How *Not* To Implement A Web Application That Handles External Authentication, Using BeTwittered.com As An Example
Today I'm going to look at how not to handle user authentication in a web application, taking BeTwittered.com authenticating with Twitter as an example (sorry, guys).
BeTwittered is a simple and comfortable gadget that you can add to your site, such as your iGoogle homepage.
Since BeTwittered is just a bridge between you and Twitter, it has to first log you into your account. Here is where things go horribly, horribly wrong.
1. BeTwittered does not use SSL to secure requests to its servers
All authentication information is transmitted to BeTwittered servers in plain text and is easily sniffable by an attacker, both on your own network and outside of it. You can read more about SSL encryption here….
Updated: January 29th, 2010
Today I found out something entirely new about framebusting and specifically clickjacking protection techniques.
I was working with a site that was using frames. Suddenly, one of the frames (which was hosted on a domain that differed from the one it was embedded in) displayed the following message (in Firefox 3.5.4):
This content cannot be displayed in a frame To protect your security, the publisher of this content does not allow it to be displayed in a frame. Click here to open this content in a new window |
To protect your security, the publisher of this content does
not allow it to be displayed in a frame.
Click here to
…
Updated: June 24th, 2020
Introduction
Clickjacking is a malicious technique of tricking web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer while clicking on seemingly innocuous web pages. A vulnerability across a variety of browsers and platforms, a clickjacking takes the form of embedded code or script that can execute without the user's knowledge, such as clicking on a button that appears to perform another function (credit: Wikipedia).
Clickjacking is hard to combat. From a technical standpoint, the attack is executed using a combination of CSS and iFrames, which are both harmless web technologies, and relies mostly on tricking users by means of social engineering. Additionally, the only server side technique against clickjacking known to me is “frame breaking…
beer planet is a blog about technology, programming, computers, and geek life. It is run by Artem Russakovskii - a local San Francisco geek who is currently pursuing his own projects and regularly enjoys hacking Android, PHP, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, Perl, and regular expressions, working on Wordpress plugins and tools, tweaking MySQL queries and server settings, administering Linux machines, blogging, learning new things, and other geeky stuff.
