Tag Archives: CVE-2008-1526

CWE-916 – Use of Password Hash With Insufficient Computational Effort

Read Time:1 Minute, 18 Second

Description

The software generates a hash for a password, but it uses a scheme that does not provide a sufficient level of computational effort that would make password cracking attacks infeasible or expensive.

Modes of Introduction:

– Architecture and Design

Likelihood of Exploit:

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-327
CWE-327

 

Consequences

Access Control: Bypass Protection Mechanism, Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

If an attacker can gain access to the hashes, then the lack of sufficient computational effort will make it easier to conduct brute force attacks using techniques such as rainbow tables, or specialized hardware such as GPUs, which can be much faster than general-purpose CPUs for computing hashes.

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Effectiveness: High

Description: 

Phase: Implementation, Architecture and Design

Effectiveness:

Description: 

When using industry-approved techniques, use them correctly. Don’t cut corners by skipping resource-intensive steps (CWE-325). These steps are often essential for preventing common attacks.

CVE References

 

  • CVE-2008-1526
    • Router does not use a salt with a hash, making it easier to crack passwords.
  • CVE-2006-1058
    • Router does not use a salt with a hash, making it easier to crack passwords.
  • CVE-2008-4905
    • Blogging software uses a hard-coded salt when calculating a password hash.
  • CVE-2002-1657
    • Database server uses the username for a salt when encrypting passwords, simplifying brute force attacks.
  • CVE-2001-0967
    • Server uses a constant salt when encrypting passwords, simplifying brute force attacks.
  • CVE-2005-0408
    • chain: product generates predictable MD5 hashes using a constant value combined with username, allowing authentication bypass.

CWE-759 – Use of a One-Way Hash without a Salt

Read Time:1 Minute, 43 Second

Description

The software uses a one-way cryptographic hash against an input that should not be reversible, such as a password, but the software does not also use a salt as part of the input.

In cryptography, salt refers to some random addition of data to an input before hashing to make dictionary attacks more difficult.

Modes of Introduction:

– Implementation

Likelihood of Exploit:

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-916

 

Consequences

Access Control: Bypass Protection Mechanism, Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

If an attacker can gain access to the hashes, then the lack of a salt makes it easier to conduct brute force attacks using techniques such as rainbow tables.

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Effectiveness: High

Description: 

Phase: Architecture and Design

Effectiveness: Limited

Description: 

If a technique that requires extra computational effort can not be implemented, then for each password that is processed, generate a new random salt using a strong random number generator with unpredictable seeds. Add the salt to the plaintext password before hashing it. When storing the hash, also store the salt. Do not use the same salt for every password.

Be aware that salts will not reduce the workload of a targeted attack against an individual hash (such as the password for a critical person), and in general they are less effective than other hashing techniques such as increasing the computation time or memory overhead. Without a built-in workload, modern attacks can compute large numbers of hashes, or even exhaust the entire space of all possible passwords, within a very short amount of time, using massively-parallel computing and GPU, ASIC, or FPGA hardware.

Phase: Implementation, Architecture and Design

Effectiveness:

Description: 

When using industry-approved techniques, use them correctly. Don’t cut corners by skipping resource-intensive steps (CWE-325). These steps are often essential for preventing common attacks.

CVE References

 

  • CVE-2008-1526
    • Router does not use a salt with a hash, making it easier to crack passwords.
  • CVE-2006-1058
    • Router does not use a salt with a hash, making it easier to crack passwords.