Boarding Pass Hacker Targets Bank of America

Concerned Customer writes "The fake boarding pass guy is at it again. His blog shows a demonstration phishing website that is able to bypass the SiteKey authentication system used by Bank of America, Fidelity, and Yahoo. Users will be shown their security image, even though they're not visiting the authentic websites." This hack compounds the study showing that users don't pay attention to the SiteKey pictures anyway.

Crux

Why does BoA allow users to get access to their SiteKey image after answering her security questions? The reason is simple. Normally, BoA knows to present the right SiteKey image to a user because it recognizes the computer that user logs in from as belonging to the user in question. This is done using secure cookies. But what happens if there are no cookies? Say that the user wants to log in to her BoA account from a computer that she has not successfully used to connect to BoA's website with before. Before sending the SiteKey image to the user, BoA will require the user to provide some evidence of her identity - the answers to the security questions. Once BoA receives these, and has verified that they are correct, then it will send the user's SiteKey image to the user. That allows the user to verify that it is really communicating with BoA, and not an impostor, which in turn, provides the user with the security to enter her password.

This is the loophole that we use in our demonstration. Through deceit, we convince the user to enter her security question, and thus get the SiteKey image.

No matter what kind of security system you devise, you cannot take out the human element. The Internet seems like magic to people - it knows them, it knows things about them, people can find them from all over the planet. The average user is not curious enough to learn how this is accomplished, paranoid enough to distrust anything at first glance, or savvy enough to protect themselves. Bank of America is kidding itself if it thinks the SiteKey is any kind of deterrent to a hacker.

Re:Crux

Rather, I think the insightful thing to say here is that you don't gain security by adding arbitrary hoops for your consumers to jump through, but by implementing a real authentication protocol.

Re:Crux

Rather, I think the insightful thing to say here is that you don't gain security by adding arbitrary hoops for your consumers to jump through, but by implementing a real authentication protocol.

Exactly. The deceit here is the same as before, there are just more hoops (for the customer, not the phisher). The problem with authentication here is that the banks want their customers to be able to log in from anywhere in the world. You simply can't properly authenticate a computer out in the wild without some additional device, like secureid.

Re:Crux

The deceit here is the same as before, there are just more hoops (for the customer, not the phisher). The problem with authentication here is that the banks want their customers to be able to log in from anywhere in the world. You simply can't properly authenticate a computer out in the wild without some additional device, like secureid.

The deceit is simply a man in the middle attack, and we all know this is not a new thing.

I'm a BOA customer, and I've been upset with their security for years, but it keeps getting better, which is kindof a problem in itself.

Some history here. BOA's main website: http://www.bankofamerica.com/ [bankofamerica.com] was only recently redirected to a https server. In fact, until recently if you even typed https://www.bankofamerica.com/ [bankofamerica.com] you got an error message. Before doing the basic thing like moving the http server to a https server, they introduced this site key junk.

OK, here are the problems. How am I supposed to trust a website to be the site I am intending to go to when a) its not on a https site, and its asking for my username/password, and I cannot verify via the certificate or anything that I did not type http://bankfoamerica.com/ [bankfoamerica.com] by accident? b) how am I supposed to trust a website that is different almost every time I interface with it.

When I go to a supposedly real BOA branch on say Main Street in YourTown, USA, there are a number of things that makes me believe its real. There are other people in there, many of which are wearing BOA nametags, and the BOA logos and stuff are all over the outside and inside of the place. Also, its expensive and difficult to put up a fake BOA storefront, and the liklihood that a fake one will generate any profit w/o getting caught is about zero (otherwise they would exist!)

Now, how much would it cost me to put up a bankfoamerica.com site? How about 15-20 of them with different typos? How much easier is it being that they can exist anywhere in the world or even outside of the world on a sattelite in space even? How hard is it to generate all of these things that look exactly like the real site w/o a secure certificate behind them to boot? Now, being that BOA changes the website all the time, AND its not on a secure server, how am I supposed to know that I'm even dealing with the same people each time?

