Category Archives: Application Security

SSL Certificate High-Level Best Practices

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SSL certificates are an essential part of online security. They protect websites against hackers who try to steal information such as credit card numbers and passwords. In addition, they ensure that customers trust the site and its content.

Almost 50% of the top one million websites use HTTPS by default (they redirect inquiries of HTTP pages to URLs with HTTPS). (comodosslstore.com)As such, even pages that don’t deal with confidential data are being deployed using SSL. The underlying certificates to power the encryption are available from a variety of commercial providers, and even the pro-bono resource https://letsencrypt.org. No matter where you get your certificate from, here are a few resources for high-level best practices.

Trust Your Certificate Provider

Since certificates provide the basis for the cryptography for your site, their source is important. You can find a trustworthy list of providers for certificates here. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-ssl-certificate-provider. Beware of commercial providers not found on this list, as some of them may be sketchy at best, or dangerous at worst. Remember, the Let’s Encrypt project above is also highly trusted, even though they are not a commercial firm.

Manage Versions and Algorithms

Make sure you disable SSL and TLS 1.0 on the server. That version has known vulnerabilities. If possible, and there are no impacts on your users, consider removing 1.1 and 1.2 as well. 1.3 fixes a lot of the known issues with the protocol and supports only the known secure algorithms.

In cryptography, cipher suites play an important part in securing connections by enabling encryption at different levels. You shouldn’t be using an old version of a cryptographic protocol if there’s a newer one available; otherwise, you may put your site’s security at risk. Using secure cipher suites that support 128-bit (or more) encryption is crucial for securing sensitive client communications.

Diffie Hellman Key Exchange has been shown to be vulnerable when used for weaker keys; however, there is no known attack against stronger keys such as 2048-bits. Make sure you use the strongest settings possible for your server.

Manage and Maintain Certificate Expiration

As of Sept. 1, 2020, Apple’s Safari browser will no longer trust certificates with validity periods longer than 398 days, and other browsers are likely to follow suit. Reducing validity periods reduces the time period in which compromised or bogus certificates can be exploited. As such, any certificates using retired encryption algorithms or protocols will need to be replaced sooner. (searchsecurity.techtarget.com)

Maintain a spreadsheet or database of your certificate expiration dates for each relevant site. Make sure to check it frequently for expiring certificates to avoid user issues and browser error messages. Even better is to use an application or certificate management platform that alerts you in plenty of time to upcoming certificate expirations – thus, you can plan accordingly. Best of all, if possible, embrace tools and frameworks for automating certificate management and rotation – that makes sure that you are less likely to have expiration issues. Most popular web frameworks now have tools and plugins available to perform this for you.

Protect Your Certificates and Private Keys

Remember that your certificate is not only a basis for cryptography, but is also a source of identification and reputation. As such, you need to make sure that all certificates are stored properly, securely and in trusted locations. Make sure that web users can’t access the private certificate files, and that you have adequate back up and restore processes in place.

Make sure that you also protect the private keys used in certificate generation. Generate them offline, if possible, protect them with strong passwords and store them in a secure location. Generate a new private key for each certificate and each renewal cycle.

Revoke your certificate or keys as quickly as possible if you believe they have been compromised.

Following these best practices will go a long way to making your SSL certificate processes safer and more effective. Doing so protects your users, your reputation and your web sites. Make sure you check back with your certificate provider often, and follow any additional practices they suggest.

 

 

 

 

Preparing for the End of SMS Authentication

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Over the last several years, wealth management/asset management firms have been integrating their systems with banking, trading and other financial platforms. One of the largest challenges wealth management firms face, from a technology standpoint, is managing multi-factor authentication when connecting to the accounts of their clients. In the coming year to eighteen months, this is likely to get even more challenging as SMS-based authentication is phased out. 

