6 Million Virgin Mobile Users Vulnerable To Brute-Force Attacks

An anonymous reader writes "'If you are one of the six million Virgin subscribers, you are at the whim of anyone who doesn't like you.' The Hacker News describes how the username and password system used by Virgin Mobile to let users access their account information is inherently weak and open to abuse." Computerworld also describes the problem: essentially, hard-coded, brute-force guessable passwords, coupled with an inadequate mechanism for reacting to failed attempts to log on.

Comments

Re:Doesn't surprise me.

[lattyware]

The way passwords are handled in general is appalling - a major supermarket here in the UK emails you your password in plaintext if you say you forgot it. The fact they have it in plaintext is disgusting.