Groupon leaks entire Indian user database

by Garbage • 15 years ago

209 90 15 years ago

We have begun notifying our subscribers and advising them to change their Sosasta passwords as soon as possible. We will keep our Indian subscribers fully informed as we learn more.

This is a lie. Neither I nor my brother have heard from them. Keep in mind that this happened on Friday and it's already Tuesday here. In the meantime, I have been spammed about deals that I don't care about through e-mail and text messages four times.

nodata2• 15 years ago

How is that spam? You opted-in to receive the e-mails.

sunchild3• 15 years ago

Not if those emails are from spammers harvesting the Groupon DB that is now available on Google.

cbr• 15 years ago

He's counting deals he doesn't care about as spam.

Garbage• 15 years ago

Though I am not a subscriber, I have received information from some of my friends that they are getting these warning emails.

rkalla• 15 years ago

I suppose we also have no verification that the passwords are no longer stored in plain text either, so changing it seems to be postponing the inevitable -- it is now a target for getting hacked again, with a delicious plain text payload as the reward for anyone doing it.

If my doctor was leaking my medical records left and right to advertisers around town, I would sue him... at some point leaking my online identity has to have some sort of repercussions behind it besides me getting online and being openly angry on the internet.

Yep, that'll do it ;)

ADDENDUM. Speak of the devil (another HN story): http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/06/cloud-site-dro...

nickolai• 15 years ago

> If my doctor was leaking my medical records left and right to advertisers around town, I would sue him... at some point leaking my online identity has to have some sort of repercussions behind it besides me getting online and being openly angry on the internet.

What would you do ? sue them? The EULA you have accepted usually forbids it, or limits the amount of damages you can claim to a few bucks. I am not a lawyer, but i doubt such an EULA would be declared void in court.

woodall• 15 years ago

Wrote a quick command line Gmail password changer for this type of thing; if I see my username I can go ahead and start changing passwords. Hopefully I'll pound more out this weekend. http://christopherwoodall.com/gmail.py

benswieskowski• 15 years ago

Groupon takes security and privacy very seriously.

Just not seriously enough to encrypt passwords.

jtchang• 15 years ago

In clear text? Really? How is this even allowed anymore?

sunchild3• 15 years ago

And indexed by Google. That is terrible.

jc1233• 15 years ago

It might have been good that it was indexed by Google so that the problem was found quicker. Completely agree about how can cleartext be allowed. Harder to regulate overseas, but would it be possible to have an actual law in the USA against storing passwords and other confidential in cleartext? There are various consumer protections such as food, cars, toys, and could similar things be legislated for data?

mbrzuzy• 15 years ago

I didn't even laugh, I just facepalmed.

anonymous2463• 15 years ago

Obligatory post I make on these stories: Use PwdHash for Firefox and Chrome. It's very low overhead and provides and extra layer of protection from lazy programmers.

Joakal4• 15 years ago

That only tackles the master password for every site issue. It does not solve the password being plaintext.

For example, Facebook has a central ID and if they don't protect the password that gets exposed, someone could use the password to withdraw money from another section of the website.

jc1233• 15 years ago

PwdHash looks great and it would be nicer if it was implemented by all browsers. To take the idea further, what if the HTML5 standard for input type=password automatically did the hashing before forms are submitted? On any form submission, browsers would hash like PwdHash by using the current domain. There would also be no need to use a prefix like PwdHash. Those are some quick thoughts and I think there's better ideas that can be implemented, that don't require work for consumers. Won't protect against things like weak passwords, but even a little contributes to security.

skbohra1232• 15 years ago

Incidents like this make me think that if success is anything to do with talent? Even a mediocre developer wouldn't do such mistake and these people are acquired by Groupon. Then, I think, it's all about who you know ?

pagekalisedown• 15 years ago

As you get older, you realize the world isn't a meritocracy. Only the young, poor, and/or foolish will believe that.

Deestan• 15 years ago

If you're lucky, you might also realize that being condescending is alienating and a bad way to get your point across.

maverhick• 15 years ago

and they were ex-googlers by the way.

vladd• 15 years ago

It appears you're putting the equal sign between developer ability and business success. Being a great developer lands you a good job with a 6-figure yearly salary. Being successful in business requires a different sort of talent.

