I Accidentally Hacked A Business

Accidental Potato

Recently i was staying at a hotel whilst travelling. The TV in the room was connected through a box to a small PC in the room.

The PC was apparently for playing DVDs or CDs and also for accessing the internet.

I only had to minimise the web-page to get access to the desktop - once there, i had no restrictions - i could create a new account for myself, and give myself full admin rights, whatever i wanted.

Most worryingly though was that i could fairly easily access the company's shared folders, all the company folders - finance, stock-takes, employee files, even the employee Christmas party.

The machine was Win XP, service pack 1 with no anti-virus, so it looks as if it's been set up a while back and forgotten about.

To be honest, i had a root around to see what i could see, but didn't change anything.

As an IT professional i was pretty shocked to see such laxness

My question is how do i tell the company involved?
I'd be worried that if i used my real name, i could be in trouble, but if i used an obviously faked name, they might not take me seriously.

Any ideas?

hfallada

Why not report it to the Data commissioners? Therefore the company will actually have to resolve it rather than thanks will sort it out.

Dermot Illogical

Data protection is the way to go. Emphasise the fact that employee records are easily viewable to anyone who cares to look.

syklops

Security in hotels is always bad. If you visited any personal websites on that machine I would change your passwords immediately. A box as wide open as that is probably riddled with all kinds of malware.

RangeR

A few years ago, I came across an unsecure wifi access point in a well known bar/nightclub in Dublin city center. It's non security went so far as to be using the default admin password. I made the mistake and cared. Told the manager. He said "Thanks" and left it as is. Checked it a month later and it was still the same.

LKTechGuy

A lot of businesses leave their networks wide open, unaware of the dangers it creates. Sometimes when you inform them of vulnerabilities you get the "What were you doing in there" attitude.

syklops

RangeR wrote: »

A few years ago, I came across an unsecure wifi access point in a well known bar/nightclub in Dublin city center. It's non security went so far as to be using the default admin password. I made the mistake and cared. Told the manager. He said "Thanks" and left it as is. Checked it a month later and it was still the same.

I was in a bar recently and the cash register was on the same network as the public wireless. Not only that but the cash registers were running vnc servers, with no password, which means you could log into the server and change your own bill. I brought this to the attention of the manageress and she started defending the system saying, "you probably cant do very much". Well I could order numerous triple whiskies, wait for shift change and delete all but one, for a start.

knotknowbody

syklops wrote: »

I was in a bar recently and the cash register was on the same network as the public wireless. Not only that but the cash registers were running vnc servers, with no password, which means you could log into the server and change your own bill. I brought this to the attention of the manageress and she started defending the system saying, "you probably cant do very much". Well I could order numerous triple whiskies, wait for shift change and delete all but one, for a start.

There is loads of places like that, there are also some places running logmein with very silly passwords, my local place Indian weren't answering the phone one night and have a wide open logmein, I was tempted to dial into their order station and stick in me order for collection, nip down in twenty minutes to collect, but just went down and ordered at the counter instead.

It's a pretty big security issue though, they have customer accounts and have credit card and debit cards linked to some of them, if I dialed in I could be away with those details and spending other peoples money. You try to do the right thing and advise them only to be ignored or be treated with suspicion.

BaconZombie

I have never used LogMeIn so I don't know but how do you know it was them running it?
Is it advertised locally on their network like VNC? I thought it was more like TeamViewer where you connected to a 3rd party Server and entered a Site ID and Password.

knotknowbody wrote: »

There is loads of places like that, there are also some places running logmein with very silly passwords, my local place Indian weren't answering the phone one night and have a wide open logmein, I was tempted to dial into their order station and stick in me order for collection, nip down in twenty minutes to collect, but just went down and ordered at the counter instead.

It's a pretty big security issue though, they have customer accounts and have credit card and debit cards linked to some of them, if I dialed in I could be away with those details and spending other peoples money. You try to do the right thing and advise them only to be ignored or be treated with suspicion.

knotknowbody

BaconZombie wrote: »

I have never used LogMeIn so I don't know but how do you know it was them running it?
Is it advertised locally on their network like VNC? I thought it was more like TeamViewer where you connected to a 3rd party Server and entered a Site ID and Password.

Yes for logmein you visit secure.logmein.com and sign into your account with your e-mail and password you will then have access to your machines, those machines will have the logmein service installed on them and are linked to your account.

When a machine has logmein running the logmein icon appears in the task-bar so can be seen easily if you know what it looks like, I noticed it one evening when I was in there, I was at home later and remembered and tried getting into their account just to see if I could.

I used their email address from their website and the name of the place as the password and I could access their machines, I could not believe it was so badly secured but they didn't want to know.

Dermot Illogical

syklops wrote: »

I was in a bar recently and the cash register was on the same network as the public wireless. Not only that but the cash registers were running vnc servers, with no password, which means you could log into the server and change your own bill. I brought this to the attention of the manageress and she started defending the system saying, "you probably cant do very much". Well I could order numerous triple whiskies, wait for shift change and delete all but one, for a start.

I too was in a pub/restaurant recently which has it's business systems (including POS) on the same network as public wireless as well. The admin on the POS was unsecured and available on port 80. One of the available options was "Factory Reset".

I told the manager, but don't expect much to be done.

unkel

Accidental Potato wrote: »

The machine was Win XP, service pack 1

Only about 10/11 years old so

Dermot Illogical

Dermot Illogical wrote: »

I told the manager, but don't expect much to be done.

I've been pleasantly surprised. They fixed it, and were happy to have been told.

harney

syklops wrote: »

I was in a bar recently and the cash register was on the same network as the public wireless. Not only that but the cash registers were running vnc servers, with no password, which means you could log into the server and change your own bill. I brought this to the attention of the manageress and she started defending the system saying, "you probably cant do very much". Well I could order numerous triple whiskies, wait for shift change and delete all but one, for a start.

Would it not be more fun to add it to the table beside you then sit back and enjoy the show?