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GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
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Shane Jones  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 2:03 am
From: Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 23:03:48 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 2:03 am
Subject: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Let me start by saying that I like GoGrid.  I think they are a viable
player in the cloud computing space, and I hope they do well.  I'm
starting this discussion so they and all of us can learn together to
build credibility for cloud computing in general.

We all know that security is only as strong as your weakest link and
you never get a second change to make a first impression.  With so
many people already skeptical of cloud computing, we need to make sure
that people's first experience with cloud computing is a positive one.

GoGrid has failed to secure the most basic component of IT security -
customers' passwords.  When you try to login to GoGrid's control
panel, the screen doesn't provide any way to retrieve your username
and password.  If you lose it, you have to contact customer support to
retrieve it.  In and of itself, this is a big oversite.

I contacted customer support through their online live chat support.
My expectation was that they would either point me to a page where I
could go through a process of requesting a password reset or that they
would have to reset my password and the system would automatically
send it to my email address.

The support rep asked for my name, email address, and billing address
for the credit card on file.  What happened next, was a complete shock
to me...in the chat window, there was my password in plain text.  Not
only did the rep have access to my password (which is completely
unacceptable), but they actually gave it to me without any real
assurance that I was who I said I was.

Getting someone's name, email address, and billing address is about as
easy as it gets - especially in the corporate world.

Bill Gates, bi...@microsoft.com, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052

I'm sure Bill isn't a GoGrid customer, but you get the point.  As an
industry, we have to be a lot better than this if we expect to earn
the trust of enterprise customers.  I know that the GoGrid team is
strong and they'll correct this problem very quickly, but it should be
an eye opener for all of us.

-shane

Shane Jones
Chief Executive Officer, CloudRamp, Inc.
Blog: www.cloudramp.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cloudramp


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sudhendra seshachala  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 9:45 am
From: "sudhendra seshachala" <sudhi.seshach...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:45:31 -0500
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 9:45 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

I noticed this too. I guess, they are still in beta, so hopefully they will
get better in this area.

thanks
Sudhi

On 9/5/08, Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Reuven Cohen  
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(1 user)  More options Sep 5 2008, 10:13 am
From: "Reuven Cohen" <r...@enomaly.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:13:44 -0400
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 10:13 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 9:45 AM, sudhendra seshachala

Amazon is also in beta.  I'm not sure if being in beta is any excuss
for poor security policies. Do they do this for their traditional
hosting plans?

reuven


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Michael Sheehan  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 10:24 am
From: Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 07:24:32 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 10:24 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Shane,

Thank you for pointing this out. I will be sure that our support team
knows not to give out this type of information, or if it is given out,
it is done in a secure manner.

Security is of utmost importance to us. If you have any other
suggestion on how we can increase your comfort level (e.g., with
password hints, temporary password resets, etc.) please let me know.

Do note that our entire GoGrid portal is run with SSL-encryption,
INCLUDING the chat session so while I agree with you that the password
should not have been delivered in that manner, the chat session was
encrypted with RC4 128 bit encryption.

Thanks,
Michael Sheehan
Technology Evangelist for GoGrid

On Sep 4, 11:03 pm, Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Khazret Sapenov  
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(1 user)  More options Sep 5 2008, 10:33 am
From: "Khazret Sapenov" <sape...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:33:52 -0400
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 10:33 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>wrote:

I think one of Shane's point is that support shouldn't have access to clear
text passwords at all and should have stronger authentication procedure of
the customer (3-4 factor plus).

This single incident might make one think the entire system has same level
of protection, which doesn't create more comfort.


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Michael Sheehan  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 11:16 am
From: Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:16:08 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 11:16 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Khazret,

I will go out on a limb here and say that it does NOT reflect the
general state of security. As I mentioned previously, all of GoGrid
runs under 128-bit SSL encryption. Some further background. GoGrid is
a product of ServePath who does managed hosting and colocation. We
have been doing this for over 7 years and have very robust security
protocols and procedure for our entire organization (SAS70 certified
as well).

The password delivery over chat is a serious matter that we will
address promptly. I would ask simply that people don't make
assumptions on the quality or security of the product due to a human
interaction (e.g., an action on chat) as it may not reflect the
product itself.

