Re: Storing Credit Cards, Passwords, Securely,two-way encryption

Damn, Bob copied me...or me him...i forget, but that was the essence of what I was attempting to let the OP know...when dealing with security you can never be paranoid enough Bastien

From: "Neil Smith [MVP, Digital media]" <php@comatose.freeserve.co.uk> To: php-db@lists.php.net CC: beckman@purplecow.com Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] Storing Credit Cards, Passwords, Securely,two-way encryption Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 23:52:25 +0000 At 03:48 06/01/2006, you wrote:

Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:48:24 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Beckman <beckman@purplecow.com> To: John Meyer <john.l.meyer@gmail.com> cc: php-db@lists.php.net Message-ID: <20060105223828.G8551@thermonuclear.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] Storing Credit Cards, Passwords, Securely, two-way

        encryption

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, John Meyer wrote: Peter Beckman wrote: So I'm thinking about how to save credit card numbers in the DB, for re-charging cards for subscriptions, new orders, etc. Yes yes, lawsuits, scary, etc.

I'm glad you're so blase about this and the threat of your business going under due to exposure to extortion. When you've got the site running, let me know the address, so I can advise my friends and colleagues to avoid it at any cost.

I was looking for technical solutions, i.e. maybe someone knows how USPS.com or Amazon.com or GoDaddy.com (do they?) does it. Or if it is all security via obscurity.

Security by obscurity is a myth. There is no such security, nor will there ever be (think of MS DRM cracks for example on a supposedly secure system). Any system that interacts with the outside world *can* and eventually *will be cracked. Best solution yet: Nope, no solution at all. *DO NOT* store any credit card numbers on any publically accessible system. Ever. Period.

    Public key encryption, with additional either secret word padding or
    using the users account password to pad/encrypt the card number
    (preventing a brute force attack, even if access to the DB is given).

Prevents nothing. If somebody compromises your application server, then own your "secret word padding" and can reverse the process to extract some or all of the credit cards. Do not underestimate the resourcefulness of bored people. OK now to the candy : I've had this book a while, and it's one of the most insightful and well researched (from experience) books on security I've ever read. In fact - so good I'm going to go to the trouble to retype an excerpt of a section called "One-Way Credit Card Data Path for Top Security" ISBN 0-13-0281870-5 [Prentice-Hall publishers] Bob Toxen : Real World Linux Security [Now in 2nd edition] ==================== For many sites the most confidential information a customer can tell the site is the customers credit card number and expiry date. Several e-com sites (including some large ones) have had thousands of their customers cc data stolen by crackers and have then had to respond to extortion threats. Most e-com sites keep the database of customer information on the same system as the web server and CGI programs. This is begging for trouble. Simply putting the database on a separate system is not enough, because if CGI programs can attach to the database across the e-com sites LAN, security has not been improved. (Bob Toxen) have come up with the concept of a one-way credit card data path. By this I mean that the credit card data flows only one way, and that way is into the credit card server but >data never flows out of the credit card server< (my emphasis) except over a hardware path to the bank or service that is processing charge requests. The cc system would be a (linux) system dedicated to this one application. It would have NO other applications on it, because each application would be a potential security hole. It would be hardened for the highest security. It would have a separate private LAN to the web server, and the web server would have a separate dedicated NIC to this private LAN to prevent sniffing (snipped section about spot welded steel pipes encasing LAN cable !) There would be >no< request implemented that would allow another system to query for a complete CC number under any circumstance. Thus neither a cracker hacking your web server, nor a disgruntled employee could get the CC data from it. So long as there are no buffer overflow vulns, this should be very secure, since there are no services to crack, no passwords to crack, and spoofing would not work because the system doesn't trust >any< other system at all. When a customer establishes an account and specifies a CC, the CGI sends the following message to the CC server :

        ADD
        user name
        account number
        cc type, number, expiry date, CCV#

When the customer wants to make a purchase, this is sent to the CC server

        CHARGE
        user name
        account number
        amount

The CC server then contacts the processing bank through the private network to charge the amt, store the authorisastion number if successful and returns either "Success" or an appropriate error message Note that the comms link to the bank would be on a separate hardware to the rest of the network, so if a cracker broke into the web or order DB server, he could not >sniff< the network for these requests, because they wouldn't be on that network. If the user has multiple CCs on file, the following request might be used

        LIST CARDS
        user name
        account number

The CC server would *only* reply with the last 3 digits, the rest replaced with XXXX XXXX XXXX X319 for example Obviously your web server should not retain any copies of the CC numbers it handles. Use of encryption to and from the CC server is recommended, as is IPTables locking down all ports except the CC and SSH request ports on the CC server. The CC server code should be audited for buffer overflow vulnerabilities, and run through Libsafe to detect buffer overflow problems. (followed by other stuff about social engineering and related admin issues) ==================== As Bob's book is so bloody good, here's the ASIN for it in case you want to read all 650 pages of good advice ;-) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0130464562/qid=1136589506/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-3174210-9795945?n=507846 HTH Cheers - Neil -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php