14 DAY TRIAL // A Romanian grey hat hacker has disclosed an SQL inject (SQLi) vulnerability on a website belonging to the United States Army, which leads to full database compromise. The website, called Army Housing OneStop, is used to provide information about military housing facilities to soldiers.
The Army Housing OneStop (AHOS) is "the official Army website for soldiers who need information about Military Family Housing (MFH), Unaccompanied Personnel Housing (UPH) and/or Community (Off-Post) Housing. It includes both comprehensive and quick-reference information for Army installations worldwide."
A self-confessed security enthusiast, who goes by the online handle of TinKode, documented a proof-of-concept attack against the onestop.army.mil on his personal blog. The published screenshots reveal that the Web server runs on Microsoft Windows 2003 with Service Pack 2 and the database engine used to power the ASP website is Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
The AHOS website seems to have been developed by DynaTouch Corporation, a third-party government contractor that provides software and hardware solutions to create "self-service kiosk systems." The company's client portfolio includes a long list of local and federal government organizations.
There are a number of 76 databases on the server, but TinKode focused his attention on the one called "AHOS." There are various tables in this database containing general website configuration information, but two in particular stand out as they are called "mgr_login" and "mgr_login_passwords."
Upon investigating the latter, the hacker stumbled upon passwords stored in plain text, a major security oversight. Storing cryptographic hashes instead of the actual password strings has been a common practice in Web application programming for years now. Furthermore, if for convenience the hashes are generated with a weak algorithm, a technique known as "salting" can be employed to make them nearly impossible to crack.
In a time when even the most amateur programmers follow such security practices, the fact that many business or government websites do not boggles one's mind. Additionally, the administrative account is called "Dynatouch" – who would have guessed that? – and its password is "AHOS" – yes, really.
Note: Softpedia has contacted both Dynatouch and the Army.mil Webmasters about this vulnerability. Only the Army.mil Web Team responded and directed us to the U.S. Army Public Affairs Media Relations Division for questions. The website has since been taken offline.