Josh,

How do you fake a Referer header?

An attacker that remains a man-in-the-middle proxy between the user and service 
provider is performing a phishing attack.
Normal anti-phishing measures apply. Such an attack will not care about 
collecting OAuth tokens, it would collect the user's password as they 
authenticate to the proxied service.
This is not a reason for rejecting the Referer header as a fix for the current 
OAuth issue.


James Manger
[email protected]
Identity and security team — Chief Technology Office — Telstra

________________________________________
From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Josh Fraser 
[[email protected]]
Sent: 24 April 2009 17:41
To: OAuth
Subject: [oauth] Re: OAuth Security Issue: Referer

It's a good idea.  The problem is that it's trivial to fake a referrer
header.  All you need to do is tinyurl a link (to avoid suspicion)
that redirects you to the authorization url via a proxy that adds the
expected referrer header.



On Apr 24, 1:25 am, "Manger, James H"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> A (temporary) fix might be for Service Providers to check the HTTP Referer 
> request header when Users arrives at the authorization URI.
>
> If the Referer “matches” the application associated with the request token 
> then the User has not come from an Attacker’s link.
>
> A Referer check at the SP requires no change to consumer applications.
>
> For desktop applications, the SP could check that the Referer field is absent 
> (though I believe this can be readily spoofed, eg redirect the user through a 
> FTP URI).
>
> P.S. I don’t think an open redirector at the application’s web site defeats 
> the Referer check as the Referer field still lists the original URI, not the 
> URI that issued the redirect (at least in my quick test with Firefox 3).
>

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