UTF8 encoding is not valid encryption.
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 2:33 amFirst of all, eventhouhg the subject looks a bit pompuous I really mean this in a positive way, I find Subsonic to be one of the best media streaming application there is, supporting HTTPS, fully open source, free, GPL... Nothing more to ask really...
Except today I forgot my password (not using the web login much to be honest), and I remembered from looking at the code that the encryption strings weren't really encrypted, more like UTF8 encoded.
So... I just opened the DB, grepped the string, and used http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/ ... f8-decoder to get the decoded string.
This brings me to the core of my post: UTF8 Encoding is not a secure way to store passwords.
Now, I know I'm connecting over HTTPS and everything so the "enc:<UTF8-encode>" string shouldn't get leaked through my connection (I shudder thinking about users not using HTTPS), but in the end the password doesn't need to be reversible, is stored locally on a shared folder and therefore could be using valid crypto.
I know it's a bit more code (eventhough in java it ain't that much, and using standard libraries would help even more secure storage in the future), and I probably even could do it if I find/have the time, but my recommendation would be to :
- Not use UTF8-encode or any home-made recipe, especially for the online login, even more for the local storage of passwords (especially in default-setup on cross-user accessible folders like C:\subsonic on a Win box).
- Seed the password with a long random number (per install, per release, whatever).
- Then use at least SHA-1 or SHA-256 to hash the password.
- Then stretch the hash a bit (run it a couple of thousands time, see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... stretching or https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/PBKDF2)
So if someone's got time to change encrypt/decrypt(String s), that would be insanely great !
Except today I forgot my password (not using the web login much to be honest), and I remembered from looking at the code that the encryption strings weren't really encrypted, more like UTF8 encoded.
So... I just opened the DB, grepped the string, and used http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/ ... f8-decoder to get the decoded string.
This brings me to the core of my post: UTF8 Encoding is not a secure way to store passwords.
Now, I know I'm connecting over HTTPS and everything so the "enc:<UTF8-encode>" string shouldn't get leaked through my connection (I shudder thinking about users not using HTTPS), but in the end the password doesn't need to be reversible, is stored locally on a shared folder and therefore could be using valid crypto.
I know it's a bit more code (eventhough in java it ain't that much, and using standard libraries would help even more secure storage in the future), and I probably even could do it if I find/have the time, but my recommendation would be to :
- Not use UTF8-encode or any home-made recipe, especially for the online login, even more for the local storage of passwords (especially in default-setup on cross-user accessible folders like C:\subsonic on a Win box).
- Seed the password with a long random number (per install, per release, whatever).
- Then use at least SHA-1 or SHA-256 to hash the password.
- Then stretch the hash a bit (run it a couple of thousands time, see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... stretching or https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/PBKDF2)
So if someone's got time to change encrypt/decrypt(String s), that would be insanely great !