Thanks,
Michael

On Sep 5, 7:33 am, "Khazret Sapenov" <sape...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Shane Jones  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 11:22 am
From: Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:22:15 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 11:22 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Thanks Michael.  Just to let everyone know, I did let the support team
know about this issue before posting it to the board, and they said
they would escalate this to the right people.

I would suggest the following:

1.  Add a password reset function to the login page that generates a
new, random password and emails it directly to the primary email
address of the main administrator.

2.  Eliminate the internal tool that the support team uses to access
customer passwords and train them to redirect people to the automated
reset function.

3.  Long term, it would be great if you allowed the administrator to
set their own policies on how passwords could be retrieved/reset.  For
example, the user could require both an email address and primary
credit card number be passed to the password reset function.  The
password reset function should be able to have access to an encrypted
version of the credit card number to compare to an encrypted version
of the number provided by the user without presenting a security risk.

Another concern that I have is whether or not server passwords stored
inside the control panel are accessible to the support team.  I
assumed that when you change a server password inside the control
panel, it would change the account password on the virtual server.  I
contacted support after my login failed, and he said that the
passwords stored inside the control panel are not connected to the
virtual servers, and that they were "just for our reference".  At the
time, I assumed he meant just for *my* reference.  But the more I
think about it, he retrieved my original password for the virtual
server, he didn't reset it.  I'm guessing that they have a similar
tool that lets them retrieve passwords for each virtual server
account?  If so, that needs to be changed as well.

Thanks again Michael for your quick response and seeing that these
issues get resolved.

-shane

On Sep 5, 7:24 am, Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com> wrote:


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Michael Sheehan  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 11:36 am
From: Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:36:53 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 11:36 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Hi Shane,

Thanks for the details. Your points are exactly what I was thinking as
well. Points #2 and 3 are great as well.

The other suggestions that you have are intriguing as well. The
passwords that are displayed within the GoGrid portal are there for
reference and do not reflect the current state of a password on a
GoGrid server. Think of it as a notepad. You can update it manually
(say, for example, you have a team of developers that you need to
share this information with). We wanted to create a utility that would
be self-serving and automated for when you created a cloud server. We
didn't want to email user/password information for newly created
servers because of the security concerns. So, we developed a slick way
that automagically creates the user/pass combo that populates the
password section. Once you go in to your server, though, it is up to
you to manage them.

In terms of not allowing support to view passwords, this is a tricky
thing. Since we do provide (free) 24x7 support for GoGrid, we needed
to be sure that we could provide support (to some extent) within the
server itself. I can't really talk about the "behind the scenes" magic
that makes that work, but it is a pretty complex and well vetted
process that continues to evolve.

Anyway, thanks for your ideas!

-Michasel

On Sep 5, 8:22 am, Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Adwait Ullal  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 11:38 am
From: "Adwait Ullal" <adwait.ul...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 08:38:32 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 11:38 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

In addition to Shane's suggestions below, encypt (not just transit via SSL,
etc) or hash the password in storage if it's not being done already. Also
the email that's being send should never contain both the password and the
userid in the same email.

- Adwait

--
Adwait Ullal

w: http://www.adwait.com
p: (408) 898-2581

On 9/5/08, Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Vishal Mehra  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 12:03 pm
From: "Vishal Mehra" <vishal.m.me...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 09:03:15 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 12:03 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

Hi Michael,

CSRs (Customer Service Reps) should not have the ability to view any
customers' passwords. In fact, all passwords should be "one-way" hashed
before they are stored in the secured database that has limited access. Most
of the secured transactional oriented sites would allow users to reset the
password rather than retrieve the password - perhaps you want to evaluate
GoGrid's architecture based on type of applications that would be hosed on
the environment. If there is a need for CSRs to impersonate as a customer,
they should login with their super id, and this id along with customer id
(and operation performed) should be recorded in the database for audit
purposes.

Vishal

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>wrote:


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Michael Sheehan  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 1:15 pm
From: Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:15:32 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 1:15 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Vishal,

Great suggestions! Thanks for the info. I'm not privy to how things
are actually architected so we may be actually doing that.

