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Slack was hacked

slackhq.com

141–150 of 526 posts

Re: Slack was hacked

#141
Remember kids, it's 2FA before the fact, not after. 2FA is not a magic bullet though, and neither is salting. Salting makes it _expensive_, but not impossible for pass recovery. Always aim for impossible. You want to be able to throw away the key during an incident.

Re: Slack was hacked

#142
post #19

Host your own IRC if you care about the privacy and security of your communication. There is no reason why you can't take 10min to setup a IRC with SSL on your own. Yes, Slack is awesome, lots of features, but it's not yours!

> There is no reason why you can't take 10min to setup a IRC with SSL on your own

For the VAST majority of people this would not take just 10 min. Not only would I first need to research the different IRC servers out there but I'd have to get a server to install it on (which is not the fastest processes where I work). Then I need to get an SSL cert (which is like pulling teeth here) unless I want to use self-signed and listen to everyone bitch about dealing with that (and some aren't tech people and I've have to walk them through that). Then I need to find clients for everyone (Windows/Mac/Linux) also now chat is only accessible from inside the company unless I want to expose it publicly then I need to worry about security.....

OR I could pay $X/mo and have it up and running in seconds... Slack is not the end-all-be-all but I quite like it and use it with friends as well as public slacks. IRC is great but let's not pretend it takes seconds to set up everything you need...

Re: Slack was hacked

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. You can't login with a password hash, you need a password.

If you get the user table, you can crack the password hashes offline, at your leisure.

While technically true, this seems like it would be computationally infeasible, or at least impractical, given that they were not just hashing but also salting the passwords.

Of course, I barely know anything about computer security, but at least it should prevent attacks using rainbow tables I think?

Re: Slack was hacked

#144
post #134

Why do I have to install Google Authenticator some sort of other app for 2factor here? Why can't you send me a text like everyone else does? EDIT: Slack responded that they do not support SMS yet .

[deleted]

Re: Slack was hacked

#145
post #134

Why do I have to install Google Authenticator some sort of other app for 2factor here? Why can't you send me a text like everyone else does? EDIT: Slack responded that they do not support SMS yet .

[deleted]

Re: Slack was hacked

#146

I hate to be the negative guy, and they were hashing passwords better than 90% of the sites, but it would be SO easy to completely neutralize password leakage when the attacker only has access to the database. https://blog.filippo.io/salt-and-pepper/ tl;dr: Hardcode a second salt in your application code or in an environment variable. Then a database dump is not enough anymore to do any kind of bruteforce. It's simpl…

I don't see that as a negative suggestion: that's a fantastic idea, and for all we know, a Slack employee will read your post, and make their hashing even better. :-)

Re: Slack was hacked

#147
If someone was able to get access to the user table I would believe it is trivial for them to download the chatlogs/ mine other information from database.

May be slack wants us to believe only a small part of the data is hacked , I dont know .

We have been using Slack for many projects over last year and it helps improve productivity

Re: Slack was hacked

#148
post #134

Why do I have to install Google Authenticator some sort of other app for 2factor here? Why can't you send me a text like everyone else does? EDIT: Slack responded that they do not support SMS yet .

Because SMS is not even remotely a secure communication channel, and the point of two factors is proof of possession of two different classes of things (that you have some device and that you know some secret), and using an insecure channel to send a message weakens the proof of the have half of that, in much the same way as using a weak or published password weakens the know half.

Ideally, you want as strong as practical proofs of each half within the constraints set by UX considerations.

Re: Slack was hacked

#149
post #45

How does one discover that they were hacked? The post states that the breach occurred during February, and this is the end of March... did it just take them a long time to react and write a post about it, or did they likely discover after the fact? If so, how?

I recommend "The Cuckoo's Egg". It's a great book about traking down a hacker and explains one of the ways it was done.
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