(Note: the following is not a plug, but a reference). In the new book from
Syngress, The Mezianic Agenda-Hacking the Presidency, by Dr. Herbert H. Thompson
Spyros Nomikos, the ficitious security expert is annoyed by a blowheart who is
pushing a new "uncrackable" authentication system. In the end, the guru finds
he is not doing ANY checking on the server, so he executes a cmd shell on the
MSSQL server and rewrites the homepage for about how much of a fool he is. (My
opinion: so far great reading on the book).
This speaks to the overall security controls needed for web applications and
the secured storage of the logon information. If the overall controls break
down, it does not matter if you have a minimum of 24 characters for passwords,
the password will be there for the taking. (Note: I like 24 character passwords
:-) )
Regards,
Shirkdog
Security Information
http://www.shirkdog.us
-----Original Message-----
From: simon@xhz.ca [mailto:simon@xhz.ca]
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 9:47 PM
To: webappsec@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: new opensource security system product launched]
Importance: Low
why stop with user id and password.
look at other levels of authentication.
lets go beyond user id and password and look at other uses for this
authentication method
Like ask for personnal information?
You can google for websites, forums and newsgroups, even mailing lists can
be googled, and if you are the target of a hacker, the hacker will do his
detective work and find all the information; wife's name, children's names,
dog's name, date of marriage, and so on...
There was a good document I read some time ago that explained the power of
Google for detective work like this, if I find it I'll post it in this
thread (if the discussion is still around this topic).
And beside personnal info, what could you ask for, a second password? Hey
lets have a username and four password of 8 chars each!
The problem is much more in the user's hand. He will put his password in
some file which can be read by spywarez, friends, friends of friends, he
might even disclose the pass to a friend of his, by email! There is no way
at the auth level to be more secure than ask for a user&pass, anything more
is fancy and useless. The only thing that will be good is to enforce a
strong password policy, to force users to change it (and while doing so, why
not educate them on the importance of not disclosing personnal info!).
And if your users are intelligent, then you don't need anything more, they
will not tell their password and their password will contain letters and
numbers, capitals, punctuation and so on...
Simon
--
Simon Lemieux (Simon@Xhz.ca)
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