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UK Mobile Operator O2 Leaks MMS Photos

Posted by Soulskill on from the like-a-sieve dept.

Anonymous Hero writes "UK Mobile Operator O2 allows its customers to send Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) photos to email recipients by way of a web interface. The URLs published by the MMS-to-email application are not authenticated, so a simple Google search reveals hundreds, if not thousands of private photos." Reader ttul points out similar coverage of this issue at InformationWeek.

33 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Tomorrow's news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Under pressure from the NY attorney general, major telecoms have agreed to permanently stop offering MMS service.

    1. Re:Tomorrow's news by duguk · · Score: 3, Informative

      Probably, O2 have already disabled access to email for non-contract users.

      I tried to post this on /. the other day but hasn't been accepted; being as anyone on O2 is probably reading this article, I'll post it here. "It's been reported in a number of places that UK Mobile Phone company, O2 are blocking some internet ports for some customers.

      It appears that although Contract customers on the mobile network are fully able to access email and SSH via their mobile phone, yet customers subscribed through 'Pay as you Go' (PAYG; a non-subscription service, paid up in front as credit), are only given WAP access, which only provides very basic HTTP access.

      Essentially this means that anyone with a pay-in-front service agreement won't be able to access their email or use anything apart from basic HTTP, even though O2 are now selling and advertising the new Apple iPhone on PAYG and stating it will support "all the same features as contract customers".

      It's been reported that on contacting O2, they state its a technical problem and one that can't be resolved, yet it's also been mentioned that their own O2 POP3 mail service does work, but access to any other service doesn't.

      Are O2 right to restrict access for customers not on a fixed contract? Does your mobile phone company do the same thing? And are O2 advertising unfairly?"

      More information here.

    2. Re:Tomorrow's news by William+Robinson · · Score: 5, Funny
      Imagine, Judge being presented his own private MMS as evidence.

      Reminds me of a joke:

      A small town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial -- a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?"

      She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a rising big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you."

      The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?"

      She again replied, "Why, yes I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He's lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him."

      At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, "If either of you asks her if she knows me, you'll be in jail for contempt of court!"

      --
      hilarious
    3. Re:Tomorrow's news by Atti+K. · · Score: 2, Funny

      Under pressure from the NY attorney general, major telecoms have agreed to permanently stop offering MMS service.

      So what, anybody actually used MMS?

      --
      .sig: No such file or directory
  2. All your creativity are belong to google.com by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I blame web 2.0 and young people.
    Back in the good old days you would have used safe ftp.
    ftp never hurt anyone.
    I do harbour dreams of being a Tor node operator.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:All your creativity are belong to google.com by duguk · · Score: 2, Informative

      MMS can't be sent directly to email on O2, and as far as I know, not at ALL in the UK.

      Even so, eMail doesn't work on Pay as you Go on O2.

      So yeah, it does affect customers. Anyone who sends an MMS to a non-MMS capable phone (presumably if the phone can't do MMS, it probably can't do eMail either), the MMS is posted to O2's website, and that's where the problem starts.

      Did you bother to read the article?

    2. Re:All your creativity are belong to google.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Aw, you gotta be kidding! You are not a sys admin, I suppose? ftp is a fucked up protocol (passive ftp? active ftp? gimme a break) that was a nightmare to manage, specially if you had firewalls.

    3. Re:All your creativity are belong to google.com by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 2, Informative

      Even so, eMail doesn't work on Pay as you Go on O2.

      Total BS. That site is making shit up to get advertising hits. It's not even believable shit this time around, as anyone with an iphone on PayG will tell you.

  3. eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    hundreds or thousands..... or maybe 40? someone can't count very high before jumping to 1000!

    1. Re:eh? by duguk · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think you'll find that there's still the same number as yesterday - I'm the DugUK as mentioned in the InformationWeek article.

      I posted the comment in the O2 Forums, and they not only deleted my comments, they disabled my account too! I'm glad people are finally beginning to realise this is a problem and can't just be hidden up.

      For my next trick, I'd like everyone to also know that EMAIL DOES NOT WORK ON PAY AS YOU GO on O2! They've blocked port access.

      Thanks!

    2. Re:eh? by duguk · · Score: 2, Informative

      O2 Customer Forums - Luckily I posted this after everyone went home, so they didn't get to delete my post or account this time.

    3. Re:eh? by amRadioHed · · Score: 2, Informative

      I still get 40 results. And google isn't real time, if the pictures were taken down from the servers that wouldn't change the search results right away.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
  4. Disappointing by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 5, Funny

    Arr, not a looker in the bunch!

    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
    1. Re:Disappointing by GradiusCVK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Funny it includes the sender's phone number... oughta MMS everyone back and tell them to start taking some photos of hot chicks.
      Presents an interesting new way for us Slashdotters to meet girls...

