Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164422

by oldgregg • 18 years ago

80 78 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My friend noticed this: If you login to your tumblr account then manually go to /admin it takes you to the systemwide tumblr admin... wow.

aaroneous• 18 years ago

Whoa.

nandos3• 18 years ago

If that's true, the lead developer should be fired on the spot. They use that "good" old "security by obscurity". I thought this technique was dead long ago....

axod• 18 years ago

/admin is obscure? :/

utnick2• 18 years ago

a little harsh maybe....developers make mistakes...probably just forgot about it while trying to get the initial release out the door.... its not like tumblr is a bank or the DoD

nandos3• 18 years ago

ok, maybe :) But forgeting to secure your admin area deserves more than a simple warning. Can you imagine if the person that discovered the vulnerability decided to delete all the user accounts?

sanswork4• 18 years ago

Forgetting to secure the admin panel isn't a little mistake though and is easy enough to detect "Hey, I didn't have to log in to an admin account to use the admin panel thats weird".

Saying security is less important because it's not a bank doesn't make sense because it's issues like this that can cost a company it's existence.

swombat• 18 years ago

What if the lead developer is the CEO? What would you suggest then? Shut down the company?

Errare humanum est.

nandos3• 18 years ago

Yes, Errare human est. I guess natural selection will take care of companies like this. If the developer is the CEO, then the investors should be concerned.

wanorris• 18 years ago

I can believe they stuck their admin at /admin, but it's hard to believe they didn't create an admin bit as part of the users table and check it to access /admin. That takes about 2 minutes if you do it when you create the system.

Oh well, everyone overlooks something that seems obvious to someone else, I guess.

pius11• 18 years ago

Elevation of privilege FTL.

dangoldin2• 18 years ago

Probably better to let Tumblr know first, then us.

Edit: just confirmed that it works.

Basically let's you search users by id or email then give you ability to change their email/reset password.

dcurtis2• 18 years ago

For the curious, it looks like this:

Admin dashboard: http://img.skitch.com/20080415-ef6k9c8hpbasi9g137j6u4iqrs.jp...

Clicking "password": http://img.skitch.com/20080415-day5r87i8tbt9iaqrtf73tpnnd.jp...

Clicking "email": http://img.skitch.com/20080415-bg12j2y7wxmeqn44pmctcs69e3.jp...

And clicking "edit" tumblog: http://img.skitch.com/20080415-cg7iwrmc7gu2a58qkmcnfre6ka.jp...

Don't worry, I didn't do anything!

mixmax2• 18 years ago

I just shot them a mail to let them know.

Ironically they don't obey one of the primary rules of usability for websites: have a link to contact info on the front page.

akkartik• 18 years ago

I've complained about it before. Not only is it not on the front page, for a long time it just did not exist.

pius11• 18 years ago

Interestingly, I've looked at your comment about 10 times and just now noticed that you transposed the 'm' and 'b' in Tumblr. :)

dangoldin2• 18 years ago

Whoops. Well they've done studies to show common typos don't affect the meaning too much. I've updated it though -

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." - http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

rlm• 18 years ago

Screenshot or it didn't happen ;-)

pius11• 18 years ago

That is absolutely unbelievable.

sanswork4• 18 years ago

Did you or your friend happen to report this to them before posting it here?

oldgregg2• 18 years ago

yeah he said he told them. I would have more sympathy if it was an obscure hole, but something this big is just disrespectful to their users.

pius11• 18 years ago

This is a pretty critical exploit . . . you'd think they'd take the app down or at least change the admin URL while this is resolved. I shouldn't at this moment still be able to reset an arbitrary user's password by going to that URL.

sanswork4• 18 years ago

Cool just making sure because it is still up and you would assume something like this would be taken down immediately.

snorkel• 18 years ago

Disrespectful to their users? Tumblr is free. I don't think they owe their users absolute iron clad security.

deathbyzen• 18 years ago

I actually don't know what Tumblr is. Is it a twitter clone or something?

pius11• 18 years ago

They were the first popular tumbleblogging platform. It's a really good service, this incident notwithstanding.

