In terms of mathematical guessability, are these equivalent?
username = user1
password = pass1
and
all_one_string = user1pass1
NB. This is a curiosity and not something I plan to implement.
Well assuming that you pass them both in one string for validation purposes, there still needs to be a character in the middle to differentiate between the two strings.
For example, there is a similar implementation of this exact idea. Basic Authentication.
The idea is to pass both username and password in the same string, encode them in base64 and send them by an HTTP request Authorization header.
The string is usually passed as username:password.
After receiving the request, the server would then split the strings by the : character to retrieve the username and password.
Related
I am sending query String as:
https://prod-17.westindia.logic.azure.com:443/workflows/f3b63b086e61420e8d76b7478f4b3e39/triggers/manual/paths/invoke?api-version=2016-10-01&sp=%2Ftriggers%2Fmanual%2Frun&sv=1.0&sig=nESqZWY2NyAKKhCkaM0VnfenHuTqi1NSBjJdl9M5jNA&UserName=SecretName&Password=Nikita#123
I want to extract UserName in logic app. For that I have used Compose connector and use following statement in expression.
coalesce(triggerOutputs()['queries']?['UserName'] , 'blank')
I have tried this to:: triggerOutputs()['queries']?['UserName']
But I am getting one single blank space appended in front of UserName in output. Due to which, my condition is becoming false even if UserName is correct.
How to remove this extra space which is unnecessary appending to front.
HTTP Connector Output as :
In this scenario , password is working fine. As below is output:
You should use the trigger output and you should not use the Coalesce expression.
Hello I have this Java code which uses the following encryption method to encrypt password.
MessageDigest digester = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-1");
value = digester.digest(password.getBytes());
digester.update(email.getBytes());
value = digester.digest(value);
This returns base64 encoded string like qXO4aUUUyiue6arrcLAio+TBNwQ= This is sample not exact.
I am converting this to NodeJs not sure how to handle this. I have tried like
var crypto = require('crypto');
var shasum = crypto.createHash('sha1');
var value = shasum.update('hello');
shasum.update('abc#xyz.com');
value = shasum.digest(value).toString('base64');
console.log(value);
The string base64 I get in node js is not similar to get from java. Not sure why?. I need to have same encoding as java as its old system migrated to new one cant lose old details.
Can someone help me how I can achieve same base64 string.
In Java you're calculating the first value as the hash of the password alone, then overwrite it with hash of the email alone. (digest gives the result and resets the hash, in Java).
In Javascript, on the other hand, you're having an undefined value, then overwrite it with the hash of (password concatenated with email).
PS that hash is conceptually wrong: you should always put a separator between two fields, to avoid ambiguity and, thus, possible attacks.
In function one, I read an object from a line and store it in a secure string. The user should never be able to determine what's in the string and the actual value will be used in a second function.
$read_servername = ConvertTo-SecureString Read-File $file -AsPlainText -Force
This becomes the object System.Security.SecureString. When I pass the secure string into the next function, it can't use the actual text of the secure string. In searching, I haven't found a way to decrypt this secure string in the second function, but I need the second function to be able to use its value without the string ever being compromised.
Note that ConvertFrom-SecureString doesn't appear to decrypt it; for instance a value of "C:\Location\" won't be decrypted for use.
Thanks!
Decrypting a SecureString isn't as easy as creating one. You can use the following to do it though:
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.marshal]::PtrToStringAuto([System.Runtime.InteropServices.marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($read_servername))
If the super long one-liner is intimidating you can make it two steps:
$BSTR = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($read_servername)
$PlainText = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.marshal]::PtrToStringAuto($BSTR)
I'm trying to generate a random password for a user in a Yii2 application.
I have the following code:
$rand_password = Yii::$app->security->generateRandomString(8);
$user->password = Yii::$app->security->generatePasswordHash($rand_password);
After that I save the $user model and the hashed string is also saved in the database. However, I cannot log in with the $rand_password string after that as I'm getting Invalid Password error message.
The generatePasswordHash description says that the hash is generated from the provided password and a random salt string. Indeed, I called the function with the same password string several times in a row and I got different result every time. So my question is, if that salt string is random and different every time, how can I use this function at all to verify passwords? When I try to login I call the same function with the password string provided by the user but this time the salt will be different so I'm unable to produce the same hash as before? What am I missing here?
Well, after hours of debugging and looking for resources and explanation, it turns out the the user module I'm using: https://github.com/amnah/yii2-user is actually automatically hashing the passwords before saving them in the database. In other words, as soon as you call:
$user->password = SOMETHING;
that SOMETHING is automatically going through the generatePasswordHash() function upon save. My problem was that I was dropping it in there in my code as well so basically the password got hashed twice.
My company's CRM system utilizes a captcha system at each login and in order to utilize certain administrative functions. The original implementation stored the current captcha value for in a server-side session variable.
We're now required to redevelop this to store all necessary captcha verification information in a hashed client-side cookie. This is due to a parent IT policy which is intended to reduce overhead by disallowing use of sessions for users who are not already authenticated to the application. Thus, the authentication process itself is disallowed from using server-side storage or sessions.
