StevenWhiting.com

Same idea as the other security flaw I found. The change password page I thought would at least be secure but it appears, even this page, Twitter is sending the passwords out in plain text instead of encrypting them.

Here the new password appears in the Username field of NetworkMiner. People may wonder what’s the use without a user name for these passwords. Well using other tabs in NetworkMiner you can get the username as well but I just never bothered to show that. Also, a lot of people have a bad habit of using the same password on other sites. So if someone gets your password for Twitter and you’re using it for, say, your googlemail account. If they find out your e-mail address then they’ll be able to get into that as well.

Further testing I changed the http to https before typing in the password. It’s making no difference. The password is still picked up by Wireshack and NetworkMiner. Meaning Twitter is sending the passwords in plain text.

I’m crap at explaining stuff so for a better and easier to understand explanation of a Man in The Middle Attack, check out Hak5’s vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N86xJpna9Js

UPDATE:

netresec.com used this video on their blog and said they reported this issue to Twitter security and got a swift reply. Good on them, but fuckers at Twitter never replied to me when I originally reported this. Besides, took them months to fix this which isn’t good.

Found this issue while sniffing traffic on my network. You only really need to worry about this if you’re on a public network, such as an Internet Cafe etc. You can use Twitter just don’t update anything in your settings as that’s where the password gets sniffed. Although I wouldn’t really use Twitter on a public network full stop as there are other ways they can get into your account while sniffing the traffic.

This is also a reason you need to protect your WIFI. Using WPA2 is best with a strong password.

All this is doing is using a Man in The Middle Attack. Basically someone will get onto your network and then listening in to the traffic. They will fool your PC into thinking they are the router and the router into thinking they are your PC. They can then sniff all the traffic (as I’m doing with NetworkMiner in the video). With this they can pick up chat messages being sent, get login details where the login isn’t encrypted and more. Best way to protect yourself is to know who is on your network, which you obviously won’t if you’re on a public one. And all sites with https are secure (not totally but that’s another story and it’s a lot harder to break). Anyway, enough waffle, enjoy the vid.

Further testing I changed the http to https before typing in the password. It’s making no difference. The password is still picked up by Wireshack and NetworkMiner. Meaning Twitter is sending the passwords in plain text.

UPDATE:

netresec.com used my 2nd video in this series on their blog and said they reported this issue to Twitter security and got a swift reply. Good on them, but fuckers at Twitter never replied to me when I originally reported this. Besides, took them months to fix this which isn’t good.