FYI: Steam accounts were hacked (around 10th November)

[User137]

Nowadays computers and especialy computer clouds offer huge computational power wich makes data encryption wich has been considered perfectly safe a few years ago, not so safe anymore. If we are hones no data encryption is perfectly safe.

And i don't agree with that Not all encryptions are perfectly safe, but some are. You may have also noticed increasing amount of sites which demand password to contain at least 1 number and capital letter, to improve even the bad ones.

If we take into account that steam system isn't run just on one server it means that the database itself had to be globally available. This means that hacker had ability to imposter as being one of those servers and accesing a database this way. Offcourse they needed to have proper database login creditentials to gain acces to the database data, but since it isn't very likly that database creditentials are being periodicaly changed they had lot's of time in trying it out (trying a few hundreds of password one day, a few hundreds next day, and so on). All that they had to do is keep number of login trials (guesing of passwords) low enough for not trigering anny alarms and that is all.

From end to start, the password guessing is in my opinion history already, unless system is built really bad. Admins will most likely get big red alarms after 5 wrong password attempts already, and ban the IP. They can shut it down if they see the attacks continuing on numerous IPs. Well, it doesn't require even admins, systems can prevent repeated attempts automatically usually.

If i was admin to such cloud server network, i'd use same IP whitelist for each server. As we know, the hackers were able to crack into something else than normal steam login because otherwise they wouldn't access all users at once. So, if each server only allows connections from other servers that are in the whitelist, wouldn't that solve everything? Admins themselves only need localhost connection to the server they are at. Allowing remote connection to big amount of data can be a root of problems. Even most server software (FileZilla FTP, Apache etc) lets admins only login from local network, by default.

[SilverWarior]

And i don't agree with that Not all encryptions are perfectly safe, but some are. You may have also noticed increasing amount of sites which demand password to contain at least 1 number and capital letter, to improve even the bad ones.

There is no encryption that is perfectly safe.
As for various sites requesting for using numbers in passwords it is only to prevent pasword breaking by using dictionarry attack wich is a lot faster as brute force attack becouse it is guesing password with the help of prechoosen words. Ass for using capital letters it only prolongs brute force attack, that's all.

[LP]

From end to start, the password guessing is in my opinion history already, unless system is built really bad.

...or, unless, that system is being used by users who are humans.

Admins will most likely get big red alarms after 5 wrong password attempts already, and ban the IP.

Sure and prevent all legitimate users from the entire subnet access to the server. Banning IPs is a very bad idea as some ISPs serving thousands of users may have only one public IP. By doing so you've just helped a successful DOS attack, which denied access to many legitimate users.

They can shut it down if they see the attacks continuing on numerous IPs.

...and simplify DOS attacks further to this server: just access this server from multiple IPs and it will automatically shut down, how cool is that!

If i was admin to such cloud server network, i'd use same IP whitelist for each server.

I would consider such server system highly insecure because if you rely on IP address whitelist, you are immediately a candidate for IP spoofing.

[LP]

Various articles about Steam hack only says that data from the user accounts database was stollen, but no article wich I read doesn't says how that was done.

This is actually very speculative. From what we can tell, they could just as well put a gun on sysop's face in an armed assault to the datacenter, download the necessary data in raw unencrypted format and be gone. Who knows...

[User137]

First off, i'm not making things up. I have built web services and seen many configuration options. You seem to be tackling on minor details now on things you could have thought of solutions yourself too.

...or, unless, that system is being used by users who are humans.

What does bots password guessing have to do with humans?

Sure and prevent all legitimate users from the entire subnet access to the server. Banning IPs is a very bad idea as some ISPs serving thousands of users may have only one public IP. By doing so you've just helped a successful DOS attack, which denied access to many legitimate users.

Ban IP for 10 hours or ban user, that's minor details. ISP's dynamic IPs usually change at frequency of once per 24 hours, but may vary alot. I used to have same IP for many weeks. Getting 1 user a "access denied" for preventing 1 hacker would be perfectly acceptable trade any day. User can request his password to his email if its lost, no system will let you attempt it more than 10 times, normally just 5.

...and simplify DOS attacks further to this server: just access this server from multiple IPs and it will automatically shut down, how cool is that!

