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Heartbleed Used To Bypass 2-Factor Authentication, Hijack User Sessions
wiredmikey (1824622) writes "Security nightmares sparked by the Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability continue. According to Mandiant, now a unit of FireEye, an attacker was able to leverage the Heartbleed vulnerability against the VPN appliance of a customer and hijack multiple active user sessions. The attack bypassed both the organization's multifactor authentication and the VPN client software used to validate that systems connecting to the VPN were owned by the organization and running specific security software.
"Specifically, the attacker repeatedly sent malformed heartbeat requests to the HTTPS web server running on the VPN device, which was compiled with a vulnerable version of OpenSSL, to obtain active session tokens for currently authenticated users," Mandiant's Christopher Glyer explained. "With an active session token, the attacker successfully hijacked multiple active user sessions and convinced the VPN concentrator that he/she was legitimately authenticated."
After connecting to the VPN, the attacker attempted to move laterally and escalate his/her privileges within the victim organization, Mandiant said."
"Specifically, the attacker repeatedly sent malformed heartbeat requests to the HTTPS web server running on the VPN device, which was compiled with a vulnerable version of OpenSSL, to obtain active session tokens for currently authenticated users," Mandiant's Christopher Glyer explained. "With an active session token, the attacker successfully hijacked multiple active user sessions and convinced the VPN concentrator that he/she was legitimately authenticated."
After connecting to the VPN, the attacker attempted to move laterally and escalate his/her privileges within the victim organization, Mandiant said."
News: Not just webservers use OpenSSL!
No kidding. My Synology NAS had a same-day update to patch this - my custom router firmware needed updating too. If there's a story for every device someone forgot might contain OpenSSL code, it's going to be a busy month.
Lots of people scoffed at Bruce Schneier for saying Heartbleed is an 11 on the 1-10 scale... I agree that sometimes he goes overboard but this is not one of those times, and the attack mentioned in the article demonstrates this.
The summary is a little muddled on what happened here, but if you follow the link you'll find this is not a security test or a research group showing something could theoretically be done. This is a real live company somewhere just using a VPN many other companies probably use, that had over the course of many hours multiple VPN session hijacked and made use of. That is a huge deal, if one person can do this you can almost bet there is a script somewhere that even the great unwashed hacker masses can make use of.
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