Information Security News: Excite in web mail hijack drama

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1130317

By James Middleton [21-03-2002]

Security watchers have identified a vulnerability in the web mail
service of internet portal Excite that allows for the hijacking of a
user's account.

According to the experts, when a user logs in to their account through
Excite's web interface, the session is authenticated by a unique URL.

By sending an HTML email which includes an image based on another
server to the victim, an attacker can easily get the unique URL from
the referrer field in the HTTP header.

Simply pasting this into a web browser would drop the attacker
straight into the victim's mailbox with complete control of the
account.

The exploit has been discussed to some degree on security mailing list
Bugtraq, and Eyeonsecurity.net has even published a demonstration of
the attack. Excite has been notified but has not yet responded.

By way of combating the threat, Eyeonsecurity recommends using secure
mode in the browser (HTTPS) to access Excite web mail. This prevents
the referrer URL from being sent out.



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