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JP Morgan Breach Tied To Two-Factor Authentication Slip
itwbennett writes The attackers who stole information about 83 million JPMorgan Chase customers earlier this year gained a foothold on the company's network because a server reportedly lacked two-factor authentication, despite the company's practice of using two-factor authentication on most of its systems. The story, reported in the New York Times, echoes the warnings of security experts over the years that the breach of a single server or employee computer can put an entire network at risk.
What 2 factor authentication solutions exist for the open source community. Requirements, must be fully open source (none of this google authenticator or RSAid nonsense)
This is banking IT security at its finest. Nothing like being overly secure with our Accounts and Personal Data.
Why can't they introduce two level log-ins for customers? First level log-in should be read-only, without any ability to modify anything. If you really want do a transaction, create a second level password. E*Trade used to have the system of "trade passcode" to be entered for doing actual trade, and the regular log in will only let you browse positions, balances, and set up alerts/watch lists. They took it away!
It figures, if they are that careless with their own servers, they don't give a rats tail about the customers security concerns.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here is some info I'm posting from the breach. BANK OF BERNE Warez--slow 3.0, probe 10.0, armorall 1.0 Other stuff--Ok, here's one you'll really like. What you do is read the messages and find out about account number 121519831200. You use the transfer funds option to transfer the funds to your account in the Bank of Zurich Orbital. Here's the info you need to do it: Bank of Berne account - 121519831200 Credit transfer authorization code- LYMA1211MARZ Bank of Zurich link code- bozobank YOUR account at Bank of Zurich-712345450134 You can transfer funds to your account at BOZOBANK. Be careful, there's some new AI's in cyberspace.
Do you understand that using a single RSA style dongle for multiple places is a huge risk? We have standards based ways of doing this, but that does not get RSA a massive paycheck or somebody else that is huge on the hook should it fail. Hell phones are actually getting better at this putting those keys in internally hardened hardware, it's not as secure as a hard token but prevents most we got the keys to the kingdom attacks.
No sir I dont like it.
Two factor authentication only provides any level of protection against a specific type of attack (ie guessed/harvested user accounts), and even then is often not infallible.
In a typical organisation the normal user facing clients (eg desktop machines) may require two factor, but the underlying network protocols are still using the same authentication they always have, so while you can't go in the front door through a local workstation login you can attack other devices at the network level. People frequently consider the fact that there are usually several ways to access the same data.
Exploitation of a security vulnerability also frequently bypasses the authentication system entirely (eg arbitrary code execution via a buffer overflow).
Many two factor systems rely on a third party (eg rsa), so if that party is compromised then you are effectively back to single factor...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Quite a few of the 'security' arrangements in financial areas make it abundantly clear that they suck because you don't really matter (this goes triple or worse for anything involving credit reports).
That said, RSA-fobs(or house-branded devices based on the same system) aren't actually something that would be trivial to share between organizations.
The RSA fob works because it is initialized with a given seed value at a given time. Every minute it performs a hash operation that provides enough output for the on screen numeric sequence along with the input for the next hash operation(if memory serves, it is reasonably well established that it is either impossible or computationally impractical to derive the internal state from knowledge of the screen output alone, even if you have many samples).
In order to enroll a fob in your authentication system, your auth server needs to know the seed and the initialization time. It can then run N rounds of the algorithm(based on the amount of time between initialization time and current time) and determine what should be displayed on the screen(sometimes allowing for a few minutes of slip, depending on how accurate the RTCs are believed to be), If you want Company B to use Company A's token, either Company B needs to pass every auth request to Company A for processing, and accept the result, or Company A actually has to send Company B the seed an initialization time for your fob(an operation that opens up certain obvious security concerns).
The RSA fobs are pretty cute(if it weren't for the fact that RSA stores all the seed values and times, and managed to get them stolen at least once), in that they require absolutely no communication between the fob and the auth server, ever; but they do suffer from the weakness that the data needed to validate a fob are also the data sufficient to clone a fob, which makes sharing a single fob between multiple entities pretty awkward.
Do you understand that using a single RSA style dongle for multiple places is a huge risk?
If you have an infinite number of systems to log into, how many dongles is optimal, and how do you keep track of which dongle to use with which system? Where do I keep these dongles? My pocket is already uncomfortably full with a keyring with 4 keys and a fob on it. My other pocket has a smart phone.
It was said many times before. Nothing substantial was lost.
