Re: Clear text password vulnerability

[Kevin Conaway <kevin.conaway () gmail com>]

Harshil,

This is not a vulnerabilty in the webmail service, but rather a side
effect of the HTTP protocol.  Everything is sent in cleartext.

Most webmail services (gmail, yahoo) have the option to conduct your
session in HTTPS, eliminating this concern.

Kevin


On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 09:16:42 -0600, Harshil Parikh
<harshil1110 () gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   I've been using a web based mail service for sometime. Yesterday I
> was trying to figure out how the packet exchange occurs between the
> client and the server by sniffing it. I wanted to know the forking off
> to different servers for authentication purposes. However, I noticed
> that the client side would send the password in clear text along with
> the username. It uses a POST method for this. I think this is a big
> vulnerability in the mail service. I wanted your opinion if I should
> term this as a vulnerability or not and whether there is an exploit
> for this or not. Also one of my friend adviced me to try and charge
> money for figuring out this vulnerability. Should I go ahead with
> contacting the sys admin for that ? also is there an
> exploit that i can point out to the admin that can be used against them...
> As far as i know..this clear text pwd can be exploited only for the =
> users in same LAN. Is there any thing else that I can point out to the admin
>
> Thanks,
> Harshil Parikh