Posts Tagged ‘flaw’

And the winner is…

Posted by spaquet on May 19, 2011  |   Comments Off

Sony!

Just four days after the PlayStation Network reopened, Sony has taken down login and password recovery pages for the service following reports they contained a serious flaw that was actively exploited to hijack user accounts.

The vulnerability, which was first reported by UK-based gaming news site Nyleveia.com, required only that an attacker know the date of birth and email address associated with a targeted user’s account… forcing Sony to disable the login pages in order to prevent attacks.

Following the publication of this hack, Sony issued the following statement:

“We temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page. Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved. In the process of resetting of passwords there was a URL exploit that we have subsequently fixed.”

But this blunder raises new doubts about Sony’s ability to secure the PlayStation Network just as the company is trying to regain the confidence of dubious government officials and its 77 million account holders. Sony took down the service on April 20, following the discovery that core parts of its network had suffered a criminal intrusion that stole names, user names, passwords, birth dates, addresses, and other sensitive details of all its users. Company executives have said they can’t rule out the possibility that credit card data was also taken.

The exploit involved the bypass of a digital token system that Sony used when users reset their PSN password. Attackers could carry out the attack by visiting https://store.playstation.com/accounts/reset/resetPassword.action?token and then, in a separate browser tab, opening a different page on us.playstation.com and following Sony’s reset procedure, which required only the date of birth and email address associated with the account.

The attacker would then return to the original tab and, armed with the browser cookie just issued by Sony’s servers, complete an image verification on the page. The attacker would then proceed to a scree allowing him to change the victim’s password.

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Sony PlayStation Network, the final word ?

Posted by spaquet on May 16, 2011  |   Comments Off

About one month after a serious breach in security occurred, exposing more than 77 million users’ personal details, Sony is gradually setting back to operation its PlayStation Network.

According to Kazuo Hirai, the executive deputy president of Sony Corp, Sony is making data protection a top priority.

Let’s hope this time they will.

UP4B offers a wide range of process and network analysis to make sure that your network is protected against what is really important for your business: information leak, network protection (penetration testing,…), network availability and more.

Feel free to contact us for more information on our IT Security services and get your company IT Sec ready.

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Facebook and your privacy, a never ending story

Posted by spaquet on May 10, 2011  |   Comments Off

According to researchers from Symantec, Facebook has leaked access to millions of users’ photographs, profiles and other personal information because of a years-old bug that overrides individual privacy settings.

The flaw, which the researchers estimate has affected hundreds of thousands of applications, exposed user access tokens to advertisers and others. The tokens serve as a spare set of keys that Facebook apps use to perform certain actions on behalf of the user, such as posting messages to a Facebook wall or sending RSVP replies to invitations. For years, many apps that rely on an older form of user authentication turned over these keys to third parties, giving them the ability to access information users specifically designated as off limits.

The Symantec researchers said Facebook has fixed the underlying bug, but they warned that tokens already exposed may still be widely accessible.

While many access tokens expire shortly after they’re issued, Facebook also supplies offline access tokens that remain valid indefinitely. Facebook users can close this potential security hole by changing their passwords, which immediately revokes all previously issued keys.

The flaw resides in an authentication scheme that predates the roll out of a newer standard known as OAUTH. Facebook apps that rely on the legacy system and use certain commonly used code variables will leak access tokens in URLs that are automatically opened by the application host. The credentials can then be leaked to advertisers or other third parties that embed iframe tags on the host’s page.

Facebook over the years has regularly been criticized for compromising the security of its users, which now number more than 500 million. The company has rolled out improvements, such as always-on web encryption, although users still must be savvy enough to turn it on themselves, since the SSL feature isn’t enabled by default.

UP4B offers a wide range of process and network analysis to make sure that your network is protected against what is really important for your business: information leak, network protection (penetration testing,…), network availability and more.

Feel free to contact us for more information on our IT Security services and get your company IT Sec ready.

When third parties are weak

Posted by spaquet on May 8, 2011  |   Comments Off

Few weeks ago (a patch has been release at the time of writing) Skype was offering a nice way for an attacker to get control of OS X computer.

This fully illustrates that how strong the OS can be, there is always a flaw somewhere on the system, and by the way the same vulnerability was not detected on Windows and Linux version of Skype…

This time, Skype was fast to respond and issued a patch, but failed communicating on it so rumors get back on the front scene this week before prompting a strong come back of Skype spokespersons.

Let’s look at the flow more precisely:

First, researchers who found this critical flaw, found it by accident while exchanging via skype piece of program. They noticed that the payload was executing on the remote end of the chat.

After testing on several Skype version on several system they had established more than a proof of concept for that flaw which has not being seen exploited for now

UP4B offers a wide range of process and network analysis to make sure that your network is protected against what is really important for your business: information leak, network protection (penetration testing,…), network availability and more.

Feel free to contact us for more information on our IT Security services and get your company IT Sec ready.