Security Pitfalls

Security is no matter of daytime

By Tom on February 28, 2010 10:17 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

You might say, "Of course, security has to be applied 24/7", but the obvious is not the standard. An example was given by Sebastian Klipper on his blog "Klipper on Security: Ps(i)2 - Sicherheit in Informationssystemen". Thanks for sharing the content of his post by CC license.

During the night, journalist Tommaso Cerno did a short trip to the airport of Rome and shared his experience on the web. The problem? There was no security at all. The screening lines and the security areas are freely accessible, doors secured by access codes or code cards are open, homeless people are taking a nap in the interior. Tommaso filmed the his tour through the airport and published it online:

http://espresso.repubblica.it/multimedia/home/22897704.

It would be an easy task to smuggle weapons or drugs into the airport during night. The only risk would be that one of the homeless people could find it before the next day and take it away, so Sebastian Klipper.

Ever thought about asking for the master key?

By Tom on February 10, 2010 10:05 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Sebastian Klipper, Senior Information Security Consultant, recently wrote on his blog Klipper on Security about an incident he experienced in a hotel. It is quite usual to have safes in hotel rooms to store important documents. It might also be obvious that lots of these safes have master key combinations to open them in case of emergency. But, he was quite surprised as he noticed how easy it was to get the master key and that it was only 3 digits long.

One day when he wanted to open the safe with his 4 digits code, it just responded with the message "BATTERY ERROR!". Hence, he made is way down to the reception, asking for help. The friendly receptionist went upstairs with him to have a look at the safe. After demonstrating the problem, the receptionist positioned right in front of the safe started entering a code and said:

"Enter, 0, 0, 2, Enter, Enter."

Open! That's it and after the receptionist left, Sebastian Klipper knew the master code. Sometimes the easiest way to circumvent the security system is, ask friendly for help.

Thanks very much to Sebastian Klipper who gave us the rights to publish his story with his pictures on SecurityPitfalls.

Key lesson

By Tom on February 4, 2010 8:52 PM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

Berni sent us the following story from Steyr in Upper Austria. On a visit at the University of Applied Sciences she found an accessible, locked room on one of the floors. The only drawback, somebody left the keys there.

Now, the question is, how much value does access to this room have?

First of all, you can steal paper, but that shouldn't leave too much damage to the company. Secondly, an intruder could wait for some important documents printed out. As this room is locked during the day, it could be an interesting place for getting information. Another source of information is the key itself. Even if an attacker can't get much value out of the information in the room, she could try to copy the key or just take notes about the cuts of the key. This can enable the attacker to duplicate it or use in combination with some other keys to rebuild the master key of the university's locks.

So the key lesson of this story: never leave your keys unattended - and never leave it on the doors. :) Thanks to Berni for sending in this story and the pictures.

Update (7/2/2010): Churchy added another security issue that wasn't mentioned in the blog posting above. An attacker could use the printer's network cable to get access to the network. This could be interesting especially in situations where you just have access to a secured WLAN that is separated from the internal LAN.

Security in Hostels

By Tom on January 1, 2010 11:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

As we've already seen, there's very little security in hostels. Another example is given by Norb who discovered the next few situations in a hostel in South Korea.

A system that might look pretty secure for a hostel, at first, ...

... is pretty useless, if all authentication credentials are given on a sheet nearby.

But it seems that the owners of the hostel are not aware of possible threats ...

... or they are just very trustful to all the people around. :)

Stupidity of guessable Access Codes

By Tom on December 1, 2009 12:32 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

During my trip through Australia I've discovered different security and access control systems of hostels all over the country. Unfortunately, most of them are not very secure and as a proof, I'd like to show you some of the access codes of my last hostel.

Actually, these access codes are retrieved from the doors of my rooms "40" and "35" where I have slept in. "CX90" and "CI15" are the id from the floor where the rooms are located, whereas the last part is set to the last room on the floor "48" or "38". Some of my friends have slept in room 32 and got room code "C15Z32".