It doesn't have to be an automatic shutdown. Or don't pull the plug and let system get hacked with all user database stolen, yay! I'd rather stop the system, call the police and see what they can do about the ongoing attack. Doublecheck security settings, maybe change admin passwords and if all ok, restart.

I would consider such server system highly insecure because if you rely on IP address whitelist, you are immediately a candidate for IP spoofing.

I would consider it an additional layer of security that makes hackers job even harder than if there was no whitelist. Coming at the cost of less admin access though, but still worth it.

[LP]

First off, i'm not making things up. I have built web services and seen many configuration options. You seem to be tackling on minor details now on things you could have thought of solutions yourself too.

No, I've just mentioned major flaws in the security solutions you have suggested. What solution to use for Steam? I don't know because I don't have knowledge of their specific system and most likely neither do you. The rest is just pure speculation as I've said earlier.

What does bots password guessing have to do with humans?

Because accounts are hosted for human users, not spam bots. Therefore, you can still guess passwords set by humans which have the nature of using easy to remember passwords instead of random letters.

Ban IP for 10 hours or ban user, that's minor details. ISP's dynamic IPs usually change at frequency of once per 24 hours, but may vary alot. I used to have same IP for many weeks. Getting 1 user a "access denied" for preventing 1 hacker would be perfectly acceptable trade any day.

It seems that you did not understand my reply. Please, check (or recheck) what subnetting is about. That is, ISP may have only one public IP with many internal (local) IP addresses given to their users. If by means of spoofing or by using proxy you thought of an IP address to be spammer and blocked it, not only you have blocked one single user, but the entire subnet! Therefore, many users will get denial of service, while the attacker can simply use a different IP address then and continue the attack. You may try to block the specific port instead of IP, but it won't help either because ports can be reused in ISP for different users and attacker can simply use a different port or most likely use as many ports and as many IP addresses as possible. Therefore, as I've said, IP blocking (check the Wikipedia link, it actually mentions the risks involved) is not an efficient security measure.

What to do in this case? It's a difficult scenario, which will most likely require multiple solutions and it still won't protect you completely. Hardware firewalls, packet filtering, redundancy, symmetric authentication are some things you can do to detect what information is legitimate, but sooner or later you will have to assume that your system will be messed up with and you will need to include steps for recovery instead of defense. This is where raw data encryption comes into play, which we have discussed earlier.

It doesn't have to be an automatic shutdown. Or don't pull the plug and let system get hacked with all user database stolen, yay! I'd rather stop the system, call the police and see what they can do about the ongoing attack. Doublecheck security settings, maybe change admin passwords and if all ok, restart.

What you are saying is fiction, that the system somehow will detect if is being hacked and say "Warning! System is being hacked, shut down? Y/N". What you are really getting are login attempts, but there is no way for you to know whether they are legitimate or some sort of attack. For instance, there are users, including myself, who may insist on logging in, more than 5 times in a row. In my own example, I have over ten passwords and sometimes I don't remember which one I've used on the particular web site, therefore I have to try all of them. An alternative solution would be simply a delay (e.g. few seconds) so that it will take quite some time for an automatic solution to guess the password, which you can detect later in the logs and do the necessary investigation on the matter without affecting any of the users or shutting down the system prematurely.

As for calling the police, that was funny. You may want to try calling FBI or NSA first.

I would consider it an additional layer of security that makes hackers job even harder than if there was no whitelist. Coming at the cost of less admin access though, but still worth it.

There are other ways to ensure security instead of using IP whitelist, which as I've said earlier, won't do the job.

What solutions should you use to improve security? It depends on the particular implementation. You may use both hardware and software solutions, packet filtering, redundant internal servers and a lot more. However, as it has been said earlier, you will most likely never achieve total impenetrable security as long as you are connected to another network, just the same as you will never protect your hardware completely from the lightning strikes (btw, yet another interesting topic which we should sometime discuss ) as long as you are connected to a power outlet.

[SilverWarior]

First off, i'm not making things up. I have built web services and seen many configuration options. You seem to be tackling on minor details now on things you could have thought of solutions yourself too.

