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Viewing posts tagged Authentication Attacks

Google search reveals private Telstra customer data

A man googling for some information on SMS carrier access codes stumbled upon private Telstra customer data. The data could be used to authenticate a user to the phone company, allowing account take-over.  There appears to be a pattern:

UGa breach, "Secret Questions" and blaming the user

The University of Georgia announced an intrusion and a breach of 8,500 personnel records including full names, social security numbers and other data.  The attackers apparently reset the passwords of two IT workers who had access to personnel records using the password reset mechanism - they guessed or discovered the answer to secret questions.  "Secret questions" are an incredibly weak authentication mechanism.  We will likely see many more breaches like this.

I know something that isn't two-factor authentication

William Edwards wrote a post entitled "I know someone whose 2-factor phone authentication was hacked…" about a friend whose bank account was drained by fraudsters. His bank relied on a dial-back system. The attackers social-engineered BT to re-route the phone calls. This attack is eerily similar to the recent attack on Cloudflare, which started with an attack on an AT&T account.

More on the Security of Software Tokens

A long time ago, I had a blog post discussion with Securology about the security of software tokens. Since then there has been a massive shift away from hardware-based tokens. A recent post on sensepost about cloning RSA software tokens will rekindle this discussion. Indeed, this morning I discussed it on twitter with boB Rudis and Rafal Los

Single-site browser

Read Jeremiah Grossman's post about "A Single-Site Browser’s impact on XSS, CSRF, and Clickjacking".  The benefits of using a Single-Site Browser are clear: reduced risk of XSS, CSRF and Clickjacking.  So, why isn't every bank in the world and every user of SSL-VPNs not deploying single-site browsers?

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