My problem is not with BOA identifying me, its with me identifying them. So, they add site-key and all of this crap, which puts the burdon of identifying them on me, which is backwards, especially when they keep changing the rules.

When I worked in a hospital, they talked repeatedly about "universal precautions" with respect to things like AIDS and whatnot. There needs to be a set of universal precautions for doing secure transactions on the internet, and there are none.

Re:Crux

What chance is there of being Spoofed if have no type of Trojan infection and type the correct URL?

vi C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
i 192.168.1.100 www.mybank.com
:wq

I Can't .. stop .. myself

Rather, I think the insightful thing to say here is that you don't gain security by adding arbitrary hoops for your consumers to jump through, but by implementing a real authentication protocol.

You are coming to a sad realization, Cancel or Allow?

Re:Crux

This is an obvious attack against the BoA authentication system. Anybody with basic knowledge of networking, authentication systems and phishing
methods should be able to figure out almost immediately how to defeat this system.

At first, I myself was also very critical of BoA's new anti-phishing technique. However, after some more careful consideration, I realized it is very arrogant for somebody to think that BoA's security team did not think of this problem themselves. Unlike security researchers (including moi), which usually try to create bulletproof security systems so they can right interesting papers with indisputable arguments, financial organizations are constrained by the very real issue of cost-efficiency.

Their current two-step authentication does not address the obvious MITM attack discussed here, but it does address the previously seen phishing attacks. BoA's security team must have figured out that it would cost them X amounts of money to defend against classic phishing attacks and by preventing those they would save Y money. They must have also considered solutions like the ones presented in http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~rachna/papers/secu rityskins.pdf [harvard.edu], which uses http://en.wikipoaedia.org/wiki/Secure_remote_passw ord_protocol [wikipoaedia.org] and must have realized that this would cost them a W amount of money. Note that such a solution would require BoA to create new SSL protocols that would have to be installed on the client machines, not only their own servers. Also note, that such a solution is not stupid-user-proof either. However, we can safely say that W > X (perhaps even W >> X).

By using such a solution they could perhaps save Z > Y amounts of money because much less users would fall victims to phishing attacks. It is very likely that they did the math. Because they chose to go with the current solution, it is very likely that Y-X > Z-W

The only thing that BoA should perhaps correct is the statement:
"If you recognize your SiteKey, you'll know for sure that you
are at the valid Bank of America site. Confirming your SiteKey is
also how you'll know that it's safe to enter your Passcode and click the Sign In button."

This is over-claiming and could have a harmful impact by making its web users dropping their defenses against phishing. I am sure however that their marketing dpt told them that they need to advertise this security feature as completely robust, otherwise users would feel that they are going through unnecessary trouble: "if BoA's system is still insecure, why did BoA bother changing it and why do I need to incur the delay to learn it and enter login information twice?"

Disclaimer: I do not work for BoA and I have no vested interest in supporting them. In fact, I hate their guts for their penalty fees policies :)

BoA = smarter than this blogger

it is very arrogant for somebody to think that BoA's security team did not think of this problem themselves.

I agree. In fact, I would go further and say that the author of this blog should actually be quite embarassed and ashamed of this post. His "amazing discovery" is actually the whole point of sitekey. Yes, you can be a man in the middle and get the sitekey images yourself. Congratulations. You and everyone else already thought of that.

And guess what, your man-in-the-middle now has to make a sitekey request to bank of american for *every potential victim* and as a result, BoA will easily identify your IP block as running a MITM scheme.

So in other words, this blogger is an idiot. He hasn't defeated sitekey at all. Set up a MITM site, make ten requests, and now you're out of business and the ten accounts that you phished are locked.

Picture?

users don't pay attention to the SiteKey pictures
Picture? what picture?

Yawn

That tactic has been around for about a year now, that's worth a story?

How about trojans that change your order, send the bogus order to the bank while displaying the one you entered instead? Or... wait, that's been around for about 6 months now, too.

Good for him!

