Slashdot Mirror
Couchsurfing Hacked, Sends Airbnb Prank Spam
I've been a volunteer host on Couchsurfing.org for 16 months. Despite the ongoing controversies surrounding the site's changes in recent years, I've always found it to be a great way to meet travelers with fascinating stories and to make new friends, not to mention a way to force a deadline upon yourself to clean up your house before the next guest arrives.
On August 15, I received an email sent from "Couchsurfing <noreply@couchsurfing.org>" with the subject "Site Improvements", which read:
Hi!
We have some exciting news. Find out more about the new CouchSurfing here.
The CouchSurfing team
but the hyperlink on the word "here" did nothing when I clicked on it. So I looked at the HTML source code of the message and saw that the source code of the link was: We have some exciting news. Find out more about the new CouchSu= rfing <a href=3D=E2=80=9Chttps://www.airbnb.com/signup_login=E2=80=9D> her= e </a>.
So... the email from Couchsurfing was promoting a link to their commercial arch-rival, Airbnb.
At that point I assume the message was spam that had been sent from some third-party server and simply forged a return address from couchsurfing.org, but the message headers clearly showed that the message really had been sent from Couchsurfing: Received: from messaging3.couchsurfing.com (messaging3.couchsurfing.com. [54.236.187.135]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id v7si15118226qay.99.2014.08.15.21.30.16 for <bennetthaselton@gmail.com>; The complete message headers and message source are here.
I sent a message to Couchsurfing tech support asking if they knew what had happened, and I started a thread on the Seattle Couchsurfing page, where several other users chimed in that they had received the same email. Couchsurfing support replied to me on August 18th:
Hello Bennett,
Thanks for your patience while we have been looking into this. As you saw yourself, some Couchsurfing members received an email in error on Friday night -- we apologize.
The part of Couchsurfing’s system that sends email to members was breached Friday night and an email was sent to approximately 1 million members. We take this very seriously, and we will continue to investigate and take all appropriate action until this situation is resolved.
There is no action you need to take to secure your account. Once we have further information, we will be sure to send out updates.
Warm Regards,
Then on August 19th, I received an email from Couchsurfing (presumably along with all or most other Couchsurfing users) with the subject "Incorrect email -- our apologies":
Dear Bennett Haselton:
We're writing because you may have received an odd email from Couchsurfing in the last few days titled "Site Improvements."
We apologize for any confusion this may have caused -- it should not have been sent.
-- The Couchsurfing Team
Want more details? Find them here
where the "here" link further explains: "The message was sent by an unauthorized user of our email system. No other systems were compromised, and we've addressed the circumstances that led to this unauthorized use."
So, kudos to Couchsurfing for at least alerting users that something had gone wrong. (Judging from the reactions in the thread that I started, most users who received the email simply deleted it without a second thought after seeing that the link didn't work, so Couchsurfing probably could have said nothing to their users at all, and gotten away with it. As of this writing, a Google News search for "couchsurfing hacked" turns up no other articles about the incident, so it's not as if there was a mob clamoring for answers that they had to respond to.)
On the other hand, I hope Couchsurfing is more forthcoming in the next few days about how much they know about what actually happened. When they say "We've addressed the circumstances that led to this unauthorized use," that probably means that they at least know whether the email was sent by (a) a disgruntled employee (or recently fired employee whose credentials still enabled them to access the server); or (b) someone who used an unpatched security hole to break in from the outside; or (c) something else. (I replied to the tech support ticket asking as much, but as of this writing I have not received a reply. I wasn't naive enough to think that they were probably going to tell me everything they knew, but it's one of those rituals that quasi-journalists engage in so that we can say "as of this writing I have not received a reply".)
Obviously I think it's unlikely that anyone at the real Airbnb would actually risk jail time by hacking Couchsurfing's servers to send out spam advertising the Airbnb website; it seems more like the actions of someone being snarky, possibly a former employee or an outsider with an axe to grind. Couchsurfing's apology email said "Once we have further information, we will be sure to send out updates." Hope so.
Ehhyeahh...hmm? What?
Because it wasn't 1,000 words long.
The irony of Bennett complaining about spamming is not lost on me.
...and that means that their petty squabbles don't really affect me very much.
It seems like most "new" things are just reimplementations of existing things. We haven't had something revolutionary on a software front in a long time.
