[HN Gopher] Social engineering GoDaddy (2007)
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       Social engineering GoDaddy (2007)
        
       Author : pbear2k21
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2022-06-13 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (g.livejournal.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (g.livejournal.com)
        
       | trafnar wrote:
       | Reminds me of this story "How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username"
       | from 2014.
       | 
       | https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...
        
         | hombre_fatal wrote:
         | Also, "Amazon's customer support backdoor" (2016).
         | 
         | https://medium.com/@espringe/amazon-s-customer-service-backd...
         | 
         | The screenshots of the attack/transcript make my stomach hurt.
        
       | pbear2k21 wrote:
       | Oops - The title was meant to say 2007. However GoDaddy still
       | suffers from social engineering attacks, e.g.
       | https://www.zdnet.com/article/godaddy-staff-fall-prey-to-soc...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | iamricks wrote:
       | I've mentioned this before[1], we once had a domain stolen
       | because somebody called GoDaddy and was able to get the 2FA code
       | removed with a phone call and they had some leaked email
       | credentials for the account.
       | 
       | We had to call GoDaddy and cancel the domain transfer, they would
       | give us no information on how it happened.
       | 
       | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308613
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | This why we need Web2 + Web3 = Web5. Dorsey was right to work
       | with the ION guys from Microsoft. It's not new, though, I know
       | all the main people in the space and back in 2014 it was Tim
       | Berners-Lee and Solid talking about the same thing. At Qbix and
       | Intercoin have been working on identity and social apps for
       | years, interviewing people in the space too:
       | 
       | https://qbix.com/blog - see the last two articles
       | 
       | Domain names are the original NFTs. But unlike most NFTs, the
       | owner can MODIFY them and what they point to. So they are more
       | useful.
       | 
       | The problem with everything before Web3 is the feudalism and
       | relying on third parties who run the infrastructure to also
       | manage your identity.
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | No. Stop that, you're embarrassing yourself.
         | 
         | The problem at hand here is social engineering. Your
         | cryptocurrency scheme (and, to be clear, this is your own
         | scheme you're promoting here) is not a solution to social
         | engineering.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | EGreg wrote:
        
       | EGreg wrote:
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | personjerry wrote:
       | Isn't this fraud?
        
         | hyperhopper wrote:
         | Who was defrauded? Not the old domain owner, he just got a
         | legit email and decided to sell.
         | 
         | Maybe they committed some other crime against GoDaddy, but I'm
         | not a lawyer and I'm not sure what. They impersonated a call
         | center manager, but I'm not sure if that's against the law.
         | After that the employee willingly told them things.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | >Maybe they committed some other crime against GoDaddy
           | 
           | As a non-sequiter, I'd say GoDaddy is a crime against
           | humanity
        
       | sethammons wrote:
       | Wow, I wonder if that is what happened to my company's domain a
       | decade ago. We lost control of our domain due to social
       | engineering at GoDaddy. It was really, really tense as we worked
       | to get control back. We got lucky and we able to retrieve the
       | domain later that day.
        
       | biermic wrote:
       | I also have heard of such a story. A friend of mine did something
       | similar a long time ago.
       | 
       | Someone posted malicious stuff on his website, which showed up
       | when googling my friends name. This costed him quite some
       | business.
       | 
       | He knew the email address of the website owner, and the provider
       | where the website was hosted. So he registered the same email
       | address under a different free email hosting provider. Then he
       | sent the website hoster an e-mail where he told them about a new
       | email address and if they could change it. With that he could
       | reset the password and delete the website.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | jherico wrote:
       | My take is "don't use the same channel for internal coms as for
       | customer coms". That way training could make it clear:
       | 
       | * Supervisor communication will always come through Slack, or
       | email or some other mechanism. * Never trust that the identity of
       | anyone on the phone is someone internal unless you initiated the
       | call.
        
         | malfist wrote:
         | That works until someone gets their slack compromised
        
       | confident_inept wrote:
       | This stuff is still incredibly easy to do to this day. I was the
       | general manager of a retail office store chain and we would
       | frequently have calls come in forging fake complaints but asking
       | for the district or regional manager's first and/or last name.
       | The attacker would then call another store in the region claiming
       | to be "Mr. Head Manager".
       | 
       | Most associates knew or had seen the names (they were required to
       | be posted in the break room) but often times never met the people
       | in question. The attacker got associates and other
       | shift/associate managers to do everything from giving up secure
       | information on the registers to ring up gift cards.
       | 
       | It was happening two to three times a week in our district at
       | times despite weekly training and conference calls on the
       | subject. Some people are just born to be duped.
        
         | swatcoder wrote:
         | > Some people are just born to be duped
         | 
         | Nah, _all_ people are born to be duped. Nobody can be vigilant
         | all the time. There 's a point where you have to let down your
         | guard and trust that there's no monster ready to pounce on you
         | from the shadows. Vigilance has its own costs that often work
         | against the tasks at hand, and can really fry your body if held
         | high for too long.
         | 
         | As GM you may have been especially vigilant about this issue
         | because you saw yourself as the steward of your store(s), but
         | those associates weren't in the same position and were bound to
         | be more lax on net.
         | 
         | It doesn't sound like these social engineering attacks tanked
         | the company, so whatever dynamic existed between everyone
         | seemed to work adequately.
        
           | formerkrogemp wrote:
           | It doesn't hurt that retail stores in the US pay dirt and
           | shit for wages.
        
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