It's great to know this guy is still at it, despite getting raided by the FBI for the boarding pass hack. However, unless I'm mistaken banking stuff like this is under the auspices of the Secret Service, so this guy might want to set some extra places at the dinner table for a different group of goons.

Re:Good for him!

If he keeps it up, he'll start to know the agents...

*hears a knock on the door, and answers*
Him: "Ahh, Agent Doe! Nice to see you! They sent you out for this one huh? Your standard crew."
AS: "Yep."
Him: "Can I interest you in some coffee, tea or a soda-pop while they are working?"
AS: "Sure, I'll have some coffee"
*He gets the coffee ready as the other agents go to his computer*
Him: "Sit down, sit down! Here's your coffee"
AS: "Thanks. So, everything's going well I take it?"
Him: "Yeah, I'd ask if you heard about my latest trick, but that's probably why you are here."
AS: "Yes, it is."
Him: "So, how's the wife and kids?"
AS: "Not bad. Jane is in basketball now."
Him: "Middle school"
AS: "College"
Him: "Really? I can't believe it's been that long. It seems like just yesterday you were telling me about her being born!"
*more idle chatter, eventually several black suits come down carrying computer equipment.*
AS: "Well, it was nice chatting with you again."
Him: "Likewise. See you next week, same time?"
AS: "Sure, what do you have planned now?"
Him: "C'mon, and spoil the surprise?"
AS: "Alright, see you next week."

Bank of America?!?

This guy is going to get it.

Here's an example on how B of A does business:

This guy just wanted to check to see if a check was good! [sfgate.com]

You can bet B of A will go after this hacker guy.

"Two-factor" authentication lame implementations

All of my financial websites (bank, credit cards, etc.) have all gone to "two-factor" authentication.

Most often, the second factor is "security questions", like "what city were you born in?" and "what's your favorite restaurant?" I always answer these with random passwords, which I put in my password safe along with the real password. Unless you do that, these are actually less secure than just having a secondary password, because others can find out that stuff.

I know every business wants to do this cheaply and half-assed; it's the American Business Way. To do it "right" would probably take SecurID's or somesuch other token, which would get ugly for the customer after accumulating a couple of dozen different ones.

I've heard in comments here about banks that send you a list of code numbers, one-time-use, in the postal mail, and you use them up as you log in. That would be a good, cheap way to do two-factor that actually increases security.

The real problem of online banking

The core problem of online banking is that the bank has to implicitly trust an untrustworthy system, using insecure protocols. The bank has no way to verify that the system used at the other end has not been tampered with and they cannot verify that the data sent to them is identical with the data entered by the user.

You can implement a billion "security features", it won't mean jack as long as the only channel between bank and user is the computer. If that channel has been corrupted, the corrupter will be able to alter, delete or forge any kind of information either side should (in his opinion) get about the other end. There is no way to remove this problem unless you open a second, secure channel which is independent of the machine used for bank transfers.

Better, but still false security

I think the BoA sitekey is definitely one step above username/password on the front page. However, I agree that while it provides an added SENSE of security, it can make people trust something more that they really can't trust any more. When it was released, I did almost exactly what this guy did just to see if it would work. I was not terribly surprised that I could create a wrapper to retrieve the sitekey picture and words while still intercepting the passcode. It was actually pretty easy. Unlike the study about the people who ignored their sitekey, I do pay attention to it. However, I also pay attention to whether I'm really on BoA. I never go there from a link in an email. While someone could still redirect my request for BoA to somewhere else, I also practice safe browsing practices that at least limit that potential issue on MY computer. The convenience of online banking is just too high for me to NOT use it.

::sigh::

When are companies gonna get smart and actually HIRE this fucker?

Someone is bound to do it eventually...I can assure you all if a company does not buy him up soon, the government will.

Dear me!

He's pointing out that most of the psychological reassurances (the security blankets, we might ball them) that are presented to customers/consumers/flyers/etc... are just that--psychological reassurances.