-Michael

On Sep 5, 9:03 am, "Vishal Mehra" <vishal.m.me...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Brendon Whateley  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 2:40 pm
From: "Brendon Whateley" <bren...@darkindigo.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 11:40:30 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 2:40 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

One of the important reasons for using a one-way-hash for passwords is to
prevent the original password from being ever discovered or recovered.  Part
of the security concern is that many people reuse passwords for other
services, so if you leak a plain text password, there is a good chance that
you could log into other services that the same customers uses.

There is no compelling reason for designing a system that allows a customer
password to be recovered.  The security risk from somebody gaining access to
the password database goes from almost zero to huge, for no operational
benefit.  If the support people can reset and supply a new one-time password
over a secure chat session or even over email, that could be a completely
acceptable risk.  If they can recover my password, that makes me cringe...

Brendon.

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>wrote:


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Dan Kearns  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 3:03 pm
From: "Dan Kearns" <d...@thekearns.org>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 12:03:46 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 3:03 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Brendon Whateley <bren...@darkindigo.com>wrote:

> There is no compelling reason for designing a system that allows a customer
> password to be recovered.  The security risk from somebody gaining access to
> the password database goes from almost zero to huge, for no operational
> benefit

Sidestepping the horror that hashing even needs to be explained to a web
based service provider....

It's actually unavoidable to store real passwords in cloud apps, as there is
no trust or delegation model between services (that matter) which is usable
or widespread enough to "just work". It doesn't seem to be for lack of
effort though, as uncountably many companies and standards have been
involved.

It's probably too low-tech to suit most folks, but I'd like to see a cloud
service created which does the following:

   - stores my ids/passwords in a way where I have a reasonable expectation
   it won't be compromised
   - provides an id/password on demand to anyone who a) asks for it, and b)
   I have approved for access to it and c) which the service provider has
   contractually obligated not to persist it locally under penalty of a
   monetary value known to me

-d


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Adwait Ullal  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 3:18 pm
From: "Adwait Ullal" <adwait.ul...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 12:18:51 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 3:18 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

OpenID (www.openid.net) ?

- Adwait

--
Adwait Ullal

w: http://www.adwait.com
p: (408) 898-2581

On 9/5/08, Dan Kearns <d...@thekearns.org> wrote:


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Brendon Whateley  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 3:21 pm
From: "Brendon Whateley" <bren...@darkindigo.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 12:21:17 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 3:21 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

That sounds a lot like OpenID.   That seems to be gaining traction at the
moment and has a bunch of nice features.

Access control and authorization are getting to be bigger hurdles as more
stuff moves into the cloud.  And the impact of compromise is growing!

Brendon.


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Dan Kearns  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 3:33 pm
From: "Dan Kearns" <d...@thekearns.org>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 12:33:44 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 3:33 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Adwait Ullal <adwait.ul...@gmail.com>wrote:

>  OpenID (www.openid.net) ?

> On 9/5/08, Dan Kearns <d...@thekearns.org> wrote:

>> It's actually unavoidable to store real passwords in cloud apps, as there
>> is no trust or delegation model between services (that matter) which is
>> usable or widespread enough to "just work". It doesn't seem to be for lack
>> of effort though, as uncountably many companies and standards have been
>> involved.

never heard of it.

seriously though, note the keywords: trust, delegation, usable, and
widespread.

Then try to imagine a yodlee or travelocity saying "I know, we'll just use
openid"

-d


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Krishna Sankar (ksankar)  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 4:01 pm
From: "Krishna Sankar (ksankar)" <ksan...@cisco.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:01:07 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 4:01 pm
Subject: RE: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

We can do that with OpenID and OAuth. Actually we can do it with better
granularity.

Cheers

<k/>  

From: cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
[mailto:cloud-computing@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Dan Kearns
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 12:04 PM
To: cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Brendon Whateley

<bren...@darkindigo.com> wrote:

        There is no compelling reason for designing a system that allows
a customer password to be recovered.  The security risk from somebody
gaining access to the password database goes from almost zero to huge,
for no operational benefit

Sidestepping the horror that hashing even needs to be explained to a web
based service provider....

It's actually unavoidable to store real passwords in cloud apps, as
there is no trust or delegation model between services (that matter)
which is usable or widespread enough to "just work". It doesn't seem to
be for lack of effort though, as uncountably many companies and
standards have been involved.

