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Critical PayPal Security Hack: Multiple Thefts Now Reported–Check Your Settings
- Samung 7y agoThat's what you get for ignoring flawed security reports.
- s5ma6n 7y agoEven yesterday there was this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403565 PayPal needs to seriously reevaluate how they want to approach the vulnerabilities. Why have a bounty program if you are going to act hostile towards the white hat community or even ignore their reports?
- tptacek 7y agoThe two stories are unrelated, though the reporter cites the former. From the vulnerabilities disclosed in that report, it seems pretty unlikely that yesterday's stories caused a rash of thefts; they were all pretty low-severity. Note that here, Paypal paid a substantial bounty a year ago.
- rasengan 7y agoFrom the article: “We reported this in February 2019 to PayPal via HackerOne,” they say. “After an initial rejection and several discussions, PayPal paid a bug bounty of $4,400.” The pair have not heard from PayPal, they say, since April 2019. But this week “tried and could still use the virtual credit card for online payments.” That means, they told me, “the bug has not been fixed.” To reiterate the OP, what is the point of a bug bounty program that ignores or fails to address reported issues? > The two stories are unrelated They are related in the sense that both stories show a failure to respond to reported issues. > Note that here, Paypal paid a substantial bounty a year ago. They paid but didn’t fix the issue? This is not taking account security serious at all. At best, PayPal has a critical flaw in their bug bounty program.
- pvg 7y agoAt best, PayPal has a critical flaw [...] This seems curiously confident given that just about every single one of your many comments on the other story was inaccurate or a misinterpretation.
- rasengan 7y ago> This seems curiously confident given that just about every single one of your many comments on the other story was inaccurate or a misinterpretation. So you don’t think that sending a bug bounty reward a year ago to a security researcher who exposed a flaw, that is still being exploited to take money from people, is a critical flaw in the program?
- pvg 7y agoDo I think it's possible PayPal had an incomplete fix or had a regression or an organizational screwup of some kind? Absolutely, that is possible. Do I think your 'motivated googling' approach to analyzing either story is likely to produce worthwhile insight? Not really. We've already seen it be remarkably inaccurate.
- rasengan 7y ago> Do I think it's possible PayPal had an incomplete fix or had a regression or an organizational screwup of some kind? Absolutely, that is possible. Great! You’re in agreement!
- paulmd 7y ago> Note that here, Paypal paid a substantial bounty a year ago. $4400 is not a substantial bounty for a bug of this severity, compared to the value on the black market. Like, the article even cites that attackers have extracted over $1000 from some individuals, multiply by thousands of users. The black market value of this exploit is certainly into the hundreds of thousands.
- tptacek 7y agoYou'll excuse me if I don't take this very seriously given that on previous threads people have --- not making this up --- made cases for logout CSRFs having high value on the black market. After all: the competitors to the vulnerable service could have used logout CSRFs to drive customers away! Vulnerabilities are worth money in markets when they fit into pre-existing business/operational models. That's why clientside RCE in popular clients is valuable: multiple competing buyers have whole operational frameworks where new RCEs are drop-in compatible. Nobody speculatively builds new business models around the prospect of a random serverside vulnerability. Maybe a vulnerability like this has value --- we don't know what it is, or how much interaction is required, or how quickly it could have been killed --- if it directly produces cash every time it's applied. But that's still a maybe for a serverside vulnerability with a half-life of epsilon. Meanwhile: $4400 is a strong bounty for a serverside logic vulnerability. Serious vulnerabilities like stored XSS have bounty values in the hundreds of dollars despite the fact that people on HN seem to think they're worth 6 figures on some hypothetical black market. I have no opinion about how Paypal handled this vulnerability after paying up for it; I'm exclusively interested in how this story intersects with yesterday's Paypal thread, which was a shitshow.
- paulmd 7y agoThe business model already exists: order videogame consoles or luxury purses or some other high-value good that is easily fungible with cash (Craigslist) and then either porch pirate the package when it arrives, or if you're brazen enough just order it right to yourself. This is something that is routinely done already with credit card fraud. This is how thieves "cash out" the cards they steal with skimmers at gas pumps and stores. The angle here is that they no longer need to steal your digits with a skimmer, they can just use your contactless payment wallet, because Paypal didn't lock them down properly. Or so the researchers allege (they don't give the exact details of the vuln for obvious reasons).
