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Security hole found in Click TV Web site

Passwords, email addresses -- the lot

A security hole in Click TV's Web site will allow access to individuals' email addresses and passwords through a simple routine which a five year old could crack. We will not reveal here how the system works but have independently verified that it is possible to obtain email addresses and passwords using a simple sequence of commands that take only a minute or so. The information was supplied by a reader who says that TV Data is one of the largest television listings firms in the US, used by many third party newspapers and magazines. The reader said: "Now, I realize that there is little appeal in harvesting accounts from a television listings site (of all things). Unless, of course, sucking user name + password + e-mail address combinations out of their boxes by the thousands would appeal to certain individuals." He said the hole first appeared four-five months ago, after a redesign of the site. He added: "The problem with this hole is that a simple script could be written, allowing thousands of user name + password + e-mail address combinations to be sucked up; a true gold mine for spammers, and a potential security risk for users. "After all, many folks foolishly use the same password for everything in the world they need one for. If "Jane Doe" used "okeeffee" as his dial-up ISP account password, a "hacker" would need only find one of Fallsearth.com's dial-in numbers for instant internet access. But I'm sure this is wildly obvious." After experimenting for several minutes, we were able to reproduce our reader's experiences. If someone from Click TV cares to email us over the weekend, we will point to the hole and demonstrate how it works so the company can fix it. A statement on Click TV's site says: "Logins and cookies are used to identify return users and maintain preferences and settings such as your channel lineup. TVData does use general demographic information such as ZIP code, age and gender for the purpose of defining our overall clickTV user profile to advertisers." ®

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