Most Online Retailer Websites are Vulnerable to User Account Theft

[mandy]

Security flaws in the "forgotten password" feature of ecommerce websites leave half the UK's online retailers open to attack, according to security consultancy SecureTest.

It warns that the log-in process of many transactional websites can be subverted by a "brute force" or enumeration attack. In a survey of 107 popular online retail websites in the UK, SecureTest found that 54 of the sites (or 50.5 per cent) are potentially vulnerable to this type of hack attack...

Differences in responses by applications when valid and invalid user account names can give clues to hackers and form the basis of enumeration attacks...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/20/...rity_risk/

related topic:
Yahoo! Personals dating site has security problems
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...861.0.html

[mandy]

A more in depth article on the SecureTest findings:

Most Online Retailer Websites are Vulnerable to User Account Theft through Enumeration Attacks

SecureTest has found over half of the major online retailers in the UK carry a user log-in page vulnerable to attack. The forgotten password feature, typically used as part of the log-in process on most transactional websites, can be subjected to a brute force or Enumeration Attack.

Enumeration describes the process of looking for differences in the response from an application when submitting valid and invalid user account names. On an ecommerce site, the users account name or registered email address can be inserted correctly and incorrectly on the forgotten password page in order to look for these differences...

full article: http://www.securitypark.co.uk/article.asp?articleid=25144&CategoryID=1

[valleygirl]

On an ecommerce site

On an ecommerce site you will lose customers forever if you don't have a password look-up page.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  :-\

[maggie777]

The article offers solutions but the software fixes are out of my control.  I should forward the article to Monster.