- dagurp 7y agoThey need to be audited IMO
- bilekas 7y agoCan we get a link with no paywall / adblocker ?
- bibinou 7y ago> Both issues appear linked to the way Google Pay is set up on a PayPal user’s account.
- brobdingnagians 7y ago> “We reported this in February 2019 to PayPal via HackerOne,” they say. “After an initial rejection and several discussions, PayPal paid a bug bounty of $4,400.” The pair have not heard from PayPal, they say, since April 2019. But this week “tried and could still use the virtual credit card for online payments.” That means, they told me, “the bug has not been fixed.” > But in terms of the Fenske and Mayer disclosure, the researchers told me that this is not fixed, even after PayPal’s “mitigation” statement. If Paypal has known about it for a year and it still isn't fixed, then it means that either 1. Paypal didn't understand the bug report and "fixed" something else 2. Paypal understood the bug report, didn't fix it, and is trying to save face. Either one of those sounds pretty bad for their security policy...
- rocqua 7y agoAs for paypal's security policy, note that they have a maximum password length of 24 characters, and routinely send people e-mails with a big 'log-in' link. These are both bad practice. The password length limit reduces the quality of passwords, and suggests plain-text storage of passwords. The sending of log-in links makes people much easier to phish, since people are used to clicking on a link in e-mail and then entering their credentials on the site.
- beamatronic 7y agoI’ve been telling friends and family, for at least 10 years, maybe more, the only safe way to go to PayPal, is to type the address into the browser yourself, starting with HTTPS.
- judge2020 7y agoPaypal is preloaded, so you're not required to start with HTTPS. https://hstspreload.org/?domain=paypal.com https://hstspreload.org/?domain=paypal.com
- Retric 7y agoWhile that includes Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, and Edge that’s not every browser and it’s a really bad habit to get into. Especially as the preload lists are yet another attack surface.
- luckylion 7y ago> PayPal told me that “the security of customer accounts is a top priority for the company.” I wish journalists would ridicule this corporate bullshit lingo instead of just relaying it. I'm fairly certain that anyone that ever had contact with PayPal's (or Amazon's, or probably any other large corporation's) customer service with issues regarding security can attest that it's absolutely not one of their top priorities. They haven't even bothered to make their official emails not look like phishing attempts. They don't care about security.
- inetknght 7y ago> They haven't even bothered to make their official emails not look like phishing attempts. They don't care about security. Man, now that you mention about it, I thought the same thing every time I see an email from PayPal and just disregarded the thought because it's so common from websites and nobody cares. It's _literally_ the business model of some of the top email marketing companies. In either case, now that you mention it, I don't think it was mentioned in yesterday's six vulns disclosed or in today's.
- 7777fps 7y agoIt's called the "right of reply". It's courtesy to reach out to a company and include their response without critique about whether it's "corporate bullshit".
- inetknght 7y agoI agree that reaching out to whomever's being criticised is a courtesy and, sometimes, even legally required. But I don't think it's right to not critique. When a company blatantly uses doublespeak, that should absolutely be critiqued.
- carapace 7y agoYou're talking about blurring the difference between journalism and opinion.
- numlock86 7y agoAs a power user of Google Pay in conjunction with PayPal (in Germany) should I be worried now and remove - as recommended - my PayPal account from Google Pay? A lot of people around me also use it the same way as I do and no one heard of any such incident yet. Well, now that I told them, of course everyone heard of it at least ... What are those "multiple reports"? I see the source is golem.de (don't get me started on that one) and "multiple reports" can just mean that less than half a dozen people got busted on their Google accounts for not using proper 2FA in that context. Also the article states that Google Pay provides a virtual credit card when used with PayPal. How? All I saw up until now was virtual debit cards.
- jotm 7y ago> Also the article states that Google Pay provides a virtual credit card when used with PayPal. How? All I saw up until now was virtual debit cards. Naming confusion, I think. To some people (mostly Americans), credit and debit cards are the same thing - just plastic payment cards. Some Europeans think Visa/Mastercard can only be credit cards (they can be either credit or debit). To me, the difference is that credit cards use the bank's/issuer's balance (that you can pay back later, all at once or spread out in smaller monthly payments), while debit cards use your bank account balance directly. I think that's the proper differentiation.
- saystupidthings 7y agoYou're the first person I've ever met that isnt entirely sure of what the difference is between a credit and debit card.
