Why You Should Change Your Amazon Password Right Away
Why You Should Change Your Amazon Password Right Away
Posted 01/31/2011 at 9:33am
| by Paul Lilly
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A forum user over at Reddit claims to have discovered a pretty startling security flaw that could potentially make it easier for hackers to guess your Amazon password. By adding extra characters to a valid password with eight characters, some Amazon customers are still able to log in.
Let's say your password is "ILoveJan," which is a terrible password to begin with. If someone up to no good guesses "ILoveJan1932," Amazon may accept it. Wired, which says it confirmed the flaw, says the security SNAFU likely only affects older accounts. Newer passwords don't appear to be affected.
So what can you do? Wired says simply logging in and changing your password sidesteps the flaw, even if you end up changing it back to your original password.
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knexkid
January 31, 2011 at 5:21pm
Wow, that's terrible. Sure enough, I threw on some extra numbers and it still logged in. How on earth could they have a flaw like that? Now I'm no professional programer, but isn't it pretty simple to check if PASSWORD==********????????????
dmonkyking
January 31, 2011 at 2:37pm
Seemed to work for me as well. After changing the PW it fixed the problem.
Blaze589
January 31, 2011 at 12:32pm
Sh*t that acually works. Thanks a lot. I'LL CHANGE IT RIGHT AWAY!!!!!!
Edit: Now that I had a chance to change my PW and I'm no longer in panic mode I realize that this isn't a major flaw. You have have to know the person's password to begin with. Granted, a flaw is a flaw.
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