Re:We took a hacker to a public WiFi café (2014)
by ricardobeat on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @05:50PM
(#16371619)
The article is from 2014 as indicated in the title. At the time HSTS was not as widespread.
HSTS bypass hacks also exist, which let the attacker controlling the DNS man-in-the-middle you through an insecure subdomain not in the HSTS preloaded list. I’m sure the guy has kept up to date with new developments to keep his job going :)
Re:We took a hacker to a public WiFi café (2014)
by devinl on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @07:54PM
(#16372442)
Do you have any more details around such an attack?
The only HSTS bypasses I am aware of that were possible with control over DNS were dependent on browser vulnerabilities that have been long since fixed or required the domain to not be cached or preloaded (which effectively means you'd only be able to attack first time visitors on sites that have not implemented preload who are clicking on an http link)
Re:We took a hacker to a public WiFi café (2014)
by superpatosainz on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @08:22PM
(#16372599)
There was once even an easy to use software that shipped with an attack. It was called Firesheep and it let anyone skillful enough to install a browser extension get into the Facebook and Twitter sessions of anyone who shares the same network.
> We do the same for Facebook: Slotboom is able to intercept the login name and password I entered with relative ease.
That sounds bit too good to be true. Facebook uses HSTS with preloaded certificates. I certainly am not aware of any "relatively easy" way of circumventing that.
> Everything, with very few exceptions, can be cracked.
Bit unnecessarily fatalistic attitude imho.
TLS is still pretty solid. Almost any half-decent VPN is non-trivial to crack. While software has holes, zero-days are typically bit beyond "All you need is 70 Euros, an average IQ" guys, so keeping your systems patched is effective measure.
Not saying that downgrade attacks etc aren't real threats, or that you don't need to pay any attention. But you can be relatively safe with fairly basic precautions and the overall situation is improving, one example being the increased alerts from browsers.