- thescriptkiddie 7y agoFor added confusion, credit and debit cards have different processing networks, with the debit networks having much lower fees. And in the US at least, virtually all debit cards can also be processed as credit if the store doesn't accept debit directly (eg online payments). And while in Europe all cards have PINs, in the US only debit cards have PINs, and running then as credit allows you to bypass the PIN requirement.
- stevespang 7y agoNo paywall version: https://outline.com/5fHtan https://outline.com/5fHtan
- ljoshua 7y agoSo NFC reading of embedded card details is always on, regardless of whether you are in "payments" mode or have the app open? Is that a PayPal flaw, or is it an Android/NFC/Google Payments flaw?
- aPoCoMiLogin 7y agoThat's an EMV [1] standard and there is a lot more info you can get [2] from your card. There are plenty of apps you can use to read your card [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV [2] https://www.eftlab.com/knowledge-base/145-emv-nfc-tags/ https://www.eftlab.com/knowledge-base/145-emv-nfc-tags/ [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.devnied.emvnfccard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.dev...
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago> So NFC reading of embedded card details is always on Apple have a similar option BUT they restrict its use to certain payment terminals (for example it is only supposed by TfL in the UK) and can be disabled if you want. Dunno if the data it exposes (in a physical read attack) could be used for other payments. > With Express Transit mode enabled, you don't have to validate with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode when you pay for rides with Apple Pay on your iPhone and Apple Watch. And you don't need to wake or unlock your device, or open an app. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT209495 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT209495
- ThePowerOfFuet 7y agoExpress Transit mode is also disabled by default.
- lxgr 7y agoIt's a Google Pay feature, but it only works up to the "no CVM" limit, which varies by country (but is usually something like $20-$50 or the local currency equivalent).
- stebann 7y ago#NOFREEBOUNTIES
- rwmurrayVT 7y agoSame first 7 with only 17 possible expiration dates? That's a recipe for disaster right from the start.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoJust as a PSA, it wasn't until I looked at one of these articles in the last few days about PayPal that a screenshot showing how to enable 2FA demonstrated that TOTP-based authenticator apps are now allowed. For the longest time, PayPal was only allowing 2FA SMS after they chucked their old physical security keys. Anyone who's been stuck on SMS may wish to login and switch over to TOTP.
- lxgr 7y agoI tried when they introduced that and gave up on it again: There is no way to mark a device as trusted, and I'm certainly not opening my 2FA app for every single login/payment. Also, this is 2020, where is WebAuthN? That would at least make the constant 2FA a bit more bearable.
- whatsmyusername 7y ago> I'm certainly not opening my 2FA app for every single login/payment. I'm fine with this. I'd rather take the 3 seconds it takes to open Authy than the several days it takes to clean up the mess.
- floatingatoll 7y agoHow many times per year do you pay someone with PayPal?
- smileybarry 7y agoEvery single login asks for TOTP, and sessions expire very quickly. Even the mobile app asks every time, even if you use some saved/authorized login method like fingerprint login. For someone who uses PayPal for most online payments this can be extremely tedious.
- floatingatoll 7y agoNone of this is relevant to the question asked. I understand it’s all correct, but it fails to answer the question of quantity over time presented.
- forgotmyhnacc 7y agoPayPal is really bad with security. A friend of mine reported a CSRF attack that an attacker could withdraw all the money out of a vemmo account (was acquired by PayPal) if the victim visited the attackers website. It took them several weeks to fix, and friend didn't receive any bug bounty.
- dessant 7y agoRegarding security at PayPal, I've got a PayPal donation not long ago to my email address in the form of {@example.com. This email was not attached to my PayPal account, so I tried to add it to claim the payment, but client-side validation would reject it because of the funky { alias. I've disabled the client-side check using the browser's developer tools and my email was accepted by the server upon submission, so I could finally claim my 5 euros :P. All of this was preceded by me contacting support about adding my email address. They couldn't help me and told me to contact the sender, which would have been impossible, since it was a donation, and the only thing I had was a PayPal notification about a pending payment to that email address. Of course the server should have accepted the email anyway, because it was valid, the issue just highlights a faulty development process at PayPal that allows server-side validation to be more permissive than client-side validation.
- m-p-3 7y agoI guess I'll remove my linked cards and bank accounts for now. Not like I use it much anyway.