RE: Penetration Test: TACACS

From: Andrew van der Stock (ajv@e-secure.com.au)
Date: Fri Jun 22 2001 - 06:43:12 PDT

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    Database password management is one of the all time worst offenders. Often
    DSN names and sa/password combos are to be found in the clear all over the
    place. One review I did had them in an .inc file, which was retrievable
    using a normal browser.
    
    So, it's not unusual to find bad password handling in security products.
    Other places/products to be cautious of like this:
    
    * VNC on NT (its in the registry, and can be easily retrieved from NT 4.0
    hosts)
    * VNC in general (it stores the password in 3des with the same salt for all
    instances)
    * DSN names in NT/2K are often fully specified, sometimes even in URLs or
    hidden fields
    * database connectors in general
    * global.asa for IIS
    * database rows (if you know the product's schema)
    * Checkpoint's Session Authentication agent is a joke
    
    And so on...
    
    Andrew
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: padrinoat_private [mailto:padrinoat_private]
    Sent: Friday, 22 June 2001 01:07
    To: pen-testat_private
    Subject: Penetration Test: TACACS
    
    
    Greetings...
    
    Recently while performing a penetration test of a large client
    I was able to gain access to the Solaris server that runs the
    Cisco Tacacs Authentication Server...
    
    After perusing the system for a while I realized that the Java/JDBC
    client program for administering the TACACS Database
    read a config file that had the DB username/password in clear
    text.   Using a little experience with PERL ODBC I connected to
    the Database server and grabbed the data from tables:
    cs_user_profile, cs_password, cs_privilege.  My client
    used Clear as the password type.
    
    Is this normal?  Seems to me like one of the core things you
    try to protect on a WAN are Router passwords... Should Tacacs
    allow you to store in password inside the database in cleartext?
    
    Don't know if this is something big or if I've merely had too much
    coffee...  Someone please let me know if I've been smoking too much
    caffeine!
    
    Thanks in advance,
    el padrino
    
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