The perverse irony of all of this is that the incident reminded me that I've got a Tumblr account. Before today, I hadn't logged in for over a year!

cameras• 18 years ago

it works. i just told them too.

dcurtis2• 18 years ago

Don't you think it's a tad unreasonable-- almost stupid-- to post something like this here? At the very least, it's immoral.

You can essentially take control of Tumblr.

sohail2• 18 years ago

What the hell is Tumblr? And what happened to vowels?

jraines• 18 years ago

Tumblr is an awesome blogging platform that's dead simple and has some Twitteresque social features (ie following) built in.

Also has a great bookmarklet and a neat api.

tbourdon2• 18 years ago

And a non-existant QA department apparently?

mixmax2• 18 years ago

You must be new here.

pius11• 18 years ago

It'll be interesting to see how this news spreads through the Twitterverse. Break the popcorn out: http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php?s=tumblr&u=

klisiu• 18 years ago

Holy crap! That's true..

lowfat• 18 years ago

I didn't know what Tumbler is and I created an account just to confirm the hack (the security hole is still there). But this got me thinking about another post at HN on how to market your site - I guess a blatant (fake?) security hole is one way to do it.

danielha• 18 years ago

Uh yeah. You must be part of the same marketing team that advises car manufacturers to stage huge vehicle safety recalls. That'll really get the customers knocking.

Tumblr has a great but small team, just like most of us on this site. As someone who makes mistakes, I offer them empathy and sympathy.

volida• 18 years ago

people would notice only if the site is already known or else nobody would care, but it would probably hurt the site than do good

ChrisRicca• 18 years ago

I can't believe, >30 min out, that this is still open

fourlittlebees• 18 years ago

Still works. Still up. Still the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

gobbin• 18 years ago

They turned it off at 4:07 eastern

agentbleu4• 18 years ago

I'm very disappointed in you all, I'm sure we could have had a lot of fun in the mean time...

WillJohnston• 18 years ago

And it's fixed

jiparker• 18 years ago

They shut it down now...

pius11• 18 years ago

[4:09 pm] Problem fixed. Response time: 43 minutes.

pb30• 18 years ago

You may want to change your passwords and your mobile email address. Both were accessible.

pius11• 18 years ago

Is that true that the passwords were revealed? All I saw was a reset link that I didn't click on.

danohuiginn• 18 years ago

hang on, they're storing passwords in the clear? really?

andr• 18 years ago

Lesson: Man your support email 24/7.

Oh, by the way, if you can't code, have somebody look at your code.

Edyedyedy• 18 years ago

Not anymore people. Nothing to see here, hole is fixed

rob• 18 years ago

Did someone at least remove Jakob Lodwick's blog while the exploit was open?

agentbleu4• 18 years ago

lol

henning2• 18 years ago

Chalk one up for PHP!

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

More like a bad and/or careless programmer...

henning2• 18 years ago

More like platforms that pride themselves on always leaving security entirely up to the programmer...

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

Tumblr posted a notice. 27 accounts were accessed, 1 was modified (guess who... Julia Allison)

http://blog.davidville.com/2008/04/15/security-notice/

freax• 18 years ago

The MIT computer lab used to forgo passwords. If you wanted to dick with the system you could, so it removed the thrill of "breaking in". You could mess with other people's accounts but they could mess with yours, too. Kind of like how everyone in Texas carries guns starting in kindergarten and so everyone is really polite.

I think it's a great lesson so I think I'll make my startup's vital information globally accessible (admin functions, source code, even my billing info for the ISP) and trust to my fellow human beings' goodwill.

I love you guys!!

jeroen• 18 years ago

This should not have been posted before it was fixed. We all make mistakes, even stupid ones, and I'm sure none of us would like this happening to them. A bit of professional courtesy would have been in order.

pmorici• 18 years ago

does anyone else find it ironic that in apologizing for their SNAFU they list the full name of the one person effected most by the incident?

"We’d also like to make a special apology to Julia Allison, whose account was temporarily affected by our mistake."

khangtoh• 18 years ago

"Earlier this afternoon, during alterations to our administrator code, "

The thought of them just doing live deploy freaks me out.. not the best practice.. ever.. ever .. for a major site like theirs

ralph• 18 years ago

The posts on this thread show how news.yc has gone down the tubes.

Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

Related Stories