Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in processmemory
From: Brian Dessent <brian () dessent net>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:51:43 -0800
Kurt Grutzmacher wrote:
Just stop keeping our secrets laying around in the "open." That's all we ask.
In my opinion this is not a very effective thing to rally against. The operating system already presents a means to protect against one process snooping on the other, as has already been pointed out elsewhere in this thread. If this sort of attack is a concern then you should be urging the user to not run as administrator. There are a number of resources on how to do this, it is far from impossible: <http://nonadmin.editme.com/> and <http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron%5Fmargosis/> are two. The fact is that if you get to the point where you A) can run code on the target's computer and B) that code has sufficient privileges to read another process's memory, then you've already lost, it's too late. Trying to mitigate things at that point is just re-arranging deckchairs. Even if the target program scrambles the password in memory, it by definition has to use the password in cleartext at some point (otherwise it would have no need for it in the first place) and so the attacking program could use a number of methods (like dicking around with process or thread priorities to create a race condition, using the debug API, using the hooks API, intercepting window messages, etc) to read the process's memory at the moment that it had the password in cleartext. As you yourself point out, there are a very large number of programs that don't bother to try to obfuscate cleartext secrets in their own process memory, because they realize it's just not their problem to deal with. Fixing all of them would be nearly impossible. From a cost/benefit analysis, which is more effective: Using the operating system's built-in protection which works for all processes, or trying to convince every Tom, Dick, and Harry that has ever written a throwaway shareware app that they need to make some change? It's whack-a-mole. Brian _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory, (continued)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Jaroslaw Sajko (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory 6ackpace (Nov 29)
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- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory pagvac (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory 6ackpace (Nov 29)
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- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory pagvac (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Stelian Ene (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Jaroslaw Sajko (Nov 29)
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- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Jaroslaw Sajko (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Nasko Oskov (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Jaroslaw Sajko (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Georgi Guninski (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in process memory Kurt Grutzmacher (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in processmemory Brian Dessent (Nov 29)
- Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in processmemory Kurt Grutzmacher (Nov 30)
- Re: Re: Google Talk cleartext credentials in processmemory pagvac (Nov 29)