Re: facebook 'routing flaw'?

["Matthew Leeds" <mleeds () theleeds net>]

There is a fairly in depth discussion of the issue here:

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/01/facebook-att-play-fast-and-loose-with-user-authentication.ars

Not a routing issue, more of a proxy issue, and not uncommon in mobile carrier networks. Getting security right in a 
mobile application is tricky given how carriers manage Internet access. With the growth of smartphones these kinds of 
issues will become more prevalent until carriers refactor how they manage traffic via their proxy's. I'll also note 
that while the referenced article suggests the use of SSL, there are issues with support in the mobile environment for 
SSL in terms of which certificate authorities are pre-installed on phones, whether applications have access to the 
certificate store on the mobile device (or need an embedded certificate), how certificate chaining and wildcarding is 
supported, and so on.

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On 1/16/2010 at 7:39 AM Michael Scheidell wrote:

> AP Report says it was a 'routing problem'? any idea what they are
> talking about, do THEY know what they are talking about?
> Did AT&T mix up the destination ip addresses? did facebook NOT CHECK IP
> ADDRESS AND COOKIES and disable the session when the ip changed?
>
> <http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/16/network-flaw-causes-scary-web-error/>
>
> SAN FRANCISCO – A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto
> Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling
> place: strangers' accounts with full access to troves of private
> information.
>
> The glitch — the result of a routing problem at the family's wireless
> carrier, AT&T — revealed a little known security flaw with far reaching
> implications for everyone on the Internet, not just Facebook users.
>
> --
> Michael Scheidell, CTO
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