Title: Google Talk Beta Messenger cleartext credentials in process memory

Affected versions: 1.0.0.64 (this version is believed to be the first one released to the public)

Vendor contacted: 25/08/05

Patched version released: 29/08/05

Advisory released: 28/11/05

Author: pagvac (Adrian Pastor)

Homepage: www.ikwt.com - In Knowledge We Trust

Advisory URL: www.adrianpv.com/projects/google-talk-cleartext-credentials-in-process-memory.txt



Description

Google Talk stores all user credentials (username and password) in clear-text in the process memory. Such vulnerability was found on August 25, 2005 (two days after the release of Google Talk) and has already been patched by Google.

This issue would occur regardless of whether the "Save Password" feature was enabled or not.

It was noticed that the Google Talk client was loading all the credentials unencrypted in the memory of the process "googletalk.exe". It was possible to recover the password by dumping the process memory to a file with PMDump and which could then examined with a hex editor.

The vulnerability would allow anyone with access to the client system to obtain the username and password of the current user. This vulnerability could also be exploited by fooling the user to execute malicious code which would dump the memory of the process "googletalk.exe" and then parse the credentials and finally send them to the attacker.  

It is also worth mentioning that sometimes, no direct user interaction is required for the execution of malicious code. Crackers often exploit vulnerabilities in web browsers and email clients that allow them to execute malicious code on the victim's machine without requiring the victim to manually execute the trojaned executable. This means that given the right scenario, this vulnerability could have been exploited in such a way.



References

PMDump - https://ntsecurity.nu/toolbox/pmdump/
Free Hex Editor - https://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm
Google Talk - https://www.google.com/talk/