Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 20:30:07 +0530
From: Vipul Agarwal <vipul@...tygeeks.com>
To: Shirish Padalkar <shirish.padalkar@....com>,
	full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Filezilla's silent caching of user's
	credentials

That's a live and good example. I hope that now they'll understand the
importance of the issue.

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Shirish Padalkar
<shirish.padalkar@....com>wrote:

>
>
> http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=inurl:recentservers.xml&oq=inurl:recentservers.xml
>
> :)
>
>
>  From:
> Ryan Sears <rdsears@....edu>
> To:
> full-disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
> Date: 10/08/2010 08:52 AM Subject:
> [Full-disclosure] Filezilla's silent caching of user's credentials
> Sent by: full-disclosure-bounces@...ts.grok.org.uk
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> As some of you may or may not be aware, the popular (and IMHO one of the
> best) FTP/SCP program Filezilla caches your credentials for every host you
> connect to, without either warning or ability to change this without editing
> an XML file. There have been quite a few bug and features requests filed,
> and they all get closed or rejected within a week or so. I also posted
> something in the developer forum inquiring about this, and received this
> response:
>
> "I do not see any harm in storing credentials as long as the rest of your
> system is properly secure as it should be."
>
> Source:(http://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17932)
>
> To me this is not only concerning, but also completely un-acceptable. The
> passwords all get stored in PLAIN TEXT within your %appdata% directory in an
> XML file. This is particularly dangerous in multi-user environments with
> local profiles, because as we all know physical access to a computer means
> it's elementary at best to acquire information off it. Permissions only work
> if your operating system chooses to respect them, not to mention how simple
> it is *even today* to maliciously get around windows networks using
> pass-the-hash along with network token manipulation techniques.
>
> There has even been a bug filed that draws out great ways to psudo-mitigate
> this using built-in windows API calls, but it doesn't seem to really be
> going anywhere. This really concerns me because a number of my coworkers and
> friends were un-aware of this behavior, and I didn't even know about it
> until I'd been using it for a year or so. All I really want to see is at the
> very least just some warning that Filezilla does this.
>
> Filezilla bug report:(http://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/5530)
>
> My feelings have been said a lot more eloquently than I could ever hope to
> in that bug report:
>
> "Whoever keeps closing this issue and/or dismissing its importance
> understands neither security nor logical argument. I apologize for the slam,
> but it is undeniably true. Making the same mistake over and over does not
> make it any less of a mistake. The fact that a critical deficiency has
> existed for years does not make it any less critical a deficiency.
> Similarly, the fact that there are others (pidgin) who indulge in the same
> faulty reasoning does not make the reasoning any more sound." ~btrower
>
> While it's true you can mitigate this behavior, why should it even be
> enabled by default? The total lapse in security for such a feature-rich,
> robust piece of software is quite disturbing, and I don't understand how the
> developers don't think this is an issue.
>
> I just wanted to gauge the FD community on this issue, because with enough
> backing and explanation from the security community as to why this is a
> problem, this issue may finally be resolved (it's been doing this for years
> now).
>
> Regards,
> Ryan Sears
>
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-- 
Thanks and Regards,
Vipul Agarwal

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