bugtraq - Re: MS to stop allowing passwords in URLs

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Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 22:57:55 -0500
From: N407ER <n407er@...ealbox.com>
To: "McAllister, Andrew" <McAllisterA@...ystem.edu>
Cc: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: MS to stop allowing passwords in URLs

McAllister, Andrew wrote:
> I just read that Microsoft will stop allowing IDs and passwords to be
> embedded in URLs used by Internet Explorer. So you will no longer be
> able to use a URL like https://user:password@....somehost.com/
> 
> See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;834489
> 
> Their reasoning is that this will mitigate status bar spoofing as has
> recently been discussed here and in other forums. The article even goes
> so far as to admit that recent versions of IE show only the URL before
> the @ sign while older versions do not.
> 
> Apparently MS has decided that this RFC URL syntax is simply too
> dangerous to allow in their products. 
> 
> Their suggested workarounds include among others:
>   1) Having users click the "Remember my password" checkbox in IE.
>   2) Using cookies.
> 
> I personally use this syntax in only one production application, BBTray
> - a windows tray applet that watches my bigbrother monitoring server.
> Click the applet and it opens a browser window with the
> id:passowrd@...ver.com syntax. The ID and password is specific to our
> bigbrother application, my workstation sits behind two firewalls and I
> am the only admin on the box. So, I consider this use to be legit and
> relatively safe given the convenience it provides.
> 
> I certainly don't consider the "remember my password" functionality nor
> stored cookies any more or less safe than this syntax.
> 
> Anyone have any comments regarding legitimate uses of this syntax and
> Microsoft removing it from their browser? (and presumably the OS since
> the browser IS the OS).
> 
> Andrew McAllister
> University of Missouri
> 

Despite what MS's notice says, presumably the primary motive for this 
was to avoid the URL spoofing detailed here 
(http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-004.asp). 
In fact, that webpage specifically states that it is to fix ``three 
newly-discovered vulnerabilities'' (``newly=discovered'' apparently 
being a relative term), including ``a misrepresentation of the URL in 
the address bar of an Internet Explorer window''.

So the security reasons they cite on the page you link to probably 
aren't that they consider that syntax to be insecure relative to cookies 
or ``Remember My Password'', but that the best way to avoid URL spoofing 
they could come up with (after, apparently, months of effort) was to 
eliminate the feature alltogether.

I can think of another great way to fix the vulnerabilities in Windows. 
It's called fdisk.

Hope that helps!