RE: username and Password sent as clear text strings

["Shenk, Jerry A" <jshenk () decommunications com>]

I think that sounds like a good solution.  You could even limit the
ipsec communication to only encrypt (allow) traffic to this particular
web server over port 443.

You might want to encrypt traffic over 80 also if the client does and
initial unencrypted connection....I'd vote to just turn off port 80
connections on that box but that's a whole different discussion.

-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
On Behalf Of jfvanmeter () comcast net
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 6:37 PM
To: pen-test () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: username and Password sent as clear text strings

What does everyone think of implementing a IPSEC solution to resolve the
issue that we've all be talking about. The following are the reason I
was thinking of IPSEC:

SSL was designed for client application-to-server application
authentication and encryption. IPsec can be used end-to-end

I think the best scenario would be to implement both AH and ESP,

AH provides data origin authentication and data integrity for the entire
IP packet (with the exception of some fields in the IP header that must
change in transit).

ESP provides data confidentiality, data origin authentication, and data
integrity for the IP payload. ESP with encryption uses an encryption
algorithm (DES or 3DES) to provide data confidentiality, data origin
authentication, and data integrity for the ESP payload.

The reason to implement both AH and ESP is to protect the IP header

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Arian J. Evans" <arian.evans () anachronic com>
> Let me summarize the previous responses and be very clear:
>
> This is how web applications work. All of them.
>
> There is no effectively way to "hash or encrypted" the password
> via client-side scripting. There are ways to do it, but in a web
> application all the code to do this is passed to the client from
> the server, making it pointless.
>
> It is similar to the problem in cryptography of passing the key
> with the message, but worse. It's passing the key, algorithm,
> comments, and message all together. In this type of environment
> it's not possible to do this securely.
>
> Hence the use of SSL for transport-layer security.
>
> Now...that said, some folks use SWFs and Adobe Air and such
> for trying to encrypt data in transit, especially if they are using
> AMF or some binary protocol, but again since everything has to
> be passed to the client it is completely trivial to reverse engineer.
>
> So, again, to conclude:
>
> This is how all web applications on the planet work today by design.
>
> You can reply to this if you would like to ask more questions,
> but unfortunately the SF pen-test list is one of the only ones
> that blocks posts from gmail forwarders so I do not think
> that you will see my post on the actual list.
>
> --
> --
> Arian J. Evans, software security stuff.
>
> I spend most of my money on motorcycles, mistresses, and martinis. The
> rest of it I squander.
>
>
> On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 3:39 AM,  <jfvanmeter () comcast net> wrote:
> > Hello everyone, and I know this might not be the most correct place
to post
> this questions, but I was hoping to get some feedback on what you
think the
> potential risk would be and how this this could be exploited.
> > I completed a security review of a web server, that creates a SSL
connection
> between the cleint and the server. Using WebScarab, I could see that
the
> username and password are sent as clear text strings. The log in to
the server
> requires a administrative account.
> > Do you think there is a large amount of risk, in sending the
username and
> password as a clear text string, since the pipe is encrypted? I was
thinking
> that a man-in-the-middle or sometype of session hijacking attack
could allow
> the account to be compromised.
> >  I'm working on completing the report for my client and was hoping
to get some
> feedback from everyone so I could pose this to them correcly.
> > Thank you in advance --John


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