Broken Authentication

Tools and Resources

Session Token Attacks

Session Token Attacks
  • Session tokens should be randomized and not easily guessed.

  • Session tokens should properly track a user.

  • When we capture an authentication process, we can see that there is a set-cookie value for the tokens.

    • Proxy tab -> History

  • We can right click the raw response and send it to Burp Sequencer

    • Start live capture to start generating session tokens

    • After a certain number of tokens it will give a summary of entropy, char level analysis and bit level analysis.

Password-Based Logins

Brute Force Attacks
  • Brute-forcing usernames - Check for any accidental public disclosure, email addresses

  • Brute forcing passwords

  • Username Enumeration

    • Observe changes in the websites behavior depending on input

    • Notice changes in Status Codes, Error Messages, and Response times

Flawed Brute Force Protection
  • Two most common ways to protect: Locking the account and blocking the remote users IP

  • Ip blocking

    • Sometimes can be bypassed by ever so often logging in to a legitimate account

  • Account Locking

    • This approach provides decent protection against specific account, but less so if an attacker is trying to get access to any account they can

    • Example:

      • Create a list of usernames that are likely valid

      • Create a shortlist of passwords. Quantity should match the lockout attempts

      • Use intruder to try each of the passwords with each candidate

  • Credential Stuffing

    • Massive dictionary of username/passwrod pairs

    • Account locking does not protect against this

  • User Rate Limiting

    • In this case, making too many login requests within a short period of time causes your IP address to be blocked

    • Can only be unblocked by: After a certain amount of time, by an admin, by the user after a successful CAPCHA

  • HTTP Basic Auth

    • Authorization: Basic base64(username:password)

    • Easy to decrypt

    • HTTP basic authentication is also particularly vulnerable to session-related exploits, notably CSRF, against which it offers no protection on its own.

MultiFactor Authentication

MFA -mandatory and optional two-factor authentication (2FA) based on something you know and something you have.

Two-Factor Tokens - Many high-security websites now provide users with a dedicated device for this purpose, such as the RSA token or keypad device that you might use to access your online banking or work laptop

Bypassing 2fa

If the user is first prompted to enter a password, and then prompted to enter a verification code on a separate page, the user is effectively in a "logged in" state before they have entered the verification code. In this case, it is worth testing to see if you can directly skip to "logged-in only" pages after completing the first authentication step.

Mind Map: https://www.mindmeister.com/1736437018?t=SEeZOmvt01

Resources

  • The response is

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
...
{"code": false}

Try this to bypass

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
...
{"code": true}

Flawed 2FA logic

Flawed 2FA logic

Other Vulnerabilities

The "Remember me" or "Keep me logged in" feature
  • This is usually set by a persistent cookie

  • If you can obtain or guess the cookie, the login process can be bypassed entirely

  • If the creation of this cookie is based off of simple rules, it cna be guessed or brute forced.

  • Even if the attacker is not able to create their own account, they may still be able to exploit this vulnerability. Using the usual techniques, such as XSS, an attacker could steal another user's "remember me" cookie and deduce how the cookie is constructed from that. If the website was built using an open-source framework, the key details of the cookie construction may even be publicly documented.

Resetting User passwords
  • Sending passwords by email

    • It should go without saying that sending users their current password should never be possible if a website handles passwords securely in the first place. Instead, some websites generate a new password and send this to the user via email. Generally speaking, sending persistent passwords over insecure channels is to be avoided. In this case, the security relies on either the generated password expiring after a very short period, or the user changing their password again immediately. Otherwise, this approach is highly susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Email is also generally not considered secure given that inboxes are both persistent and not really designed for secure storage of confidential information. Many users also automatically sync their inbox between multiple devices across insecure channels.

  • Resetting passwords using a URL

    • A more robust method of resetting passwords is to send a unique URL to users that takes them to a password reset page. Less secure implementations of this method use a URL with an easily guessable parameter to identify which account is being reset

    • An attacker could change the user parameter to refer to any username they have identified. They would then be taken straight to a page where they can potentially set a new password for this arbitrary user.

    • A better implementation of this process is to generate a high-entropy, hard-to-guess token and create the reset URL based on that. In the best case scenario, this URL should provide no hints about which user's password is being reset.

    • However, some websites fail to also validate the token again when the reset form is submitted. In this case, an attacker could simply visit the reset form from their own account, delete the token, and leverage this page to reset an arbitrary user's password.

Password reset poisoning
  • The attacker first enters the victim's username and requests a password reset. They then intercept this request using Burp. If certain headers are supported, the attacker may be able to utilize them to override the hostname for the generated URL. They may even be able to simply change the value of the Host header directly.

  • If the attacker changes the Host to a domain that they control, such as evil-user.net, the victim would then receive an email similar to the following: Dear Dave, It looks like you have forgotten your password. To reset it, please click the link below: http://evil-user.net/password-reset?token=a0ba0d1cb3b63d13822572fcff1a241895d893f659164d4cc550b421ebdd48a8 This would be a genuine email from the website and, importantly, would contain the valid token required to reset this user's password. However, as the URL points to the attacker's website, clicking this link would cause the user to expose their reset token to the attacker. By visiting the real URL with the user's leaked token, the attacker could subsequently reset the victim's password unimpeded.

Changing user passwords
  • Typically, changing your password involves entering your current password and then the new password twice. These pages fundamentally rely on the same process for checking that usernames and current passwords match as a normal login page does. Therefore, these pages can be vulnerable to the same techniques.

  • Password change functionality can be particularly dangerous if it allows an attacker to access it directly without being logged in as the victim user. For example, if the username is provided in a hidden field, an attacker might be able to edit this value in the request to target arbitrary users. This can potentially be exploited to enumerate usernames and brute-force passwords.

User registration sanitization
  • If you can discover a valid username, attempt to create a new user with the same name preceeded by a space

Last updated