It’s not been a great week for cell carriers. EE was hit with two
security bugs and T-Mobile admitted a data breach. Now, Sprint is the
latest phone giant to admit a security lapse, TechCrunch has learned.
Using two sets of weak, easy-to-guess usernames and passwords, a
security researcher accessed an internal Sprint staff portal. Because
the portal’s log-in page didn’t use two-factor authentication, the
researcher — who did not want to be named — navigated to pages that
could have allowed access customer account data.
Sprint is the fourth largest US cell network with 55 million customers.
TechCrunch passed on details and screenshots of the issue to Sprint, which confirmed the findings in an email.
“After looking into this, we do not believe customer information can be
obtained without successful authentication to the site,” said a Sprint
spokesperson.
“Based on the information and screenshots provided, legitimate
credentials were utilized to access the site. Regardless, the security
of our customers is a top priority, and our team is working diligently
to research this issue and immediately changed the passwords associated
with these accounts,” the spokesperson said.
We’re not disclosing the passwords, but suffice to say they were not difficult to guess.
The first set of credentials let the researcher into a prepaid Sprint
employee portal that gave staff access to Sprint customer data — as well
as Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, which are Sprint subsidiaries. The
researcher used another set of credentials to gain access to a part of
the website, which he said gave him access to a portal for customer
account data.
A screenshot shared with TechCrunch showed that anyone with access to
this portal allowed the user to conduct a device swap, change plans and
add-ons, replenish a customer’s account, check activation status and
view customer account information.
A screenshot showing an internal customer portal.
All a user would need is a customer’s mobile phone number and a
four-digit PIN number, which could be bypassed by cycling through every
possible combination.
The researcher said there were no limits on the number of PIN attempts.
Account PIN numbers are highly sensitive as they can be used to transfer
ownership from one person to another. That gives hackers an easier
route to carry out a “SIM swapping” attack, which target and hijack cell
phone numbers. Hackers use a mix of techniques — such as calling up
customer service and impersonating a customer, all the way to recruiting
telecom employees to hijack SIM cards from the inside. In hijacking
phone numbers, hackers can break into online accounts to steal vanity
Instagram usernames, and intercept codes for two-factor authentication
to steal the contents of cryptocurrency wallets.
SIM swapping is becoming a big, albeit illegal business. An
investigation by Motherboard revealed that hundreds of people across the
US have had their cellphone number stolen over the past few years.
TechCrunch’s John Biggs was one such victim.
But the authorities are catching up to the growing threat of SIM
swapping. Three SIM swappers have been arrested in the past few weeks
alone.
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