Would you mind sharing wich ones? I gues that they arent such prosperous targets as Steam accounts for instance, wich lowers chances off hackers trying to hack them in the first place.

What does bots password guessing have to do with humans?

Everything becouse most of the humans can remember only simple passwords wich have some predictable patters. This means that guesing those passwords is easier.

Ban IP for 10 hours or ban user, that's minor details. ISP's dynamic IPs usually change at frequency of once per 24 hours, but may vary alot. I used to have same IP for many weeks. Getting 1 user a "access denied" for preventing 1 hacker would be perfectly acceptable trade any day. User can request his password to his email if its lost, no system will let you attempt it more than 10 times, normally just 5.

Yes most ISP-s would assign specific IP's to be used by specific users for some period of time, but most ISP's still alow users to request to be assigned a different IP to them anytime. This meanst that one user cah launch hack attempt from even more than 100 different IP's in the same day.
But here is the problem. After you blacklist certain IP address hacker just request for new one. And since old IP is no longer being assigned to the hacker it can be assigned to another user. And if this another user is a legitimate user you would just prevent him prom accesing your sevices.

It doesn't have to be an automatic shutdown. Or don't pull the plug and let system get hacked with all user database stolen, yay! I'd rather stop the system, call the police and see what they can do about the ongoing attack. Doublecheck security settings, maybe change admin passwords and if all ok, restart.

I would rather have some decoy system than stop the whole system for every attack. Why? If you stop the system you clearly tell the hackers that you discovered their hacking atempt and before you would even managed to explain the police that someone tried to hack your system the hackers would already erase all traces behind them. So you only get your system not being available to legitimate users and have no leads to the hackers for police to arest them.
But if you use some kind of a decoy you might hold hackers online long enough to backtrace to them. And how to make a dcoy system. For instance if you detect an atempt to access your database give the hacker impresion that he realy hacked your database engine and start feding him with false information. If you do this long enough it might be posible to backtrace the wareabouts of this hacker. But there is no quarantee that backtracing would be sucsessful.
Most todays hacking attmepts are launched from botnets nad not from a single computers. What this means. This means that hakcing attempt is actualy being launched from certain computers wich have been infected with some troyan's wich gives hackers controll off those computers. Usualy hackers even use pretimed attacks. This means that they actually arent online when athe hack is actually taking place. This makes them erasing traces behind them a lot easier and they have a firm alliby that they have been doing something else at the time making aoutorities a lot harder job in putting them in prison. And sometimes some inocent pepole actually get in trouble becouse the atack actualy originated from their computer and they didn't even know it. That's why most ISP providers usage terms have a clause that the user of the service can be prosecuted and fined if the ISP detects that a hacking attempt originatet from their computer even if their computer was under someones elses controll at the time.

[User137]

Would you mind sharing wich ones?

Just on local computer, trying different software throughout the years. I have a ftp server as hidden service online with computer every day, which only accepts localhost for admin.

About subnetting or IP manipulation, that really is just a DoS attack. Consider it as a mail that you send anonymously to someone. The receiver has no way to send you its "thanks", such as "welcome to the system", because it doesn't know where you are. So this method directly cannot be used to gain access to the system but its just harrassment.

..humans can remember only simple passwords wich have some predictable patters. This means that guesing those passwords is easier.

That was maybe so 5 years ago, but now assume that every password has number and letter (Nobody cares about passwords that don't, thats just stupidity and everyone knows that). Pick a random steam name and try guessing his password just like that... How many attempts would it take? 10? Try a botnet to login to his account... oh wait, his user account has 10 second delay between login attemps, and 10 total limit till it locks up waiting for email verification or something.

Should i rephrase it. Could i guess your pascalgamedev password easily in under 1000000 attempts?

I'm just saying of various techniques you can use with net services, not that they are best and flawless just on their own or without much further planning through the whole thing. Just because you say there are flaws in a techique, do you think nobody uses them?

Also, you might think that locking up someones account for hacking attempt is a too harsh method. It's actually reality on many systems, it's just that hacking in general is not that common against certain user accounts. Even a game server as old as Diablo 2 visibly said the player last failed login attempts to see if someone had tried to hack him.

An alternative solution would be simply a delay (e.g. few seconds) so that it will take quite some time for an automatic solution to guess the password, which you can detect later in the logs and do the necessary investigation on the matter without affecting any of the users or shutting down the system prematurely.

And that's exactly the same thing i was talking about, i'm just not mentioning all minor details. Server admins may still shut it down for safety reasons if they wish to do so, IP logs are there anyway, be it useful or not. It should be in most cases very easy to see sudden spike in failed login attempts. Assuming system has any such graph tracking at all.

[LP]

About subnetting or IP manipulation, that really is just a DoS attack.

Subnetting is not a DOS attack, it is a common technique to overcome IPv4 address exhaustion and improving routing performance for local networks connected to Internet.

That was maybe so 5 years ago, but now assume that every password has number and letter (Nobody cares about passwords that don't, thats just stupidity and everyone knows that).

Please, you are just being stubborn, we've replied on this multiple times. Nothing has changed in 5 years. People still prefer to use easy to remember passwords. I personally know people that use such passwords, actually all people I know personally use such passwords with myself being the only exception. If some web site forces you to use letters and different case, people simply use something trivial like John2011. Therefore, your assumption that every password has number and letter is grossly fallacious.

Should everyone switch to random letters and numbers? No, I think this is not necessary. If you are storing some random family photos and use e-mail to talk to some friends, there is no need for ultra-high security. Even if you don't use password at all it's unlikely someone will have interest in your data anyway.

I'm just saying of various techniques you can use with net services, not that they are best and flawless just on their own or without much further planning through the whole thing. Just because you say there are flaws in a techique, do you think nobody uses them?

No, this is a typical logical fallacy called Argumentum ad populum, saying that because others are doing it you should do it as well (check C/C++ vs Pascal thread here on PGD to see how this fallacy is used on geometric scales). You proposed IP banning and IP whitelists, I've demonstrated that these techniques do more damage than good and should not be used at all. Yes, other people might be using them (curiously including the developers of vBulletin). *Should* you ever use these techniques? No, you should use something different that doesn't involve in blocking large user masses.

If you find my arguments reasonable, you may try simply agreeing that you were wrong. This is not a contest and I'm sure everyone including myself will respect you even if you are mistaken about something (as I've said earlier, we are supposedly humans). I've myself edited one of my earlier posts about encryption because I've misunderstood you and was wrong to discuss it any further since I've agreed that breaking properly ciphered document was significantly difficult.

Also, you might think that locking up someones account for hacking attempt is a too harsh method. It's actually reality on many systems, it's just that hacking in general is not that common against certain user accounts. Even a game server as old as Diablo 2 visibly said the player last failed login attempts to see if someone had tried to hack him.

I'm not sure if this is on purpose, but you are doing Red herring. I've never mentioned and never referred to individual account blocking. You recommended IP banning, I've said that this might result in many innocent people being banned, while not resolving the issue. Redirecting the subject to a different topic doesn't support your original argument.

[User137]

I will admit where i'm wrong but it doesn't feel like that yet I'm sworm follower of pure logic.

I'm not Red herring, you just didn't read my post. I did agree that banning IP for long time can be bad for masses of people, therefore i suggested shorter (maybe even minutes) IP ban and/or user account (or in whitelist case, admin account) related temporary ban.

That is still on topic of whitelists, which under this logic is still a valid technique. It does not block large user masses, it only makes hacking attempting harder. And like i said, if you fake your IP you can't hack, only DoS. Subnetting is about communicating with computers in same network group. You cannot form a network group with a computer out in the Internet, especially if he is using a fake IP. Packets only move in 1 way, to the server (well, you can form a VPN, but that requires acceptance and setup from all parties involved).

I can prove the subnetting restriction with example: From your home computer, it is not possible to directly connect to local universitys internal network even if you fake your own IP network mask same. That is why schools have SSH or VPN login systems.

About easy passwords people make, ok, could be that large amount of people try to make them as easy as possible for them. However this topic was about hackers trying to guess them. I have been trying to make it clear that most systems will not let them try it many times in a row. They have to guess it right in 10 attempts in most cases. I don't want to try how many times Steam actually allows. Login policies for admins can be built even stricter.