We'd better be careful. This kid is dangerous. He could dismantle our entire society! Wait to see what happens when he points out that money is fictitious.

A bit less than it appears

The summary is not quite correct. It's not so much that the SiteKey is being bypassed, as that the attacker is able to get their hands on the user's SiteKey. They can only do this by getting the user's password and security code, which they do with a conventional man-in-the-middle attack. Once they've got that, getting the SiteKey seems the least of their worries.

The obvious problem with SiteKey is the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the image to the server in the first place. There's some step where you're communicating in a fashion where you trust the server enough to give them your SiteKey, which they later show back to you. It's tied to a single computer, via a cookie, so if you log in from a different computer you need to send a new SiteKey or get them to send yours back to you, on the new computer.

So this attack only works if you can get the user to give up not only the password but also the "security question" (one of the dumbest bits of security I've ever seen; it's like a password only you can look it up.) Easy enough, if the user isn't alert (and they usually aren't.)

SiteKey depends on users to expect the key image, but the absence of the image doesn't usually trigger warning bells because they're not very common. You need some sort of phishing detector which says, "Hey, this site is known to require a SiteKey and isn't sending it to you."

Who can remember their authentication images?

These authentication images seem to be one of these ideas that is based on the assumption that you only deal with one company.

Within the last six months, three banks and two brokerage houses I use have all gone to the use of these authentication images. In each case, the only way to select the image is to go through slow-loading screen after slow-loading screen of apparently random images.

I can choose my own password, but it is virtually impossible to "choose" my image, so they're not very memorable to me. I certainly can't choose the same image at all five sites, which is what I'd like to do. (That's insecure for a password, but I don't think it's insecure for an authentication image; it's not as if one bank were going to try to pretend to be a different bank).

One of them also wants you to give them a little phrase that goes below the picture. Ah, I thought, I'll use my phrase to describe the picture, that way I'll know if the picture is incorrect. Wrong, I couldn't do it. I had to enter the phrase before I got to choose the picture. Well, I thought, OK, I'll just change it. The picture was of (let's say) soccer ball. So I went to the screen that lets you change your passwords and personal information, entered "soccer ball" as my phrase... and was then taken to a screen where I was required to select a picture, again. And the soccer ball wasn't one of the choices. I clicked through about ten screens of five-by-five pictures trying to find the soccer ball and couldn't find it. Was it just because they were randomly selecting from a huge collection of images? Or do they actually enforce changing the image? I don't know. All I know is that I now am supposed to remember my password AND the phrase "soccer ball" AND a picture of a kangaroo.

If the picture were wrong, would I notice? I might have a vague sense of unease, but I wouldn't be sure. Not unless I wrote them all down.

original, though?

One thing I kind of want to say is that, while I agree that the SiteKey method isn't secure, it seems that most any kind of website can fall prey to this kind of MITM. With enough time, one could (with relative ease) write a bot that wraps around just about any website. (monitor the headers, cookies, GET/POST vars that are passed during a normal browser login, and then write a script that uses curl to emulate all of that and create a phishing site). I tend to think that at some point, any "necessary" security measures that could be taken to ensure someone's idenity would be inconvenient for the user or too expensive for the consumer.

I like

how with my bank, my password is printed directly below the picture...

That doesn't seem all that secure to me...

Bank of America's security needs improvement

Most Bank of America branches have open customer service centers. They consist of desks with no walls or partitions and a customer waiting area a few feet away. The first question after, "How may I help you?" is "What is your social security number". That is usually followed by, "And what can I do for you Mr./Ms. ______?"

Why not use referrer?

Why don't the banks just require that the referrer to a login page be blank. Yes, this would mean that the login page would have to be either on the main page or very simple to type since the only way a (normal) user will have a blank referrer will be to type the url in.

Essentially this means that banks would be requiring everyone to physically type (or bookmark) their banks login page and that would be the ONLY way to get there. I suppose it could be modified to accept a referrer of the banks own domain so you could click a "Login Here" button.

