Re: Re: yahoo mail login security

["Darren Bounds" <dbounds () gmail com>]

That Google SSL functionality must have just recently been
implemented. Back in December (when I last checked) they were
operating in the same fashion as Yahoo, redirecting clear text after
SSL-based authentication.


On 5/2/06, Damon Leung <bcdnet () myrealbox com> wrote:
> In Gmail, if you start with the url https://mail.google.com, then you stay in https even after authentication.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ace123 <flace9 () gmail com>
> To: "ROB DIXON" <rdixon () workforcewv org>
> Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 11:30:32 +0530
> Subject: Re: yahoo mail login security
>
> 1. Would it then be wise to send the md5 hash over ssl?
>
> 2. Yahoo is not alone in switching to http for email after
> authenticating the user, both hotmail and gmail do the same. One
> reason I can think of why they do this is, the various resources in
> their pages come from different domains (possibly 3rd party) and they
> can't ask for all of them to do SSL. Do you know of any other reasons?
>
> 3. The cookie names these guys use are very tricky, there are usually
> many cookies and it is not clear why of them represents the session,
> so that we can take that cookie, set it in our browser and check out
> other's email. Ofcourse, it might be possible to set all the cookies
> that we see there, but I have not tried that. Has anyone done any
> research on what each of the cookies is used for, in
> yahoo/hotmail/gmail?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> On 5/2/06, ROB DIXON <rdixon () workforcewv org> wrote:
> > exactly
> >
> > Robert L. Dixon,  CHFI
> > State of West Virginia's
> > West Virginia Office of Technology
> > Infrastructure Applications
> > Netware/GroupWise Administrator
> > Telephone: (304)-558-5472 ex.4225
> > ------------------------------------------
> > If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked.
> > What's more, you deserve to be hacked.
> > -- former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke
> > >>> "Matt Fisher" <mfisher () spidynamics com>  >>>
> > Don't they revert back to HTTP after auth anyhow ?
> > Protect my credentials all you want, but if you give up my email on the
> > wire(less) I'm switching regardless.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ROB DIXON [mailto:rdixon () workforcewv org]
> > Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 3:51 PM
> > To: flace9 () gmail com; vanderaj () greebo net
> > Cc: webappsec () securityfocus com
> > Subject: Re: yahoo mail login security
> >
> > If you are capturing the form submission via MITM then would SSL not be
> > just as trivial via Cain and Able.\
> >
> > Granted it would be obvious since the SSL cert would appear to be
> > invalid, but not everyone is that savy.
> >
> > Robert L. Dixon,  CHFI
> > State of West Virginia's
> > West Virginia Office of Technology
> > Infrastructure Applications
> > Netware/GroupWise Administrator
> > Telephone: (304)-558-5472 ex.4225
> > ------------------------------------------
> > If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked.
> > What's more, you deserve to be hacked.
> > -- former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke
> > >>> Andrew van der Stock <vanderaj () greebo net>  >>>
> > Several reasons:
> >
> > 1. MD5 does protect the password... as long as it is salted
> > correctly. Unsalted MD5 hashes are trivially breakable using rainbow
> > attacks, and are unsuitable for most uses (despite heavy usage by
> > many programs in exactly this fashion).
> >
> > 2. Replay attacks on public networks. Capturing the form submission
> > (trivial without SSL) would allow an attacker to replay the
> > conversation and log on as the identity without any issues
> >
> > 3. MD5 is provably weak as a hash - see the work of Wang et al:
> >
> > http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/199.pdf
> >
> > 4. Javascript on the client is not a trusted environment. Minimizing
> > the trust of security weak components is a good design goal.
> >
> > 5. SSL is cheap. A certificate costs less than $100 these days and
> > solves many of these issues.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> >
> >
> > On 30/04/2006, at 5:55 PM, Ace123 wrote:
> >
> > > Clicking on "Why this is secure" link on the yahoo login page gives
> > > this:
> > >
> > > "Yahoo! now submits your ID and password securely via SSL (Secure
> > > Sockets Layer) encryption. This means that your personal information
> > > is more secure every time you sign in.
> > >
> > > In the past, Yahoo! used a challenge-response mechanism to protect
> > > passwords using MD5. Passwords were scrambled using a one-way hash, so
> > > that they could not be converted to clear text."
> > >
> > >
> > > What could be the reasons why yahoo changed their login security
> > > mechanism?
> > >
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--

Thank you,
Darren Bounds

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