[ale] Now this is just bloody frightening as all hell!

[Michael H. Warfield]

I'm sure a number of us are already aware of this incident.  It was even
mentioned at last nights AUUG meeting about a reporter getting hacked
and wiped back to the stone age.  Here's his report up on Wired from
yesterday about what happened to him.  It contains a large number of
lessons for us all, users and implementers of security systems alike!
Yeah, this dude should NOT have done a whole LOT of things but...
Amazon and Apple deserve fellowship positions in the halls of shame and
stupidity for their systems.  As Shakespeare once wrote "he is the idol
if idiot worshipers!"  Apple and Amazon BOTH here by qualify.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/

Some choice comments...

-- 
“You honestly can get into any email associated with apple,” Phobia
claimed in an e-mail. And while it’s work, that seems to be largely
true.
--

-- 
And it’s also worth noting that one wouldn’t have to call Amazon to pull
this off. Your pizza guy could do the same thing, for example. If you
have an AppleID, every time you call Pizza Hut, you’ve giving the
16-year-old on the other end of the line all he needs to take over your
entire digital life.
-- 

Basically...  If you know the last 4 digits of the credit card number on
the account (printed on every credit card receipt you throw out) and the
billing address, you can own a person's Apple account...  Sigh...

As FOR Amazon...  This is just incredibly lame!

-- 
First you call Amazon and tell them you are the account holder, and want
to add a credit card number to the account. All you need is the name on
the account, an associated e-mail address, and the billing address.
Amazon then allows you to input a new credit card. (Wired used a bogus
credit card number from a website that generates fake card numbers that
conform with the industry’s published self-check algorithm.) Then you
hang up.

Next you call back, and tell Amazon that you’ve lost access to your
account. Upon providing a name, billing address, and the new credit card
number you gave the company on the prior call, Amazon will allow you to
add a new e-mail address to the account. From here, you go to the Amazon
website, and send a password reset to the new e-mail account. This
allows you to see all the credit cards on file for the account — not the
complete numbers, just the last four digits. But, as we know, Apple only
needs those last four digits. We asked Amazon to comment on its security
policy, but didn’t have anything to share by press time.
--

Really???  Yes the author was stupid in what he did.  But this just
blows my mind on the part of those two companies!

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 482 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20120807/d10c5f08/attachment.bin