As you see, the codes are not very hard to guess and offer no security for the backpackers sleeping in there. As there was no locker available, you just could hope everybody was so friendly not to steal anything while you've been out for a few drinks.

Therefore, if you have access codes in place, they should never be guessable and of course, they should be changed from time to time, so that, in case somebody publishes the codes or gets access to these codes, your company still remains secure.

Would you trust this ATM?

By Tom on November 19, 2009 1:08 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Looks good from the front...

... but would you use it after you've seen that it's unprotected from the back?

I haven't thought too much about ATM security before, but it doesn't look very trustworthy, does it?

Trustful Austria

By Tom on November 8, 2009 6:35 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Thanks to Berni, who sent us the following pictures from the Beachvolleyball Grand Slam in Klagenfurt. Impressingl, these pictures have been taken in 2 subsequent years - 2007 and 2008 - and nothing has ever changed.

Have you already recognised the issue in this picture?

It's really impressive, that you can still leave your keys at your bike in Austria, but I wouldn't recommend that. :)

One year later, at nearly the same spot, at the same time, at the same event - people haven't learned anything.

As long as nothing happens, all seems to be fine, but don't get upset, when someone steals your bike.

Configured to leak data

By Tom on October 30, 2009 9:19 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The Stellenwerk Newsletter of the University of Hamburg was leaking data from some of their users. Because of a configuration error the mailing list relayed replys to their e-mails to all subscribed users. Unsubscribe messages and advertisement were spread over the mailinglist within this period of time. The responsible persons apologised for the inconvenience caused and already fixed the problem.

The original e-mail in German:

Subject: Entschuldigung vom Stellenwerk

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

unsere gestrige E-Mail an Sie und andere Kunden hatte aufgrund eines Systemfehlers unangenehme Folgen: Einige Antworten wurden nicht nur an uns, sondern an andere Empfänger gesendet. So sind sie eventuell auch in Ihrem Postfach gelandet.

Dafür möchten wir uns bei Ihnen entschuldigen und können Ihnen versichern, dass der Fehler mittlerweile behoben werden konnte und dass es nicht wieder vorkommen wird.

Wir sind alle sehr betroffen und hoffen, dass Sie auch zukünftig unseren Service gerne nutzen.

Wir bitten um Ihr Verständnis und verbleiben

mit freundlichen Grüßen

xxxxx xxxxxxxx
Leitung Stellenwerk
_______________________________________

Thanks to Sup for reporting this incindent.

Not even Security by Obscurity

By Tom on October 16, 2009 3:34 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Got the link to this image from vmorbit - thanks for your contribution to the project.

Is this really working? Can't add anything more to this - check it out yourself.

(c) by Cheezburger Network (Failblog.org) - pls contact them, if you want to use the image in further documents

Unattended Working Places - Part 1

By Tom on October 9, 2009 5:21 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Our unattended series goes on and this time we discovered an unattended working place at the airport in Munich. At first, I was not really shure what was going on, should have people really left the place unattended or was she just around the corner?

But, indeed, after 5 minutes of waiting, no one was showing up and the blue sign on the desk saying "Be right back." seemed to be there for a reason. I took a second, closer picture of the working place, noticing that all the screens were not locked and paper sheets were lying on the desk.

Apart from the possibility that an attacker could exploit this situation to try to get access to the systems, it may have been enough for an attacker to study all the information presented to him by the paper sheets and the computer screens.

Therefore, companies should raise awareness for such problems and insist their employees to always lock the computer desktops when leaving the working place and to hide important working papers when there's the possibility that attackers could get advantage by reading them.

User	Reported Pitfalls
Flo	3
Norb	3
Berni	2
Sup	2
Ali	1
Churchy	1
JG	1
Nuuz	1
Trixi	1
vmorbit	1

Security Pitfalls

Security is no matter of daytime

Ever thought about asking for the master key?

Key lesson

Security in Hostels

Stupidity of guessable Access Codes

Would you trust this ATM?

Trustful Austria

Configured to leak data

Not even Security by Obscurity

Unattended Working Places - Part 1

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