Issue
OpenSSL is a widely-used cryptographic library which implements the TLS protocol and protects communications on the Internet. On April 7, 2014, a bug in OpenSSL known as “Heartbleed” was disclosed (CVE-2014-0160). This bug allows attackers to read portions of the affected server’s memory, potentially revealing data that the server did not intend to reveal.
Impact
Two Mozilla systems were affected by Heartbleed. Most Persona and Firefox Account (FxA) servers run in Amazon Web Services (AWS), and their encrypted TLS connections are terminated on AWS Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs) using OpenSSL. Until April 8, when Amazon resolved the bug in AWS, those ELBs used a version of OpenSSL vulnerable to the Heartbleed attack.
Because these TLS connections terminated on Amazon ELBs instead of the backend servers, the data that could have been exposed to potential attackers was limited to data on the ELBs: TLS private keys and the plaintext contents of encrypted messages in transit.
For the Persona service, this included the bearer tokens used to authenticate sessions to Persona infrastructure run by Mozilla (including the “fallback” Persona IdP service). Knowledge of these tokens could have allowed forgery of signed Persona certificates.
For the Firefox Account service, this included email addresses, derivatives of user passwords, session tokens, and key material (see the FxA protocol for details).
Raw passwords are never sent to the FxA account server. Neither the account server nor a potential attacker could have learned the password or the encryption key that protects Sync data.
Sensitive FxA authentication information is only transmitted during the initial login process. On subsequent messages, the session token is used as an HMAC key (in the HAWK protocol), and not delivered over the connection. This reduces the amount of secret material visible in ELB memory.
Status
We have no evidence that any of our servers or user data has been compromised, but the Heartbleed attack is very subtle and leaves no evidence by design. At this time, we do not know whether these attacks have been used against our infrastructure or not. We are taking this vulnerability very seriously and are working quickly to validate the extent of its impact.
Amazon has updated their ELB instances to fix the vulnerability. We have re-generated TLS keys for all production services, and revoked the possibly exposed keys and certificates. Subsequent sessions with Persona and Firefox Accounts are not vulnerable to the Heartbleed attack.
As a precaution, we have revoked all Persona bearer tokens, effectively signing all users out of Persona. The next time you use Persona you may need to re-enter your password.
Because Firefox Accounts session tokens are not used as bearer tokens, we believe it was unnecessary to revoke them.
Additional User Precautions
Although we have no evidence that any data was compromised, concerned users can take the following additional precautions:
- Persona: if you have a fallback account, you can change the password. This will require you to re-enter your password, on each browser, the next time you use Persona.
- Firefox Accounts (FxA): you can change your account password. This will invalidate existing sessions, requiring you to sign back into Sync on all your devices. Devices will not sync until you sign back in.
- If you have used the same password on multiple sites or services, in order to protect yourself, you should change the password on all services.
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