Hi (sorry about the wordy post)
I'm working on a web app that will store some of the users personal data.
I have looked into various ways of encrypting the data to protect it from intruders if the database or web server was compromised and think that creating and storing a unique “master key” encrypted with a password derived key for each user is the best way to go for my set-up.
The only issue I can see is with forgotten passwords. Currently, the users can reset a forgotten password by receiving an email containing a link with a unique token that takes then to the password reset form.
My idea is to add security questions to the registration page that will be used to create a 2nd derived key and use it to encrypt the users master key. The answers will not be stored in the database, just the key derived from them. The questions would be more opinion based than personal or factual.
This will mean there are two encrypted versions of the “master key”.
These questions would be added to the existing password reset form and the answers used to recreate the derived key and decrypt the master key. This would mean that the original master key can then be encrypted using the new password.
I have read many posts on how security questions should not be used to reset passwords but in this case it seems like an additional layer of security.
Does anyone see any potential problems with this approach or have any other suggestions?
Thanks
It is not clear who you are trying to protect the data from (your organisation or potential intruders), but I would presume that intruders is your main concern, since your organisation has access to the code of the application and therefore can view the passwords that the user is inputting (unless encryption/decryption takes place on the client side).
I would not encrypt the data using the passwords of the users. Instead, I would generate random key(s) for each user, store them on a separate server, and retrieve them once the user authenticates successfully. That separate server would have to be inaccessible from the outside world.
Note that user authentication should also take place on the second server as well. Do not return the keys without prior user authentication, in case the first server gets compromised. You can additionally encrypt these keys using the user passwords and on a different column, using a master key that you are holding in case someone forgets their passwords.
This way you will get stronger passwords as well, than what the average user is going to use.
I've heard a unique salt only provides protection in the event that you have a lot of user credentials stored in the same location. Is there any benefit to salting on a single user application where the password is never sent to the web? Thanks!
Password hashing is used if you don't need to retrieve the original password. For example a website with a account system will hash your password when you register and save the hash of the password in a database. When you login the next time it will again hash the password you entered and compare it to the hash stored in the database. You can use salting to make it even harder to retrieve the original password.
You have a different use case. You want to retrieve the password to be able to decrypt the data that you recieve from the server. To achieve that you have a view options:
Generate a key for the user and store it in plaintext on the disk.
Don't store the password at all but let the user enter it each time he wants to access the data on the server or upload data to the server (potentially store it in memory, you should make sure to completely erease it from memory bevore the program ends).
Generate a key for the user and store on the disk like in option 1 but encrypt it with a password thats handled like the password from option 2.
The 3rd option is definitely the safest of them. You have control over the key generation so you can make sure the key has a decent size to make it impossible for the server to guess while the key is encrypted on the disk.
I am setting up a website to use Google's OAuth2 interface for user authentication. The website will store private data associated with each user - which I'm planning to encrypt.
If I implemented my own authentication method for the website, I could easily derive a key from the user's credentials (which include the user's password), allowing the data for each user to be strongly protected. But with OAuth2, I believe I can only receive an access token, granting that user permission for a period of time - the problem is that the access token value will change over time.
Is there a way that OAuth2 can provide me with an immutable secret tied to the user which I can use to derive a secure key from? Or is there some other method of creating a secure persistent secret using OAuth2?
--- Edit ---
In response to the questions and comments, here are some thoughts to consider:
All user information should always be protected with strong encryption and user authentication - the reason we read so many news articles about website & database hacks is because developers say "do we really need to secure that" and then respond with "No - because no-one but us will be able to access the database, security is hard, etc". The hacker downloads the database et violá. Credit cards, email addresses, phone numbers, passwords, you name it, then become compromised.
There are only two real secrets - one is a password stored in someone's head, the other is a strong random value that only the authorised user has access to (like a physical token). If you think a secure key can be derived from an email address alone, or that a secret needs to be stored in a database, you don't really understand security.
I guess what I was trying to discover was whether an OAuth provider can provide to the OAuth client an immutable value securely linked to both user and client - effectively, this would be a key that could only be unlocked by the OAuth provider using a combination of the user's secret (their authentication password) and the client's secret (used in the OAuth protocol). The client could then use this value to provide a reasonable level of security for the user's data.
Of course this implementation is not perfect from abuse, but implemented correctly, could provide a reasonable way to secure data whilst still using the good practices of the OAuth scheme.
