Hi gang,
On recent consulting gig, I came across what I think is a
potential vulnerability and wanted to see how crazy my thinking is.
Without mentioning the exact place or piece of software because
of NDAs, here is the basic scenario.
The tool stores the hex version of the remote access password in
a field that is visible to the end user. The default setting of
the software is that if you enter ASCII into the field, it will
calculate the hex version and display it. At this site the sys
admins have decided that this is not a user settable field so
once set the user can not change it except with the help of an
admin. There is also no policy in place to require periodic
password changes.
Also every user in the entire enterprise has this field visible
in their LDAP address information that anyone in the company can
access at any time. The address info also contains the user name
for logging onto the network. The password for remote access
appears to be the same as the password for logging onto the
machine even when it it not connected to the domain.
Next, trial versions of the software are available that still
have the default setting where the user can enter any password
and the hex value will be shown. As to the password algorithm
itself, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it uses an IV
that changes for every password that is entered, but that would
be easy to check with the trial version. What research I've done
says that it is derived from AES128 and it is a fixed field
length. There is more than a bit of security by obscurity at play
here.
So it seems to me this is vulnerable to a know text attack: i.e.,
enter "known password 1" get back "hex value 1", etc. By hand it
would take a while to build a list of equivalences, but I assume
that a clever perl hacker, which I'm not, could code a widget
that would automate this, taking a common dictionary such as from
Cain & Abel, John the Ripper or some such, and fairly quickly
build a list of password/hex pairs. With this list in hand an
insider bent on industrial espionage could find the weak
passwords of sys admins and logon as them and do whatever
nefarious deeds they wish.
My questions are: A) is this as vulnerable as it seems at first
blush? B) how many password/hex pairs would be needed to deduce
the underlying algorithm?, C) If one could deduce the algorithm,
could the attack be generalized so that it could be used against
other enterprises that use the same software? (It is very(!)
widely deployed), and D) am I missing something in my thinking?
Thanks,
Allen
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