Thursday, May 7, 2020

Hacking PayPal's Express Checkout



Do you know what is happening in the background when you buy something in an online shop using PayPal?

In this post we will tackle the following problems:
  • How can PayPal's API be tested?
  • How does PayPal's Express Checkout work? You can find the detailed report here.
  • How can we debit more money than authorized?

How PayPal's API can be tested?

PayPal's Sandbox API

PayPal offers a feature called PayPal Sandbox Accounts, which mimics the production API. The basic idea is that a normal user/shop can test the API and make transactions without actually transferring money. This is the perfect tool for developers to test their API integration.

Access to all messages

The next question is how to get access to all messages. All browser-related messages can be inspected, intercepted, and modified via BurpSuite. The main problem here is how to get access to the server-to-server exchanged messages: the messages exchanged between PayPal and a shop. In order to solve this problem, we deployed our own shop. For this purpose we used Magento, which already has a PayPal integration.
Once we have our own controlled shop, we can enforce Magento to send all request through a proxy.
In the following picture you can see our setup.

Test suite for analyzing PayPal's API [1]

In order to capture the traffic between our Magento hhop and PayPal we proceeded as follows:
  • We configured Magento to use a proxy running on localhost:8081.
  • We connected the proxy port on the virtual machine with our local machine via SSH remote port forwarding by issuing the following command
    ssh -N -R 8081: localhost :8081 <IP of Magento shop>
  • We configured BurpSuite running on our local machine to listen on Port 8081 for incoming requests.
Now, we were able to see the entire traffic.
Please note that we uses our own, custom Magento shop in order to be able to test Paypal's API.

PayPal's Express Checkout

An overview of the checkout procedure is depicted in the following:

PayPal's Express Checkout [2]




Step 1: Magento tells the PayPal API where to redirect the user after authorizing the transaction via the parameter RETURNURL and requests a token for this transaction.
Step 2: The PayPal API provides Magento with the token.
Step 3: Magento redirects the user to PayPal's website. The redirect contains the token from the previous step.
Step 4:  The user authorizes the transaction. As a result, he will be redirected back to Magento (RETURNURL) with the token.
Step 5: Magento issues a request to the PayPal API to get the transaction details.

Step 6: Magento signals the PayPal API to execute the transaction.

Step 7: Magento serves the success page.

A more detailed view of the protocol and all parameters is shown on page 16 in the full version. We will concentrate only on step 6 and the parameters relevant for the attack.

The Attack

The goal of the attack is to let a shop (in our case Magento) debit more money than authorized by the PayPal user. The core of the attack is Step 6 -- DoExpressCheckoutPayment. Let's get a deeper look at this message:

Magento can raise the authorized amount and debit more money from the user's account

  • The shop sends the token, which was issued in the first step of the protocol and identifies uniquely the transaction through all steps. 
  • The PayerID referring to the user that authorized the payment.
  • The AMT defining the amount, which will be transferred.
  • The API Credentials authenticating Magento on PayPal.
  • The Version pointing to the release number of the API.

As one can imagine, the core problem we found was the change of the AMT parameter. This value can be freely chosen by the shop, despite the fact that the user has authorized a different amount.

We tested only the SandBox API, but refused to test the production API in order to avoid problems. We promptly contacted PayPal's security team and described the problem hoping that PayPal can and will test the production API against the attack.

The response of PayPal can be summarized as follows:
  • We don't get any BugBounty since we only tested the Sanbox API. (Fair enough)
  • In the Production API PayPal this flexibility is a wanted feature. Thus, PayPal allows a merchant to charge for shipping and/or other expenses different amounts. Any malicious behavior can be detected by PayPal. In case of fraudulent charges the consumer are protected by the Buyer Protection policy.
... but the Sandbox API was nevertheless fixed.

Authors of this Post

Daniel Hirschberger
Vladislav Mladenov
Christian Mainka (@CheariX)



[1] BurpSuite Logo
[2] PayPal Express Checkout

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CEH: Fundamentals Of Social Engineering


Social engineering is a nontechnical method of breaking into a system or network. It's the process of deceiving users of a system and convincing them to perform acts useful to the hacker, such as giving out information that can be used to defeat or bypass security mechanisms. Social engineering is important to understand because hackers can use it to attack the human element of a system and circumvent technical security measures. This method can be used to gather information before or during an attack.

