ABSTRACT

Obscuring a password with a trivial encoding does not protect the password.

EXPLANATION

Password management issues occur when a password is stored in plaintext in an application's configuration files or other data store. A programmer can attempt to remedy the password management problem by obscuring the password with an encoding function, such as base 64 encoding, but this effort does not adequately protect the password.

Example: The following code reads a password from the registry, decodes it using a trivial encoding algorithm and uses the password to connect to a database.


...
RegQueryValueEx(hkey, TEXT(.SQLPWD.), NULL,
NULL, (LPBYTE)pwd64, &size64);
Base64Decode(pwd64, size64, (BYTE*)pwd, &size);
rc = SQLConnect(*hdbc, server, SQL_NTS, uid,
SQL_NTS, pwd, SQL_NTS);
...


This code will run successfully, but anyone who has access to the registry key used to store the password can read the value of pwd64 and easily determine that the value has been base 64 encoded. If a devious employee has access to this information, they can use it to break into the system.

REFERENCES

[1] Standards Mapping - OWASP Top 10 2010 - (OWASP 2010) A7 Insecure Cryptographic Storage

[2] Standards Mapping - OWASP Top 10 2007 - (OWASP 2007) A8 Insecure Cryptographic Storage

[3] Standards Mapping - OWASP Top 10 2004 - (OWASP 2004) A8 Insecure Storage

[4] Standards Mapping - Security Technical Implementation Guide Version 3 - (STIG 3) APP3150.1 CAT II

[5] Standards Mapping - Common Weakness Enumeration - (CWE) CWE ID 261

[6] Standards Mapping - FIPS200 - (FISMA) IA

[7] Standards Mapping - Web Application Security Consortium 24 + 2 - (WASC 24 + 2) Information Leakage

[8] Standards Mapping - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Version 1.2 - (PCI 1.2) Requirement 3.4, Requirement 6.3.1.3, Requirement 6.5.8, Requirement 8.4

[9] Standards Mapping - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Version 2.0 - (PCI 2.0) Requirement 3.4, Requirement 6.5.3, Requirement 8.4

[10] Standards Mapping - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Version 1.1 - (PCI 1.1) Requirement 3.4, Requirement 6.5.8, Requirement 8.4

[11] Windows Data Protection Microsoft