What login screens reveal

This picture was sent to us by Flo just a couple of days ago. Thanks buddy, keep being that active! What it shows is a company's desktop background. We don't have much more information on that but we can tell from experience that you find such screens a lot more often than you would think.
Administrators in big companies tend to use the desktop background to include detailled information on (most likely server) systems they use. This if of course helpful if you do a lot of remote work and don't wanna accidentally reconfigure a wrong server. However, as practical as it might be for admins, as practical is it for remote (or even local) attackers.

There is some information anonymised on this picture, but I'm sure you get that there are a lot of questions that can be answered just by looking at this picture. You can probably derive the server's role in the network from its hostname. IP address info gives you more knowledge about the network - how a local user could connect or in which address space the servers reside in. You get information about which domain the server belongs to and even get alrady a valid administrator username! You don't have to do any OS recon anymore, do you? Just start preparing your exploints right away. And if you are not sure if a DoS attack would be viable - just have a short look at its cpu, memory, volumes and free space.

Decide yourself if you wanna give all this information to strangers in your network, but probably you do better with increasing the awareness of your admins.

Information disclosure classic

A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours on a train which by chance lead me to the following information disclosure classic. The person in front of me did some work on his notebook and obviously was not aware that someone might be watching. He was editing a cooperation aggreement that of course showed the involved parties on its first page and allowed me to read some details.

I googled the companies (mostly in the field of smoke detectors and facility management) and from what I saw, they are not really "big players". But I am pretty sure a lot of large companies also fail in protecting their internal information in these situations. A simple screen privacy filter would have done the job. :-)

Insecure Key Switch and Full Mailbox

Being very active we got another hint from Flo, who shot the following two pictures during a physical assessment. He posted those pictures on his own blog dosbartjones.org, so we will just keep his text and pictures in original and wanna refer to his own blog entry at this point. Thanks for your contribution to the project, Flo. 

Easy access to your mailbox

This image has been taken while performing a physical security assessment and shows the vulnerability of a stuffed mailbox. This mailbox has not been emptied in a while and can easily be accessed by outsiders. It was not even necessary to pick locks.

 

Insecure key switch

The following image displays an insecure key switch. This switch in particular controls the access to a company building. Although an attacker might try to break the lock, a screwdriver is everything one would need to gain entry.

Police in Paris probably doesn't have ISO 27001 in place

It is already three years ago that Flo was wandering through the streets of Paris. Thanks to him that he didn't forget to send us his observations from this tour through the city of love. The pictures he sent us have nothing to do with love, though.

What he discovered was this police station in the heart of the city. It looks quite fine at first, but an expert eye probably instantly sees what is wrong in this picture.

 

Chapter 9.2.3 "Cabling Security" of ISO 27002 states: "Power and telecommunications cabling carrying data or supporting information services should be protected from interception or damage."

I agree that the cable coming from inside the building, hanging just besides the video camera near the entrance is in a height that a 1,60 m tall woman or man cannot instantly catch it and get some data or video feeds. But, letting this cable reside on a nevertheless easy to reach position outside of the building is definitely a breach according to the above stated paragraph in ISO 27002.

So we might come to the conclusion that the police in Paris has not implemented ISO 27001 in their information security system. Probably they have, but then they should probably re-think their security strategy.

Making logout a bit more complicated

An established and most often applied design principle in the field of web application security is to provide users with a logout button on every page of an application. Ideally, this button is always in the same place so that users can leave the application with one click on a defined spot. Making logout as simple as possible and having users actually using the logout function leads to the prevention of a number of possible attacks. Cross-site request forgery, session hijacking or just someone using the same computer and thereby getting access to the session are a few examples.

However, some popular platforms seem to prefer making logout a bit more complicated. Google Mail and Facebook are just two examples:




As you can see, logout needs at least two clicks, which might leads to a decrease of the total number of users actually using the logout button. While this leads to a decrease in security, it also leads to an increase of privacy problems.

Popular platforms want your session to be established as long as possible, in order to be able to track which web sites you use and gather as much information about a person as possible. Social media plugins like the Facebook like button just come in handy in this process, as third party cookies and of course your current IP address are visible to the respective platforms when you access external sites with these plugins integrated. So long, happy tracking!

Android lock screen

If you have an Android mobile phone, you probably already use the lock screen functionality that makes you enter an unlock code or draw an unlock pattern each time you want to use the phone. If you don't, you should. Otherwise, contact details or personal messages can be stolen within seconds, if you leave your mobile unattended. Other people may also make long distance calls or send unwanted messages to your contacts.

Android offers the functionality to unlock your mobile by drawing a pattern on the touch screen. This is generally faster than typing an unlock code again and again. Connect the dots shown on the screen in the correct order to draw your pre-defined pattern and you are done.


On the other side, using a touch screen always leaves some traces of your fingers. If you do not use your mobile extensively after the unlock (and thereby blurring your traces), attackers may be able to reconstruct your unlock pattern.

Even though taking photos of the finger traces did not lead to satisfying results, you generally get the idea: tilt the mobile against your next best source of light and see what you can reconstruct. Click on the photos to enlarge them.


But keep in mind: using the Android lock screen with a draw pattern instead of an unlock code is still way better than using no lock functionality at all.

Sometimes attackers just have to listen

This story happened yesterday in a bank just near my place. A woman, approximately 55 years old, entered the bank and went up to the friendly guy behind the desk to get some cash. Her voice was louder than the everage and therefore good to understand.

Woman (W): "I lost my company's money somewhere. I can't find it anymore - don't know where I put it."

Man (M): "You should probably just have another look at home, it will be somewhere around."

W: "Yes, sure it will be - I always hide it behind one of the big containers at home - under the doormat. I will have a look at there later on."

The man looked confused and so did a couple of other people, who were standing in the same room. The bank assistant grinned for short, but tried to explain her to speak in a low voice and that she should have a look at different places where she puts the money usually. But the woman was not going to stop.

W: "I think, it has to be under the container. I also put my wallet there, this time."

At this point a man, standing behind the woman already the whole time interrupted: "Sorry lady, but you should stop talking about your secret places in your own interest."

But once again the womand didn't want to listen:
"Ah...nobody knows where I am living. And I am going home afterwards to look for it. Just doing groceries before that."

Eventually, the woman left the bank and my friend, who was standing on the other side of the room, called me to tell me what he had just experienced. The story is true and is an awkward reminder of security awareness. But there is also a good side of this story. It also points out that security is already in everybody's mindset when it comes to topics like this - except for the woman, of course. And security measures, like not talking about sensitive information, can get a very natural part of their lives. A man even took action to shut her up, how often do we see an employee reminding colleagues about keeping company secrets?