Today, many financial web sites, applications and phone apps require the use of SMS one-time security verification codes to be sent via text to the user. This usually happens once the user has entered their login and password to the system, after which it triggers the credential to be sent to their mobile phone number on record. The user then inputs this code into a form on the system and it is verified, and if correct, allows the user to proceed to access the application. This is called two factor authentication/multi-factor authentication (“MFA”) and is one of the most common mechanisms for performing this type of user authorization.

The problem with this mechanism for regulating sign ins to applications is that the method of sending the code is insecure. Attackers have a variety of means of intercepting SMS text messages and thus defeating this type of authentication. Just do some quick Google searches and you’ll find plenty of examples of this attack being successful. You’ll also find regulatory guidance about ending SMS authentication from a variety of sources like NIST and various financial regulators around the world. 

The likely successor to SMS text message authentication is the authenticator app on user mobile devices and smartphones. These authenticator apps reside in encrypted storage on the user’s phone and when prompted, provide a one-time password (“OTP”) just like the code sent in the text message. The difference is, through a variety of cryptographic techniques, once the application is setup and  the settings configured, it doesn’t need to communicate with the financial platform, and thus is significantly more difficult for attackers to compromise. Indeed, they must actually have the user’s device, or at the very least, access to the data that resides on it. This greatly reduces the risk of interception and mis-use of the codes in question, and increases the security of the user’s account with the financial institution.

This presents a significant problem, and opportunity, for wealth management firms. Transitioning their business processes from integrating with SMS-based authentication to authenticator apps can be a challenge on the technical level. Updates to the user interaction processes, for those firms that handle it manually, usually by calling the user and asking for the code, are also going to be needed. It is especially important, for these manual interactions, that some passphrase or the like is used, as banks, trading platforms and other financial institutions will be training their users to NEVER provide an authenticator app secret to anyone over the phone. Attackers leveraging social engineering are going to be the most prevalent form of danger to this authentication model, so wealth management firms must create controls to help assure their clients that they are who they say they are and train them to resist attackers pretending to be the wealth management firm. 

Technical and manual implementations of this form of authentication will prove to be an ongoing challenge for wealth management firms. We are already working with a variety of our clients, helping them update their processes, policies and controls for these changes. If your organization has been traditionally using SMS message authentication with your own clients, there is even more impetus to get moving on changes to your own processes. 

Let us know if we can be of service. You can reach out and have a no stress, no hassle discussion with our team by completing this web form. You can also give us a call anytime at 614-351-1237. We’d love to help! 

All About Credit Union Credential Stuffing Attacks

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Credential stuffing attacks continue to be a grave concern for all organizations worldwide. However, for many Credit Unions and other financial institutions, they represent one of the most significant threats. They are a common cause of data breaches and are involved in some 76% of all security incidents. On average, our honey nets pretending to be Credit Union and other financial services experience targeted credential stuffing attacks several times per week. 

What Is Credential Stuffing?

“Credential stuffing occurs when hackers use stolen information, such as usernames and passwords from database breaches or phishing software from one account, and attempt to gain access to another. The hackers prey on people’s habit of using the same usernames and passwords for multiple sites. Using automated tools, they run large amounts of stolen information across multiple sites looking to find the same usernames and passwords being used elsewhere. Once they find a match, they can monetize the personal and financial information they gather.” (ardentcu.org)

How Common is Credential Stuffing?

Beyond our honey nets, which are completely fake environments used to study attackers, credential stuffing and the damage it causes is quite starteling. Here are some quick facts:

  • It is estimated that automated credential-stuffing attempts makes up 90% of enterprise login traffic in the US. (securityboulevard.com)

  • It’s estimated that credential stuffing costs companies more than $5 billion a year and creates havoc with consumers. (ardentcu.org)

  • According to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report on credential stuffing, its customers alone were deluged by 30 billion malicious login attempts between November 2017 and June this year, an average of 3.75 billion per month. (theregister.com)

  • Significant credential stuffing attacks are a favorite of professional hacking groups from Russia, India, Asia and Africa. They often gather extensive lists of stolen and leaked credentials through advanced Google hacking techniques, by combing social media for password dumps (so called “credential spills”) and by purchasing lists of exposed credentials from other criminals on the dark web. Lists of member information from compromised online banking, online retailers and business association sites are common. This information often includes names, addresses, bank account numbers/credit card numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers and other sensitive data – enabling credential stuffing and social engineering attacks against victims around the world.