  5. no problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Right now the web is being slashdotted, your pictures will be safe

  6. I hear a thundering herd of feet.... by tecker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cue lawsuit over this in

    3.....

    2.....

    1.....

    Ohhhh, settled out of court and everyone gets 1000 free picture and MMS messaging while we fix our system.



    (Im calling 3 weeks to the system being fixed)

    --
    Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
  7. Of course that is not all. by lantastik · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google can dig up all kinds of wonderful information.

  8. Problem solved! by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Funny

    Heartfelt thanks to all the people of slashdot for mounting a DDOS attack on our servers.

    The O2 team.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Problem solved! by duguk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At least it might get O2's attention! All the action they've taken so far is deleting forum posts from their own forums and ignoring any email or telephone complaints.

      Are you really from the O2 Team? If so, I've got a few words for you...

  9. Not as bad as it sounds by srjh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Try searching for each of those 16-character IDs, and you'll see that each has already been posted publically, and most seem to be from just the one user. Which makes sense, if Google managed to index them in the first place.

    Sure, 02 should have taken steps to avoid being indexed, but they aren't responsible for leaking the photos.

    And It would be quite easy to write a script to try various combinations of 16 hex digits to try and randomly view a photo but depending on how many photos are being hosted the hit rate could be quite low.? Yeah, seeing as there are about 10^19 combinations, the hit rate would be fairly low. Did the author seriously consider this to be flaw?

    1. Re:Not as bad as it sounds by duguk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, 02 should have taken steps to avoid being indexed, but they aren't responsible for leaking the photos.

      Their site is not suitabled secured, usually it would require a mobile number and pin code but this 16-digit code circumnavigates this requirement.

      From TFA, apparently these are also being picked up by Google's Toolbar.

      Surely if you'd MMS'd a friend a picture message, and they'd changed to a phone without MMS without you knowing - your picture will most likely be available on O2's website. Is this right? Should it be more secured? Or don't you care about who see's your 'private' conversations?

    2. Re:Not as bad as it sounds by daviddcawley · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm the author of the post. It's true that there are 10^19 combinations if the 64-bit "keys" are secure and generated with a good PRNG. As I'm able to access the "keys" (without using any type of web based search) directly from O2 due to a security hole, it entirely circumvents the URL based authentication. I don't even need to guess any keys! I will update the blog next week with details of the full attack but I'd like to give O2 some time to fix this.

    3. Re:Not as bad as it sounds by srjh · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Surely if you'd MMS'd a friend a picture message, and they'd changed to a phone without MMS without you knowing - your picture will most likely be available on O2's website. Is this right? Should it be more secured? Or don't you care about who see's your 'private' conversations?

      Yes, it probably should be more secure. Not allowing the pages to be indexed by Google would be a good start. But as it stands, unless there are further flaws I'm not aware of, you still need the 64 bit key to intercept the message. Unless the person I've sent a private message to makes that key public, the message should remain private.

      On the other hand, I'm not under any delusions that privacy exists for SMS/MMS messages here in Australia, so I wouldn't send sensitive information through SMS/MMS in the first place. Not that it excuses any mistakes, I just have low expectations to begin with.

    4. Re:Not as bad as it sounds by Gandalf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Their site is not suitabled secured, usually it would require a mobile number and pin code but this 16-digit code circumnavigates this requirement.

      I'd like to clarify this a bit to avoid that people think of the 16-digit code itself as insecure.

      Any site built with performance in mind has a similar setup: you authenticate yourself through the main site, but the content is on a delivery network. This network serves static files and by design doesn't handle the dynamics of authentication (cookies, HTTP auth).

      The idea is that using hard-to-guess ID tokens gives enough privacy: even if you were to guess or systematically scan them, you would get random content at best - you wouldn't have any information about the uploader or the context.

      Users with access to the content can of course republish it in ways that bypass the authentication, but that's true for all on-line content: once access has been granted to an authenticatied and authorised user, security becomes a matter of trust.

      The use of such IDs is not 100% secure but it's a good trade-off because ordinarily you have to be authenticated before you learn a specific ID.

      The real problem with the O2 site is the lack of authentication on the pages referencing the hard-to-guess IDs, not the use of IDs themselves.

      (The robots.txt omission isn't the real problem either, of course.)

  10. what is wrong with you people? by speedtux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Worse still, the majority of the images taken on cameras turns out to be children. Ironically, O2 has a website dedicated to "Protect Our Children", well a good first step would be to avoid leaking customer photos.

    What bullshit idea is it that pictures of children need to be removed from the world? If you look at the history of photography, pictures of children have always been an important part of street photography, portraits, and artistic photography. In the US and many other places, it's legal to take pictures of children, even without permission of their parents. There are many pictures of children on Flickr and elsewhere.