It's probably too low-tech to suit most folks, but I'd like to see a
cloud service created which does the following:

*       stores my ids/passwords in a way where I have a reasonable
expectation it won't be compromised
*       provides an id/password on demand to anyone who a) asks for it,
and b) I have approved for access to it and c) which the service
provider has contractually obligated not to persist it locally under
penalty of a monetary value known to me

-d


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Rich Wellner  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 4:53 pm
From: Rich Wellner <goo...@objenv.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:53:03 -0500
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 4:53 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

> It's probably too low-tech to suit most folks, but I'd like to see a
> cloud service created which does the following:

>     * stores my ids/passwords in a way where I have a reasonable
>       expectation it won't be compromised
>     * provides an id/password on demand to anyone who a) asks for it,
>       and b) I have approved for access to it and c) which the service
>       provider has contractually obligated not to persist it locally
>       under penalty of a monetary value known to me

The grid community solved this with GSI
<http://www.globus.org/security/overview.html> and delegated credentials.

/The primary motivations behind the GSI are:

    * The need for secure communication (authenticated and perhaps
confidential) between elements of a computational Grid.
    * The need to support security across organizational boundaries,
thus prohibiting a centrally-managed security system.
    * The need to support "single sign-on" for users of the Grid,
including delegation of credentials for computations that involve
multiple resources and/or sites. /

There is almost certainly some stuff there worth considering for use in
clouds.

rw2


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Tim Freeman  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 6:23 pm
From: Tim Freeman <tfree...@mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 17:23:27 -0500
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 6:23 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:53:03 -0500

That link is pretty out of date, in particular:

    "Note that the GSI and software based on it (notably the Globus Toolkit,
     GSI-SSH, and GridFTP) is currently the only software which supports the
     delegation extensions to TLS (a.k.a. SSL). The Globus Project is actively
     working with the Grid Forum and the IETF to establish proxies as a
     standard extension to TLS so that GSI proxies may be used with other TLS
     software."

See: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3820.txt

OpenSSL has support for this since 2005 I believe.

> /The primary motivations behind the GSI are:

>     * The need for secure communication (authenticated and perhaps
> confidential) between elements of a computational Grid.
>     * The need to support security across organizational boundaries,
> thus prohibiting a centrally-managed security system.
>     * The need to support "single sign-on" for users of the Grid,
> including delegation of credentials for computations that involve
> multiple resources and/or sites. /

> There is almost certainly some stuff there worth considering for use in
> clouds.

We use it with Nimbus for client -> management interactions:

    http://workspace.globus.org

As for what happens on VMs, the Nimbus automatic configuration technology can
take you from no secrets to a bootstrapped security context using just about any
technology (including remote access policies as well as SSH host key
distribution/authentication across your launched VMs):

    http://workspace.globus.org/clouds/clusters.html#features

This "overlay" technology is good in my opinion because only a small amount of
"cooperation" is necessary from the various VM-as-resource providers (namely,
help to get a seed secret on to the VM).

We've spoken with AWS evangelists etc. about some kind of delegation for EC2
operations -- it is a natural fit for the ecosystem of businesses running
things on clients' behalf (many companies are getting into this, it would be
good for our users that run via a Nimbus backend to EC2 as well).

Uploading your raw credentials to a remote management application is
unnecessary and risky...

Tim


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Michael Sheehan  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 6:33 pm
From: Michael Sheehan <mich...@servepath.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:33:06 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 6:33 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
For those who have been following this thread, I just posted more
information and some changes that we have put into effect (today) to
mitigate some of the concerns that users have.

More information is here: http://blog.gogrid.com/2008/09/05/gogrid-password-security-update/

Feel free to contact me with any questions, concerns or suggestions
you may have.

Thanks,
Michael

On Sep 4, 11:03 pm, Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Robert W. Anderson  
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 More options Sep 5 2008, 6:35 pm
From: "Robert W. Anderson" <rob...@digipede.net>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:35:30 -0700
Local: Fri, Sep 5 2008 6:35 pm
Subject: RE: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

OpenID doesn't do anything like what is being suggested.   Several
OpenID providers are building identity services that do support the
single sign-on password management.  

But we aren't really even talking about single sign-on here.  We're
talking about delegation.  OAuth, SAML, and I think GSI have solutions
for this, but OpenID?  Not what is was designed for.