A social engineer commonly uses the telephone or Internet to trick people into revealing sensitive information or to get them to do something that is against the security policies of the organization. By this method, social engineers exploit the natural tendency of a person to trust their word, rather than exploiting computer security holes. It's generally agreed that users are the weak link in security; this principle is what makes social engineering possible.

The most dangerous part of social engineering is that companies with authentication processes, firewalls, virtual private networks, and network monitoring software are still wide open to attacks, because social engineering doesn't assault the security measures directly. Instead, a social-engineering attack bypasses the security measures and goes after the human element in an organization.

Types of Social Engineering-Attacks

There are two types of Social Engineering attacks

Human-Based 

Human-based social engineering refers to person-to-person interaction to retrieve the desired information. An example is calling the help desk and trying to find out a password.

Computer-Based 

​Computer-based social engineering refers to having computer software that attempts to retrieve the desired information. An example is sending a user an email and asking them to reenter a password in a web page to confirm it. This social-engineering attack is also known as phishing.

Human-Based Social Engineering

Human-Based further categorized as follow:

Impersonating an Employee or Valid User

In this type of social-engineering attack, the hacker pretends to be an employee or valid user on the system. A hacker can gain physical access by pretending to be a janitor, employee, or contractor. Once inside the facility, the hacker gathers information from trashcans, desktops, or computer systems.

Posing as an Important User

In this type of attack, the hacker pretends to be an important user such as an executive or high-level manager who needs immediate assistance to gain access to a computer system or files. The hacker uses intimidation so that a lower-level employee such as a help desk worker will assist them in gaining access to the system. Most low-level employees won't question someone who appears to be in a position of authority.

Using a Third Person

Using the third-person approach, a hacker pretends to have permission from an authorized source to use a system. This attack is especially effective if the supposed authorized source is on vacation or can't be contacted for verification.

Calling Technical Support

Calling tech support for assistance is a classic social-engineering technique. Help desk and technical support personnel are trained to help users, which makes them good prey for social-engineering attacks.

Shoulder Surfing 

Shoulder surfing is a technique of gathering passwords by watching over a person's shoulder while they log in to the system. A hacker can watch a valid user log in and then use that password to gain access to the system.

Dumpster Diving

Dumpster diving involves looking in the trash for information written on pieces of paper or computer printouts. The hacker can often find passwords, filenames, or other pieces of confidential information.

Computer-Based Social Engineering

Computer-based social-engineering attacks can include the following:
  • Email attachments
  • Fake websites
  • Pop-up windows


Insider Attacks

If a hacker can't find any other way to hack an organization, the next best option is to infiltrate the organization by getting hired as an employee or finding a disgruntled employee to assist in the attack. Insider attacks can be powerful because employees have physical access and are able to move freely about the organization. An example might be someone posing as a delivery person by wearing a uniform and gaining access to a delivery room or loading dock. Another possibility is someone posing as a member of the cleaning crew who has access to the inside of the building and is usually able to move about the offices. As a last resort, a hacker might bribe or otherwise coerce an employee to participate in the attack by providing information such as passwords.

Identity Theft

A hacker can pose as an employee or steal the employee's identity to perpetrate an attack. Information gathered in dumpster diving or shoulder surfing in combination with creating fake ID badges can gain the hacker entry into an organization. Creating a persona that can enter the building unchallenged is the goal of identity theft.

Phishing Attacks

Phishing involves sending an email, usually posing as a bank, credit card company, or other financial organization. The email requests that the recipient confirm banking information or reset passwords or PINs. The user clicks the link in the email and is redirected to a fake website. The hacker is then able to capture this information and use it for financial gain or to perpetrate other attacks. Emails that claim the senders have a great amount of money but need your help getting it out of the country are examples of phishing attacks. These attacks prey on the common person and are aimed at getting them to provide bank account access codes or other confidential information to the hacker.

