WebApp Sec mailing list archives

Re: Are client side certificates good enough against phising?


From: Marc-André Laverdière <marc-andre () atc tcs com>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:17:15 +0530

Hello,

In a MITM attack, the attacker can do pretty much anything. The client
certificates wouldn't save you.

Marc-André Laverdière
Software Security Scientist
Innovation Labs, Tata Consultancy Services
Hyderabad, India

On Saturday 05 February 2011 01:55 AM, Marcel Constantopulos wrote:
Hi,

This is my first post on the list, and I'm very happy that I've found you.
I was wondering if the client side certificates are good enough
against phishing.

Can an attacker use what he receives from the victim to impersonate as
the victim?

I do not know exactly how the client-server authentification works, I
assume that the web-server asks for the client to have the certificate
by asking it to sign one random sequence of numbers/text, and then the
server authenticates the client with the client's public key.

If the above is true, I guess that a hacker/thief would initiate first
the comunication from the server, and then pass on the request to the
victime, and afterwards using what he receives from the victime to
authenticate himself against the server.

It might be a bit simplistic the way I think, cause I do not have that
much experience with SSL. I know a bit about the SSL handshake...

Thank you,
Marcel



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