Subj : Millions of airline customers possibly affected by OAuth security
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Wed Jan 29 2025 16:30:07

Millions of airline customers possibly affected by OAuth security flaw

Date:
Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:03:00 +0000

Description:
The bug has since been mitigated, but users should still take care.

FULL STORY
======================================================================A 
travel service, integrated into many airline service providers, carried a 
security flaw This could be abused to log into people's accounts and change 
their bookings It has since been reported and mitigated 

A popular, top-tier travel service for hotel and car rentals was vulnerable 
to a flaw which allowed malicious actors to take over anyones account, a new 
report from API security firm Salt Labs has claimed. 

By abusing the flaw, they would be able to book hotel rooms, rent cars, and 
modify any booking information, easily. To make matters worse, since the 
service is integrated into dozens of commercial airline online services, it 
would also allow miscreants to spend airline loyalty points, and more. 

Salt Labs said millions of people could be at risk, but that it did not want 
to say the name of the affected service. Stealing session cookies 

Here is how a theoretical attack would work: A malicious actor would create a 
custom-tailored link and share it with the victim via usual channels (for 
example, email). The victim would click on the link, leading to the rental 
service provider, which would ask it to log in with the credentials 
associated with the airline service provider. 

At that point, the rental platform generates a second link, and sends the 
victim back to the airlines website, to log in using OAuth. 

OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard for secure access delegation, 
allowing applications to access a user's data on another service without 
exposing their credentials. 

Because of the custom-built link, the authentication response is returned to 
the attackers, including the users session token, which grants them access to 
the platform. 

"Since the manipulated link uses a legitimate customer domain (with 
manipulation occurring only at the parameter level rather than the domain 
level), this makes the attack difficult to detect through standard domain 
inspection or blocklist/allowlist methods," the researchers said in their 
write-up. 

Salt Labs disclosed its findings to the affected service, which confirmed the 
flaw and deployed a fix. You might also like Ransomware attack forces US 
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right now



======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/millions-of-airline-customers-possibly-
affected-by-oauth-security-flaw


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