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Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

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Re: Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I confess I was misled by the name "application specific" into assuming that such a binding already occurred.

That's "application specific" not machine specific. I'm not sure, other than IP address, how they could tell machines apart.

Could they create a fingerprint of the application logging in using the request headers and user agent and watch for a grater than n% change in that fingerprint?

Obviously a hacker could just copy the applications headers...

Re: Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

#72
post #69
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Read the article :)

The article says it's fixed.

The fix that Google rolled out blocks ASP-based logins from accessing a few highly-sensitive pages on https://accounts.google.com, but otherwise, little has changed. With a quick API request, you can still use an ASP to skip just about any other Google web-based login anywhere on the web. Google might have to completely eliminate their Chrome/Android auto-login feature to actually prevent this sort of thing...

Re: Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

#73
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said it then, I'll say it again -- The solution is obvious: allow per-password permissions. For instance, if I make an app-specific password to sync my bookmarks, that password shouldn't provide access to my Gmail or my settings. Why isn't this already a feature?

What are possible reasons per-password permissions hasn't been a feature implemented by major websites yet? Is it simply that the way they do it now is easier to create/manage? Seems like a no-brainer.

The AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) system [1] is perhaps the most comprehensive RBAC deployment I've encountered in a web-based service. It's extremely powerful, extremely flexible, and rather hard to use. AWS is a service designed (primarily) for developer-types, so if they roll out something that requires users to have a relatively strong understanding of security concepts (and to expend some thought and effort to get things right), that's arguably OK.

Google is a different story. People commenting on this thread would appreciate some in-depth manual controls over the resources each Google credential can access, but making this sort of thing accessible/understandable to an average user is a formidable challenge.

They might be able to get part of the way there using a something like a TOFU (Trust on First Use) policy - e.g. after you create an ASP and use it to login over XMPP, that ASP would only be usable for XMPP logins for the remainder of its existence. However, this might still confuse some users or break some assumptions here and there (e.g. what if you have a client application that's designed to do both email and chat?)

Besides all this, I wouldn't be surprised if Google would have to do some major backend re-architecting for this sort of thing to even be possible...

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/iam/

Re: Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I confess I was misled by the name "application specific" into assuming that such a binding already occurred.

That's "application specific" not machine specific. I'm not sure, other than IP address, how they could tell machines apart.

I don't need them to be machine specific. What I expected was that a password issued (and immediately used) for e.g. authenticating to Gmail's IMAP service is then disqualified authorisation for any other Google service.

Re: Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication

#75
FYI - I had also observed some similar issues which I recently presented at a security conference. (The conference talk happened to be the impetus for Google to fix this stuff when they did.) For my perspective on the issues, please check out my conference slides: http://connect.ncircle.com/t5/VERT-Security-Research-Blog/Ha...
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