Broken Authentication and Session Management

OWASP
23/07/2012

Vladimir Polumirac e-mail: v.polumirac@sbb.rs blog: d0is.wordpress.com FB: facebook.com/vpolumirac Twitter twitter.com/d0is

Copyright The OWASP Foundation Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the OWASP License.

The OWASP Foundation

http://www.owasp.org

INTRODUCTION Proper authentication and session management is critical to web application security. Flaws in this area most frequently involve the failure to protect credentials and session tokens through their lifecycle. These flaws can lead to the hijacking of user or administrative accounts, undermine authorization and accountability controls, and cause privacy violations.

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Account credentials and sessions tokens are often not properly protected A third can access to one's account Attacker compromise password, keys or authentication token Risks Undermine authorization and accountability controls Cause privacy violation Identity Theft Method of attack: use weaknesses in authentication mechanism Logout Password Management Timeout Remember me Secret question and account update
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WEB APPLICATION SECURITY

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Authentication
User authentication on the web typically involves the use of a : UserID and Password. Stronger methods of authentication (commercially) Software and hardware based cryptographic tokens or biometrics, but such mechanisms are cost prohibitive for most web applications. A wide array of account and session management flaws can result in the compromise of user or system administration accounts. Development teams frequently underestimate the complexity of designing an authentication and session management scheme that adequately protects credentials in all aspects of the site.
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What are sessions? Part of the art of session management. Storing of data on the server for later. Need a session ID Where to store it?
Cookies Query Strings

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Example Scenario
Login page with UserID/Password. Another page with Welcome, user How does 2nd page know user is logged in? On login.aspx, we write a session object.
Session["Username"] = txtUsername.Text;

And on Page2.aspx, we read the session object.

username = (Session["Username"] ?? "Guest").ToString();

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Cookies The cookie will have

ASP.NET_SessionId:33irkjdmslkjeior9324jkdkj2039

And if we go cookieless, the url will look like:

http://tic.com/(S(33irkjdmslkjeior932))/Page2.aspx

If the attacker can get the cookie or cookieless URL, he can impersonate a logged-in browser.
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Environments Affected All known web servers, application servers and web application environments - are susceptible to broken authentication and session management issues.

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How attackers do it Hackers will intercept the session ID, either from the cookie or the request URL. They then replicate that session ID themselves. URLs are easy; they simply type it into their own browser. Cookies are tougher, but if they can write a cookie or inject the cookie into the HTTP Request header, they can trick the server.

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How to Determine If You Are Vulnerable

Both code review and penetration testing can be used to diagnose authentication and session management problems. Carefully review each aspect of your authentication mechanisms to ensure that user's credentials are protected at all times, while they are at rest (e.g., on disk) and while they are in transit (e.g., during login). Review every available mechanism for changing a user's credentials to ensure that only an authorized user can change them. Review your session management mechanism to ensure that session identifiers are always protected and are used in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of accidental or hostile exposure.
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Protection Avoid cookieless sessions Avoid homegrown authentication schemes Look into IP checking Double-check passwords on certain activities Use SSL (Security Socket Layer) Expire sessions early and often

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Avoiding cookieless sessions

In web.config, set cookieless=False This doesnt completely solve the problem but it makes it a whole lot tougher to crack.
<sessionState cookieless=false" />

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Add IP checking Store the original IP add in session. Add subsequent checks; if the IP from the HTTP header is different, decline to show anything. You can even delete the session itself. If the attacker is behind the same firewall, the public IP may be the same. Similarly, the legitimate surfers ISP may dynamically change the IP address during the session.
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Use SSL with sessions When using SSL, all communications (including cookies) are encrypted. Makes it nearly impossible to directly lift the cookies. Still can be stolen via:
Physical access to cookie store.

So other methods are still needed

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Expire sessions early and often You cant hijack what isnt there! Get rid of sessions quickly.
Set the timeout as small as possible.
<system.web> <sessionState timeout= "8" /> </system.web>

Have a logout button.

Session.Abandon()

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Preventing authentication flaws

- careful planning so important considerations are (conclusion): Implementing a decent audit logging for authentication and authorization controls. Questions?: Who logged on? When? From where? What transactions did the user start? What data was accessed?
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Solution
Only use the inbuilt session management mechanism. Do not accept new, preset or invalid session identifiers from the URL or in the request. Limit or rid your code of custom cookies for authentication or session management purposes, such as remember me Use the session management of the application server. Use a single authentication mechanism with appropriate strength and number of factors. Implement a strong password policy when allowing passwords. Don not allow the login process to start from an unencrypted page. Ensure that every page has a logout link. Logout should destroy all server side session state and client side cookies.
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 Use a timeout period that automatically logs out an inactive session as per the value of the data being protected (shorter is always better) Use only strong ancillary authentication functions (questions and answers, password reset) Require the user to enter the old password when the user changes to a new password Do not rely upon spoofable credentials as the sole form of authentication, such as IP addresses or address range masks, DNS or reverse DNS lookups, referrer headers or similar Be careful of sending secrets to registered e-mail addresses as a mechanism for password resets.

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Resources
1. OWASP
http://www.owasp.org/

2. Top 10 Web Application Security Vunerabilities

http://www.upenn.edu/computing/security/swat/SWAT_Top_Ten_A3.php

3. CodeIdol

http://codeidol.com/community/security/a3-broken-authentication-andsession-management/22604/

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Diskusija

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