Online Scams

Some websites that make free offers or other special deals can lure a victim to enter a username and password that may be the same as those they use to access their work system.
The hacker can use this valid username and password once the user enters the information in the website form. Mail attachments can be used to send malicious code to a victim's system, which could automatically execute something like a software keylogger to capture passwords. Viruses, Trojans, and worms can be included in cleverly crafted emails to entice a victim to open the attachment. Mail attachments are considered a computer-based social-engineering attack.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2020

OWASP Announcement

🕬  OWASP Announcement:


The OWASP Foundation has been chosen to be 1 of 50 Open Source Organizations to participate in the inaugural year of the Google Season of Docs program.

The goal of Season of Docs is to provide a framework for technical writers and open source projects to work together towards the common goal of improving an open source project's documentation. For technical writers who are new to open source, the program provides an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects. For technical writers who're already working in open source, the program provides a potentially new way of working together. Season of Docs also gives open source projects an opportunity to engage more of the technical writing community.

We would like to thank the OWASP members that donate their time and knowledge as administrators and mentors. It would not be possible if not for these individuals:
Spyros, Fabio, and Konstantinos 




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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

How To Repair A Crashed SD Card And Protect Your Data

One of the many reasons users prefer Android devices is the ability to expand the amount of available storage space using the MicroSD Card. Since we have the ability add up to 256GB of external storage to Android devices today, you're bound to choke up when the SD card crashes without any tell-tale signs.
If you're experiencing issues on how to repair a crashed SD card on your Android device, there are certain fixes you can try out. Since there's not a singular solution to SD Card issues, we've created a guide to help you detect the issue with your external storage and mentioned multiple solutions to get your SD card working and even retrieve your stored data along with it.


Before you start

Don't format the card if you want to retain any of the photos on it. You can follow the tips in our separate article on how to format a write-protected SD card after you've tried to recover any files that are on your card.

Now, try and find a different card reader. If you've inserted an SD card into your laptop or PC's built-in slot and nothing happens, try using a different computer or a USB card reader.
Sometimes it's the reader at fault – not the card. You can buy a USB SD card reader online for just a couple of pounds which will accept both microSD and standard SD cards.

Steps to Repair a Crashed SD Card and Protect your Data:

Step 1 – Physically clean the SD Card

Despite being durable and built to last, SD cards are prone to crashing sometimes due to physical damage. Since you carry your phone around everywhere, some dirt and dust are bound to fill up in the cracks, that can make SD card stop working from time to time.
The first thing you can try to do on how to repair a crashed SD card is physically scrub and clean it.
  • Remove the MicroSD card from your Android device and place it on a clean surface. Make sure that you turn off your phone before pulling out the SD card for safety.
  • Flip the MicroSD card and using a white eraser, gently scrub the gold contact pins of the SD card to get rid of any residual dirt or grime.
  • If you have an alcohol-based cleaning solution or even nail polish remover around, dab it on to the connector pins using a Q-tip and gently rub it.
Once the SD card has dried out, you can plug it back into your Android device and turn it on to see if the solution has worked.


Step 2 – Format the SD Card

If your SD card is being detected by the Android device but you're having trouble accessing the saved files, there's a good chance that the files are corrupt. This could either be due to a particular broken file in the saved storage, or a virus that is causing the issue.
Either way, the only option there is left for you to try out is make the SD card reusable for formatting it.
  • From the home screen of your Android device, head over to the Settings app and then scroll down to find the Storage
  • In the Storage tab, you'll be able to find the Erase SD Card option, so go ahead and select it.
  • Confirm your action to delete all of the files and folders stored on your SD card and this should effectively solve the issue.

Step 3 – Check the SD card compatibility

If you are trying to figure out how to repair a crashed SD card on an older Android device, you might just need to look at the details more carefully. If your SD card fails to be recognized on the mobile device but works with your computer, the problem could be related to compatibility.
  • If the MicroSD card that you are trying to use with your older phone is SDXC version (built for higher transfer speeds), it will not be recognized.
  • Look up the maximum capacity of expandable storage that is supported by your device, since they can vary from starting at 64GB to all the way up to 256GB.