What Can Credit Unions Do About Credential Stuffing?

The key to handling this threat is to be able to prevent, or at the very least, identify illicit login attempts and automate actions in response to failed logins. Cybercriminals use a variety of tools, rented botnets (including specifically built credential stuffing bots) and brute force attacks to pick off less than strong passwords all around the Internet. Then, as we discussed above, they use that stolen information to probe your credit union for the same login credentials. 

The first, and easiest step, in reducing these cybercriminals’ success rate is to teach all of your legitimate users not to use the same password across multiple systems, and NEVER use passwords from public sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter for example, as account credentials at work or on other important sites. Instead, suggest that they use a password manager application to make it simple to have different passwords for every site. Not only does this help make their passwords stronger, but it can even reduce support costs by reducing password reset requests. Ongoing security awareness is the key to helping them understand this issue and the significance their password choices have on the security of their own personal information and that of the company.

Next, the Credit Union should have a complete inventory of every remote login service, across their Internet presence. Every web application, email service, VPN or remote access portal and every single place that a cybercriminal could try or use their stolen credentials to gain an account takeover. Once, the Credit Union knows where login credentials can be used, they should go about preventing abuse and cyberattacks against those attack surfaces. 

The key to prevention should start with eliminating any Internet login capability that is not required. It should then progress to reducing the scope of each login surface by restricting the source IP addresses that can access that service, if possible. Often Credit Unions are able to restrict this access down to specific countries or geographic areas. While this is not an absolute defense, it does help to reduce the impacts of brute force attacks and botnet scans on the login surfaces. 

The single best control for any authentication mechanism, however, is multi factor authentication (MFA) (basically a form of secure access code provided to the user). Wheverever possible, this control should be used. While multi factor authentication can be difficult to implement on some services, it is widely available and a variety of products exist to support nearly every application and platform. Financial services should already be aware of MFA, since it has been widely regulated by FFIEC, NCUA and FDIC guidance for some time.

More and more, however, credential stuffing is being used against web mail, Office 365 and other email systems. This has become so common, that a subset of data breaches called Business Email Compromise now exists and is tracked separately by law enforcement. This form of unauthorized access has been wildly popular across the world and especially against the financial services of the United States. Compromised email addresses and the resulting wire transfer fraud and ACH fraud that stems from this form of credential theft/identity theft are among some of the highest financial impacts today. Additionally, they commonly lead to malware spread and ransomware infections, if the attacker can’t find a way to steal money or has already managed to do so.

No matter what login mechanism is being abused, even when MFA is in place, logging of both legitimate access and unauthorized access attempts is needed. In the event that a security breach does occur, this data is nearly invaluable to the forensics and investigation processes. Do keep in mind, that many default configurations of web services and cloud-based environments (like Office 365) have much of this logging disabled by default. 

While Credit Unions remain prime targets, having good prevention and detection are a key part of strong risk management against credential stuffing. Practicing incident response skills and business recovery via tabletop exercises and the like also go a long way to stengthening your security team’s capabilities.

How Can MicroSolved Help?

Our team (the oldest security firm in the midwest) has extensive experience with a variety of risk management and security controls, including helping Credit Unions inventory their attack surfaces, identify the best multi factor authentication system for their environment, create policies and processes for ensuring safe operations and performing assessments, configuration audits of devices/applications/cloud environments. 

We also scope and run custom tabletop exercises and help Credit Unions build better information security programs. Our team has extensive experience with business email compromise, wire/ACH/credit card fraud prevention, cybercriminal tactics and incident response, in the event that you discover that credential theft has occurred. 

Lastly, our ClawBack data leak detection platform, can help you watch for leaked credentials, find source code and scripts that might contain reuseable account credentials and even hunt down device configurations that can expose the entire network to easy compromise. 

You can learn more about all of our services, and our 28 years of information security thought leadership here.

Lastly, just reach out to us and get in touch here. We’d love to talk with your Credit Union and help you with any and all of these controls for protecting against credential stuffing attacks or any other cybersecurity issue.

WARNING: Migrate Windows Server 2003 Immediately

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Believe it or not, we still get queries from a few utility companies that have operational processes locked on Windows Server 2003 as a platform. Most of the time, these are legacy applications associated with some form of ICS device or data management system that they have not been able to afford to replace.

Windows 2003 Server end-of-life searches are still among the most popular searches on our StateOfSecurity.com blog, receiving more than 200 queries most months. Keep in mind, this is an operating system that patches haven’t been released for since 2015. According to Spiceworks, an online community for IT professionals, the Windows 2003 Server operating system still enjoys a market share of 17.9%, though we could not validate the time frames of their claim.

But, just in the last year or so, we have seen it alive and well in natural gas, energy and the communications infrastructures, both foreign and domestic. So, we know it is still out there, and still being used in seemingly essential roles.

I’m not going to lecture you about using a system that is unmatched for 5 years. That’s just common sense. Instead, what I am going to do is make three quick suggestions for those of you who can’t get rid of this zombie OS. Here they are:

1. Install a firewall or other filtering device between the legacy system and the rest of your environment. This firewall should reduce the network traffic allowed to the system down to only specifically required ports and source addresses. It should also restrict all unneeded outbound traffic from the device to anything else in the network or the world. The device should be monitored for anomalies and security IOCs.

2. If the hardware is becoming an issue, as well, consider virtualizing the system using a modern virtualization solution. Then apply the firewalling above. Server 2003 seems to be easily virtualized and most modern solutions can handle it trivially.Hardware failure of many of these aging systems is their largest risk in terms of availability.

3. Eliminate the need AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Even with the firewalling and filtering, these systems have high risk. You might also consider if you can migrate portions of the services from Windows 2003 to a more recent system or platform. This isn’t always possible, but everything you can move from Windows 2003 to a supported OS is likely to let you crank down your filtering even more.

Lastly, if you’re still trapped on Windows 2003, make sure you review this every quarter with the application owners and management. Keep it on their mind and on the front burner. The sooner you can resolve it, the better. 

If you need more help or advice on risk mitigation or minimization, get in touch. We’d love to help! Just email us at info@microsolved.com and we can connect.

EDI – The Often Overlooked Critical Process in Utilities

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EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is an often forgotten underpinning of many utility companies, even though many of its functions are likely to be critical to the operation. In many states, EDI is a mandated operation for commercial bill pay and meter reading data exchange with third party services. In fact, between the Gas Industry (GISB) and North American Energy (NAESB) Standards Boards, a substantial set of requirements exist for industry use of EDI.

Data

While EDI exists as a specific set of functions for exchanging digital data, it is often managed through third party applications and networks. These operations carry several different threat models, from disruption of service and outages that impact the data availability, to tampering and compromise of the data in transit. As such, it is essential that utilities have performed business function and application specific risk assessment on EDI implementations.

Additionally, many of our clients have performed EDI-focused penetration testing and technical application assessments of their EDI translators and network interconnects. Some clients still utilize a Value Added Network (VAN) or other service provider for EDI transmissions, and MSI can work with your VAN to review their security program and the configuration of your interconnections to ensure maximum security and regulatory compliance.

Lastly, our team has been very successful doing tabletop incident response and disaster recovery/business continuity exercises involving modeling EDI outages, failures and data corruption. Impacts identified in these role playing exercises have ranged from critical outages to loss of revenue.

