How Safe are

Oracle Passwords?

Quick TipSession UGF9198

Troy Ligon

Who is Troy?

•Over 35 years experience in the IT field

•Focused on Oracle systems since 1983 (version 3)

•IBM – Developer Robot Communications and Complier Design

•Ligon Solutions – President and CEO

•CitiBank – VP Global Database Systems

•PriceWaterhouseCoopers – Senior Principal DBA

•Nielsen – Principal Architect

•President of the SOUG in Tampa, Florida

•IOUG Collaborate Track Manager for High Availability track

How do I gain access to an

Oracle database?

Authentication Methods

Password:• Stored in the database

Externally:• O/S Authentication (OPS$)• as ‘PKI_Cert_Distinguished_Name’ (from ssl wallet)• as ‘Kerberos_Principal_Name’ (from Kerberos server)

Globally (LDAP):• Shared Global Schema in Enterprise Directory• Schema in Enterprise Directory Distinguished Name

Classic Password Attacks

•Guess

•Social Engineering

•Watching the keyboard (shoulder surfing, camera)

•Keylogger (software, USB, built into the keyboard)

•Network sniffer (wireshark)

•Dictionary attack (checkpwd – Red Database Security)

•Brute force attack (woraauthbf – László Tóth)

•Rainbow Table attack (ophcrack – Objectif Sécurité)

•Dictionary / Rainbow Table Hybrid attack

What’s the Big Deal?

With a simple PROFILE setting,wouldn’t the account get locked due to

too many failed login attempts?

What if I have access to USER$?

ORA10g:sys.dba_users.password = pre-11g version, case-insensitive hash

ORA11g:sys.user$.password = pre-11g version, case-insensitive hashsys.user$.spare4 = SHA1(pwd concat with salt) concat with salt

select password hash10g, substr(spare4, 3, 40) hash11g, substr(spare4,43,10) saltfrom sys.user$where name=&USERNAME;

SHA1 – Secure Hash Algorithm

Of Course it’s Easy if I’m SYS!

What if I don’t have access to the database?

Stealth Password Cracking Vulnerability

Esteban Martinez Fayo – AppSecInc.com

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/09/oracle-database-stealth-password-cracking-vulnerability/

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/flaw-oracle-logon-protocol-leads-easy-password-cracking-092012

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/flaw-oracle-logon-protocol-leads-easy-password-cracking-092012

What does this Look Like?

After the client sends its username, the server responds with the AUTH_SESSKEY and AUTH_VFR_DATA:

So How Would This Work?

1. Get the SALT (available through AUTH_VRF_DATA field)

2. Get the encrypted server session key (available through AUTH_SESSKEY field)

3. Brute force the AES 192-bit encrypted AUTH_SESSKEY to determine the SHA-1 password hash

4. Once you have the SALT and the SHA-1 hash value, brute force the password.

So How Would This Work?

1. Get the SALT (available through AUTH_VRF_DATA field)

2. Get the encrypted server session key (available through AUTH_SESSKEY field)

3. Brute force the AES 192-bit encrypted AUTH_SESSKEY to determine the SHA-1 password hash

4. Once you have the SALT and the SHA-1 hash value, brute force the password.

Flaw Leaks Unencrypted version of

this Key

So How Would This Work?

1. Get the SALT (available through AUTH_VRF_DATA field)

2. Get the encrypted server session key (available through AUTH_SESSKEY field)

3. Brute force the AES 192-bit encrypted AUTH_SESSKEY to determine the SHA-1 password hash

4. Once you have the SALT and the SHA-1 hash value, brute force the password.

With the SALT, you can loop thru possible passwords, generating SHA-1 hashes and comparing them to captured hash. A brute force crack of this type can discover an 8-character password

in about 5 hours.

So How Would This Work?

1. Get the SALT (available through AUTH_VRF_DATA field)

2. Get the encrypted server session key (available through AUTH_SESSKEY field)

3. Brute force the AES 192-bit encrypted AUTH_SESSKEY to determine the SHA-1 password hash

4. Once you have the SALT and the SHA-1 hash value, brute force the password.

Now 4. is moot, as it is the password from the brute force loop that generated a matching hash.

5 Hours? Really?

A 3-GHz Pentium 4 brute forces the 26-character ASCII namespace in:

LENGTH TIME

5-character-combinations 10 seconds

6-character-combinations 5 minutes

7-character-combinations 2 hours

8-character-combinations 2.1 days

9-character-combinations 57 days

10-character-combinations 4 years

5 Hours? Really?

One AMD Radeon HD7970 GPU can average 8.2 billion password trys/sec

oclHashcat-plus can utilize multiple GPUs for exponential performance improvement

Rainbow tables can utilize pre-calculated values to cut even more time

5 Hours? Really?

Here’s an 8-Radeon card computer for about $12k that can brute force the entire 8-character namespace

(upper/lower/digit/symbol) in 12 hours!!!

Why is this so Insidious?

Wouldn’t the account get locked due to too many failed login attempts?

Why is this so Insideous?

Wouldn’t the account get locked due to too many failed login attempts?

No!You don’t get locked because once you

grab the AUTH_VRY_DATA and AUTH_SESSKEY, the rest is offline

activity.

How to Protect Against This?

How to Protect Against This?

Note that this is a flaw in O5LOGON protocol

O5LOGON came out with Oracle 11.1 (client and server)

How to Protect Against This?

Upgrade to Oracle 12c

- or –

Go back to O3LOGON protocol

How to Go Back to O3LOGON?

alter system set sec_case_sensitive_logon=FALSE scope=BOTH;

orapwd file=pwdSID.ora ignorecase=y

grant sysdba to USER1;

grant sysoper to USER2;

So Now I’m Safe…Right?

So Now I’m Safe…Right?

WRONG!!!

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Alex KornbustPete Finnigen

David Litchfield Paul Wright

Zsombor KovácsEttienne Vorster

László TóthFerenc Spala

If you don't know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

But if you know the enemy and know yourself,you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Troy Ligon tligon@soug.org