Facebook Fixes Bug That Allowed Users To Set Other Users' Passwords

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has paid $15,000 (€13,600) to an independent security researcher who discovered a simple way of resetting passwords for other people's Facebook accounts, setting a new passphrase and effectively taking over profiles.

The problem was in the fact that Facebook also runs a Beta platform on beta.facebook.com. This platform's "reset password" feature did not include brute-force protection and allowed anyone to guess the six-digit verification code sent to someone's phone when resetting the password. This issue also raises another question: How many unsafe features are on Facebook's beta platform that have not been patched simultaneously with the main platform?

Comments

Re:questions abound

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is not about customer service. It's not Mickey Ds.

FB is largely a platform for people, namely Americans, to bolster their ego without doing any real work. You just post some tit pictures and let the "likes" roll in, and if puffs your ego up. FB is one of the worst things to ever happen to the American psyche. Everyone thinks they are a bad ass with talent, whereas reality is closer to "whiny bitch that no one cares about"

only $15k?

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking cheapskates.

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wtf is with capcha treating me like a nigerian prince trying to send webmail? captcha: zmnjwfm

Problem is password reset itself

[WaffleMonster]

Schemes for resetting passwords fundamentally lower the security of the system and almost always rely on insecure transports (Email and SMS).

At the very least users should be given the option of not allowing any password reset or recovery features to be used in conjunction with their account.

Rather than conceding to inevitability of forgotten passwords I would rather see sites warn users ahead of time what the consequences are including suggestion to write it down and store it in a safe place.

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