I expect that most technological revolution will be hardware-based for the next while and software will follow as a necessity, not as the driving force. Computing devices become wearable and less obvious (no more hulking PCs, that sort of thing) and eventually maybe the software will give us nonvisual UI, as a necessary component of shrinking and ubiquitousness.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I can't even think of how scary it must be to wind up on Bennett's couch. I can imagine a naïve traveller opening Bennett's door, finding no one there and deciding to make themselves at home.. only to hear the door slam and lock behind them. That's Bennett preparing to move in for the kill - but he won't do it yet, oh no, that would be too soon. He'll lie in wait until the traveller is at their most vulnerable, just when they've turned the lights off to sleep, wondering where the host is.. and that's when he springs out with a satanic, blood-curdling cry of "Hey, want to hear my thoughts on cellphone tethering and data plans?"
The police will find the gibbering husk of what used to be a man huddled in a pile of trash in an alley a mile down the road, slowly rocking back and forth, chanting the same four words over and over: "He.. doesn't.. shut..up.."
There's more to come in the exciting adventures of Bennett Haselton!
Bennett has once again managed to inject constant, irrelevant references to himself into a story that has nothing to do with him.
"Wow, Bennett Haselton submitted a short and concise story concerning an actual event without inserting pages of inane rambling about something no one but him cares about", *clicks link to read comments*
Considering I don't know either it seems like both had a success with spamming Slashdot...
We cannot filter him like we can with editors. Please stop making Slashdot this boring man's blog.
If he had simply taken their client's emails he probably would have gotten a similar increase in business and no one would ever have been the wiser that he had hacked Couchsurfer.
Instead this idiot made a statement, may end up in jail, and almost certainly will have pissed off any ethical Couchsurfer.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Couchsurfing went from an ostensibly community-run (but really oligarchy-controlled) website to a private, Delware-registered and venture capitalist-funded corporation three years ago. To continue to call it Couchsurfing.org is disingenuous. And as for "volunteer", most of the volunteers with any integrity have long since stopped donating their time to Couchsurfing and instead are active on other, truly community-run hospitality exchange platforms.
But the counter argument is that he clicks on links sent to him via email prior to verifying their origin (who sent them) or destination (where do they link to).
Next episode - If only there was some way to inform people that they should not click on links in email. Even if they think they're from someone they know. How will the bitter rivalry between MySpace and Friendster play out?
Couchsurfing went from an ostensibly community-run (but really oligarchy-controlled) website to a private, Delware-registered and venture capitalist-funded corporation three years ago. To continue to call it Couchsurfing.org is disingenuous.
Yet you're posting this on Slashdot, which continues to operate from the .org TLD after having been sold to Andover, VA Linux, and Dice.
The images loading at the bottom of the email attempted to change profile data, join the CS queer group, and remove the profile.
You think that's bad? Try couch surfing at the geek compound circa 1999. Hope you like the smell of jaeger and astroglide.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
I hear airbnb is good.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
You win the thread.
Couch surfing at a stranger's home is like staying at a hostle or homeless shelter and is very risky to you and your belongings.
On the other side of that, letting a complete stranger into your home to sleep on your couch is also risky and could get you robbed, hurt, and/or killed.
They gave him one long ago, right here, on slashdot!
maybe they can celebrate a whole new section soon.
bennett.slashdot.org
it will be great. as beloved as idle.slashdot.org !!
The police kicked down the door, breaking the glass and maneuvering through the room with guns drawn. The living room was empty. They searched the kitchen. Nothing. One of them kicked in the bedroom door and swung his assault rifle in a wide angle as he crashed through.
Immediately he saw that the floor was covered with spam. A computer's hard drive had exploded under pressure and was oozing a liquid discharge of strange attachments and cryptic URLs across the desk and onto the floor. " Couchsurfing sucks... here's a better couch!" they yelled, one after another. Then the fumes struck him.
Overwhelmed, he stumbled backward, spraying vomit across the living room as he fell. He lay on the spammy floor unconscious, convulsing, muttering the same thing over and over. "Delete... delete... delete... delete..." The other officers quickly ran out of the front door, dragging him along by the legs as they struggled to cover their eyes which were lachrymating upon exposure to the spam. One of the units outside called for backup and unwound a yellow tape labeled "POLICE LINE - DO NOT EMAIL" around the residence. A forensics van pulled up, and several officers strapped rubber gloves onto their hands and Pentagon-surplus armored spam filters on their faces. They reentered the building, treading lightly, taking flash photographs, and laboriously stuffing individual spam emails into each of 10,000,000 Ziploc bags.
About twenty minutes later, Detective Protagoniste and the Commissioner arrived at the scene in their unmarked car.
"Well, what do you make of this mess, Detective?" asked the Commissioner, as they approached the building. Protagoniste picked up one of the bags, and held it up to the light, and replied, "Commissioner, as of now, the spam's been caught... but not the Spammer!"
stop posting spoilers without a warning
As a queer, I find that offensive.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.