Vulnerabilities > CVE-2020-15105 - Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information vulnerability in Django Two-Factor Authentication Project Django Two-Factor Authentication
Summary
Django Two-Factor Authentication before 1.12, stores the user's password in clear text in the user session (base64-encoded). The password is stored in the session when the user submits their username and password, and is removed once they complete authentication by entering a two-factor authentication code. This means that the password is stored in clear text in the session for an arbitrary amount of time, and potentially forever if the user begins the login process by entering their username and password and then leaves before entering their two-factor authentication code. The severity of this issue depends on which type of session storage you have configured: in the worst case, if you're using Django's default database session storage, then users' passwords are stored in clear text in your database. In the best case, if you're using Django's signed cookie session, then users' passwords are only stored in clear text within their browser's cookie store. In the common case of using Django's cache session store, the users' passwords are stored in clear text in whatever cache storage you have configured (typically Memcached or Redis). This has been fixed in 1.12. After upgrading, users should be sure to delete any clear text passwords that have been stored. For example, if you're using the database session backend, you'll likely want to delete any session record from the database and purge that data from any database backups or replicas. In addition, affected organizations who have suffered a database breach while using an affected version should inform their users that their clear text passwords have been compromised. All organizations should encourage users whose passwords were insecurely stored to change these passwords on any sites where they were used. As a workaround, wwitching Django's session storage to use signed cookies instead of the database or cache lessens the impact of this issue, but should not be done without a thorough understanding of the security tradeoffs of using signed cookies rather than a server-side session storage. There is no way to fully mitigate the issue without upgrading.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Footprinting An attacker engages in probing and exploration activity to identify constituents and properties of the target. Footprinting is a general term to describe a variety of information gathering techniques, often used by attackers in preparation for some attack. It consists of using tools to learn as much as possible about the composition, configuration, and security mechanisms of the targeted application, system or network. Information that might be collected during a footprinting effort could include open ports, applications and their versions, network topology, and similar information. While footprinting is not intended to be damaging (although certain activities, such as network scans, can sometimes cause disruptions to vulnerable applications inadvertently) it may often pave the way for more damaging attacks.
- Lifting Data Embedded in Client Distributions An attacker can resort to stealing data embedded in client distributions or client code in order to gain certain information. This information can reveal confidential contents, such as account numbers, or can be used as an intermediate step in a larger attack (such as by stealing keys/credentials).