'123456' password exposed chats for 64M McDonald's job applicants

The second was an insecure direct object reference, where the lead_id querystring parameter can be changed on an API call to retrieve another applicant's data.

hardwaresofton6• 1 year ago

A third problem that senior engineers might recognize: using numeric IDs on an outward facing object. UUIDs would have made this impossible as well

bsuvc2• 1 year ago

Not impossible, just more difficult to guess.

"Security through obscurity" isn't really good enough.

lelandbatey• 1 year ago

Using numeric IDs on an outward facing object is, for the most part, totally fine. It's a serious tradeoff to ditch the nice properties of numerical IDs and the legibility they provide in order to cargo-cult a "we must reveal nothing" approach, as you would here via UUID. It also misses the point of the actual security lesson: no matter the identifier, you need to be applying access controls to your data. Even if your UUIDs were generated via 100% airtight cryptographically random sources, you have to, y'know, communicate with them. That means you'll probably leak them, expose them, or other folks will collect them (often incidentally via things like system logs). If all it takes to gain access to a thing is knowing the identifier of that thing, you've blown it in a huge way. Don't stress about the theoretical benefits of something like an opaque identifier and then completely neglect the necessary real world access control.

Can you tell I've been scarred by discussing designs with folks who focus on the "visible" problems without thinking about the fundamental question of "is this secure"?

jszymborski2• 1 year ago

Ok, this is probably a stupid, very bad, no good idea considering I've not heard of people doing this, but can't you retain many of the benefits of numerical IDs but also the secrecy of UUIDs by using an HMAC ?

With HMAC, you can still ask for some sequential IDs

SipHash128(0, KEY) = k_0

SipHash128(1, KEY) = k_1

You get the same number of bits as a UUID.

You can't, however, sort by IDs to get their insertion sequence, however. For that you'd need something like symmetric encryption but this is already a bad idea, no reason to make it worse.

Natsu2• 1 year ago

123456 was both the username & password, they were hit by CWE-1392 because someone failed to change the default credentials.

thaumasiotes2• 1 year ago

The writeup never claimed that 123456:123456 were default credentials?

thaumasiotes2• 1 year ago

It sounds like there were two separate problems:
The first was that 123456 was the credentials for the admin panel.

No. 123456 was the credentials for the test setup, which contained nothing. But you could use the IDOR to access data from the test setup.

If 123456 had been the credentials to the admin panel, there would have been no point in exploiting an IDOR - as an admin, you can just look at whatever you want.

micw• 1 year ago

Wait, 64 million applicants, not applications? That's like 20% of the US population!

Volundr• 1 year ago

Maybe it includes applications outside the US?

bigfatkitten• 1 year ago

They use this site for hiring globally. The number of privacy regulators they will have to notify and deal with is going to make this messy.

mousethatroared• 1 year ago

Others have said it's for the global site, but would 64 million really be that off for the US?

I just looked it up 13 of the 40k francises are in the US. Assuming linearity, thats about 21 million US applicants since they started keeping centralized, digital records.

20% of Americans younger than 40 is not a bad guess.

crazygringo• 1 year ago

Which is 1,615 applicants per US franchise.

Seems totally reasonable to me.

2 shifts of 12 employees is 24 employees per day. Assume they all work there for 6 months on average, then if the system's been up for 10 years, that's 480 employees per franchise over a decade. Which means for every employee they hired, 2 were either rejected or chose not to work there.

Working at McD's is something a lot of people do for a few months when they're young.

AbstractH24• 1 year ago

Also is the unit identifier for a human an email? Then one living being might be seen twice or more

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

No its 64 million chatbot interactions that instantiated it at all

Its not as deep as the guesses

gnabgib• 1 year ago

Discussion (125 points, 2 days ago, 69 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513940

pyman• 1 year ago

Please stop giving OpenAI ideas on where to find and download more data!