From: cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
[mailto:cloud-computing@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Adwait Ullal
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 12:19 PM
To: cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

OpenID (www.openid.net) ?

- Adwait

--
Adwait Ullal

w: http://www.adwait.com
p: (408) 898-2581

On 9/5/08, Dan Kearns <d...@thekearns.org> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Brendon Whateley

<bren...@darkindigo.com> wrote:

        There is no compelling reason for designing a system that allows
a customer password to be recovered.  The security risk from somebody
gaining access to the password database goes from almost zero to huge,
for no operational benefit

Sidestepping the horror that hashing even needs to be explained to a web
based service provider....

It's actually unavoidable to store real passwords in cloud apps, as
there is no trust or delegation model between services (that matter)
which is usable or widespread enough to "just work". It doesn't seem to
be for lack of effort though, as uncountably many companies and
standards have been involved.

It's probably too low-tech to suit most folks, but I'd like to see a
cloud service created which does the following:
*       stores my ids/passwords in a way where I have a reasonable
expectation it won't be compromised
*       provides an id/password on demand to anyone who a) asks for it,
and b) I have approved for access to it and c) which the service
provider has contractually obligated not to persist it locally under
penalty of a monetary value known to me

-d

<br


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Tim Freeman  
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 More options Sep 6 2008, 12:26 am
From: Tim Freeman <tfree...@mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 23:26:08 -0500
Local: Sat, Sep 6 2008 12:26 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:01:07 -0700
"Krishna Sankar (ksankar)" <ksan...@cisco.com> wrote:

> We can do that with OpenID and OAuth. Actually we can do it with better
> granularity.

Here is a slightly old, but I think still relevant, discussion of OpenID cons:

    http://idcorner.org/2007/08/22/the-problems-with-openid/

Tim


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randall  
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 More options Sep 6 2008, 12:40 am
From: randall <rand...@qrimp.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 21:40:54 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Sat, Sep 6 2008 12:40 am
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
Hey Michael,

First I want to commend you on your rapid response on this issue.
Moving quickly to respond to and fix these issues is important. Now
for the bad part.

If passwords have always been stored via one-way hash, how did Shane
get his actual password back?

Also, I know the web chats I've used always ask if I want a transcript
emailed to me.  I was once asked to give my password in one of these
chats and thought it very odd and would not do it, because these
emailed transcripts are sometimes sent over the wire in plain text or
cached on the smtp server or thick clients.  So there are still holes
even if the web sessions are all SSL.

- randall


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Shane Jones  
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 More options Sep 6 2008, 12:03 pm
From: Shane Jones <shanedjo...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2008 09:03:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security
The customer support rep that I spoke with said that the passwords
were encrypted, but not 1-way hash encrypted.  They had an internal
tool that could lookup customer records and decrypt their password if
needed.  He didn't mention the exact encryption method used.

Michael, thanks for your blog post and fast action on the issue.  Your
open communication about this issue builds confidence that the GoGrid
team takes this seriously and isn't trying to sweep it under the rug.

-shane

On Sep 5, 9:40 pm, randall <rand...@qrimp.com> wrote:


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Oscar Koeroo  
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 More options Sep 6 2008, 2:27 pm
From: Oscar Koeroo <okoe...@nikhef.nl>
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:27:21 +0200
Local: Sat, Sep 6 2008 2:27 pm
Subject: Re: GoGrid Needs to Rethink Security

Hi Randall,

I'd like to note that if the one-way encryption of the password is MD5,
then I can be patient or look it up on a database by people who have
been patient for me. To me, that's not a security advertisement worth
noting. The security mechanisms and procedures you expose should be a
base line example.

Another weakness is the procedure of the password retrieval or reset
procedure. Telling the right stuff provides new keys to the kingdom.

Working with certificates might be a lot of extra hassle but could add a
new level of trust. If you're not up to the task to work the certificate
CA jazz yourself, then you can leave that to existing commercial CAs. If
the CAs do their job (except just collect $200 and sign a certificate
request by comparing bank transfer info or credit card info) then they
have a very well known identity relationship established between them
(the CA) and your customer. Other options, like GSI, might then also
become possible.

my 2 cts,

        Oscar

  smime.p7s
4K Download

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