I often get emails that someone is trying to get into my accounts. I guess there are just some trolls, trying to login into my Wikipedia account. So far, these have been unsuccessful.
Now I got an email that someone asked for a temporary password for my account.
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial is actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
Thoughts?
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Happy new year, Denny
No, spectre/meltdown wouldnt apply to that situation.
The meltdown/spectre vulnerabilities is all about computer programs having access to data they should not. In order to exploit the attacker must be able to run computer programs on the victims computer.
-- brian
On Thursday, January 4, 2018, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
I often get emails that someone is trying to get into my accounts. I guess there are just some trolls, trying to login into my Wikipedia account. So far, these have been unsuccessful.
Now I got an email that someone asked for a temporary password for my account.
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial
is
actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
Thoughts?
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Happy new year, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi!
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial is actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
I think for those you need local code execution access? In which case, if somebody gained one on MW servers, they could just change your password I think. Spectre/Meltdown from what I read are local privilege escalation attacks (local user -> root or local user -> another local user) but I haven't heard anything about crossing the server access barrier.
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Might be a good idea anyway :)
Spectre can be exploited in just only javascript.
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/01/03/mitigations-landing-new-class-t...
Browsers are making changes to mitigate this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-exploit-browser-javascript...
The actual extents of the attack that are realistically possible in this scenario, I do not know. But as stated in the article google suggests: "Where possible, prevent cookies from entering the renderer process' memory by using the SameSite and HTTPOnly cookie attributes, and by avoiding reading from document.cookie."
I would take that to mean that cookies could be accessed, at the least.
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 12:16 PM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi!
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial
is
actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
I think for those you need local code execution access? In which case, if somebody gained one on MW servers, they could just change your password I think. Spectre/Meltdown from what I read are local privilege escalation attacks (local user -> root or local user -> another local user) but I haven't heard anything about crossing the server access barrier.
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Might be a good idea anyway :)
-- Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Ah, that sounds good. I was thinking of a scenario where someone runs code in, say labs, and gains access to memory while that machine generates my temporary code to send it to me, and thus gains access to that code.
Or, alternatively, just attack my browser through a compromised site running a JS exploit and gaining access to anything in my memory. But that's on my side to fix (or, rather, on the browser developers).
One way or the other, I have set up 2FA for now.
Use more lynx!
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 10:18 AM Cyken Zeraux cykenzeraux@gmail.com wrote:
Spectre can be exploited in just only javascript.
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/01/03/mitigations-landing-new-class-t...
Browsers are making changes to mitigate this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-exploit-browser-javascript...
The actual extents of the attack that are realistically possible in this scenario, I do not know. But as stated in the article google suggests: "Where possible, prevent cookies from entering the renderer process' memory by using the SameSite and HTTPOnly cookie attributes, and by avoiding reading from document.cookie."
I would take that to mean that cookies could be accessed, at the least.
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 12:16 PM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi!
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset
trial
is
actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
I think for those you need local code execution access? In which case, if somebody gained one on MW servers, they could just change your password I think. Spectre/Meltdown from what I read are local privilege escalation attacks (local user -> root or local user -> another local user) but I haven't heard anything about crossing the server access barrier.
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Might be a good idea anyway :)
-- Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Labs and production machines are separate machines. An attack on labs in the worst case would only be able to attack other labs users.
As Cyken said, one of the very scary scenarios is js getting access to data it should not have access to (e.g. if your inputting your password in one tab and a malicious site is in a different tab). The Spectre paper has a proof of concept they say worked to extract private memory against (a now outdated) version of google chrome.
All this is to say, you should update your browser ASAP or ensure that autoupdates are enabled. Similarlarly for your OS as updates become available.
-- bawolff
On Thursday, January 4, 2018, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, that sounds good. I was thinking of a scenario where someone runs code in, say labs, and gains access to memory while that machine generates my temporary code to send it to me, and thus gains access to that code.
Or, alternatively, just attack my browser through a compromised site running a JS exploit and gaining access to anything in my memory. But that's on my side to fix (or, rather, on the browser developers).
One way or the other, I have set up 2FA for now.
Use more lynx!
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 10:18 AM Cyken Zeraux cykenzeraux@gmail.com
wrote:
Spectre can be exploited in just only javascript.
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/01/03/mitigations-landing-new-class-t...
Browsers are making changes to mitigate this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-exploit-browser-javascript...
The actual extents of the attack that are realistically possible in this scenario, I do not know. But as stated in the article google suggests: "Where possible, prevent cookies from entering the renderer process'
memory
by using the SameSite and HTTPOnly cookie attributes, and by avoiding reading from document.cookie."
I would take that to mean that cookies could be accessed, at the least.
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 12:16 PM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi!
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset
trial
is
actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
I think for those you need local code execution access? In which case, if somebody gained one on MW servers, they could just change your password I think. Spectre/Meltdown from what I read are local privilege escalation attacks (local user -> root or local user -> another local user) but I haven't heard anything about crossing the server access barrier.
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Might be a good idea anyway :)
-- Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 9:29 AM, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
I often get emails that someone is trying to get into my accounts. I guess there are just some trolls, trying to login into my Wikipedia account. So far, these have been unsuccessful.
Now I got an email that someone asked for a temporary password for my account.
User:Denny is generic enough that people might be using it on other sites and getting confused about their Wikimedia user name. I wouldn't be too worried. (That, or they already hacked your email account and are now using that to take over your wiki account :)
My favorite solution to the password problem is BitAuth2017. I believe that Spectre / Meltdown can't beat PoW, but I'm not 100% sure of the details.
On 4 January 2018 at 17:29, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
I often get emails that someone is trying to get into my accounts. I guess there are just some trolls, trying to login into my Wikipedia account. So far, these have been unsuccessful.
Now I got an email that someone asked for a temporary password for my account.
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial is actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
Thoughts?
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Happy new year, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[This is kind of getting far afield of mediawiki, but...] Spectre can potentially be used to read your private (bitcoin) keys, so bitauth is just as vulnerable to it as anything else (assuming keys on your computer and not some hardware token setup). The only benefit i see is that bitauth would probably happen in a separate process and the cross process variants of spectre look more difficult to pull off.
As far as different/exotic authentication technologies go, I think U2F would be the way to go. But its all pretty irrelevent to this attack as if you had an unpatched browser and someone did this attack against you, they would probably target your session cookie. (Assuming its available in the process. I dont know enough about different browser architectures to say if thats always true)
-- bawolff
On Friday, January 5, 2018, Dan Bolser dan.bolser@gmail.com wrote:
My favorite solution to the password problem is BitAuth2017. I believe that Spectre / Meltdown can't beat PoW, but I'm not 100% sure of the details.
On 4 January 2018 at 17:29, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
I often get emails that someone is trying to get into my accounts. I
guess
there are just some trolls, trying to login into my Wikipedia account. So far, these have been unsuccessful.
Now I got an email that someone asked for a temporary password for my account.
So far so good. What I am wondering is whether that password reset trial
is
actually even more dangerous now given Spectre / Meltdown?
Thoughts?
(I probably should set up 2FA right now. Have been too lazy so far)
Happy new year, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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