Researchers last week introduced a new penetration-testing tool that makes it possible to capture poorly encrypted Web session data -- such as cookies and HTML parameters. Now they say they're looking into how similar attacks against Web applications can be used to advance attacks against Web-facing databases with sloppy encryption-key deployment.. Demonstrated this spring at Black Hat Europe and officially released last week, the Padding Oracle Exploit Tool (Poet) takes advantage of and automates a side-channel attack called a Padding Oracle Attack, which was introduced to the cryptographic community in 2002. This attack leverages commonly used cryptographic padding oracles that receive cipher text, decrypts it, and replies to the sender whether the padding is valid or invalid. The attack is carried out if attackers can intercept padded messages encrypted in CBC mode, effectively gaining access to encrypted information without a key. "What happens in Web apps is that it is very common for the programmer to send something encrypted to the client/Web browser [and] not to share it with the client, just to store it for some time like cookies, [which] is a perfect scenario to implement what is called 'chosen cipher text attacks,' where the cipher text is modified and [sent] again to the Web application," says Juliano Rizzo, who together with Thai Duong developed Poet. "Poet should help to show that is not easy to implement cryptography correctly, [and] attacks that could look theoretical are very practical and dangerous." The link for this article located at Dark Reading is no longer available. . In today’s digital landscape, the Poet serves as a tool for capturing weakly encrypted data, raising major concerns about web application security and privacy risks. Padding Oracle Attack, Web Application Security, Penetration Testing. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Citibank is trying to get an order in the High Court today gagging public disclosure of crypto vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities mean that bank insiders can almost trivially find out the PINs of any or all customers. The discoveries happened while Mike and I were working as expert witnesses on a `phantom withdrawal' case.. . .. Citibank is trying to get an order in the High Court today gagging public disclosure of crypto vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities mean that bank insiders can almost trivially find out the PINs of any or all customers. The discoveries happened while Mike and I were working as expert witnesses on a `phantom withdrawal' case. We present an attack on hardware security modules used by retail banks for the secure storage and verification of customer PINs in ATM (cash machine) infrastructures. By using adaptive decimalisation tables and guesses, the maximum amount of information is learnt about the true PIN upon each guess. It takes an average of 15 guesses to determine a four digit PIN using this technique, instead of the 5000 guesses intended. In a single 30 minute lunch-break, an attacker can thus discover approximately 7000 PINs rather than 24 with the brute force method. With a $300 withdrawal limit per card, the potential bounty is raised from $7200 to $2.1 million and a single motivated attacker could withdraw $30{50 thousand of this each day. This attack thus presents a serious threat to bank security. The link for this article located at cyptome is no longer available. . Citibank is trying to get an order in the High Court today gagging public disclosure of crypto vulne. citibank, trying, order, court, today, gagging, public, disclosure, crypto, vulne. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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