Authentication Attacks
When authentication is mentioned, the security of your details come to mind. You won’t be at peace to learn that an unauthorized person can access your data without your consent. Many people assume that authentication is merely about passwords; however, this is a half-truth. Simply put, authentication aims at ascertaining whether you are who you claim to be. The authentication process is important because we need to maintain user-specific sessions. With that in mind, hackers work tirelessly to attack authentication process to access your personal information. Here are three authentication attacks that the hackers use to unearth your identity.
Brute Force
Brute Force is a trial-and-error method used to exploit the authentication process. With this method, hackers crack encryption keys and passwords to access your personal information. While other authentication attacks use intellectual tactics, Brute Force uses guesswork until the safe opens. The hacker tries all combinations possible until the system grants access.
Brute Force doesn’t fail especially if the hacker is patient and the target lacks mitigation strategy. In fact, Brute Force can crack any system that is protected by encryption keys and passwords. More so, the amount of time that the Brute Force attack takes to break into the system suggests the security level of the application. Though Brute Force attack might sound like a tedious process, attackers use it often.
Here are three brute force attacks most used.
Dictionary Attack
With this method, the attacker gathers the commonly used passwords and try different combinations until the system grants access. The login process is always easy and quick when the hacker has a list of possible passwords. With the list of likely passwords, the hacker takes a short time to log in because otherwise if the attack takes to longer than expected, the original user may notice. A dictionary attack is certain and pronto when the attacker manages to get the password storage file.
Search Attacks
Search attacks aim at getting all likely characters and their length. This method is a little bit tedious since a lot of time due to large possible combinations.
Rule-based search attacks
Rule-based attack generates passwords by modifying particular set rules. The method helps the hackers create rules to manipulate the characters. Once this is done, the hacker can safely log in to the system to temper with whatever information.
Insufficient Authentication
Insufficient authentication happens when computer system allows a hacker to log in without suited authentication process. It occurs, for example, when a hacker obtains access to the administrator’s control panel without having to sign in. This is only possible if the administrator’s password is stored on the website. In such a case, the hacker simply requests directories that he/she obtains. If a user requests a page on a website, the server looks for the page root directory and then it sends the page to the user. However, if the server fails to locate the page, it automatically sends the HTML to the user – hacker. Such a directory is vulnerable and can be used by the attacker to exploit the website to his/her advantage. In some cases, the information provided could include, backup files, hidden files, names directories and personal user accounts. When the attacker lays hand on either of the mentioned files, he/she gets access to unintended directory listings which are soft targets for attackers.
Basically, when the user logs in, it doesn’t mean that he/she should have access to all content and functionalities therein. Like he/she shouldn’t gain access to the administrator’s content. For secure website, authorization process follows the authentication process just to ascertain that the user is legally allowed to access the site. However, some website lack mitigation strategies; they became susceptible to hackers attack. Due to insufficient authentication, hackers gain access to sensitive content that otherwise must be left to the administrator’s disposal.
Weak password recovery validation
Weak password recovery occurs when a system allows a hacker to recover another user’s password. Normally, a website shouldn’t allow another user to recover password for somebody else. If such a mistake occurs, then the website is said to have weak password recovery validation. However, the hacker can only recover the password if it can easily be guessed. For instance, if a user wants to recover the password, he/she should provide an email address and phone number. Any user – including hackers – can provide that information to verify authenticity. Another case is when the user is enticed to provide any hint to help him recall the password. Simply put, that’s a weak password recovery validation.
The password may also be recovered using cross-site scripting. In this method, the hacker inserts scripts into a trusted system or application. With cross-site scripting, the hacker sends harmful codes to the other side of the user. The original user will not determine that the script sent by the hacker is malicious and that it can expose the user’s website. With cross-site scripting, the hacker can bypass access controls to manipulate the application to get whatever information. Basically, if the application has a weak password and poor security mitigation, then cross-site scripting can cause a significant security risk to the website. The applications that allow users to generate output using their input without proper encoding is considered vulnerable.