I have default auth implemented in Laravel 7 and works like a charm.
However, I have a very peculiar requirement wherein, the password shouldn't even travel in plain text although SSL is implemented on network.
One way would be to handle it via javascript on login page wherein I encrypt the value of password and send the same to server and then decrypt the same in php before handing it to laravel attemptLogin method.
However, I am not so sure about this approach.
Any help would be awesome.
Solution:
On client side, used crypt.js/aes.min.js and encrypted the password using a key and iv.
In login controller, overrode credentials method and decrypted using openssl_decrypt before passing on to hash check.
This is already discussed on this answer:
It is standard practice to send "plaintext" passwords over HTTPS. The
passwords are ultimately not plaintext, since the client-server
communication is encrypted as per TLS.
And this one:
If you hash on the client side, the hashed password becomes the actual
password (with the hashing algorithm being nothing more than a means
to convert a user-held mnemonic to the actual password).
This means that you will be storing the full "plain-text" password
(the hash) in the database, and you will have lost all benefit of
hashing in the first place.
You may also read this answer for more security options.
I solved it as below:
On client side, used crypt.js/aes.min.js and encrypted the password using a key and iv.
In login controller, overrode credentials method and decrypted using openssl_decrypt before passing on to hash check.
Related
I need my users to use their laravel's account password in another nginx server (for http authentication) which uses crypt encription. How can I do this conversion? Is that even possible?
Encrypting passwords is bad practice since it's reversible. Always store them in an irreversible format, e.g. hashes.
If you still want to encrypt the passwords, you should write a custom user provider.
I want to encrypt the query string values used in my MVC3 application. If i implement SSL certificate, whether all the parameters passed with url in encrypted form or not. The application is already completed, now its running appscan testing, so its very tough to encrypt and decrypt manually the query string.
As per answer given in this post
Yes, it is. But using GET for sensitive data is a bad idea for several reasons:
Mostly HTTP referrer leakage (an external image in the target page might leak the password1)
Password will be stored in server logs (which is obviously bad)
History caches in browsers
Therefore, even though Querystring is secured it's not recommended to transfer sensitive data over querystring.
I wrote a small webserver which currently uses basic auth over ssl. So far everything works great. Now I want (need) to switch to digest auth. But I can't figure how out to make this work with passwords that are not stored as cleartext in the database? I only have the password digest (generated using bcrypt) of my users' passwords stored. Is http digest auth possible at all?
Was just looking into this just now. First, I read through RFC 2617 - HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication to get some insight into the specification and see how it can be adapted for a REST API authentication.
Ran into the same question as you did—Does digest authentication mean the server needs to store the user's password in plaintext?
This Stack Overflow answer makes it clear: No. The server doesn't store the plaintext password—it should store the hash of (username|realm|password).
That would've been fine except for one thing—the canonical spec only supports using MD5 as the hash function.
Of course you could store both the bcrypt hash and the MD5 hash but doing so only undermines the security of the bcrypt hash effectively rendering it useless (since an attacker can shift his efforts into brute forcing the MD5 hash instead).
So, I took a step back and thought, why not disregard the spec and use bcrypt on both sides as the hash function (bcrypt(username|realm|password))?
Well, aside from being purposefully slow, bcrypt has a maximum password length which makes it unsuitable for use as a general digest algorithm.
Whew, by now my head was swimming but I still thought to give it another go. Some of the suggestions were to use TLS with SRP or authenticated encryption, specifically EAX, but I felt that maybe those were taking things just a step too far for a simple Web service.
To put it simply, if you're really bent on doing this you can work around bcrypt's character limitation by using a preliminary hash.
Long story short it seems that you can do:
bcrypt(sha256(username|realm|password))
And use that in place of H(A1) in a bastardized version of the spec.
The question now becomes—was all that added complexity really worth it? Did we get any added layer of security over Basic auth over HTTPS?
The question now becomes—was all that added complexity really worth it? Did we get any added layer of security over Basic auth over HTTPS?
I can see one, when you use basic auth, your HTTP client sends the Authorization header as a base64(password)
So, if you leave your web browser open, and someone opens the browser web console, he can base64 decode your password.
Whereas, with digest auth, the Authorization header is a md5 hash (and a nonce hash is included to prevent replay attacks)
I need to decode a password that was encoded using the org.springframework.security.authentication.encoding.PasswordEncoder.encodePassword method. Basically, application "A" maintains the encoded/encrypted password in its database. Application "B" makes a RESTful call to application "A" to get the userid and password (passes password as encoded/encrypted) and then application "B" needs to view the clear text version of the password, how would it decode it?