Business "talent" is primarily about knowing what matters. There are lots of Groupon clones or other startups where founders can't do basic arithmetic on user acquisition costs or lifetime customer value, or they choose to work on scaling the backend prematurely or on solving things that will not matter unless they achieve product/market fit and scale. Recognizing priorities and working on what matters is also talent, or more precisely, a lot of hard work.

Once you have product/market fit, doing risk management is a must and nowadays it seems to be a lacking skill (look at this incident or the Dropbox story from a couple of days ago). But doing risk management is like translating your business in French: if you're big it pays off to do it but otherwise you should be more worried about not dying.

Therefore I'm not surprised when I see that people who are focused on not dying more than risk management have been more successful in reaching... "success" (managing it once you've got it is another business)

skbohra1232• 15 years ago

I am a young 20 something, right out of college, first time startup founder, developer and with almost zero business knowledge guy. It's hard to accept the truth you are saying, but I am learning.

TheOnly922• 15 years ago

Maybe Google should start working with security firm so that once their bots crawled on a leaked database they will notify the website owner immediately.

Zakuzaa2• 15 years ago

I think Google would rather just not index such data.

random42• 15 years ago

Yes, do not index AND possibly inform the website.

mike-cardwell• 15 years ago

I can't think of a reason why Google would care... I certainly can't think of a reason why Google would care enough to spend money on staff/research in order to get that type of content out of the index.

If you don't want something indexed, don't put it on the web. And sure as hell don't link to it.

Joakal4• 15 years ago

How would Google do it with an algorithm to tell whether a database is leaked or not? Get emails from the firm to assess it? Maybe a honeypot email?

In that case, it seems far more easier for developers to put in honeypot emails in the databases and constantly query search engines hourly when those become available.

That is assuming database gets released, let along exposed for indexing.

TheOnly922• 15 years ago

Well, you know. A .sql file containing username, password, email is a very high possibility that it's a leaked database.

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

I am not normally in favor of legislation, but I'd be okay with a fine for US-based companies that leak and expose this kind of data. Specifically a harsher fine for cleartext or anything less than bcrypt.

sandGorgon• 15 years ago

nothing is gonna happen to Groupon (or the indian subsidiary). OTOH, Dropbox just got hit with a class action lawsuit.

pavel_lishin5• 15 years ago

How about something similar to HIPAA?

I worry, though, that it would end up making things more difficult for developers while not improving things for the end users - much like the European/Dutch cookie law.

g123g2• 15 years ago

Sosasta means "so cheap" in Hindi. Maybe they are too cheap to spend any effort on security of their users' data.

iqster• 15 years ago

Sasta means cheap ... the so is English ;)

subbu• 15 years ago

But the intended meaning is 'so cheap'.

adhipg• 15 years ago

Continuing on that line of thought - a simple search like 'filetype:sql phpmyadmin' also shows a lot of 'interesting' results.

india• 15 years ago

Did anyone manage to get a copy of the sql file? A password analysis of a largely Indian audience could be pretty interesting.

pavel_lishin5• 15 years ago

I'm mostly wondering if their usernames and passwords are strictly ascii, or if they're using another alphabet.

bdhe• 15 years ago

Most Indian computers I've seen are standard American or British layouts. India has a lot of English speakers [1] and most computer-savvy folk, especially the kind that use Groupon will definitely know enough English to use English usernames and passwords.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-sp...

evolution• 15 years ago

anybody got that sql?

dagrz• 15 years ago

All the data has been removed and only exists in sha1 hash form but you can see if you were affected at https://shouldichangemypassword.com/

franze2• 15 years ago

as we are currently groupon bashing, take a look at groupon.de (germany) http://www.groupon.de/deals/berlin

scroll down ... down ... down ... there it is (gray text on black background), the crappiest example of SEO i have seen in a long long time. keyword stuffing is so 2004.