Step 4 – Diagnose the SD card using a PC

If a simple format did not help you solve the SD card problem, you might need a more technical analysis of the issue. To do so, you can plug in your SD card into a computer and use the diagnostic tools to find out the pertaining errors and effectively fix them.
  • Connect your Android mobile device to a computer using a USB cable.
  • Make sure that you connect Android as MSC (Mass storage mode) and not MTP (Media transfer mode). You can do this using the notification menu once you connect the phone to your computer.
  • Launch the Windows Explorer and right click on the SD card driver you see on the screen. In the options menu, choose Properties – Tools – Error Checking and wait for the entire process to complete.
  • The computer will try to update the software for your SD card and fix any errors that are causing it to crash.

Step 5 – Use chkdsk to fix/repair a corrupted SD card without data loss

The "chkdsk" command is your first choice for damaged SD card repair. Requiring no format, it allows you to fix or repair a corrupted SD card and regain access to all your important files on the device. Let's see how it works. (I'm using Windows 7 for this demonstration)
1. Plug in your SD card to your computer with a card reader.
2. Go to the start menu, type in "cmd" in a search bar, hit enter and then you can see something named "cmd. exe" in a list of programs.
3. Right-click "cmd. exe" and then you will get the following command windows that allow you to fix your corrupted SD card without formatting.
4. Type in "chkdsk /X /f sd card letter:" or "chkdsk sd card letter: /f ", for example,"chkdsk /X /f G:" or "chkdsk h: /f".
After finishing all the steps, Windows will have checked and fixed the file system of the SD card. It usually takes several minutes. After that, if you see "Windows has made corrections to the file system" in the command window, then congratulations! The damaged SD card is successfully fixed and you can see your data again. If not, you should try a third-party data recovery software to retrieve your files from the damaged SD card and repair it by formatting.
Once the process has been completed, you can go ahead and pop the SD card back into your Android device and see if the issue has been resolved.

Step 6 : Use EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover data from damaged SD card

1. Connect the corrupted SD card to your PC, launch EaseUS's data recovery software, select the card and click "Scan".
2. A quick scan will first start to search all the lost and existing data on the SD card. And after that, a deep scan will automatically launch in order to find more files.
3. After the scan, choose those files you want to recover and click the "Recover" button to retrieve them back.

Final Words :

So finally through this article, you have got to know about the method by which the SD card could be repaired and hence the data in it could be saved for the further access. We have tried to present the method in easy to grab manner and we believe that you could possibly get to know about it easily. Hope that you would have liked the information in this post, if it is so then please share it with others. Also, do not forget to share the post with others, let most of the people know about the method. Share your comments about the post through using the comment box below. At last never the fewer thanks for reading this post!
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How Do I Get Started With Bug Bounty ?

How do I get started with bug bounty hunting? How do I improve my skills?



These are some simple steps that every bug bounty hunter can use to get started and improve their skills:

Learn to make it; then break it!
A major chunk of the hacker's mindset consists of wanting to learn more. In order to really exploit issues and discover further potential vulnerabilities, hackers are encouraged to learn to build what they are targeting. By doing this, there is a greater likelihood that hacker will understand the component being targeted and where most issues appear. For example, when people ask me how to take over a sub-domain, I make sure they understand the Domain Name System (DNS) first and let them set up their own website to play around attempting to "claim" that domain.

Read books. Lots of books.
One way to get better is by reading fellow hunters' and hackers' write-ups. Follow /r/netsec and Twitter for fantastic write-ups ranging from a variety of security-related topics that will not only motivate you but help you improve. For a list of good books to read, please refer to "What books should I read?".

Join discussions and ask questions.
As you may be aware, the information security community is full of interesting discussions ranging from breaches to surveillance, and further. The bug bounty community consists of hunters, security analysts, and platform staff helping one and another get better at what they do. There are two very popular bug bounty forums: Bug Bounty Forum and Bug Bounty World.

Participate in open source projects; learn to code.
Go to https://github.com/explore or https://gitlab.com/explore/projects and pick a project to contribute to. By doing so you will improve your general coding and communication skills. On top of that, read https://learnpythonthehardway.org/ and https://linuxjourney.com/.

