Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

How do you know if this is fixed or not? The article didn't provide any details about the exploit beyond saying there's a bug in the e-mail system for password recovery.


Well, the article said "any paypal account", and I can't get it to send a reset token to an unauthorized email, so at the least it seems that either the claim was wrong, or they fixed it.


It doesn't say how they are sending it to an unauthorized email, maybe their is some hidden value in the form that they are sending to allow it or something altogether different to get the reset email.

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean it is fixed.


"It’s a bug in their email system that corrupts email addresses."

If you submit just the right from data you can probably corrupt the address in a predictable way. I don't think they mean just entering in a bogus address somewhere.


Yup, nail on the head. And this post scared the begeezes out of me, because it was so close. You had me on the phone to Paypal Australia within seconds. Cost me a fortune.

Luckily, I was completely wrong, and all is well. Sorry for anyone who panicked. I wasn't expecting it to get published so quickly without further discussion. I didn't even provide the screen shots at that time. It's all rather embarrassing. Mr Zee Kane took charge when he woke up and we worked through it once I got some key movers to endorse him. I didn't want to spread the apparent weakness to those who might take advantage of it. I was hasty in following advise to make it more widely known, and they were hasty to publish straight away without further discussion.

The account I was given access to was set-up against an email synonym I didn't know about, and Paypal never bothered to verify the email address. It's not my account though, someone else's name, address, and other details. A bit nefarious but not a security issue unless you plan to open a account with someone else's email address. Now, I'm not sure who's the hacker and who's the victim! I plan to request that Paypal disable the account, or at least remove my email from it, and if they refuse I will change the email myself.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: