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Groupon leaks entire Indian user database
- microarchitect 15y agoWe have begun notifying our subscribers and advising them to change their Sosasta passwords as soon as possible. We will keep our Indian subscribers fully informed as we learn more. This is a lie. Neither I nor my brother have heard from them. Keep in mind that this happened on Friday and it's already Tuesday here. In the meantime, I have been spammed about deals that I don't care about through e-mail and text messages four times.
- nodata 15y agoHow is that spam? You opted-in to receive the e-mails.
- Garbage 15y agoThough I am not a subscriber, I have received information from some of my friends that they are getting these warning emails.
- rkalla 15y agoI suppose we also have no verification that the passwords are no longer stored in plain text either, so changing it seems to be postponing the inevitable -- it is now a target for getting hacked again, with a delicious plain text payload as the reward for anyone doing it. If my doctor was leaking my medical records left and right to advertisers around town, I would sue him... at some point leaking my online identity has to have some sort of repercussions behind it besides me getting online and being openly angry on the internet. Yep, that'll do it ;) ADDENDUM. Speak of the devil (another HN story): http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/06/cloud-site-dropbox-drops-the-ball.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/06/cloud-site-dro...
- nickolai 15y ago> If my doctor was leaking my medical records left and right to advertisers around town, I would sue him... at some point leaking my online identity has to have some sort of repercussions behind it besides me getting online and being openly angry on the internet. What would you do ? sue them? The EULA you have accepted usually forbids it, or limits the amount of damages you can claim to a few bucks. I am not a lawyer, but i doubt such an EULA would be declared void in court.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoSomehow, I think this wouldn't be the case. Otherwise, doctors would be throwing EULA agreements left and right, and saving millions on malpractice insurance fees.
- sunir 15y agoThey do. They are called waivers. You sign them all the time when using the health care system.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoI've never seen a complete waiver of rights. What you typically sign is an agreement to try arbitration before (or instead of) suing in the courts. I don't believe it is possible to waive the ability to be penalized for negligence, just the venue the penalty is assessed in. Of course, said arbiter is much less likely to give out a seven digit award than a jury is.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- benswieskowski 15y agoGroupon takes security and privacy very seriously. Just not seriously enough to encrypt passwords.
- jtchang 15y agoIn clear text? Really? How is this even allowed anymore?
- sunchild 15y agoAnd indexed by Google. That is terrible.
- jc123 15y agoIt might have been good that it was indexed by Google so that the problem was found quicker. Completely agree about how can cleartext be allowed. Harder to regulate overseas, but would it be possible to have an actual law in the USA against storing passwords and other confidential in cleartext? There are various consumer protections such as food, cars, toys, and could similar things be legislated for data?
- Joakal 15y agoOf course. Keywords: PCI, MIPSA/HIPAA, etc. More: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Information_privacy https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Information_p...
- jc123 15y agoYes, my impression is that passwords are not treated with the same seriousness as say credit card numbers, or health info. That (passwords) was actually what I was curious about, before I generalized my comment.
- sunchild 15y agoPasswords are one of the safeguards (perhaps the most important) that protect personal/sensitive data.
- oasisbob 15y agoPCI isn't law, it's the product of an industry group, and is arguably more about the protection of the networks and issuers than consumers. There is even less guidance and specific regulation pertaining to the encryption and security of banking records. The audits and regulations that are in place are more about overall controls than technological measures.
- skbohra123 15y agoIncidents like this make me think that if success is anything to do with talent? Even a mediocre developer wouldn't do such mistake and these people are acquired by Groupon. Then, I think, it's all about who you know ?
- pagekalisedown 15y agoAs you get older, you realize the world isn't a meritocracy. Only the young, poor, and/or foolish will believe that.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Deestan 15y agoIf you're lucky, you might also realize that being condescending is alienating and a bad way to get your point across.
- maverhick 15y agoand they were ex-googlers by the way.
- vladd 15y agoIt appears you're putting the equal sign between developer ability and business success. Being a great developer lands you a good job with a 6-figure yearly salary. Being successful in business requires a different sort of talent. Business "talent" is primarily about knowing what matters. There are lots of Groupon clones or other startups where founders can't do basic arithmetic on user acquisition costs or lifetime customer value, or they choose to work on scaling the backend prematurely or on solving things that will not matter unless they achieve product/market fit and scale. Recognizing priorities and working on what matters is also talent, or more precisely, a lot of hard work. Once you have product/market fit, doing risk management is a must and nowadays it seems to be a lacking skill (look at this incident or the Dropbox story from a couple of days ago). But doing risk management is like translating your business in French: if you're big it pays off to do it but otherwise you should be more worried about not dying. Therefore I'm not surprised when I see that people who are focused on not dying more than risk management have been more successful in reaching... "success" (managing it once you've got it is another business)
- TheOnly92 15y agoMaybe Google should start working with security firm so that once their bots crawled on a leaked database they will notify the website owner immediately.
- Zakuzaa 15y agoI think Google would rather just not index such data.
- random42 15y agoYes, do not index AND possibly inform the website.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI can't think of a reason why Google would care... I certainly can't think of a reason why Google would care enough to spend money on staff/research in order to get that type of content out of the index. If you don't want something indexed, don't put it on the web. And sure as hell don't link to it.
- g123g 15y agoTrue, if you are incompetent enough to expose your most sensitive data on the internet yourself, why do you expect others to come to your aid. Even if Google does not index it, what is stopping other search engines from indexing or hackers to get access to it directly. There are lot of tools which will automatically index all the content of a website with the click of a button. So I think it is best to put the onus on the website collecting the user data to protect it. If they cannot, then maybe they should just use some third party authentication and minimize the amount of sensitive data that they need to keep on their servers.
- Joakal 15y agoHow would Google do it with an algorithm to tell whether a database is leaked or not? Get emails from the firm to assess it? Maybe a honeypot email? In that case, it seems far more easier for developers to put in honeypot emails in the databases and constantly query search engines hourly when those become available. That is assuming database gets released, let along exposed for indexing.
- drivebyacct2 15y agoI am not normally in favor of legislation, but I'd be okay with a fine for US-based companies that leak and expose this kind of data. Specifically a harsher fine for cleartext or anything less than bcrypt.
- sandGorgon 15y agonothing is gonna happen to Groupon (or the indian subsidiary). OTOH, Dropbox just got hit with a class action lawsuit.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoHow about something similar to HIPAA? I worry, though, that it would end up making things more difficult for developers while not improving things for the end users - much like the European/Dutch cookie law.
- g123g 15y agoSosasta means "so cheap" in Hindi. Maybe they are too cheap to spend any effort on security of their users' data.
- adhipg 15y agoContinuing on that line of thought - a simple search like 'filetype:sql phpmyadmin' also shows a lot of 'interesting' results.
- india 15y agoDid anyone manage to get a copy of the sql file? A password analysis of a largely Indian audience could be pretty interesting.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI'm mostly wondering if their usernames and passwords are strictly ascii, or if they're using another alphabet.
- bdhe 15y agoMost Indian computers I've seen are standard American or British layouts. India has a lot of English speakers [1] and most computer-savvy folk, especially the kind that use Groupon will definitely know enough English to use English usernames and passwords. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-sp...
- evolution 15y agoanybody got that sql?
- dagrz 15y agoAll the data has been removed and only exists in sha1 hash form but you can see if you were affected at https://shouldichangemypassword.com/ https://shouldichangemypassword.com/
- franze 15y agoas we are currently groupon bashing, take a look at groupon.de (germany) http://www.groupon.de/deals/berlin http://www.groupon.de/deals/berlin scroll down ... down ... down ... there it is (gray text on black background), the crappiest example of SEO i have seen in a long long time. keyword stuffing is so 2004. "Berlin ist als Hauptstadt der Bundesrepublik bekannt für seine Sehenswürdigkeiten und das umfassende Angebot an Freizeit-Aktivitäten. ... ... Berlin Deal ... ... Rabatten ... ... Geld zu sparen... ... Gutschein ...bla ... ... Angebote des Berlin Deals ... ... Wellness-Angeboten ... ... Restaurantgutscheinen.... ... .Freizeiterlebnisse, Events und Dienstleistungen in Berlin ... ... Shopping und Online Shop. ... ... Berlin Gutscheine ... ... " i would have guessed that a multi billion dollar company could at least hire a decent SEO guy.
- eliben 15y agoWhile arguably interesting, I don't see how this is related to the linked password leak
- franze 15y agoyeah, i know, but shitty SEO is not worth a separate 'submit' - also the overall theme of this thread is 'just another poor business decision / f*ck up by groupon' and this seems to fit the bill
- TruthElixirX 15y agoMaybe Russian search engines fall for keyword stuffing? I do not know what the primary search engine of Russia is.
