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Boarding Pass Hacker Targets Bank of America
Concerned Customer writes "The fake boarding pass guy is at it again. His blog shows a demonstration phishing website that is able to bypass the SiteKey authentication system used by Bank of America, Fidelity, and Yahoo. Users will be shown their security image, even though they're not visiting the authentic websites." This hack compounds the study showing that users don't pay attention to the SiteKey pictures anyway.
This is the loophole that we use in our demonstration. Through deceit, we convince the user to enter her security question, and thus get the SiteKey image.
No matter what kind of security system you devise, you cannot take out the human element. The Internet seems like magic to people - it knows them, it knows things about them, people can find them from all over the planet. The average user is not curious enough to learn how this is accomplished, paranoid enough to distrust anything at first glance, or savvy enough to protect themselves. Bank of America is kidding itself if it thinks the SiteKey is any kind of deterrent to a hacker.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
All of my financial websites (bank, credit cards, etc.) have all gone to "two-factor" authentication.
Most often, the second factor is "security questions", like "what city were you born in?" and "what's your favorite restaurant?" I always answer these with random passwords, which I put in my password safe along with the real password. Unless you do that, these are actually less secure than just having a secondary password, because others can find out that stuff.
I know every business wants to do this cheaply and half-assed; it's the American Business Way. To do it "right" would probably take SecurID's or somesuch other token, which would get ugly for the customer after accumulating a couple of dozen different ones.
I've heard in comments here about banks that send you a list of code numbers, one-time-use, in the postal mail, and you use them up as you log in. That would be a good, cheap way to do two-factor that actually increases security.
The core problem of online banking is that the bank has to implicitly trust an untrustworthy system, using insecure protocols. The bank has no way to verify that the system used at the other end has not been tampered with and they cannot verify that the data sent to them is identical with the data entered by the user.
You can implement a billion "security features", it won't mean jack as long as the only channel between bank and user is the computer. If that channel has been corrupted, the corrupter will be able to alter, delete or forge any kind of information either side should (in his opinion) get about the other end. There is no way to remove this problem unless you open a second, secure channel which is independent of the machine used for bank transfers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think the BoA sitekey is definitely one step above username/password on the front page. However, I agree that while it provides an added SENSE of security, it can make people trust something more that they really can't trust any more. When it was released, I did almost exactly what this guy did just to see if it would work. I was not terribly surprised that I could create a wrapper to retrieve the sitekey picture and words while still intercepting the passcode. It was actually pretty easy. Unlike the study about the people who ignored their sitekey, I do pay attention to it. However, I also pay attention to whether I'm really on BoA. I never go there from a link in an email. While someone could still redirect my request for BoA to somewhere else, I also practice safe browsing practices that at least limit that potential issue on MY computer. The convenience of online banking is just too high for me to NOT use it.
He's pointing out that most of the psychological reassurances (the security blankets, we might ball them) that are presented to customers/consumers/flyers/etc... are just that--psychological reassurances.
We'd better be careful. This kid is dangerous. He could dismantle our entire society! Wait to see what happens when he points out that money is fictitious.
The summary is not quite correct. It's not so much that the SiteKey is being bypassed, as that the attacker is able to get their hands on the user's SiteKey. They can only do this by getting the user's password and security code, which they do with a conventional man-in-the-middle attack. Once they've got that, getting the SiteKey seems the least of their worries.
The obvious problem with SiteKey is the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the image to the server in the first place. There's some step where you're communicating in a fashion where you trust the server enough to give them your SiteKey, which they later show back to you. It's tied to a single computer, via a cookie, so if you log in from a different computer you need to send a new SiteKey or get them to send yours back to you, on the new computer.
So this attack only works if you can get the user to give up not only the password but also the "security question" (one of the dumbest bits of security I've ever seen; it's like a password only you can look it up.) Easy enough, if the user isn't alert (and they usually aren't.)
SiteKey depends on users to expect the key image, but the absence of the image doesn't usually trigger warning bells because they're not very common. You need some sort of phishing detector which says, "Hey, this site is known to require a SiteKey and isn't sending it to you."
I wish banks would offer something like SecurID for authenticating with their site. They seem to be in the process of adding on layers and layers of crap, without adding any actual security. I'd rather have a couple dozen secure IDs over having to carry around half a dozen one-time-pads around. Ideally, you'd only need one securID for each account. Which for most people is probably 3. Chequing, Savings, Credit Card. If you have more accounts than that, you're probably in the minority. I guess i'm not of the crowd that has 7 credit cards though. I have 1, and It's accepted just about everywhere. So I don't have a need for more than 1. I'd rather have a couple extra dongles hanging from my keychain than having to worry about someone hacking my account. I'd happily pay for the SecurID if only the option were available.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Why don't the banks just require that the referrer to a login page be blank. Yes, this would mean that the login page would have to be either on the main page or very simple to type since the only way a (normal) user will have a blank referrer will be to type the url in.
Essentially this means that banks would be requiring everyone to physically type (or bookmark) their banks login page and that would be the ONLY way to get there. I suppose it could be modified to accept a referrer of the banks own domain so you could click a "Login Here" button.
I know power users can spoof their referrer using a browser setting and malware could do the same, but at least that would be another layer. What am I missing here?
!hoD
Looking at what banks can do to improve security:
- Stop putting the "lock" icon on your login form. Users should look for the lock on the toolbar or part of browser frame. (chase.com, others)
- Stop using non secure login pages (not where the login form is being submitted to) (chase.com, usbank.com, wachovia.com)
- Stop using marketing emails from strange marketing addresses. This just gets people used to bank emails from weird places.
- Make a secure bookmarkable banking page. (my bank does not do this, I get an error screen if going to bookmark)
- Simplify navigation and operation and unify systems. (my bank does not do this, if I log out on one part of the site, I'm not logged out from the "very secure" part)
Bank sites driven by marketers
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
it is very arrogant for somebody to think that BoA's security team did not think of this problem themselves.
I agree. In fact, I would go further and say that the author of this blog should actually be quite embarassed and ashamed of this post. His "amazing discovery" is actually the whole point of sitekey. Yes, you can be a man in the middle and get the sitekey images yourself. Congratulations. You and everyone else already thought of that.
And guess what, your man-in-the-middle now has to make a sitekey request to bank of american for *every potential victim* and as a result, BoA will easily identify your IP block as running a MITM scheme.
So in other words, this blogger is an idiot. He hasn't defeated sitekey at all. Set up a MITM site, make ten requests, and now you're out of business and the ten accounts that you phished are locked.