Ovih dana u javnosti pojavila se informacija da je WPA2 protokol probijen, odnosno da ima inherentnu pogreÅ¡ku (“flaw”) koja omogućuje onima koji se inicijalno mogu opravdano autenticirati izvoÄ‘enje Man In The Middle napada. To znači da su ovom ranjivošću pogoÄ‘eni prvenstveno korporativni klijenti – s druge strane, upravo oni su u najvećoj opasnosti jer je poznato da najviÅ¡e napada na računalne sustave dolazi upravo “iznutra”.

Tekst o tome prenesen s prenosi se u cijelosti s Darkneta.

WPA2 Vulnerability Discovered – “Hole 196″ – A Flaw In GTK (Group Temporal Key)

Well as it tends to be, when something is scrutinized for long enough and with enough depth flaws will be uncovered. This time the victim is WPA2 – the strongest protection for your Wi-fi network which is standardized.

WEP fell long ago and there’s a myriad of WEP Cracking tools available. In 2008 it was reported flaws had been found in WPA and it was partially cracked.

These factors of course shifted a lot of people to WPA2, which has now been found to have certain flaws.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time. But wireless security researchers say they have uncovered a vulnerability in the WPA2 security protocol, which is the strongest form of Wi-Fi encryption and authentication currently standardized and available.

Malicious insiders can exploit the vulnerability, named “Hole 196″ by the researcher who discovered it at wireless security company AirTight Networks. The moniker refers to the page of the IEEE 802.11 Standard (Revision, 2007) on which the vulnerability is buried. Hole 196 lends itself to man-in-the-middle-style exploits, whereby an internal, authorized Wi-Fi user can decrypt, over the air, the private data of others, inject malicious traffic into the network and compromise other authorized devices using open source software, according to AirTight.

The researcher who discovered Hole 196, Md Sohail Ahmad, AirTight technology manager, intends to demonstrate it at two conferences taking place in Las Vegas next week: Black Hat Arsenal and DEF CON 18.

It’s a pretty interesting attack and leverages a man-in-the-middle style exploit to decrypt data from the wire and inject malicious packets onto the network.

The researched Md Sohail Ahmad is going to demo the exploit at 2 upcoming conferences (Black Hat and DEF CON 18) so I’ll be looking out for the slides and videos on that. We’ll have to wait and see if this is another ‘mostly theoretical‘ attack – or something that can actually be implemented in the wild.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) derivative on which WPA2 is based has not been cracked and no brute force is required to exploit the vulnerability, Ahmad says. Rather, a stipulation in the standard that allows all clients to receive broadcast traffic from an access point (AP) using a common shared key creates the vulnerability when an authorized user uses the common key in reverse and sends spoofed packets encrypted using the shared group key.

Ahmad explains it this way:

WPA2 uses two types of keys: 1) Pairwise Transient Key (PTK), which is unique to each client, for protecting unicast traffic; and 2) Group Temporal Key (GTK) to protect broadcast data sent to multiple clients in a network. PTKs can detect address spoofing and data forgery. “GTKs do not have this property,” according to page 196 of the IEEE 802.11 standard.

These six words comprise the loophole, Ahmad says.

The upside is that the attack is limited to people who can genuinely authenticate to the network first, the downside that means large organizations using WPA2 in trouble – as generally most damage comes from the inside.

It’s also something to think about when connecting to ISP/public Wi-fi hotspots using WPA2 encryption.

I’m sure there will be more news about this soon.

Apple the new world leader in software insecurity

By Peter Bright |

Apple has displaced Oracle as the company with the most security vulnerabilities in its software, according to security company Secunia. Over the first half of 2010, Apple had more reported flaws than any other vendor. Microsoft retains its third-place spot. Secunia has tracked security vulnerabilities and issues advisories since 2002, producing periodic reports on the state of software. Together, the top ten vendors account for some 38% of all flaws reported.

