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Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

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Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What attack vector does changing your password help with? Are you concerned they could have recovered the account password via the Oauth scope?

The greater issue is the passwords of other accounts, which could now be 'recovered' as the attacker has your access to your email

Yes, I agree, although revoking the scope should remove the access (and I assume Google did that for everyone already).

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords for authentication was just always a flawed idea, typing them into the DOM and sending them over the wire even more so.

I agree. However I have yet to see a better alternative. Are there any out there?

Did they ever solve the privacy issues with browser client certificates?

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#143

I reported this attack vector to Google back in 2012. They awarded a modest bounty, and then a few months later I heard this: > "We're deploying some abuse detection and reactive measures to deal with impostors that might try to abuse this sort of attack. Given this, we do not intend to perform validation that the URL matches the branding information." That last part was in reference to one of my proposed mitigations…

Unicode domain names, Google OAuth phishing...changing my passwords every 30 days is looking less and less important. It's sad we can't seem to provide good, usable secure software.

> changing my passwords every 30 days is looking less and less important.

Using some non-English Unicode text as password will make the password really strong. I sometimes include Malayalam text for passwords as it's my native language.

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#144
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What attack vector does changing your password help with? Are you concerned they could have recovered the account password via the Oauth scope?

Changing your password is the fastest way to ensure all authed sessions on any device is logged out. Google offers a "log out of any sessions" button somewhere in account settings, but most other services don't. If your email account is compromised, any service that do password resets via email confirmation, are potentially compromised by whoever has access to your email via OAuth.

I'm pretty sure that changing your password does NOT revoke your oauth scopes, which was the attack vector here.

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords for authentication was just always a flawed idea, typing them into the DOM and sending them over the wire even more so.

I agree. However I have yet to see a better alternative. Are there any out there?

Absolutely! My favorite is usually referred to as passwordless authentication, and generally means that when a user gives you their email address/SMS/etc, you send a login link to their device.

Here's an article: https://medium.com/@ninjudd/passwords-are-obsolete-9ed56d483...

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#146
post #116

Here's an interesting case that I encountered (~1:20pm maybe): 1) I clicked on the link on my phone's email app. It looked super believable since it was coming from a person I was expecting a Google Doc invite from. I allowed access to "Google Docs" and then the page hit a 502 gateway error. 2) I tried it again on my computer by logging in, and this time, when the page was loading (after I allowed access), I saw the…

Go to your Google account's security settings and see which apps have access. Revoke access from any app that is not needed or has the display name "Google Docs".

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#147

This happened to me. An unknown person from my organization shared a Google doc. I didn't open it, and replied by saying 'what is this about?'. He said he didn't send any gdocs :|

Did he click on a link telling him someone had shared a google doc with him?

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unicode domain names, Google OAuth phishing...changing my passwords every 30 days is looking less and less important. It's sad we can't seem to provide good, usable secure software.

> changing my passwords every 30 days is looking less and less important. Using some non-English Unicode text as password will make the password really strong. I sometimes include Malayalam text for passwords as it's my native language.

Or made up Malayalam words such as Melcow!

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#149

It's a pretty nasty one, since it uses their standard OAuth flow with an app "Google Docs" to have users grant full access to their email and contacts. 1. I can't believe Google doesn't have basic filters to disallow developers from registering an app named "Google Docs" 2. Perhaps there should be some more validation/limits associated with allowing apps on the platform that can gain full access to email. A secure em…

I think they do, I got an app shut down because it was named too similar to one of their products, this was just a week ago or so.

Manual review if it is reported? Because if it was manually reviewed before first use this never would have gotten through.

Re: Ask HN: Google Doc email virus?

#150

I reported this attack vector to Google back in 2012. They awarded a modest bounty, and then a few months later I heard this: > "We're deploying some abuse detection and reactive measures to deal with impostors that might try to abuse this sort of attack. Given this, we do not intend to perform validation that the URL matches the branding information." That last part was in reference to one of my proposed mitigations…

This was particularly effective because the app was registered as "Google Docs" - to not even filter names of your own products out seems ripe picking for imposter apps.

I've seen this point and agree with it, but I really have to wonder: if the app was just called "Documents" or "My Docs" and had a professional-looking icon, would a significant number of people really have given it a second look anyway?
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