"Berlin ist als Hauptstadt der Bundesrepublik bekannt für seine Sehenswürdigkeiten und das umfassende Angebot an Freizeit-Aktivitäten. ... ... Berlin Deal ... ... Rabatten ... ... Geld zu sparen... ... Gutschein ...bla ... ... Angebote des Berlin Deals ... ... Wellness-Angeboten ... ... Restaurantgutscheinen.... ... .Freizeiterlebnisse, Events und Dienstleistungen in Berlin ... ... Shopping und Online Shop. ... ... Berlin Gutscheine ... ... "

i would have guessed that a multi billion dollar company could at least hire a decent SEO guy.

eliben• 15 years ago

While arguably interesting, I don't see how this is related to the linked password leak

franze2• 15 years ago

yeah, i know, but shitty SEO is not worth a separate 'submit' - also the overall theme of this thread is 'just another poor business decision / f*ck up by groupon' and this seems to fit the bill

TruthElixirX2• 15 years ago

Maybe Russian search engines fall for keyword stuffing? I do not know what the primary search engine of Russia is.

pitdesi• 15 years ago

It's Yandex, but I don't see how that's relevant since this is a German site

51Cards• 15 years ago

Ok my mouth is literally a-gape at the number of database dumps indexed by Google. I guess I just never thought of searching for something so simple and now I'm floored at how often this seems to happen. How does anyone possibly allow a data dump to come anywhere near somewhere Google could index it?

oozcitak• 15 years ago

> How does anyone possibly allow a data dump to come anywhere near somewhere Google could index it?

Let me just put this sql dump in the web root for a couple hours to copy over to the test server.

bad_user• 15 years ago

Google also has to know that the file is there, before indexing it, either from a link available to Google, or from the website's sitemap, or by activating directory listing in Apache, or some other shit like that.

nestlequ1k• 15 years ago

Heads outta roll for this one. The dev, the supervisor, his supervisor. Probably all the way up to VP.

It's a stupid, boneheaded mistake, but one of those that could only be made in an environment where security is extremely lax. Easiest way to fix the environment here is to just fire everyone involved.

mqzaidi2• 15 years ago

Here's the communication they sent. This is totally a lie - my email was in the database, and they have been only saying an issue potentially affecting them -------

Hi SoSasta Subscriber,

Over this weekend, we've been alerted to a security issue potentially affecting subscribers of Sosasta. We wanted to let you know that the issue has been brought under control and your accounts are secure. However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your SoSasta password immediately, by visiting the SoSasta website (Sign-In using your existing password, then click on Profile followed by Change Password). If you use the same email/password combination at other websites, we recommend you change those passwords as soon as possible, too.

Please be aware that none of your financial information (Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking etc) has been compromised since this information is not stored on SoSasta, as per law.

If you have any concerns or find any unusual changes in your SoSasta account, please contact our Customer Support team as soon as possible at 1800 103 2111 between 9.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. IST, Monday to Saturday so that we can review your account.

You should know that we are working aggressively to prevent this from happening again. Sosasta takes security and privacy very seriously -- it's important to us to provide you with a safe shopping experience of the highest quality, and we will do everything possible to keep your trust. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience or concern we've caused.

Sincerely, SoSasta Customer Support

Zakuzaa2• 15 years ago

Was your password in plaintext? Just to confirm what others have been saying.

gary4gar• 15 years ago

I can guess, how this can happen.

--------------------- First,Take the db dump, for backups/setting up another server etc.

$ mysqldump -u <user> -p <password> <db name> > xyz.sql

Now, lets move db dump file to webroot, I hate SSH,FTP,RSYNC -- too complicated for me. I like clicking hyperlinks. KISS FTW!

I guess nobody will notice that file is present here. How can they know, I won't tell them!

$ mv xyz.sql public_html/uploaded/users

now, I can download it simply by going to

http://www.sosasta.com/uploaded/users/xyz.sql

See how easy this is, why complicate things unnecessarily.

---------------------

I guess the guy wouldn't have even imagined mighty google will index this & people from around will download the file, resulting in major security breach.

This is what you get when you act ignorant or plain lazy. poor guy...lol

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

> This is what you get when you act ignorant or plain lazy.

Or, in general case[1], when 'industry standard' tools are PITA to use. Simpler solutions are always preferred, for better or worse.

[1] I'm not defending here the person that caused the SoSasta breach.

EDIT: Formatting.

suking• 15 years ago

Your User Information - 100% Off!

PartyDawg• 15 years ago

Sue this irresponsible company into oblivion.

mukeshsinghr• 15 years ago

If Companies itself ready for compromising there email id and password then who can protect them. Hacker's just shown there mistakes done to the people. Otherwise a small child knows well how to hide his password from the other people.

Groupon leaks entire Indian user database

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