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OP finds vulnerability where a forum sends you your password in plaintext over email and everyone misses the forest for the trees (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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This thread is frustrating. Everyone seems more interested in nitpicking the specifics of what OP is saying and are ignoring that a forum sends you your password (not an automatically generated one) in an email on registration.

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[–] 91 points 3 years ago (19 children)

Just wow, yeah. Nothing should ever send you a password in cleartext - once that's been done, a MITM attack's success rate just went to 100%.

It's painless to use password resets if the person forgot the password. Never, ever should a password be in cleartext.

hunter2

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  • [–] 88 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Why did you put a bunch of asterisks at the bottom of your post?

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  • [–] 35 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    I'm delighted you get the reference!

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I'd be more worried if someone who uses the internet to such a degree that they use Lemmy over Reddit, on a programming forum, didn't get the reference. This is famous hacker lore at this point.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    Can you be worried for me, and fill me in?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    An issue if you’re reusing passwords. If not, every forgot my password email is also vulnerable.

    A combination of bad practices could be… bad.

    Edit: apparently around the same time, their forum was also lacking https. This would be an even easier vector.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago* (6 children)

    It’s painless to use password resets

    Ya and have they send you the (one-time) password in cleartext

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    In my experience it's always a tokenized link, no clear text required.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 years ago

    Well, the tokenized link is essentially a clear text one time password. Not really any better than just a one time password except for the convenience that the user does not need to type it in. If someone gets hold of the link or password before you they can get access to your account.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Many years ago, I had forgotten my password to the Sprint websiteb so I could log in and pay my cellular bill. I had to call customer support to resolve this. After verifying my activity, the support agent read me my existing password one letter at a time. While this was alarming, I was amused she had to spell out a somewhat obscene phrase for me. This was maybe 20 years ago and I no longer use Sprint.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    MITM attack's success rate just went to 100%

    No, it didn't. It's stupid and shouldn't be done, but all ham nowadays is encrypted.

    I know that because I've been running my email server for some years now, technically breaking one of the RFCs for not allowing unencrypted connections. Zero email has been missed.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    While I agree that likely most SMTP traffic is sent encrypted these days, you simply cannot be sure. Just because you received something over an encrypted connection doesn't mean that relays in between also used this. The webserver could have handed over the email unencrypted to an SMTP server for all you know. And even if an encrypted connection was used the mail might still have been copied to a log on the SMTP server. Email is unfortunately inherently unsafe.

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