The point of the token is that you can then use the token to obtain information from Google about the user. During the initial authentication, you will tell the user, and google, that you want to access certain information about the user:
https://developers.google.com/+/api/oauth
Assuming that the user allows you to access their information, such as their email address, you can then get their email address from google. Once you have their email address, you can generate a secret key for their user, store this in your user table, and use it to encrypt their data. Then, when they login again, you can lookup their email address and find their key.
Is there a specific need for the immutable information be 'secret'? Or is it just a key to identify a user?
If the information that you're storing is truly private, and you want to make it so that you can't access your user's data, then all you have to do is store the encrypted blob for your users. Once the user had downloaded their data, they can use their key to decrypt the data client-side.
My first question would be: Why do you want to derive your encryption keys from some tokens?
The tokens and your encryption keys could remain independent and can be associated to a user identified by a unique id. User authentication can be done by whatever way you need either via credentials or open ID authentication or something else. But, once a user is authenticated, your decryption APIs can fetch the decryption key associated with the authenticated user and do whatever decryption it has to.
This way you can potentially allow users to tie multiple open ID accounts with the same user similar to what Stackoverflow does. I can associate my yahoo, facebook and google accounts with my Stackoverflow user and can sign in with any of those providers. I can disassociate those accounts any time I want. But that does not affect my Stackoverflow profile and data.
So, it is not a good idea to derive your keys from something that is not constant and keeps changing. Instead, keep them separate.
If I implemented my own authentication method for the website, I could easily derive a key from the user's credentials
This schema has a terrible weakness - if a user forgets /resets its credentials, the key is lost forever
Is there a way that OAuth2 can provide me with an immutable secret tied to the user which I can use to derive a secure key from?
OAuth2 is an authorization protocol. It is not intended to give you any user secrets.
the Google's OAuth2 should provide a user info service returning username (email) and some id (sub).
However these are identity information, not any secrets. And mixing user credentials is imho bad idea (as already mentioned), using an external IdP (google) you will have no access to credentials tat all.
And now what?
My suggestion:
If you really want to encrypt user's data using a user-provided secret, let the user provide the secret or encrypt the data encryption key by the user itself (or using user's public key?). The user must be aware that if this secret is lost, the data will be unaccessible. It is quiet uncomfortable in long run. Some DMS systems use this approach to encrypt the stored sensitive documents.
if you want to encrypt data in rest (on the server, database), you may have an application specific key, imho best stored somewhere else (key vault, key management service,..). Indeed then there is a different risk profile (you have to protect the key,..) but it's much more convient for users. This is usually good enough along other security measures (even big enterprises don't ask for a separate password to encrypt your credit card number or email)
What you need is constant secure (random) key for each user that you could get from authentication service that gives OAuth2 endpoint (in this case - Google).
OAuth2 protocol itself does not provide such value - Authentication server uses generated values that are not constant. But OAuth2 does not prohibit from giving this value from Resource server (together with user id, email etc). So basically OAuth2 lets you secure data in the way you want, but Google, which you currently use, does not give this type of constant random value.
Also note, that this would not work if you would let user relate few accounts, like Google and Facebook, as they would give different random keys.
If you derive secret from credentials, this would also mean that resetting password would reset user account.
Furthermore, if you encrypt data like emails in this way, it becomes impossible to decrypt them without currently signed-in user. So emailing newsletter becomes practically impossible. You cannot query the data in SQL also.
I could only suggest some countermeasures:
Do not store sensitive data at all, or store it hashed. Passwords must be hashed, not encrypted. Do not store CC numbers, store tokens that represent them.
Use encryption with key, stored in another data source. This adds at least some security - attacker must get not only DB copy, but also encryption key.
As data is encrypted, storing it in database is no longer necessary. You can store encrypted data in files or some other source, where it is safer than in DB (no risk of SQL injections etc)
I've been having this same issue. So far, I can't find a secure way around it.
Basically, we need a per-site randomly generated secret provided only with implicit flow that can be used to derive credentials to access systems and decrypt data.
Because I want to protect the data from myself, I could write the client to salt/hash the secret in two ways, one way to retrieve the data and another to decrypt it.
Alas, this is not the case.
I could derive credentials from things in the basic scope of the oAuth and that would protect the data against me, but that leaves the user wide open for cross-site vulnerabilities, and besides, personally identifiable information makes for a poor secret.
The best I got is to use implicit flow oAuth2 to acquire the user's email address, randomly generate a client side secret, and force the user to email themselves the secret (as a recovery key), then store the secret in localStorage. Salt/Hash the secret + oauth scope variable to derive the credentials client side (so the user must be logged in) needed to access, encrypt and decrypt data.