$ Downloading 64M transcripts...

ajsnigrutin2• 1 year ago

It's funny how mcdonalds did everything in their power to make it almost impossible to run their mcdonalds app on a rooted phone, but their backend infrastructure is beyond broken (security wise)

hippich• 1 year ago

Btw, I wondered why they flight root on the phone at all?

ajsnigrutin2• 1 year ago

I have no idea... maybe they store their "coupons" locally and are afraid you'll clone them? Don't know, I eat there twice a year and it's not worth it :)

suhide in magisk makes my banking app work, but not mcdonalds :)

le-mark• 1 year ago

My theory is they store payment information on the mobile app. The app connects to the store wifi automatically, even when going through the drive thru. And processes the payment then. I theorized it so they don’t store credit card info on their servers, simplifying their PCI audits. Presumably they think all that is better than preventing the app from running on rooted phones.

ceejayoz3• 1 year ago

The McDonalds consumer-facing app is quite possibly the worst app from a major company I've ever encountered. It's shockingly bad.

parpfish2• 1 year ago

The UI is atrocious.

I do computers for a living and can barely navigate and figure out what’s going on.

rahimnathwani2• 1 year ago

It can be confusing for new or infrequent users.

I use it once a week and I don't find it annoying at all, except for the bug where it will let you complete an order for an airport McDonald's, and then soon after automatically cancel the order.

whatsupdog• 1 year ago

Why does one even need an app for a fast food restaurant?

acuozzo• 1 year ago

1. You can exchange privacy for 20% off.

2. Many franchises have a crummy PA system, so you can avoid this if you plan on using the drive-through.

3. Customization. It's very tedious for all involved to repeatedly request "no cheese", "no ice", "extra sauce", etc. for a very large (e.g., $100+) order.

brikym• 1 year ago

I don't eat that junk but my understanding is McDonald's have segmented their customers into two groups:

1) People who just want to eat McDonald's now and don't care about apps. They will put up with the normal prices which are quite high now.

2) Cheapskate people who wouldn't go to McDonald's much due to the pricing, but can be enticed to go through deals in the app they are happy to jump through hoops to get.

Ekaros• 1 year ago

Not McDonalds. But it is nice to browse options, make order list with whatever special selections like no onions, and just pay on phone for whole thing. Often being able to make the order when you are on the way and then pick it up soon after arriving.

theturtle• 1 year ago

Wait, sixty-four MILLION people actually wanted to work there?

Are they counting everybody since 1954?

chungy• 1 year ago

It's the second largest fast food chain, behind Subway. It is everywhere and provides steady good work.

There should be no surprise here.

notepad0x90• 1 year ago

getting jobs is hard. majority us on this thread couldn't get a job at mcdonalds if we tried our best. and that's mostly because they think we'll quit after a few days/week. and there are harder to get jobs that pay even less! it's about supply/demand, not how desirable the job is.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513940

RandomBacon• 1 year ago

[dupe comment] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44537871

mediumsmart• 1 year ago

That’s the default pin for iPhones too.

ezekiel68• 1 year ago

This is what happens when "Minimum Viable Product" meets modern threat environments.

'Move fast and break things' indeed.

jofzar• 1 year ago

My favourite part form the original report was that paradox had no way to find their security team ( to contact) and their security page just had "We worry about security, so you don't have to."

https://web.archive.org/web/20250208000940/https://www.parad...

autobodie• 1 year ago

Your favorite part? Are you sick? I can't imagine having a "favorite part" of any of this.

nickthegreek• 1 year ago

it’s a common expression to point out unbelievable moments in a story.

rPlayer6554• 1 year ago

Chill out man, it’s a common ironic expression

vivzkestrel• 1 year ago

Stupid question, if we really tried brute forcing websites with less than 100k monthly traffic, how many such cases would be actually run into?

aaronmdjones• 1 year ago

There was also https://www.techspot.com/news/108619-mcdonalds.html

Moreover, when Carroll attempted to alert Paradox to the breach, he was unable to find a security disclosure contact. The company's security page mostly consists of a simple assurance that users shouldn't need to worry about security. Eventually, after the researchers emailed "random people," Paradox and McDonald's confirmed that they resolved the issue in early July.

Shouldn't need to worry indeed. McDonald's evidently doesn't either.

Can someone tell them to put "Set a password a five-year-old child can't guess" onto their deployment checklist?

'123456' password exposed chats for 64M McDonald's job applicants

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