Top 10 2014-I2 Insufficient Authentication/Authorization

Back To The Internet of Things Top 10

Consider anyone who has access to the web interface, mobile interface or cloud interface including internal and external users.

Attacker uses weak passwords, insecure password recovery mechanisms, poorly protected credentials or lack of role/discretionary based access control to access a particular interface. Depending on setup, attack could come from external or internal users.

Authentication/Authorization may not be sufficient when weak passwords are used or are poorly protected. Insufficient authentication/authorization is prevalent as manufacturers strive to make interfaces easier for users to use and assume these interfaces will not be exposed to external users. Deficiencies are often found to be present across all interfaces as vendors strive to make credentials match across varying interfaces. Many Issues with authentication/authorization are easy to discover when examining the interface manually and frequently easy to discover via automated testing.

Insufficient authentication/authorization can result in data loss or corruption, lack of accountability, or denial of access and can lead to complete compromise of the device or user accounts.

Consider the business impact of compromised devices and accounts and in turn compromised customers. All data could be stolen, modified, or deleted. Could your users be harmed?

The simplest way to find out if you have insufficient authorization/authentication is to review the password policy for the various interfaces and to review whether the interfaces allow for separation of roles. For example, all features will be accessible to administrators, but users will have a more limited set of features available.

Attempting to set usernames to simple passwords such as "1234" is a fast and easy way to determine if authentication/authorization is sufficient. Manual testing can help a security analyst find instances where weak passwords are allowed, access control is not limited by roles or credentials are poorly protected. Penetration testers can validate these issues by conducting brute-force attacks against usernames, reviewing access controls and testing for privilege escalation.

Automated dynamic scanning which exercises the application will provide insight into whether these issues exist as well.

Ensuring sufficient authentication/authorization requires:
 * 1) Ensuring password recovery mechanisms are robust.
 * 2) Ensuring complex password construction.
 * 3) Ensuring role/discretionary based access control is in place where necessary.
 * 4) Ensuring credentials are properly protected.

Scenario #1: The interface only requires simple passwords.

Username = Bob; Password = 1234

Scenario #2: Username and password are poorly protected when transmitted over the network. Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46MTIzNA==

In the cases above, the attacker is able to either easily guess the password or is able to capture the credentials as they cross the network and decode it since the credentials are only protected using Base64 Encoding.