The mentioned class "org.springframework.security.authentication.encoding.PasswordEncoder.encodePassword" seems to use digest function to encode the password. Because all the digest function are mentioned to be one way only it is easy to make encoded password from the clear text but almost impossible to obtain unencrypted version from the digest.
If you want to authenticate user just encrypt the password and compare it to it's stored encrypted version.
Other option can be reseting the password (replacing value stored in application "A").
If you insist on unencrypted password in application "B" from the digest, you have to crack it, which can be time consuming operation...
I'm trying to make a web service secure.
It's not for a bank or anything of that sort, but the organization using it may lose some money if the service will be used by someone not authorized (it's hard to tell exactly how much..).
The purpose is not to allow unauthorized applications to use any method (other than "GetChallenge". for users authentication there is a different mechanism which checks for username and password. I actually combined the two, but they serve different purposes):
So here's what I do:
I send a (ASP.NET) session key (for everyone to read. ASP.NET's session Is 15 randomly generated bytes, it lives for 20 minutes unless prolonged, and ASP.NET will not receive any request without it).
In my SignIn method, apart from username and password (which anyone can acquire, since it's a part of a public site), I receive a third parameter - the session key hashed by md5 algorithm with 6 bytes as salt.
And only if the hash is correct (I'm hashing and comparing it on the server side) - I let the users sign in.
From then on in every method, I check if the user is signed in.
Added: The username and password are sent as clear text, and that's not a problem (not the one I'm addressing at least). The problem is for someone (other than the company we're working with) writing an application which uses my web service. The web service should only be used by an authorized application.
Also, the session id is sent back and forth with every request and response (as a part of ASP.NET session mechanism. That's how ASP.NET knows to "track" a session specific for a user). Sorry for not clarifying that from the first place.
(irrationally thought it was obvious).
How strong and effective is that security strategy?
Thanks.
Updated based on your edit and comment
It's pretty secure and is very similar to the approach used by Google, Facebook and others for their API keys. Except...
Session ID plain text potential issue
I would recommend against using Session ID as part of a security mechanism.
The one issue is with passing the session key in plain text across the network. There is potential that this could open up some Session hijack and other attacks.
From the Microsoft Docs:
The SessionID is sent between the server and the browser in clear text, either in a cookie or in the URL. As a result, an unwanted source could gain access to the session of another user by obtaining the SessionID value and including it in requests to the server. If you are storing private or sensitive information in session state, it is recommended that you use SSL to encrypt any communication between the browser and server that includes the SessionID.
As you are using the Session ID as part of your security mechanism I would say that is sensitive data.
One way to ensure someone doesn't get hold of your session key is to run your service on HTTPS. Personally I would avoid using the Session ID in this way and generating a non-related value instead.
Recommended change
Follow more closely the model used by Google and the like. Generate a new GUID for each application, store the GUID in a database on the server, pass the GUID in each request to your server from the client.
Benfits:
Identifies the client application uniquely, allowing you to track and manage usage per client nicely
Easily disable any client by removing the GUID from your data store
No sensitive data on the wire
I would still run the service on HTTPS as it's easy to setup and gives the added benefit of protecting any other data you send to your service.
The purpose of encryption is not to
allow unauthorized applications to use
any method
Wrong. The purpose of encryption it to prevent the understanding of data whilst either in transit or stored. It prevents data being 'useable' by those that do not have the means to decrypt.
What you are describing is something similar to a public/private key system. You're making your session key available to everyone. Then only after they've md5 with the correct salt (as per your server side comparison) you're then trusting that source.
You've got NO authentication here except for username and password. Also your data isn't encrypted during transit. I fail to see how this is at all secure.
I think you're best bet is to use an SSL certificate (so your web service is running over HTTPS) along with the username and password. If you want to be doubly secure you might want to go down the route of checking source IP ranges and login locations as an additional check. Perhaps a forced password change interval will help in the case that consumers are passing credentials to a third party + audit how the web service is actually being used.
As a side note if you want to hash something don't use MD5, its broken.
From a web services perspective the ideal way to use authentication or provide security to your service is something like this: Web Service Authentication (Token and MD5 Hashing to encrypt password).
The way you describe it, it does not seem secure at all.
What is the point of letting the SignIn method accept a hashed session key, if the session key is public ("for everyone to read")?
Plus: "in every method, I check if the user is signed in. " How do you check that?
A common (and reasonably secure) strategy would be to generate a (unique, sufficiently long and random) session ID server-side, and send it to the client after it has authenticated. Then check every client request and only accept it if it contains the session ID. To do this, either embed the ID into all links on every page, or set it as a cookie, depending on what's easier for you.
On logout, just delete the session ID on the server.
That way, no one can invoke any method without a valid session.