By Dan Goodin in San Francisco for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Dov Tenenboim, 21, of the Sydney suburb of North Bondi, stood
accused of breaking into at least 90 different eBay seller accounts
last year, mostly by guessing passwords. Tenenboim frequently
figured out the credentials by matching usernames to passwords,
prosecutors said. Other times he hacked into email accounts.
Following a familiar route, Tenenboim targeted users with highly
favorable feedback ratings from their eBay peers. Posting under the
guise of a trusted user with an established account makes it easier
to dupe buyers.
After hacking the accounts, Tenenboim used them to advertise
non-existent iPods, according to the Sydney Morning
Herald. He also hacked into the Commonwealth Bank. He pleaded
guilty to two counts of making a false statement to obtain money,
two counts of obtaining money by deception and four counts of
committing an unauthorized computer function. Tenenboim faces a
maximum of 11 years in jail and fines of $9,900.
Account takeovers have been a persistent problem on eBay. Over
the past several weeks, we've observed hundreds of fraudulent
auctions being offered by users with unblemished records. Such
hijackings are on the rise, according to a small but vocal group of
eBay users, who also claim the breaches are the result of an
unpatched security hole in the company's defenses.
eBay strongly denies such a hole and says the takeovers are the
result of users having their log-in credentials snatched through
lax passwords and phishing attacks. Tenenboim's methods appear
consistent with such statements.
But eBay can't be let off the hook completely. The company
employs lax password requirements that, for instance, allow a user
ID of james34231 and a password of james34. (To be fair, Google
Mail allowed the same combination, though the site warned it was
only "fair.")
What's more, eBay, like the vast majority of online services,
has no mechanism in place to allow account holders to log in using
security keys that generate random numbers every minute or so. Such
devices would render most current password attack methods
ineffective.
eBay has said it is in the early stages of testing
such a system for its PayPal users, and a spokeswoman says the key
will also work on eBay.
© The Register
2007