Help others. If you can teach it, you have mastered it.
Once you discover something new and believe others would benefit from learning about your discovery, publish a write-up about it. Not only will you help others, you will learn to really master the topic because you can actually explain it properly.

Smile when you get feedback and use it to your advantage.
The bug bounty community is full of people wanting to help others so do not be surprised if someone gives you some constructive feedback about your work. Learn from your mistakes and in doing so use it to your advantage. I have a little physical notebook where I keep track of the little things that I learnt during the day and the feedback that people gave me.


Learn to approach a target.
The first step when approaching a target is always going to be reconnaissance — preliminary gathering of information about the target. If the target is a web application, start by browsing around like a normal user and get to know the website's purpose. Then you can start enumerating endpoints such as sub-domains, ports and web paths.

A woodsman was once asked, "What would you do if you had just five minutes to chop down a tree?" He answered, "I would spend the first two and a half minutes sharpening my axe."
As you progress, you will start to notice patterns and find yourself refining your hunting methodology. You will probably also start automating a lot of the repetitive tasks.

Continue reading

Saturday, May 2, 2020

Camelot (1982) Guidebook Finished By Game's Author

Excited about the renewed interest in Camelot from my series of 2019 entries (beginning here), author Joshua Tabin has developed a 101-page guidebook to the game.
           
         
The book walks you through setting up a Cyber1 account so that you can play Camelot and other PLATO games. It includes a quick history of the PLATO series, with screenshots. The bulk of the manual is tips, tricks, and instructions for navigating the game, including the full text of the in-game manual; lists of monsters and equipment; and full maps of all 10 levels (there's still plenty for you to annotate). 

This is a great opportunity for any reader who's thought they'd like to try one of the PLATO games.

*****

And one other random announcement while I have you: I finally updated my Dungeons of Avalon II summary entry to reflect what commenter LanHawk discovered about the game, plus the winning screenshots he was able to obtain after fixing the problem for himself.

Types Of Projects

When I started writing articles on my site, sometimes I had great results, like writing the hexagonal grid guide in 6 weeks, and sometimes I had terrible results, like writing article about curved roads in 5 months. I eventually realized that the difference was that with hexagons, I understood the topic well, but with curved paths, I spent most of the time trying to understand the topic. To make matters worse, because I had a high standard for my articles, I spent too much time trying to polish the article about curved paths, even before I understood it well.

Back in 2013 I decided to create a separate directory /x/YYWW-name/ where I'd put the lower effort and experimental pages, numbered by year and week. For example, 1942-isometric means year 2019, week 42. Over the last few years I've realized I do two different types of projects:

  • fixed scope, variable time, usually focused on explaining something
  • variable scope, fixed time, usually focused on learning or understanding something

The fixed time articles typically go into /x/. An unexpected benefit of these short unpolished experiments is that sometimes it lets me explore a set of topics that comes together into a larger polished project. The best example of this is my map generation work in 2017–2018. Back in 2017 I had started experimenting with map generation topics:

This structure let me try things quickly, and also abandon things quickly. Those of you who know garbage collection algorithms know that there are two general strategies: throw away the garbage, or keep the non-garbage. In my regular projects I follow the "throw away garbage" strategy, but in this experimental folder I follow the "keep non-garbage" strategy. Things that work I can copy into a new project. Things that fail I leave alone. When I wanted to produce mapgen4 in 2018, I went back through these small projects and picked the parts I could use, and turned that into a new big project.

People ask me if I share links to all the /x/ pages. I don't do this because I found that by not sharing at first, it increases how much I write. I don't start every page worrying about how to explain something, or cross-browser compatibility, or making things work on any machine other than my own. If something works out, I can then fix it up and share it. Many things don't work out, and then I can abandon them quickly. This strategy has been extraordinarily successful at getting me to write more. I started these in 2013, with 7 pages, and then 11 in 2014, 20 in 2015, 24 in 2016, 33 in 2017, 36 in 2018, and 27 in 2019 so far. The downside is that it's so much easier to write the /x/ pages that I am not making many of the regular pages. I'm annoyed with myself for that but I'm just going to have to accept it for now.