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Gigantic Security Flaw



Try the following:

  1. Go to the Broadband Dashboard at http://supportcentre.talktalk.net/
  2. Login as normal with your Master Account username and password (i.e. 02079813040@talktalk.net for your landline number)
  3. Look at the status bar at the bottom of you Browser whilst hovering over 'Connection' or 'E-Mail' or 'Webspace' links!
You will see your authentication credentials being plainly published for the attention of any would-be hacker, in the form of a URL as below.

http://supportcentre.talktalk.net/cgi-bin/login.cgi ?hostname=02079813040 &password=O0F2T0C7O9 &action=username &tab=1

This is very serious because it means that every time you access the Support Centre it will be transmitting, in an unencrypted form, all the information necessary to hack your account. With minimal effort this can be retrieved at any point between you and the Support Centre cluster, in fact, it will be sitting there in the server log files and may even be passed to a third parties for usage reports. You are particularly vulnerable to other users on your network, proxy servers, or through access to your computer and the Browser History Cache (search for http://supportcentre.talktalk.net/cgi-bin/account.cgi). More crucially, access to the Support Centre through any computer infected with SpyWare will instantly compromise your account.

Don’t even think about using HTTPS (encryption), first of all, they do not have a valid certificate installed, and secondly, it redirects to a ‘Test’ environment – look at the Title Bar.
 
That's quite an incredibly bad flaw you've uncovered, can anybody else confirm this? To expose a password in the URL information field without even basic encryption is beyond stupid. Did you find this yourself or was it posted elsewhere first?
 
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That's quite an incredibly bad flaw you've uncovered, can anybody else confirm this? To expose a password in the URL information field without even basic encryption is beyond stupid. Did you find this yourself or was it posted elsewhere first?

I'm 100% sure of my facts and it would be nice to get some independent corroboration. Yes, I did discover this myself but I can't be sure if I am the first, although having Googled around I can't see any related articles.

And any idea of how long its been going on (since they started, or introduction of a new system)?

Sorry, none at all - I've only been signed up for a couple of weeks or so.
 
There's a direct link to the (non SSL) HTTP: "broadband dashboard" page which asks for a username the password here :- http://www.talktalk.co.uk/talktalk/...BROADBAND&catSelect=E-mail&showFAQ=EMAILSETUP

http://supportcentre.talktalk.net/

form action="/cgi-bin/login.cgi" method=post so Customers are directed to an unsecure form to login and the form is also sent back without using SSL.

Does the password allow access to anything important though?

Many ISPs I've used only allowed a plain text login to their email servers, and if that happens to be the same uisername/password as your account login...
 
Last edited:
Does the password allow access to anything important though?

Yep, it's like your own admin user which gives access to all the POP usernames/passwords and the FTP usernames/passwords for the Web hosting.
 
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