If you’d like to learn more about our EDI services and capabilities, give us a call at 614-351-1237 or drop us a line at info@microsolved.com. We’d love to talk with you about our nearly 30 years of experience in EDI, information security and critical infrastructure.

 

 

 

It’s Dev, not Diva – Don’t set the “stage” for failure

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Development: the act, process, or result of developing, the development of new ideas. This is one of the Merriam-Webster definitions of development.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it…dev, development, stage, test. Software applications tend to be in flux, and the developers, programmers, testers, and ancillary staff need a place to work on them.

Should that place be out on the internet? Let’s think about that for a minute. By their very nature, dev environments aren’t complete. Do you want a work in progress, with unknown holes, to be externally facing? This doesn’t strike me as the best idea.

But, security peeps, we HAVE to have it facing the internet – because REASONS! (Development types…tell me what your valid reasons are?)

And it will be fine – no one will find it, we won’t give it a domain name!

Security through obscurity will not be your friend here…with the advent of Shodan, Censys.io, and other venues…they WILL find it. Ideally, you should only allow access via VPN or other secure connection.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, here’s a short list of SOME of the things that MSI has found or used to compromise a system, from an internet facing development server:

  • A test.txt file with sensitive information about the application, configuration, and credentials.
  • Log files with similar sensitive information.
  • .git directories that exposed keys, passwords, and other key development information.
  • A development application that had weak credentials was compromised – the compromise allowed inspection of the application, and revealed an access control issue. This issue was also present in the production application, and allowed the team to compromise the production environment.
  • An unprotected directory that contained a number of files including a network config file. The plain text credentials in the file allowed the team to compromise the internet facing network devices.

And the list keeps going.

But, security peeps – our developers are better than that. This won’t happen to us!

The HealthCare.Gov breach https://www.csoonline.com/article/2602964/data-protection/configuration-errors-lead-to-healthcare-gov-breach.html in 2014 was the result of a development server that was improperly connected to the internet. “Exact details on how the breach occurred were not shared with the public, but sources close to the investigation said that the development server was poorly configured and used default credentials.”

Another notable breach occurred in 2016 – an outsourcing company named Capgemini https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7qp8/open-database-exposes-millions-of-job-seekers-personal-information exposed the personal information of millions of job seekers when their IT provider connected a development server to the internet.

The State of Vermont also saw their health care exchange – Vermont Connected – compromised in 2014 https://www.databreachtoday.asia/hackers-are-targeting-health-data-a-7024 when a development server was accessed. The state indicates this was not a breach, because the development server didn’t contain any production data.

So, the case is pretty strongly on the side of – internet facing development servers is a bad idea.

Questions? Comments? What’s your take from the development side? I’d love to hear from you – lwallace@microsolved.com, or @TheTokenFemale on Twitter!

If you would like to know more about MicroSolved or its services please send an e-mail to info@microsolved.com or visit microsolved.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because you know it’s all about them apps, ’bout them apps…

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Know thyself – Socrates

I ran across this link last week, from SANS, and it’s one of the better basic checklists I’ve seen for application security. With all due respect to OWASP, their information is more technical, and useful for practitioners – their testing guide is here. For the CIO level crowd, I’d highly recommend a look at their top 10 for 2017. And a serious nod to Bill Sempf – if you haven’t heard his talk about care and feeding of developers in the security space, go find it!

Since this missive was designed to have pretty pictures and convince you to send your developers to the SANS courses listed, it’s a nice start for security practitioners that may need to work with developers, but aren’t 100% versed in application security. Some of this info is more basic than OWASP’s, as well – which does not diminish it’s importance. Let’s talk about what they list here, and why it’s important.

Error handling and logging:

Don’t display the specific error messages generated by your programs/architecture, and don’t allow unhandled exceptions – both of these items can display information about the underlying architecture of your application. Attackers can leverage this information and any associated vulnerabilities to compromise the application. If the user creates a condition that generates an error, offer them enough information to fix the problem – nothing more, nothing less.

