Another Sony in the making?

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Tel69

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#111429 3-Nov-2012 09:18

In my job we have dealings with lots of companies.
For one (EMC), I had the need to sign onto their site to get some information.
I've not been on their site for over a year, so my password was not forthcoming.
Asked for a password reset, and all was fine, I got my temporary password in an e-mail.

Imagine my surprise when I went to a second EMC site, my new password didn't work. OK, I'll use their "password finder" function. And that is exaclt what it did. It found my password and e-mailed it to me in plain text.

You would think by now companies this big would have learnt from Sony's very public mistake.
It seems not in this instance.

Dratsab

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#711284 3-Nov-2012 11:29

Numerous companies seem to email original passwords in plain text. Gives the perception that security isn't something that's given a lot of thought, either by the organisation or the website developers.

One company I deal with would email out my username and password with every order I placed. I emailed them several times pointing out a lot of reasons for the stupidity of this and the practice seems to have now stopped. I have a feeling though that all they've done is suppressed the sending of this field in their automated emails rather than actually fixing the real problem...

gzt

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#711300 3-Nov-2012 11:50

Surprising from EMC. Emailing stored passwords opens up so many vectors for account compromise.

EMC may consider the information protected does not merit a secure reset procedure. Big mistake.

The password itself is worthy of protection to say the least.

It was not unusual in the past for large companies to manage their internal infrastructure and procedures ok but run web as a separate operation aligned to marketing and practically ignore it from an IT perspective. Maybe EMC has some catching up to do.

Tel69

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#711439 3-Nov-2012 17:23

Actually I'll stand corrected on this after some more investigation, perhaps it's not EMC themselves doing this, but a third party EMC have outsourced to.
The domain is not owned by EMC themselves. It seems going by the domain name for the base URL the domain is run by "Flexera Software LLC".
Worrying the list of companies they have listed as clients. (But I'd not say every customer is using them the same way EMC does).

gzt

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#711442 3-Nov-2012 17:28

What is the http address for the service you use?

Kyanar

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#711546 3-Nov-2012 22:45

Ah, Flexera. The people behind InstallShield. I'd say they are running the licensing for whatever EMC product you're trying to manage, as software license management is one of their outsourcing services.

AidanS

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#711557 3-Nov-2012 23:05

I've seen a bit of "double-MD5" encryption appearing seen as there are large databases of MD5 string available (MD5 decryption tools). I would at least expect normal MD5 encryption with any new website these days.

Which incident are you referring to exactly about Sony?

The one I'm thinking of is the Playstation one last year?

-Aidan

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Tel69

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#711611 4-Nov-2012 08:56

CoolAs101: I've seen a bit of "double-MD5" encryption appearing seen as there are large databases of MD5 string available (MD5 decryption tools). I would at least expect normal MD5 encryption with any new website these days.

Which incident are you referring to exactly about Sony?

The one I'm thinking of is the Playstation one last year?

-Aidan

Yes, Sony's was a bit worse as there was also the SQL injection problem as well.
I'm just comparing the 2 because of the complete lack of common security measures and/or it would seem encryption.
There should never be a way a website can send you your password. Reset it to a temporary one, yes.

Even if it is encrypted and stored encrypted them being able to decrypt it and send it in plain text doesn't sit well with me.
So many vectors are opened up if an original password can be obtained. (disgrunteled employee doing a DB dump, etc..., etc...)

Tel69

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#711613 4-Nov-2012 09:00

gzt: What is the http address for the service you use?

It's a subscribenet.com addy.

gzt

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#711656 4-Nov-2012 10:39

Kyanar: Ah, Flexera. The people behind InstallShield. I'd say they are running the licensing for whatever EMC product you're trying to manage, as software license management is one of their outsourcing services.

Yeah, Flexera do a lot for EMC. Why EMC would outsource without even a basic audit is beyond me. EMC has the leverage to force a change there easily. As always with something like that users, fairly or not, have reduced expectations about the quality of service and expect other issues are present.

Tel69

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#711858 4-Nov-2012 18:25

gzt: Yeah, Flexera do a lot for EMC. Why EMC would outsource without even a basic audit is beyond me. EMC has the leverage to force a change there easily. As always with something like that users, fairly or not, have reduced expectations about the quality of service and expect other issues are present.

I agree, I'm surprised EMC would want to be associated with a site that has passwords this way.
Think I'll open a powerlink question asking about the security of my password considering they can e-mail it back to me and also in plain text. Any network sniffer on the route it travels via e-mail to get to me could pick that up.

freitasm

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#711860 4-Nov-2012 18:56

CoolAs101: I've seen a bit of "double-MD5" encryption appearing seen as there are large databases of MD5 string available (MD5 decryption tools). I would at least expect normal MD5 encryption with any new website these days.

The only problem is that MD5 is not encryption but hash. Different things.

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#711874 4-Nov-2012 19:31

CoolAs101: I've seen a bit of "double-MD5" encryption appearing seen as there are large databases of MD5 string available (MD5 decryption tools). I would at least expect normal MD5 encryption with any new website these days.

Which incident are you referring to exactly about Sony?

The one I'm thinking of is the Playstation one last year?

-Aidan

There is no excuse to use MD5 hashing for passwords these days when SHA256 and bcrypt are so simple to implement.