I know power users can spoof their referrer using a browser setting and malware could do the same, but at least that would be another layer. What am I missing here?

The Weakest Link

The weakest link in the banking system is its reliance on a single account number. Imagine, if you will, if your bank could give you limited use account numbers that never revealed your master account number to outsiders.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could give someone (e.g. PayPal, known by some for removing money back out as fast as they put it in) Deposit-Only account numbers. Like the Roach Motel, the money checks in, and it don't check out.

Or Limited Transfer Out numbers. (Allow AOL, and AOL only, to automatically debit monthly payments for amounts not exceeding your monthly bill, and only valid for 6 transactions before you give them a new number.)

Personal Checks, each one of which has a One Time Only account number on it that is worth nothing to a thief who tries to forge a hundred duplicates of the check you just gave him.

The archaic current system could, I believe, be made much more secure by this simple change alone.

Note to IP thieves: This constitutes Prior Art, and you're not allowed to patent it now.

Huh?

After reading the headline "Boarding Pass Hacker Targets Back of America" I couldn't help but wonder what sort of bank would let someone take money out of an account using only a Boarding Pass as their form of I.D.

Man in the middle and SecureID

I used to work for a bank and we looked at SecureID for all of our internet banking customers that could originate ACH (Automated Clearing House) transfers.

We realized that SecureID is also vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. Since most people ignore invalid SSL certificates, anyone could put up a fake webpage and intercept the entire SecureID transaction. Once a successful login is permitted, the attacker can process bank transactions as the legitimate user.

SecureID is a nice way to augment passwords with a one-time password, and it does reduce the "attack window" due to the fact that the bad guy can not reuse your login credentials at a later time. SecureID does not eliminate the attack window...the attacker needs to process the fraudulent transactions during the legitimate user's session.

-ted

One perfect scheme...

Many europeans banks now gives you a physical device. You must enter your PIN in the device then give back the generated number to log in. This is still vulnerable to MITM attacks. But when you're transferring a huge amount of money, you must enter the account number of the account you want to transfer money to. This, if done correctly, is approaching perfection. There could still be complete fool mislead by a MITM: the fake bank site asks to enter another account number on the physical device... However bank customers could be trained to only enter the the account they want to pay money to, which could also be emphasized by having a button on the physical device labelled "ONLY ENTER THE BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER YOU WANT TO PAY MONEY TO" (these devices tend to have a few buttons anyway, for different types of challenge). After entering the bank account number you want to pay to, the device gives you back a security that you transmit to the bank. You ain't cheating such a scheme unless you've got physical access to the device. So you ain't attacking a bank using such a scheme on a big scale. This is "good game lowlifes".

Stupid online banking security problems

The banks are really just bringing this on themselves. They have marketed the idea of security as being more important than actual security. Making me answer more questions about myself may make it harder to break in, but it leaves me even more vulnerable to identity theft if my answers are compromised.

Looking at what banks can do to improve security:

- Stop putting the "lock" icon on your login form. Users should look for the lock on the toolbar or part of browser frame. (chase.com, others)
- Stop using non secure login pages (not where the login form is being submitted to) (chase.com, usbank.com, wachovia.com)
- Stop using marketing emails from strange marketing addresses. This just gets people used to bank emails from weird places.
- Make a secure bookmarkable banking page. (my bank does not do this, I get an error screen if going to bookmark)
- Simplify navigation and operation and unify systems. (my bank does not do this, if I log out on one part of the site, I'm not logged out from the "very secure" part)

Bank sites driven by marketers [washingtonpost.com]

I have always said

I have said for a long time now, that the systme in place is faulty, because they cant verify the person at the other end. If however they had in place that the online inof does not get access to a special bank of phone numbers designed to be used per purchase....at the time of purchase you receieve a call from visa or the bank in question saying you have made some transactions or purchases online for such items, is this correct....then this would solve almost evrything, except it would cost the banks enormous amounts of money, which would then trickle back down to bigger costs and fees for a bank account of which we did not have any fees as far back as 20 years ago ( here in canada...dont know about all other places).

