Google, Amazon, Microsoft Passkey implementations vulnerable to AitM attacks, study says

Based on FIDO [Fast Identity Online] By default, a passkey is designed as a replacement for passwords. A passkey is the equivalent of a hardware key (the most well-known being the Yubikey), but resides on the device itself. Like a Yubikey, a passkey stores a private key that is used to cryptographically sign challenges from websites to prove the user's identity.

Although traditional passwords can be forgotten or used on multiple sites, they are more secure than traditional passwords and, if implemented correctly, are an effective protection against phishing attacks.

However, like any security tool, they are not perfect and threat actors are surely always looking for weaknesses.

Joe Stewart, lead security researcher at eSentire's Threat Response Unit, has looked into implementations of passkey technology by prominent software providers. In a blog post outlining his team's findings, Stewart said that cybercriminals could use man-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing attacks to gain access to passkey-protected accounts on a range of online platforms, including banking and social media.

“We reviewed implementations of passkey authentication flows in some of the most popular software services and found that nearly all can still be circumvented by AitM phishing using an authentication method edit attack,” he wrote.

AitM attack

AitM phishing attacks exploit the fact that most website passkey implementations still provide a less secure backup authentication method even when a passkey is added to an account. AitM attackers manipulate the login page the user sees and edit references to passkey authentication to convince the user to resort to the fallback method. This can be achieved by modifying the HTML, CSS, images, or JavaScript of the login page that is proxied to the end user.

eSentire researchers demonstrated this method using the open-source Evilginx AitM software to simulate a phishing attack against GitHub. Evilginx sits between the user and GitHub, presenting the user with a doctored login page for the service that has removed any references to the passkey. Users forget that they would normally log in using a passkey, and are therefore more likely to type in their username and password, which is a fallback method. These credentials can then be harvested by an attacker.

AitM attack against GitHub. Source: eSentire

GitHub isn't the only one that's vulnerable: Google Gmail, Amazon's e-commerce website (not AWS), eBay, Microsoft Outlook mail (free version), Docusign, CVS Pharmacy and Coinbase all have insecure fallbacks, Stewart told Computing.

“The problem isn't that these companies are incorrectly implementing the passkey technology itself, but rather how they get users to choose an alternative, less secure login method. And AitM allows attackers to choose the method on the user's behalf.”

Many of these vendors offering alternative login methods actively promote passkeys, unknowingly sacrificing security for convenience.

“I believe that from the beginning, when technology vendors and online retailers were developing their implementations of Passkey, they assumed that the way it worked was secure by default and did not consider the various ways that cybercriminals could circumvent the Passkey login flow,” Stewart told Computing.

“When they were designing the process, they never considered how a hacker could use an AitM attack to hijack a user's web session and manipulate everything that appears in their browser tab while the user is logged into their online accounts.”

AitM attacks against passkeys are relatively easy to carry out, he added, “especially since there are a lot of phishing proxy-as-a-service solutions being sold in the hacker underground.”

Remove password option

Unfortunately, there's no particularly easy solution other than adding an additional secure authentication factor, such as a hardware key, and Stewart recommends services remove the password option entirely.

“The best thing organizations can do for sensitive and important online accounts is to do away with passwords altogether and only provide account holders the option to access their accounts using a passkey,” he said.

“But to ensure that users don't get locked out of their accounts, platforms should require users to store at least two separate passkeys for each online account.”

But this puts a burden on users that many companies don't even consider. A slightly less secure solution, but better than the status quo, in case you lose all your passkeys, is to send a “protection link” via email or SMS. “This is like a magic link that naturally separates the user from the AitM attack session, but it's additionally protected by other multi-factor authentication methods, making it even more secure,” Stewart said.

Currently, there is no perfect recovery method that is both secure and user-friendly, but by understanding how AitM attacks against passkeys work, assuming all login sessions are compromised, and improving workflows to reduce the likelihood of a compromise, teams can improve security without sacrificing usability.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4331630/passkey-implementations-google-amazon-microsoft-vulnerable-aitm-attacks-research The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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