Don’t allow specific framework errors…”the X program says you broke Y variable” – suppress them. Allowing these errors discloses potentially useful information about the framework and architecture to attackers.

Log all the things! Log authentication attempts – successful or not. Log privilege changes – successful or not. Log all administrative activity, or administrative attempts. Log any and all access and access attempts to sensitive information.

Log all the things….except when you don’t. Don’t log sensitive information. Log the admin attempts, but not admin passwords. Don’t log any information that falls under HIPAA, PCI, or other regulatory spheres.

Store logs securely. Plain text in an internet facing share? Not the world’s best idea. Encrypt, secure, and protect against data loss and tampering. If you have a data retention policy, make sure that logs are included and the policy is followed.

Data Protection:

Turn ON HTTPS, turn OFF HTTP. The same URL should not be accessible via HTTP. Get your HTTPS certificates from a respectable CA – no self-signed certificates. Accepting them is bad practice, and you run the risk of the impression that you haven’t done your due diligence, AND of conditioning your users to bypass this simple security measure.

Disable weak ciphers. Don’t wait for the 4,732 vulnerability, and don’t argue that these vulnerabilities are difficult to exploit. The NEXT one might not be. Get your SSL sanitization house in order.

Don’t allow auto-complete. Yes, some browsers will ignore things – their bad practices shouldn’t be used to justify your bad practices.

Avoid storing user info. Tokenize when possible. If you have to store password, encrypt, salt, spindle, mutilate and fold. There’s no such thing as TOO safely here.

Operations:

Have a consistent, repeatable process for…application development, testing, change control. Include security requirements at the beginning of the design – don’t try to shoehorn them in after the fact.

Review, review, review. Code reviews. Design reviews. Security testing – as you go, not at the end. Harden the environment per best practices.

Train your developers on security! Work as partners, not as the guys who make stuff and those security guys that always say no.

Have an incident response plan. TEST your plan, evaluate your plan, use your plan. Do not wait til something DOES happen to discover the holes in your plan. Keep your plan updated, as staff contacts and responsibility changes. Do disaster recovery exercises.

Authentication:

Hard coded credentials. Don’t. Just don’t. But I need to because….no. You do not. There are safer ways to do this.

Have a strong password policy. Have a strong password reset – do not accidentally disclose things like the validity of an account via the password reset mechanism. Do have a password lockout policy – unlimited attempts is an invitation to a brute force attack.

Again, make sure your error messages aren’t handing valuable information to attackers.

Run applications and middleware with the least privilege required. Database passwords are gold – do not put them in code. Guard them. But I need to because…again, you do not. Do it right, don’t do it over.

Session management:

Put a logout button on every page. Every. Page. Then, invalidate the session once they’ve logged out – no back button resumption of the session.

Randomize your session tokens, so that they are not vulnerable to predictive attacks. Regenerate them as user permissions change. Unless the application requires multiple connections – and you have a legitimate need to DO this – destroy tokens in multiple sessions. Don’t leave yourself open to session cloning.

Cookies. And not the chocolate chip kind. Set the domain and path correctly. Use secure cookie attributes, and expire cookies as appropriate.

Log users out automatically on reasonable idle periods. Implement an absolute logout – there are few, if any, legitimate reasons to be logged in forever.

Input & Output handling:

Whitelist over blacklist. Only accept data that meets the criteria for your application.

Validate, validate, validate. Validate uploaded files – consider all uploads as suspect, and sandbox accordingly. Validate input sources.

Follow the OWASP recommendations, many detailed in the link above, for input, output, and safe transport.

Access control:

Apply access controls consistently. Use “gate keeper” technology, so that all requests are validated and verified, whether the user is logged in or not.

Don’t allow unvalidated forwards or redirects. This gives an attacker potential capability to access content without authentication.

Least privilege rules. Make access control mandatory, don’t elevate rights when you don’t absolutely need to. Don’t use direct object references to validate access.

