AT&T Routing Error Reveals Security Flaw

[Gawain 0]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100116/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_facebook_at_t_glitch

Anyone have this happen to them? On their Blackberry, WinMo phone, or Nokia? Good grief AT&T!

Quote

After typing Facebook.com into her Nokia smart phone, she was taken into the site without being asked for her user name or password. She was in an account that didn't look like hers. She had fewer friend requests than she remembered. Then she found a picture of the page's owner.

"He's white — I'm not," she said with a laugh.

Sawyer logged off and asked her sister, Mari, 31, her partner in a dessert catering company, and their mother, Fran, 57, to see whether they had the same problem on their phones.

Mari landed inside another woman's page.

Fran's phone — which had never been used to access Facebook before — took her inside yet another stranger's page, one belonging to a young woman from Indiana. They sent an e-mail to one of their own accounts to prove it.

They were dumbfounded.

"I thought it was the phone — `Maybe this phone is just weird and does magical, horrible things and I have to get rid of it,'" said Candace Sawyer.

The women, who live together in East Point, Ga., outside Atlanta, had recently upgraded to the same model of phone and all used the same carrier, AT&T.

Sawyer contacted The Associated Press after reporting the problem to Facebook and AT&T.

The problem wasn't in the phones. It was a flaw in the infrastructure connecting the phones to the Internet.

That illuminates a grave problem.

Doesn't appear widespread, but dang!!

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[justinb138 0]

Hasn't happened with any of my stuff.

Only security flaw I've seen lately is on CT's state tax website. You'd think the people that designed that would have at least read MS's recommendations on IIS security, but it would appear not.