RE: Cookies as the second factor

["Matt Fisher" <mfisher () spidynamics com>]

I'm skeptical of any activities like this occurring on the client, and
greatly scrutinize them when testing.

I once did a .mil that never sent the pw over the wire; it sent a hash
instead.  Sounds okay at first blush, but in reality the hash became the
new password; they were fooling themselves. 

Call me old-fashioned, call me conservative, risk-adverse,
non-progressive, whatever you want ... two factor to me (at this point
in time) doesn't include client side tricks. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Rogan Dawes [mailto:discard () dawes za net] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 11:54 AM
To: Robin Wood
Cc: Jeff Robertson; webappsec () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Cookies as the second factor

Robin Wood wrote:
> Javascript could be used to generate the cookie which is then passed
> back to the server with each request. This would save having to make
> sure a value was posted or passed on the query string on each request.
>
> Don't have time to think about how good this would be for
> authentication but I think techincally it can be done.
>
> Robin

That is actually quite an interesting approach to using a session 
identifier.

On the positive side, it means that you never send your password to the 
server. Depending on how clever your client-side javascript is, you may 
not even need to store the clear-text password on the server side (for 
verification purposes)

On the down side, it might expose you to session fixation attacks.

Regardless, I'd say that that cookie would then qualify as "something 
you know", rather than "something you have", since it is created based 
on your username and password.

Regards,

Rogan

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