80 or 100 million of people. It does NOT matter. They are just means to make a profit. People in corporate world don't count.
Do you understand that using a single RSA style dongle for multiple places is a huge risk?
It's not a huge risk if you're simply using the dongle as a second factor.
Hard to believe anyone in their right mind still does business with them.
Does anyone know what kinds of servers are they using? Are these linux machines or some version of BSD?
So you're saying you don't have to jingle a Google dongle?
Do you not realize the only difference in the singles is the seed numbers to get started with?
I use Google auth with both Google and Dropbox. It shows two different numbers( more actually as I have multiple google accounts).
The algorithm is open so people can study it. Back doors can be found and published. Why can't banks use stanardised and tested instead of closed systems with back doors?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Depends on the cardinality of the infinity in question. If you begin life with one dongle, ignore that one for purposes of later calculations.
As this is a variation of one of those infinite pigeonhole problems, the first essential stage is to calculate a finite but abundant set of potentially infinite sets so the rest of the calculation can be done with finite but absurd quantities rather than actually infinite quantities. While the rational guide of subset construction would probably be to sort your systems based on visibility and value (do people attack it and what is the damage if an attack succeeds), I will instead advocate grouping based on how many degrees the sysadmins of each system are from Kevin Bacon using the "has shaken hands with" standard of establishing a connection. This will result in sets with Bacon Values of 0 to roughly 7 billion (0 would be the set of systems administrated by Kevin Bacon, 7 billion would be the set administered by that one theoretical worst-case who has to link through nearly every other living human).
Once you have a properly finite set of sets, acquire one RSA dongle for each set and label each with the appropriate Bacon Value. Be warned that if anyone who has not yet shaken hands with Kevin Bacon does so, you need to throw all the dongles out (except your natural one if appropriate) and begin the algorithm again.
Yes it is as your using the same seed. An attack that breaks e-trade's security can then give them the seed for your bank etc etc. Software tokens make having many seeds trivial, it would be trivial to do the same for hardware tokens to some extent.
No sir I dont like it.
The best system I've seen, in theory, was IBM's ZTIC. You can make a bank transaction, but it wouldn't go through until you confirmed it on the keyfob, and the keyfob used an independent link to obtain the amount of cash, and where it was going to, to protect against a compromised browser.
The downside was that the device required special drivers, so it only functioned in Windows.
With 3G radios so cheap, why not a relatively cheap device that not jut works as a SecurID dongle, but is used with a layer of encryption between the bank's computers and the device itself (so if 3G is compromised, data is still protected) to confirm the amount and allow/deny it on the device? The reason for an independent 3G connection is a separate, secure channel that can't be attacked by a compromised computer. Done right, this would be a major security boost, as it would require the device not just to log on, but to perform transactions. The device by itself would be useless without password/PIN access to the bank account.
Still well within the confines of acceptable risk. Now, if you're personally being targeted, then that's another conversation.
Use a soft token, store as many seeds and OTP's are you like. The a reason RSA tokens only have one seed is they get $$$ for each one adding some buttons to scroll up/down is a very minor security risk to make it much more functional. Modern phones are putting the seeds in hardware vaults, not quite as good but a decent trade off.
No sir I dont like it.
I use Fastmail for their fantastic email service. They offer a range of authentication mechanisms, my favourite being the ability to generate 100 OTP passphrases. Even the OTP is customisable. Easily a fantastic system I believe could be used in other ways.
OTP for the win.
Try regulation that includes criminal penalties including jail time in blue collar prison.
Let me guess regulation bad... banks are people!
US bank regulations will never again include criminal penalties. DOJ learned from their experience prosecuting Arthur Anderson that criminal penalties against a large bank, or it's senior officers, often amount to a "death sentence" for the bank http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/hsbc-money-laundering-case-too-big-to-fail-does-not-mean-too-big-to-jail. There can be no criminal malfeasance so egregious that they would judge it worthy of carrying a corporate death sentence.
It seems like a neat explanation for what had to be multiple levels of screwing up. From topology design mistakes, to breach detection problems, lack of two factor auth is just one thing wrong in a chain of things wrong with their security posture.
Schwab has plenty of more glaring security issues than just making it hard to enroll a compatible token you already have. http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/swab-password-policies-and-two-factor-authentication-a-comedy-of-errors
Backup confirmation from a non-blog site if you want http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/why-your-password-cant-have-symbols-or-be-longer-than-16-characters/.
