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.
Because it wasn't 1,000 words long.
The irony of Bennett complaining about spamming is not lost on me.
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.."
We cannot filter him like we can with editors. Please stop making Slashdot this boring man's blog.
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.
The images loading at the bottom of the email attempted to change profile data, join the CS queer group, and remove the profile.
I hear airbnb is good.
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While Slashdot may continue to operate from its old .org URL, no one regularly refers to it as "Slashdot.org" with the aim of suggesting community governance, which is still done by some disingenous advocates for Couchsurfing. And luckily with the Dice acquisition and beta debacle, and the rise of SoylentNews, most people are aware of Slashdot's circling the drain and the rise of a community-run alternative.
Couchsurfing (with a modicum of due caution) isn't staying with or hosting "complete strangers". You can check previous references left by other guests/hosts that the person has had. Plus, well-functioning hospitality exchange platforms tend to have an active userbase small enough that everyone kind of knows each other. I've hosted a number of people with whom I've turned out to have mutual friends.
People have been "robbed and hurt" on Couchsurfing, but beyond the rare petty theft that could even happen when hosting friends (yes, people's friends can steal too) or relatives (many people have a klepto in the family), violent incidents are rare and the cases I am aware of were single females unwisely hosting single males. I am unaware of anyone ever being killed. Maybe you would like to back up your assertion somehow?
Couchsurfing is nothing new. It superseded its website forebear Hospitality Club, which in turn inherited, among other things, mailing lists for hospitality exchange among hitchhikers and nomadic travellers. There's also WarmShowers, a community for cycle tourists, that has been around for years now and goes back to a pre-internet paper directory. With years of experience and millions of host-guest interactions, you cannot reasonably claim that hospitality exchange is more dangerous than, say, driving one's car on a daily basis.
Fearmongering about risks that are statistically insignificant should be waved away. Otherwise one would hardly ever leave their own homes (or even move about in those homes).
Noting that the well-known cases of violence within Couchsurfing.com related to single females hosting single males is in no way blaming them. Rather, the point is that since the GP is presumably male and writing for a predominantly male audience (these being the sad demographics of Slashdot), his exortation to fear such violence is groundless.
There has been no such transition overall in internet hospex from trustworthy closed communities to "random people, complete strangers" as you depict. Couchsurfing.com specifically has grown too large to have that feeling of being a closed community of like-minded people, though the result of this is vastly more likely to be simply meeting a person whose company one doesn't enjoy with than experiencing crime. However, internet hospex in general remains a series of overlapping circles of friends, which one can plainly see from Couchsurfing's two community-run alternatives.