If the user ever clears their localStorage, they need to go click the link in the recovery email, which places the secret back into localStorage.
This places the scope of vulnerability back on the client, but is resistant to public machines (would have to know who was logged in last, and get access to the localStorage token), allows for recovery, and weakly requires the user to be logged in. Still vulnerable to plugin injection attacks and physical access + knowing the user.
Update: I have decided to use some oAuth extensions (hello.js, folder APIs) to store the keys in the user account as files. It requires some permissions and some APIs to implement, but appears to be viable.
Am I correct that OAuth 1.0a credentials need to be stored in plaintext (or in a way that can be retrieved as plaintext) on the server, at least when doing 2-legged authentication? Isn't this much less secure than using a username and salted+hashed password, assuming you're using HTTPS or other TLS? Is there a way to store those credentials in such a way that a security breach doesn't require every single one to be revoked?
In more detail: I'm implementing an API and want to secure it with OAuth 1.0a. There will possibly be many different API clients in the future, but the only one so far has no need for sensitive user data, so I'm planning to use "2-legged" OAuth.
As I understand it, this means I generate a consumer key and a shared secret for each API client. On every API request, the client provides both the consumer key, and a signature generated with the shared secret. The secret itself is not sent over the wire, and I definitely understand why this is better than sending a username and password directly.
However, as I understand it, both the consumer and the provider must explicitly store both the consumer key and the shared secret (correct me if I'm wrong), and this seems like a major security risk. If an attacker breached the provider's data store containing the consumer keys and shared secrets, every single API client would be compromised and the only way to re-secure the system would be to revoke every single key. This is in contrast to passwords, which are (ideally) never stored in a reversible fashion on the server. If you're salting and hashing your passwords, then an attacker would not be able to break into any accounts just by compromising your database.
All the research I've done seems to just gloss over this problem by saying "secure the credentials as you would with any sensitive data", but that seems ridiculous. Breaches do occur, and while they may expose sensitive data they shouldn't allow the attacker to impersonate the user, right?
You are correct. oAuth allows you however to login on the behalf of a user, so the target server (the one you access data from) needs to trust the token you present.
Password hashes are good when you are the receiver of the secret as keyed-in by the user (which, by the way, is what effectively what happens when oAuth presents the login/acceptance window to the user to generate afterwards the token). This is where the "plaintext" part happens (the user inputs his password in plaintext).
You need to have an equivalent mechanism so that the server recognizes you; what oAuth offers is the capacity to present something else than a password - a limited authorization form the use to login on his behalf. If this leaks then you need to invalidate it.
You could store these secrets in more or less elaborated ways, at the end of the day you still need to present the "plaintext" version t the server (that server, however, may use a hash to store it for checking purposes, as it just needs to verify that what you present in plain text, when hashed, corresponds to the hash they store)
There are a lot of questions on Stack Overflow about how to store user passwords, and the general advice of course is to hash the passwords and compare hashes.
However, imagine you are building a shrinkwrap intranet application (like SharePoint) that people deploy in their own environments. And suppose it requires a username/password combination to access an external service via HTTP (solutions that rely on API keys or federated security aren't supported).
In this case, we can't hash the password because we will need to pass the original password to the web service that we call. Encrypting would be the second best solution, but what would we use for the encryption key? If an attacked compromised the database, presumably they would have access to whatever key is used to encrypt the data in the first place?
If it was really a requirement for you to get the plain-text version of a stored password, how would you approach the problem in the most secure way?
This is actually a really interesting question. I'll join in.
You should encrypt it when storing it. No matter how you look at it it's better than storing it in plain text. Let's say an attacker finds an sql injection ad dumps the db, he still don't hold the encryption key. On the other hand, if he gets access to the server he will probably also find the encryption key.
To improve it a bit, you could store the encryption key in the server configuration. Assuming you are using Apache, you could use SetEnv.
I in my environment are required to enter the encryption key when Apache starts, this is then stored as en environment variable, so the key isn't really stored anywhere on my server.
There is no way, unless you require the user to enter a key to decrypt the password that you will be 100% safe.
You could generate the encryption key from the user's password. (Not their password for the external service—their password for your service.) Since you're not storing their password in plain text, an attacker who compromised your database wouldn't be able to decrypt the passwords. The downside is that you have to ask them for their password (for your service) whenever you need their external password.
You have the question inverted. The problem is not how to let the consumer "view" the password; the problem is how to let the consumer verify authentication.
In your implementation provide a means by which the consumer can provide a password and a username and get either a yes or a no. Then you continue to store encrypted (not hashed) passwords in the database.