The design was a bit of a group effort, and I have my doubts as to its overall efficacy. My question is, can anyone see any obvious security issues with the implementation shown below, and is it overkill or insufficient in any way?
EDIT: Further discussion has led to an updated implementation, so I've replaced the original code with the new version and edited the description to talk to this revision.
(The code below is a kind of pseudo-code; the original uses some idiosyncratic legacy libraries and structure which make it difficult to read. Hopefully this style is easy enough to understand.)
// Generate a "session" cookie unique to a particular machine and timeframe
String generateSessionHash(timestamp) {
return sha256( ""
+ (int)(timestamp / CAPTCHA_VALIDITY_SECONDS)
+ "|" + request.getRemoteAddr()
+ "|" + request.getUserAgent()
+ "|" + BASE64_8192BIT_SECRET_A
);
}
// Generate a hash of the captcha, salted with secret key and session id
String generateCaptchaHash(captchaValue, session_hash) {
return sha256( ""
+ captchaValue
+ "|" + BASE64_8192BIT_SECRET_B
+ "|" + session_hash
);
}
// Set cookie with hash matching the provided captcha image
void setCaptchaCookie(CaptchaGenerator captcha) {
String session_hash = generateSessionHash(time());
String captcha_hash = generateCaptchaHash(captcha.getValue(), session_hash);
response.setCookie(CAPTCHA_COOKIE, captcha_hash + session_hash);
}
// Return true if user's input matches the cookie captcha hash
boolean isCaptchaValid(userInputValue) {
String cookie = request.getCookie(CAPTCHA_COOKIE);
String cookie_captcha_hash = substring(cookie, 0, 64);
String cookie_session_hash = substring(cookie, 64, 64);
String session_hash = generateSessionHash(time());
if (!session_hash.equals(cookie_session_hash)) {
session_hash = generateSessionHash(time() - CAPTCHA_VALIDITY_SECONDS);
}
String captcha_hash = generateCaptchaHash(userInputValue, session_hash);
return captcha_hash.equals(cookie_captcha_hash);
}
Concept:
The "session_hash" is intended to prevent the same cookie from being used on multiple machines, and enforces a time period after which it becomes invalid.
Both the "session_hash" and "captcha_hash" have their own secret salt keys.
These BASE64_8192BIT_SECRET_A and _B salt keys are portions of an RSA private key stored on the server.
The "captcha_hash" is salted with both the secret and the "session_hash".
Delimiters are added where client-provided data is used, to avoid splicing attacks.
The "captcha_hash" and "session_hash" are both stored in the client-side cookie.
EDIT: re:Kobi Thanks for the feedback!
(I would reply in comments, but it doesn't seem to accept the formatting that works in questions?)
Each time they access the login page, the captcha is replaced; This does however assume that they don't simply resubmit without reloading the login form page. The session-based implementation uses expiration times to avoid this problem. We could also add a nonce to the login page, but we would need server-side session storage for that as well.
Per Kobi's suggestion, an expiration timeframe is now included in the hashed data, but consensus is to add it to the session_hash instead, since it's intuitive for a session to have a timeout.
This idea of hashing some data and including another hash in that data seems suspect to me. Is there really any benefit, or are we better off with a single hash containing all of the relevant data (time, IP, User-agent, Captcha value, and secret key). In this implementation we are basically telling the user part of the hashed plaintext.
Questions:
Are there any obvious deficiencies?
Are there any subtle deficiencies?
Is there a more robust approach?
Is salting the hash with another hash helping anything?
Is there a simpler and equally robust approach?
New question:
I personally think that we're better off leaving it as a server-side session; can anybody point me to any papers or articles proving or disproving the inherent risk of sending all verification data to the client side only?
Assuming no other security than stated here:
It seems an attacker can solve the captcha once, and save the cookie.
She then has her constant session_hash and captcha_hash. Nothing prevents her from submitting the same cookie with the same hashed data - possibly breaking your system.
This can be avoided by using time as part of captcha_hash (you'll need to round it to an even time, possibly a few minutes - and checking for two options - the current time and the previous)
To calrifiy, you said:
The "session_hash" is intended to prevent the same cookie from being used on multiple machines.
Is that true?
On isCaptchaValid you're doing String session_hash = substring(cookie, 64, 64); - that is: you're relying on data in the cookie. How can you tell it wasn't copied from another computer? - you're not hashing the client data again to confirm it (in fact, you have a random number there, so it may not be possible). How can you tell it's new request, and hadn't been used?
I realize the captcha is replaced with each login, but how can you know that when a request was made? You aren't checking the new captcha on isCaptchaValid - your code will still validate the request, even if it doesn't match the displayed captcha.
Consider the following scenario (can be automated):
Eve open the login page.
Gets a new cookie and a new captcha.
Replaces it with her old cookie, with hashed data of her old cptcha.
Submits the old cookie, and userInputValue with the old captcha word.
With this input, isCaptchaValid validates the request - captcha_hash, session_hash, userInputValue and BASE64_8192BIT_SECRET are all the same as they were on the first request.
by the way, in most systems you'll need a nonce anyway, to avoid XSS, and having one also solves your problem.