Thursday, May 08, 2014

Disclosure of ID data or Predictable ID format vulnerabilities

Disclosure of ID data or Predictable ID format vulnerabilities are considered low risk. In fact you can search around and you will find not much about it. For example most folks will highlight the advantages of using UUID versus numbered IDs when it comes to load balancing but few will acknowledge the security issue behind the usage of predictable numbers.

Don't be misled by risk classifications, these vulnerabilities can be serious and could cost companies their mere existence.

I hear statements like "well, if the account is compromised then there is nothing we can do". Actually there is a lot we can do to protect the application against stolen authentication. Double factor authentication is one of them which many times is associated to just the authentication phase but which can be used also as added authorization protection. Sometimes it is just about compromises with usability.

Disclosure of ID data is about listing views. A list should never provide sensitive information. If you want to access such thing you should go an extra step and select first the entity to see that information in the details page only. However there is little protection on doing that. The IDs are still in the list view and from those each detail view can be retrieved. Avoiding listing pages that lead to sensitive information sounds like the only possible defense but still a difficult one to sell. IMO listing pages should exist only for those knowing what they are retrieving, for example records should be originated only when providing keywords like names, addresses, known identifiers, etc.

Predictable ID format is about detail and form views. These types of views will demand the use of an ID. If that ID is predictable like an incremental number then someone can easily pull the sensitive data for all IDs. If your current model uses sequential, general numeric IDs or even symmetric encrypted IDs you should consider using a map from those to a random stored value. You could achieve this if you generate a random UUID per real ID and store it in a mapping table. You can then expose to the user just the UUID while still persisting the real ID.

Defense is to be practiced in depth. Even if the account is compromised you can still avoid a list of sensible information across your client base to be accessible from the wild.

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