Though this does not necessarily mean that Apple’s software is the most insecure in practice—the report takes no consideration of the severity of the flaws—it points at a growing trend in the world of security flaws: the role of third-party software. Many of Apple’s flaws are not in its operating system, Mac OS X, but rather in software like Safari, QuickTime, and iTunes. Vendors like Adobe (with Flash and Adobe Reader) and Oracle (with Java) are similarly responsible for many of the flaws being reported.

To illustrate this point, the report includes cumulative figures for the number of vulnerabilities found on a Windows PC with the 50 most widely-used programs. Five years ago, there were more first-party flaws (in Windows and Microsoft’s other software) than third-party. Since about 2007, the balance shifted towards third-party programs. This year, third-party flaws are predicted to outnumber first-party flaws by two-to-one.

Secunia also makes a case that effectively updating this third-party software is much harder to do; whereas Microsoft’s Windows Update and Microsoft Update systems will provide protection for around 35% of reported vulnerabilities, patching the remainder requires the use of 13 or more updating systems. Some vendors—Apple, Mozilla, and Google, for example—do have decent automatic update systems, but others require manual intervention by the user.

(preuzeto u cijelosti s Internet portala, 22.07.2010.)

ÄŒlanak je u cijelosti preuzet s Metro Portal.HR

UPOZORENJE

7 stvari koje ne bismo trebali raditi na Facebooku

Uložite nekoliko minuta i posložite profil koji će jamčiti maksimalnu sigurnost vas i vaše djece

ÄŒasopis “Consumer Reports Magazine” izdao je svojevrsno upozorenje svim korisnicima Facebooka s popisom stvari koje nikako ne bismo smjeli raditi na toj druÅ¡tvenoj mreži:

1. Koristiti lošu lozinku

Izbjegavajte jednostavna imena i pojmove, čak i ako na kraju lozinke koristite brojeve. Umjesto toga, stvorite kombinaciju velikih i malih slova, brojeva i simbola. Dobra lozinka ima najmanje osam znakova. Preporučljivo je koristiti brojeve i simbole u sredini riječi, kao na primjer hO27usEs

2. Ostaviti puni datum rođenja

Datum rođenja može biti važna informacija lopovima da vam isprazne bankovni račun ili prikupe informacije o mogućim PIN-ovima ili lozinkama pošto većina ljudi u njih uključuje brojeve iz vlastitog datuma rođenja. Možete postaviti da vam se prikazuju samo dan i mjesec rođenja ili pak potpuno izostaviti navedenu informaciju s profila.

3. Zanemarivati postavke privatnosti

Za gotovo sve informacije na Facebooku možete kontrolirati što želite dijeliti, a što zadržati za sebe. Uložite nekoliko minuta i podesite postavke privatnosti onako kako vam najbolje odgovaraju.

4. Objaviti imena djece

Ne koristite imena vlastite djece prilikom tegiranja slika te u profilima. Djeca imaju pravo na privatnost i pravo da jednog dana samostalno odluče u kojoj mjeri se žele eksponirati na internetu..

5. Spominjati da niste kod kuće

Status da odlazite na putovanje lopovu je jednak statusu: “Nema me doma, opljačkaj me!”. Doživljaje s putovanja radije podijelite s prijateljima kad ponovno stignete kući.

6. Dopustiti da vas tražilice pronađu

Spriječite nepoznate osobe da pronaÄ‘u vaÅ¡ profil. MeÄ‘u postavkama privatnosti odaberite “Only friends” u odgovarajućoj kućici koja se odnosi na tražilice.

7. Dopustiti djeci da bez nadzora koriste Facebook

Iako Facebook ne smiju koristiti djeca mlaÄ‘a od 13 godina, činjenica je da postoje i mlaÄ‘i korisnici. Postanite njihovi prijatelji te diskretno nadgledajte njihove aktivnosti. Ono Å¡to se djeci čini bezazlenim, može se pretvoriti u potencijalno opasne podatke poput statusa: “Mama se uskoro vraća kući, moram oprati suÄ‘e.”