oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications
From: Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac () debian org>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:56:24 -0700
On jeu., 2012-08-09 at 11:19 -0700, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
Hi list, I'm currently at the Usenix Security 2012 conference, where there was a nice paper about randomness vulnerabilities in PHP applications. I invite you to read the paper[1] but in summary, a lot of PHP applications make false assumption about the true randomness of the core PHP random functions and it might lead to attacks, for example using the “password reset” features. Paper authors tried to port this to PHP security team, but it seems the answer was that it was an application problem. Some examples are given in the paper, but I have no idea where exactly the vulnerabilities really lie. The various rand() functions used by application developers might just not hold up to the expectations, or the developers might just don't know that they should use a cryptographically secure random function. In any case, I guess some discussion might be needed on how to really fix those vulnerabilities, and here seems like a good place. I've just added the two papers authors to CC:, but it might be interesting to bring PHP security team and applications developers in the loop.
ven., 2012-08-10 at 09:57 -0700, Aggelos Kiayias wrote: Hi Yves-Alexis -
my student George Argyros brought the below to my attention - (but I have not received any e-mail myself - )
Sorry, I tried to add you to CC: of the initial mail but it seems I failed
thanks for taking this initiative - I think it is important to find the optimal way to resolve these problems and relying on web application developers to have the expertise to
resolve
these problems on their side is totally unrealistic.
To be honest, I don't have any position on this. I was merely forwarding your work to raise awareness on this list, but I have no idea what's the correct way to move forward. Regards, -- Yves-Alexis
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Current thread:
- Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Yves-Alexis Perez (Aug 09)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Yves-Alexis Perez (Aug 10)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Solar Designer (Aug 22)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Solar Designer (Sep 14)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Josh Bressers (Sep 17)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Raphael Geissert (Sep 17)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Daniel Kahn Gillmor (Sep 17)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Kurt Seifried (Sep 17)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications George Argyros (Sep 20)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Solar Designer (Sep 22)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Vladimir Vorontsov (Sep 23)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications George Argyros (Sep 27)
- Re: Randomness Attacks Against PHP Applications Solar Designer (Sep 14)