Everybody is greedy, so I guess if I make no money, no one will bug me!

Passmark is also mind-bogglingly stupid...

I have accounts with three financial institutions. All three use Passmark.
All three ask me to pick a common object and give it a name.
Of course I'm going to call it what it is.
Calling it something obtuse makes the whole thing harder to keep track of.
Each one asks me up to 6 security questions.
These are in case my computer gets "unregistered" or if I try to get to an account from not-my-computer.
They're not all the same. The answers are not one-word slam dunks. If they were, they would be no good.
Because they're not easy and obvious, I have to remember up to 18 obtuse answers.
If I get one wrong, even by one character, I'm kicked off until I call someone.
The banks claim this is a government law that makes them do this.
Please don't say "get one bank".

Possible Solution?

I've posted a possible solution to this kind of thing on my blog:
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2007/02/05/mutu al-authentication/ [jamesward.org]

I'd love to hear the ./ folks thoughts on my solution.

BofA

Well, I was at BofA yesterday, and noticed they are using Windows machines. In my mind that means that none of the $23.62 that I have in the bank is at all secure. I'm losing sleep tonight!

The sad irony is that my teller CLAIMED that they use the same computer security as the FBI and the CIA. My response was, "No WONDER we're losing the war!"

rhY

Here we go again

Every time I read a report on online phishing I wonder why banks (and other secure sites) don't apply a very simple almost 100% proof solution that will eliminate phishing, AND make life easier for the end user.

The solution is simple: Issue each client a tamper-proof USB dongle with a private key, similar to the smart cards you have in your cable boxes. When visiting the bank's website, the Browser/OS/USB dongle itself will ask the user for a PIN. Like ATMs, the dongle can lock out if the PIN is keyed in incorrectly too many times.

When the dongle confirms the PIN, it will conduct a Zero-Knowledge proof protocol that will prove the client's identity to the bank and simultanously generate a common session key, all without devulging any information. A man-in-the-middle attacker will be missing the session key or will not have any information required to prove its identity to the real bank site.

No password of any kind is transferred on the wire, encrypted or otherwise.

The only way around this kind of system is to have a trojan on the client's machine. In thsese cases, some OS features may be used to prevent the trojan from interacting with the dongle and PIN.

Client education is also easier: There is a physical object that serves as a key to your account, compound with a PIN. Exactly as with ATM cards. You know if your dongle is stolen (and it may not be duplicated), and in any case it's not usable without a PIN.

Maybe I'm ignorant or so

Hmmm... after reading the article I have a stupid question popping up in head...
I live in Belgium and several banks here have switched to a card reader device [vasco.com]
You just have to type in the number of your physical bank account card, then banks site generates a 8 digit passkey.
pop in your bank card, type in the generated passkey, type in your pin code and type in on the site the passkey the little device generates.

Voila... i'm banking... on any pc i want...
every time i make an online banktransfer, i have to repeat the above procedure

My wife hates it... she doesn't like that she has to type over these numbers, but i'm very happy with it.

best protection: password manager

I store my password in my password manager (firefox) that way if it's filled in, I'm shure that I'm on the right site.
I'm quite annoyed by yahoo that they disable this feature so I have to type the password in each time, and it already happened that I got phished because of that.

The password manager offers the same protection than SiteKey because it's also linked to the browser. But it is more convenient. Just forget your password and if it's not filled in automatically it can't be phished. I came across many paypal and ebay phishing sites and this method protected me effectively.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something..

Imagine the phisher's server as a type of proxy server. It's not linking you to the image on the bank's site, which is likely dynamic anyways, it's passing stuff you enter along to the login site and caching/manipulating the information to feed it back to you.

The modifications might entail stuff like changing links to keep you on the phisher site.

You enter information into the phisher site, the phisher server feeds this information(while capturing it) to the real site. The real site responds, giving the information to the phisher site, which the phisher site then sends to you.

The user doesn't have a clue. At most he might think his browser's being slow.