You'd be surprised how many other brokers were still doing the same bone headed crap (storing only first 8 chars of password or using a hash scheme designed around touchtone phone keypad entry) until recently, but Schwab seems to stand out as a laggard.
It's fairly clear from your response that you have experience in setting up in-house, corporate systems ... and not customer-facing systems.
RSA's pricing model is simply unsustainable when scaled up for customer use which is why alternative tokens from providers like Symantec are used by many/most brokerages and banks which do offer token-based two factor authentication. Those tokens are often designed specifically to allow enrollment into multiple security systems https://idprotect.vip.symantec.com/learnmoretoken.v in that neither your hypothetical Company A nor Company B are ever trusted with the seed for your fob. It works more like chip-and-PIN EMV online processing where only the security company and the hardware are trusted and that's a damn good thing.
OP was right to bitch about Schwab forcing him to use a second Symantec token when he already has a Symantec token from E-Trade.
Yes it is as your using the same seed. An attack that breaks e-trade's security can then give them the seed for your bank etc etc. Software tokens make having many seeds trivial, it would be trivial to do the same for hardware tokens to some extent.
*sigh* ... Neither e-trade nor Schwab (nor JP Morgan's brokerage arm) use RSA tokens. They use Symantec VIP tokens and that means they don't know your token's seed.
A break in at Symantec could expose your token's seed, but that would presumably have exposed the seeds for each of your separate e-trade, Schwab, bank, etc Symantec tokens so it offers little advantage to have multiple tokens of this type.
>Yes it is as your using the same seed. An attack that breaks e-trade's security can then give them the seed for your bank etc etc.
You're making overly broad assertions.
There are plenty of protocols that can use a single hardware token in multiple places securely. By using a ZKP for instance.
By 'seed' I assume you are referring to the time based RNG where you type in the number from the dongle. We have better ways.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Taped to the monitor, right next to the sticky note with the username/password!
The organization that I work for is a third party contractor to JPMC.
Their risk management team has been up our ass for YEARS about implementing two factor authentication for the systems that we host for them. But some how a critical internal system managed to slip through the cracks? Bullshit. I have seen how that organization works. There is no way that any less than half a dozen people signed off on the risk associated with not having two factor auth enabled on that system.
RSA SecurID soft token applications are free on all mobile devices. Soft tokens are also garbage.
It's nice that you think you've managed to define a rigid standard of what risk is acceptable to everybody, but I'm not sure that's actually true.
Last I checked RSA is using a seed in their hardware tokens. That was what the debate was about and thus the assumptions relate to a RSA style seed based token not some other theoretical device.
No sir I dont like it.
If only humans had some ability to keep things secret and not let others know what the secrets are.
My pocket is already uncomfortably full with a keyring with 4 keys and a fob on it. My other pocket has a smart phone.
Maybe stop wearing skinny jeans then.
I wouldn't call it a rigid standard by any means. I think of it more like common sense. I'm not accounting for those that are typically more paranoid than most.
Nothing about security is absolute; it's all about risk management. Sure the impacts are huge here, but what are the likelihoods? When protecting yourself (digitally or physically), everyone takes a reasonable approach and draws the line on what is acceptable to them. In this specific case, if your second factor is compromised, your first factor is still intact because it's different for each resource. If you use strong keys for your first factor, then you would have to be specifically targeted for both factors to be compromised. Unless you're someone really important, the likelihood of that happening is next to zero.
Or you can save the expense and skip the second factor altogether--which is an acceptable risk for almost everyone.
Side note: a second factor token isn't buying much for the attacks we're seeing in the real world. (Compromised endpoint; and no, it doesn't take personal targeting for someone to go active once a user on a compromised host has been identified as using a bank with a scripted attack pattern.) What you really want to stop theft in that scenario is an out of band channel, like SMS confirmation. But then you've got a different set of problems with mobile malware potentially being able to spoof that. Picking just one attack vector, choosing an arbitrary mitigation, then criticizing the banks for implementing the mitigation in too stringent a fashion because your arbitrary standard is "good enough" seems...myopic at best.
One server... And go on... How did they find this one server? Was this one server on the external perimeter of their network? Why was it so unprotected if clearly exposed? If it was inside and not externally exposed.. Then how did they get in the front door? Was it an inside job? So many questions to what appears to have been a serious penetration requiring notification to the government. I suppose it sounds small when it's only one unfortunately overlooked server... Could happen to anyone so nothing to see here.. Move along.