- pitdesi 15y agoIt's Yandex, but I don't see how that's relevant since this is a German site
- TruthElixirX 15y agoI have no idea where I read Russian. My bad. :\
- 51Cards 15y agoOk my mouth is literally a-gape at the number of database dumps indexed by Google. I guess I just never thought of searching for something so simple and now I'm floored at how often this seems to happen. How does anyone possibly allow a data dump to come anywhere near somewhere Google could index it?
- oozcitak 15y ago> How does anyone possibly allow a data dump to come anywhere near somewhere Google could index it? Let me just put this sql dump in the web root for a couple hours to copy over to the test server.
- bad_user 15y agoGoogle also has to know that the file is there, before indexing it, either from a link available to Google, or from the website's sitemap, or by activating directory listing in Apache, or some other shit like that.
- mqzaidi 15y agoDirectory listing was on. Searching google's cache for http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ will confirm as much.
- angusgr 15y agoSearching on cache:http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ doesn't show a result now from here (Australia.) Also, searching on link:http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/ doesn't show anyone linking to it. Even if the directory is there, it had to get there in the first place somehow.
- rahoulb 15y agoTo: mycolleague@gmail.com The database dump is here: http://www.secretserver.com/database.sql.gz http://www.secretserver.com/database.sql.gz Don't tell anyone.
- nestlequ1k 15y agoHeads outta roll for this one. The dev, the supervisor, his supervisor. Probably all the way up to VP. It's a stupid, boneheaded mistake, but one of those that could only be made in an environment where security is extremely lax. Easiest way to fix the environment here is to just fire everyone involved.
- mqzaidi 15y agoHere's the communication they sent. This is totally a lie - my email was in the database, and they have been only saying an issue potentially affecting them ------- Hi SoSasta Subscriber, Over this weekend, we've been alerted to a security issue potentially affecting subscribers of Sosasta. We wanted to let you know that the issue has been brought under control and your accounts are secure. However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your SoSasta password immediately, by visiting the SoSasta website (Sign-In using your existing password, then click on Profile followed by Change Password). If you use the same email/password combination at other websites, we recommend you change those passwords as soon as possible, too. Please be aware that none of your financial information (Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking etc) has been compromised since this information is not stored on SoSasta, as per law. If you have any concerns or find any unusual changes in your SoSasta account, please contact our Customer Support team as soon as possible at 1800 103 2111 between 9.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. IST, Monday to Saturday so that we can review your account. You should know that we are working aggressively to prevent this from happening again. Sosasta takes security and privacy very seriously -- it's important to us to provide you with a safe shopping experience of the highest quality, and we will do everything possible to keep your trust. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience or concern we've caused. Sincerely, SoSasta Customer Support
- Zakuzaa 15y agoWas your password in plaintext? Just to confirm what others have been saying.
- NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago"As a side project, he created shouldichangemypassword.com, a website that allows any Internet user to search a database of known-compromised e-mail address and password pairs to see if their password has been compromised." Sure, just wait a while for me to connect to your sweet little reverse honey pot of a phishing, data harvesting Web site! Want me to type in my bank's URL and there my user ID and password so that you can "see" if that "password has been compromised" too?
- gary4gar 15y agoI can guess, how this can happen. --------------------- First,Take the db dump, for backups/setting up another server etc. $ mysqldump -u <user> -p <password> <db name> > xyz.sql Now, lets move db dump file to webroot, I hate SSH,FTP,RSYNC -- too complicated for me. I like clicking hyperlinks. KISS FTW! I guess nobody will notice that file is present here. How can they know, I won't tell them! $ mv xyz.sql public_html/uploaded/users now, I can download it simply by going to http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/users/xyz.sql http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/users/xyz.sql See how easy this is, why complicate things unnecessarily. --------------------- I guess the guy wouldn't have even imagined mighty google will index this & people from around will download the file, resulting in major security breach. This is what you get when you act ignorant or plain lazy. poor guy...lol
- TeMPOraL 15y ago> This is what you get when you act ignorant or plain lazy. Or, in general case[1], when 'industry standard' tools are PITA to use. Simpler solutions are always preferred, for better or worse. [1] I'm not defending here the person that caused the SoSasta breach. EDIT: Formatting.
- suking 15y agoYour User Information - 100% Off!
- PartyDawg 15y agoSue this irresponsible company into oblivion.
- johnx123 15y agoSoSasta software seems coded by scriptkiddies. Groupon's takeover was a big blunder.
- mukeshsinghr 15y agoIf Companies itself ready for compromising there email id and password then who can protect them. Hacker's just shown there mistakes done to the people. Otherwise a small child knows well how to hide his password from the other people.