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Hackers: BitDefender site exposes private data (yet again)

Second time in seven days

Updated Romanian hackers have discovered a security flaw in the website of anti-virus provider BitDefender. They said it was the second time in a week the company has inadvertently exposed a database that is supposed to remain private.

According to an item posted to HackersBlog, BitDefender's main website can be tricked into disclosing database contents by embedding commands into the BitDefender.com URL.

"This parameter gives access to the DB," a hacker by the name of Unu reported. "I will not publish too much now as I am waiting for the problem to be solved."

Unu went on to say he had reported the vulnerability to the site's webmaster but had received no reply. "Therefore, knowing they read our articles, I will let them know here that they have a vulnerable parameter," he wrote.

A BitDefender spokesman confirmed the site had an unchecked parameter that was fixed on Saturday. But he denied the flaw exposed any private information or resulted in an SQL injection.

Last week, HackersBlog reported a separate vulnerability in BitDefender.pt, the authorized seller of BitDefender software for Portuguese-speaking customers. It had the potential to expose names and email addresses of people who used the site. The company has yet to say whether any such information was accessed. The company only made matters worse when it released a statement distancing itself from the breach.

"This was an unfortunate event and while we sympathize with the sites that were affected, BitDefender was not one of those sites," the statement read. "None of the sites hacked are owned or operated by BitDefender."

BitDefender could learn a thing or two from competitor Kaspersky Lab. After an American support site was found to have exposed customer data for 11 days, the company hired an outside auditor to conduct a forensic analysis. He determined that while the information was accessible, hackers never actually succeeded in stealing the data.

Last week, F-Secure, another anti-virus provider, was also found to have SQL injection vulnerabilities on its website. The company said the only data exposed by the bug was publicly available information shown on its statistics page. ®

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