    There is no evidence that pictures of children place them at risk. Can we please stop and reverse this meme that there is anything wrong with taking pictures of children?

    I don't really give a damn about pictures of children per se, but demonizing legitimate and legal content is a serious threat to free speech and democracy.

  11. Its not O2, its Google by plierhead · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ridiculous summary that does not seem to be based on the actual article. This sounds like an issue with Google, not with O2.

    It seems that O2 posts the images with a pretty well randomized URL (16 hex digits is not too bad in most people's books). And the URLs are not linked to any publicly crawlable page on O2's web site. So how does Google reach them?

    The reason (if anyone cares to FTA) that they can be googled is that according to "Ken Simpson, CEO of anti-spam company MailChannels, is that one's Google Toolbar may be configured to pass URLs that one visits to Google for indexing. "If you run Google Toolbar, it knows pages you visit," he said."

    So if the article is correct, Google in its wisdom has decided to treat a URL sent to someone with the Google toolbar in a private email as a publicly reachable URL.

    I find this whole story pretty non-sensicle though - presumable Google would not make "click here to reset your password" links publicly reachable?

    If the article is correct then I'd be stripping off the Google toolbar as quick as I could.

    --

    [x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful

    1. Re:Its not O2, its Google by Cyberllama · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You missed a key point in the TFA:

      I looked at the URL in the e-mail and found the only requirement was a 16 digit hex number. [Update: A few readers pointed out that a 64-bit key results in a HUGE number of possibilities to guess 10^19. However, as I can obtain the keys via another security hole no guessing is required - I'm not going to release that information yet as I'd like O2 to fix this]. As these web pages were wide open to the internet, not requiring any authentication a very small handful were indexed by Google. I was able to craft a Google search that results in some matches to show an example of how this is an insecure method of hosting:

      In other words, the stuff that's on google is merely the tip of the iceberg. He can start randomly plucking valid hex codes out of thin air and start viewing random people's random MMS's. The google search is just a "proof of concept" if you will, of the larger flaw.

      This could be, of course, untrue -- as we really only have his word to take for it that there is some "pattern" in picking valid hex codes.

    2. Re:Its not O2, its Google by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 3, Informative

      No robots.txt
      http://mediamessaging.o2.co.uk/robots.txt

      Nothing is telling Google (or Yahoo, or ...) not to index a page somebody linked to on some other page.

  12. Look out, it's a trap! by Airw0lf · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. Leak MMS Photos
    2. Watch people as they go through the photos
    3. Arrest anyone who stumbles upon an underage photo (Someone please think of the children!)
    4. ???
    5. Profit! (Or at the very least, create a big carnival sideshow about capturing hordes of perverts in the act in order to distract attention from the massive privacy breach.)

  13. Unfortunately no nude pics by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's amazing how many people have boring pictures and enjoy sending pictures of their ugly kids.

    I think O2 should have the decency to warn people about this but they haven't and I know that because I'm an O2 customer. Thankfully I only use my phone for calls so this doesn't affect me.

  14. Re:Watch for the fallout by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is a SERIOUS breach of privacy. This will hit mainstream media. The fact that I can hit a google link and listen to people voice attachments, look at their photos - that's too public of a mistake. I look forward to watching this unfold.

    Umm... yesterday it hit the TV news that in the last 4 years the MoD has lost ~650 laptops - many containing classified information. It made the mainstream news, I'm sure people are moaning, and there'll probably be an "enquiry" which will take a few months and cost a few million eventually leading to nothing and, as always, nothing will change.

    By comparison a few photos and sound-bites is nothing. This will probably be a 1/8th page article on page 32 and that'll be the end of that.

    In the UK the prevalence of data collection is so great and the ineptitude of governments and companies is so absolute that this stuff is just commonplace now. Even if this story gets picked up anywhere it'll be overshadowed within days by a bigger data breach fuck-up somewhere else.

    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  15. Don't think O2 is that at fault here by AC-x · · Score: 2, Informative

    Given the small number of results here I'd say that those pages were linked from somewhere else (a forum or someones homepage maybe?) which allowed google to index them.

    Google's spider isn't magic, it can only find things that are linked to from another public site (given google's don't be evil mantra I doubt they'd start indexing links from emails etc.)

    Still O2 should probably add some no index tags as it does give people a way to list all O2's public mms', with probably a broader audience then whoever posted them would like

  16. Re:Cut to the chase.. by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Informative

    Any direct links to naked chicks photos?

    You're pretty new here, so let me give you a bit of advice: If anyone on Slashdot purports to show you pictures of naked chicks ...

    Put your welding goggles on before you hit the link. And for damned sure don't do it at work.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!