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January 25, 2016 02:00 pm

Amazon's Customer Service Backdoor

An anonymous reader writes: Eric Springer describes his recent troubles with Amazon to highlight one of the biggest weak points in information security: customer service. You can use complex passwords and two-factor authentication all you want — all it takes is a low-level representative trying to be helpful and your account information is now compromised. In this case, a bad actor was able to use Amazon's online chat support and a fake address to get the rep to tell him Springer's real address and phone number. That was enough to commit fraud with a couple of unrelated online services. Springer complained, but months later the same thing happened again. That time, he had Amazon put a note on his account not to give out his details. But that didn't help; the attacker contacted Amazon's phone support line instead, and gathered yet more information. Springer writes, "At this point, Amazon has completely betrayed my trust three times. I have done absolutely everything in my power to secure my account, but it's hopeless. I am in the process of closing my Amazon account, and migrating as much to Google services which seem significantly more robust at stopping these attacks." Springer's advice for fixing this: "Never do customer support unless the user can log in to their account. The only exception to this would be if the user forgot the password, and there should be a very strict policy." He also says email services should make aliases easier, and whois protection should be default.

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