (and therefore always HTTPS) everywhere, there is a risk of this. Even if they use HSTS (which isn't broadly supported in browsers yet), almost no-one checks TLS certificates for man-in-the-middle attacks. In short: the man-in-the-middle attack risk is always a risk unless the user takes extraordinary efforts. They could do more to mitigate it, but it'd undoubtedly have some seriously negative user experience consequences. It seems like a very high bar to hold Pandora to given the nature of their service. If you are going to hold them to that standard, you might want to start with a more significant target like say.... the Apple Store.
- aiiane 14y ago
  Re #1: There's still a matter of degree, however - this takes zero technical knowledge and zero external tools, works on every platform that Pandora runs on, and requires maybe 5 seconds of time. Re #2: Again, it's a difference of degree. Invalid TLS certs will at least give a browser warning that a user isn't used to seeing (in modern browsers), cluing them in that something might be up. Sure, some users might bypass it anyway, but there's at least some tip-off. Furthermore, there's no reason why the password needs to be in the DOM past the login page, which can easily be served over full HTTPS with no user experience impact. Yes, that can still fall prey to session hijacking if you don't use HTTPS for the rest of the site, but session hijacking doesn't give you passwords that you can use to go break into other sites.
  - cbsmith 14y ago
    #1: You know what also requires zero technical knowledge and zero external tools and requires maybe 5 seconds of my time? Typing in a new password for the account and clicking "save". #2: It needn't be an invalid TLS cert. It could be a valid TLS cert pointing to another domain. The browser provides no warning and you only notice it if the check the domain is different from the one you expect. Watch out for domains that are only different because they use a funky character that looks like the one you are expecting.
jarrett 14y ago
Very true! And here's a realistic attack scenario: Malorie goes to the coffee shop/train station/airport terminal and sets up a public wifi network. The network--be it provided by a laptop hotspot or a router with custom software--is programmed to intercept request/response cycles as follows. Every response, except those that are part of Malorie's attack, is replaced with a redirect to Pandora's settings page. Some fraction of users will have a Pandora login cookie, which means they'll see the page. Further, every response for the Pandora settings page gets a <script> tag of Malorie's creation. The JS reads the value attributes of the password and email fields and sends them to Malorie's server. Malorie then has a bunch of email/password combos. A lot of users will have reused that same combination on many different sites. Quite possibly their email accounts too, which would facilitate even more account takeovers via password reset emails. So now Malorie can steal entire online identities. From people who reuse passwords, anyway. To protect against this and many other attacks, everyone should avoid reusing passwords. A password manager, such as the excellent 1 Password, is the most practical solution.

by aiiane 14y ago

peterwwillis 14y ago

The fact that someone could physically break into your machine to steal your Pandora password is extremely problematic? I'd hate to see your write-up once somebody knocks over the carton of milk... If they used an HMAC and the secret is stored locally, aside some some sort of JavaScript/browser exploit, it's more secure than a non-MAC cryptographically hashed password, and much more secure than the plaintext password you submit in your browser to log into almost every website in the entire world. This Pandora password is just visible to you on your computer. If you're worried about that, please don't have a heart attack, but they have these things called malware now ...

stcredzero 14y ago
> The fact that someone could physically break into your machine to steal your Pandora password is extremely problematic? I'd hate to see your write-up once somebody knocks over the carton of milk... For users that use the same few passwords everywhere, it could well be a problem.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  My reply to that argument here: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4551852 http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4551852
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Blame the user is a bankrupt strategy. Maybe you can deflect the blame, but it does nothing to keep the black hats at bay. In essence, you are admitting you are wrong. (Clearly passwords period are broken for use by non geeks, but that is another can of worms.)
    - peterwwillis 14y ago
      It's not anyone's fault but yours if you reuse a password. But now the straw men will come out of the woodwork, declaring that password reuse is somehow a good thing. All this shit started because someone who does not understand security thought it was horrible that a local program might store a password locally in plain text. There are a billion local programs that store passwords in a reversible way. Know why? Because sending a non-mac password is the same if it's hashed or not. Blame whoever you want to blame, I don't care. But don't tell me Pandora is responsible for the total security of every moron on the internet, either.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        > But don't tell me Pandora is responsible for the total security of every moron on the internet, either. Real security needs to work, even without the education and cooperation of "every moron on the internet" or it isn't going to work. Implementing systems that don't work in the face of this is just failing, then pointing fingers.

cbsmith 14y ago

1) No matter what they do, if someone walks up to a computer that you're logged in to, they have a very good shot at getting your plaintext password (there's a distinct chance it's in a memory buffer somewhere). With a minor bit of effort, they can get access to any future password you use. This is a basic principle of security for anything other than MAC style security systems (and even then...) 2) I think there is a very real risk there, but of course, unless they use HSTS (and therefore always HTTPS) everywhere, there is a risk of this. Even if they use HSTS (which isn't broadly supported in browsers yet), almost no-one checks TLS certificates for man-in-the-middle attacks. In short: the man-in-the-middle attack risk is always a risk unless the user takes extraordinary efforts. They could do more to mitigate it, but it'd undoubtedly have some seriously negative user experience consequences. It seems like a very high bar to hold Pandora to given the nature of their service. If you are going to hold them to that standard, you might want to start with a more significant target like say.... the Apple Store.

aiiane 14y ago
Re #1: There's still a matter of degree, however - this takes zero technical knowledge and zero external tools, works on every platform that Pandora runs on, and requires maybe 5 seconds of time. Re #2: Again, it's a difference of degree. Invalid TLS certs will at least give a browser warning that a user isn't used to seeing (in modern browsers), cluing them in that something might be up. Sure, some users might bypass it anyway, but there's at least some tip-off. Furthermore, there's no reason why the password needs to be in the DOM past the login page, which can easily be served over full HTTPS with no user experience impact. Yes, that can still fall prey to session hijacking if you don't use HTTPS for the rest of the site, but session hijacking doesn't give you passwords that you can use to go break into other sites.
- cbsmith 14y ago
  #1: You know what also requires zero technical knowledge and zero external tools and requires maybe 5 seconds of my time? Typing in a new password for the account and clicking "save". #2: It needn't be an invalid TLS cert. It could be a valid TLS cert pointing to another domain. The browser provides no warning and you only notice it if the check the domain is different from the one you expect. Watch out for domains that are only different because they use a funky character that looks like the one you are expecting.

jarrett 14y ago

Very true! And here's a realistic attack scenario: Malorie goes to the coffee shop/train station/airport terminal and sets up a public wifi network. The network--be it provided by a laptop hotspot or a router with custom software--is programmed to intercept request/response cycles as follows. Every response, except those that are part of Malorie's attack, is replaced with a redirect to Pandora's settings page. Some fraction of users will have a Pandora login cookie, which means they'll see the page. Further, every response for the Pandora settings page gets a <script> tag of Malorie's creation. The JS reads the value attributes of the password and email fields and sends them to Malorie's server. Malorie then has a bunch of email/password combos. A lot of users will have reused that same combination on many different sites. Quite possibly their email accounts too, which would facilitate even more account takeovers via password reset emails. So now Malorie can steal entire online identities. From people who reuse passwords, anyway. To protect against this and many other attacks, everyone should avoid reusing passwords. A password manager, such as the excellent 1 Password, is the most practical solution.