CAPEC-50: Password Recovery Exploitation
An attacker may take advantage of the application feature to help users recover their forgotten passwords in order to gain access into the system with the same privileges as the original user. Generally password recovery schemes tend to be weak and insecure.
Last updated
Overview
Most of them use only one security question. For instance, mother's maiden name tends to be a fairly popular one. Unfortunately in many cases this information is not very hard to find, especially if the attacker knows the legitimate user. These generic security questions are also re-used across many applications, thus making them even more insecure. An attacker could for instance overhear a coworker talking to a bank representative at the work place and supplying their mother's maiden name for verification purposes. An attacker can then try to log in into one of the victim's accounts, click on "forgot password" and there is a good chance that the security question there will be to provide mother's maiden name. A weak password recovery scheme totally undermines the effectiveness of a strong password scheme.
How the attack works
The phases an attacker typically follows to carry out this attack.
- Step 1Explore
Understand the password recovery mechanism and how it works.
- Step 2Exploit
Find a weakness in the password recovery mechanism and exploit it. For instance, a weakness may be that a standard single security question is used with an easy to determine answer.
What the attacker needs
Prerequisites
- The system allows users to recover their passwords and gain access back into the system.