full-disclosure - Re: Grab a myspace credential

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Message-Id: <F6E8F514-383A-42A8-A517-4B7EAD6330E5@beskerming.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:11:55 +1030
From: Sûnnet Beskerming <info@...kerming.com>
To: K F (lists) <kf_lists@...italmunition.com>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Grab a myspace credential

Where did it all come from?  The prevailing theory is that the 'Tom'  
account was successfully phished / breached (note - the real Tom has  
a separate account) and used to send out a Bulletin to all Friends  
(almost all users on MySpace) with the malicious link contained.   
 From there it was a matter of waiting for the clicks to roll in.

Claimed evidence of the hack of 'Tom' is provided across several Digg  
stories (http://www.digg.com/security/ 
MySpace_s_Tom_s_Profile_Hacked_Sending_Links_to_Phishing_Website)  
(http://digg.com/security/Myspace_Tom_gets_hacked_PIC) from the 2-3  
days prior to the list being pushed to F-D.  Although screenshots can  
be faked, the examples that have been posted do correctly reflect how  
a Bulletin-based attack would appear.  With the numerous current  
active XSS vulnerabilities present on MySpace, it is reasonable to  
believe this chain of events.

Basic analysis of the list (which I believe is a much better source  
than the one Bruce Schneier commented on [http://www.schneier.com/ 
blog/archives/2006/12/realworld_passw.html]) throws up some  
interesting output:

  - A little more than 2% of the full list is abuse directed at the  
site operator (more when duplicate records are removed), including  
some basic ASCII porn mixed in with the results.

  - For too many users, if the login didn't work the first time,  
nothing was going to stop them from try, try, trying again (I'd  
regard those records as excellent live data).  Removing duplicate  
logins takes the list from 56k records to 41k.

  - Even better, some of the repeated attempts are users correcting  
mistakes from the first time they tried to enter their details.

  - It's a family thing.  It appears that some users (who only tried  
5-6 times to login) convinced family members to try and login to the  
site themselves (or family were caught the same way).

  - An obscure email address is not an effective means of hiding  
identity, especially if the user then spells out their full name in  
their password.

  - While not the exclusive domain of Hotmail (15162/11360)  / AOL  
(7137/5448) / MSN (1449/1069) / Gmail (825/620) / Yahoo (16562/12168)  
account holders, the list is heavily biased towards them (orig list/ 
duplicates removed).

  - Approximately 25% of the results for each of the main email  
domains is the result of multiple attempted logins (surprisingly  
consistent across each domain).

  - At least one request from a user to target a specific myspace  
account.

  - Password strength is fairly weak for most users.  A simple  
dictionary attack will capture most of the passwords available.   
Repeated login attempts appear to be associated with weaker  
passwords.  Variations to standard dictionary words seems to be  
restricted largely to adding a number before and / or after the word.

Carl

Sûnnet Beskerming Pty. Ltd.
Adelaide, Australia
http://www.beskerming.com

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