Title: Google Talk Beta Messenger cleartext credentials in process memory
Affected versions: 1.0.0.64 (this version is believed to be the first one
released to the public)
Vendor contacted: 25/08/05
Patched version released: 29/08/05
Advisory released: 28/11/05
Author: pagvac (Adrian Pastor)
Homepage: www.ikwt.com - In Knowledge We Trust
Advisory URL:
www.adrianpv.com/projects/google-talk-cleartext-credentials-in-process-memory.txt
Description
Google Talk stores all user credentials (username and password) in clear-text
in the process memory. Such vulnerability was found on August 25, 2005 (two
days after the release of Google Talk) and has already been patched by Google.
This issue would occur regardless of whether the "Save Password" feature was
enabled or not.
It was noticed that the Google Talk client was loading all the credentials
unencrypted in the memory of the process "googletalk.exe". It was possible to
recover the password by dumping the process memory to a file with PMDump and
which could then examined with a hex editor.
The vulnerability would allow anyone with access to the client system to obtain
the username and password of the current user. This vulnerability could also be
exploited by fooling the user to execute malicious code which would dump the
memory of the process "googletalk.exe" and then parse the credentials and
finally send them to the attacker.
It is also worth mentioning that sometimes, no direct user interaction is
required for the execution of malicious code. Crackers often exploit
vulnerabilities in web browsers and email clients that allow them to execute
malicious code on the victim's machine without requiring the victim to manually
execute the trojaned executable. This means that given the right scenario, this
vulnerability could have been exploited in such a way.
References
PMDump - http://ntsecurity.nu/toolbox/pmdump/
Free Hex Editor - http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm
Google Talk - http://www.google.com/talk/
