Slashdot Mirror
Changing Customers Password Without Consent
risinganger writes "BBC News is reporting that a customer had his password changed without his knowledge. After some less than satisfactory service the customer in question changed his password to 'Llyods is pants.' At some point after that, a member of staff changed the password to 'no it's not.' Requests to change it back to 'Llyods is pants,' 'Barclays is better,' or 'censorship' were met with refusal. Personally I found the original change funny, like the customer did. After all, god forbid a sense of humour rears its ugly head in business. What isn't acceptable is the refusal to change it per the customer's requests after that."
What worries me more is that they are storing the passwords in plaintext.
In the UK "pants" is the term used for underwear.
It is also slang for rubbish (that's "crap" for Americans.)
This doesn't speak well for the state of British underwear, but whatever.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I read the article and it only reports half the story.
Sure he tells us all about his password and what he is using. But what was his account name?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
I called in and asked,"Can you give me my password?"
Him "Ok give us your information."
Me: I gave him my information.
Him"You want your password now?"
Me:"Yes please."
Him,"Biteme."
Me:"What?"
Him,"Biteme is your password."
Me,"Oh... Thanks..."
I made a mental note,"Do not make passwords that will embarrass me if I have to call in the phone"
God spoke to me.
My Dearly Beloved Lloyds customers.
I encourage you all to change your passwords to Lloyds is pants in protest at this stupid bank's actions.
Thank you sincerely for your cooperation.
Mrs Mariam Abacha, Lagos, Nigeria
I just love the hypersensitivity out there. I was on a project years ago where there were duplicate records on companies. One fellow that I worked with wrote a drag and drop application to eliminate duplicates. The user would drag the "good" record over an icon for the good company record and drag the "bad" record over the icon for the bad company record. The good company icon was a building in white with a halo over it and the bad company icon was a building in red with horns. I told him that someone with no sense of humor is going to tell him to change the icons. Sure enough, he was told to change the icons so as to not potentially offend someone's religious faith.
Until a few months ago, I did some helpdesk work at a web hosting provider. When a customer calls in, we are required to make them verify that they are the account holder by telling us either the last four digits of their credit card or their hosting account password (which they specify when they're signing up for service).
One day, a new customer calls in and says he's having some trouble setting up DNS and would like some advice. He's maybe in his late teens or early twenties He gives me the account number. I notice that he makes his payments via PayPal. When I see his password, I hit mute on the phone and giggle for a few seconds. After my composure is somewhat regained, I unmute and ask him to verify his account password for security purposes.
You could almost hear him tense up. When he starts stuttering, I was sure he never stopped to consider that he might have someone
"Ummm, uh, it's fuckyou2dickhead."
I helped him through his DNS questions as politely as possible and we got along pretty well. Before hanging up, he asked if there was a way he could change his password online. I said yes, through our monitoring and billing system.
He gave a huge sigh of relief.
Everybody knows passwords. We're all used to them. But they suck rather miserably for real security. They are a vast improvement over nothing at all, but they just aren't good enough, anymore.
All it takes is one leak of your password, and you're hung. Worse, you don't know that you're hung. You can't let somebody else use your password. Ever. You can't ask a family member to enter it in for you while you're on the road while they look up your bank balance on the way to the airport without disclosing your password.
And lots of people can see your password. Techies. Poorly-paid tech support people in India. System administrators. Clerks, counters, janitors, and people who dig up your stuff out of the pile of computer hardware behind XYZ large firm.
Passwords are a terrible, terrible idea for security, and have left the social environment highly vulnerable to vast compromises.
On the other hand, dual-key cryptography is rather good for security.
It doesn't matter who sees the key exchange. If somebody else gets your public key, it doesn't weaken the strength of your private key. Nobody else can see your private key. You don't need to disclose your private key to anyone to use it.
Personally, I'd like to see a password-key machine. Basically, a weak form of dual-key cryptography (at least as effective as a password) stored in a small doohickey. It has your private key. Rather than type in a password, you are given a set of characters that you need to encrypt with your doohickey. You type the characters into your doohickey, and indicate which private key you want to use. (since it's private, you really only need one)
You enter in the passphrase for your private key. You enter the response back into your website, whatever.
Weaknesses? Not many.
1) You can lose your doohickey. At which point you need to get another one, regenerate a private key, and hand out new public keys to everybody. But even with the doohickey, $RandomBadGuy can't do much without the passphrase. Which is not a "password" in the usual sense because it's only stored there, in the doohickey and cannot be seen by anybody else.
2) You can use your doohickey thru the phone. Your son-in-law is checking your bank balance for you, and you want him to - this time. He sees the challenge, and tells it to you. You enter challenge into doohickey, give him the response, and he types it in. That gives him nothing more than a login that time, because next time, the challenge will be different, and without doohickey, he can't do anything more.
3) Nobody else sees your private key. It's yours. It's private. Websites and such will have your public key, but it won't help them any since they don't have the private key that matches.
Doohickey doesn't have to be much - it could easily fit into a cell phone. Processing a small, 32-bit key isn't difficult, and the challenges don't have to be very long to well exceed the security of your average password. (EG: Wife's middle name, the street you were born on, etc)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
And who's to stop them from calling after hours and pretending to be you?
Perhaps the fact the call center would be closed after hours?