There’s a lot more than I’ve include here….don’t understand these? Need more info? Talk to your developers. Buy ’em a burger. Buy ’em a beer. Become the guy who listens, and attempts to understand….not the jerk that always says no. If you make an honest effort to understand them, and to help them understand you, you’ll both be better for the attempt.

Got a development war story? Got a good development story? Please reach out – @TheTokenFemale on Twitter. Let’s keep the conversation going.

Drupal Security Best Practices Document

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This is just a quick post to point to a great guide on Drupal security best practices that we found recently. 

It was written for the Canadian government and is licensed under the Open Government License platform. 

The content is great and it is available free of charge. 

If your organization uses Drupal, you should definitely check it out and apply the guidance as a baseline! 

Pointers for Mobile App Certificate Pinning

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We often get questions about Certificate Pinning in mobile applications. Many clients find the issue difficult to explain to other teams.

You can find really great write ups, and an excellent set of source code examples for fixing this issue – as well as explaining it – at this OWASP.org site.

At a super high level though, you basically want your mobile application to validate the SSL certificate of the specific server(s) that you want it to talk to, and REJECT any certificates that do not match the intended server certificate – REGARDLESS of whether or not the underlying OS trusts the alternative certificate.

This will go a long way to hardening the SSL communication streams between the app and the server, and will not permit easy interception or man-in-the-middle attacks via a network provider or hostile proxy server.

Updates to the app source code are needed to mitigate the issue, and you may need to update apps in the app stores, depending on the way your app is delivered.

As always, if you work with MSI on mobile app security reviews or application-specific penetration testing, we would be happy to demonstrate the attacks and suggested mitigations for any identified issue. Just let us know if you would like assistance.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope your team finds this useful.

Sometimes, It Happens…

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Sometimes things fail in interesting ways. Sometimes they fail in dangerous ways. Occasionally, things fail in ways that you simply can’t predict and that are astounding.

In a recent assessment of a consumer device in our lab, we found the usual host of vulnerabilities that we have come to expect in Internet of Things (IoT) devices. But, while testing this particular device, which is also tied to a cloud offering for backup and centralization of data – I never would have predicted that a local device would have a full bi-directional trust with a virtual instance in the cloud.

Popping the local device was easy. It had an easy to compromise “hidden” TCP port for telnet. It took my brute force tool only moments to find a default login and password credential set. That’s pretty usual with IoT devices.

But, once I started poking around inside the device, it quickly became apparent that the device configuration was such that it tried to stay continually connected to a VM instance in the “cloud storage and synchronization” environment associated with the device and vendor. How strong was the trust? The local device had mount points on the remote machine and both systems had full trust to each other via a telnet connection. From the local machine, simply telnet to the remote machine on the right port, and without credential check, you have a shell inside the cloud. Not good…

But, as clear of a failure as the scenario above was, the rabbit hole went deeper. From the cloud VM, you could see thousands of other VMs in the hosted cloud environment. Connect from the VM to another, and you need the default credentials again, but, no sweat, they work and work and work…

So, from brute force compromise of a local piece of consumer hardware to a compromise of thousands of cloud instance VMs in less than 30 minutes. Ugh… 

Oh yeah, remember that storage centralization thing? Yep, default credentials will easily let you look through the centralized files on all those cloud VMs. Double ugh…

Remember, I said bi-directional? Yes, indeed, a connection from a VM to an end-point IoT device also works with assumed trust, and you get a shell on a device with local network visibility. Now is the time you kinda get sick to your stomach…

These kinds of scenarios are becoming more common as new IoT devices get introduced into our lives. Yes, the manufacturer has been advised, but, closing the holes will take a complete redesign of the product. The moral of this story is to pay careful attention to IoT devices. Ask questions. Audit. Assess. Test. There are a lot of bad security decisions being made out there in the IoT marketplace, especially around consumer products. Buyer beware!