NON-Secure Credit card info transfer from time.com/pathfinder.com

From: Bob Niederman (btrq@bob-n.com)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2001 - 17:37:56 PDT

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    When you go to www.time.com and click on "Order This Special Issue" (over
    the picture of the Time cover showing the second crash into the World
    Trade center), you are taken to:
    
    https://www.pathfinder.com/subs/books/forms/td/tdspecialed01.html
     
    
    
    The problem is that while the page 
    
    https://www.pathfinder.com/subs/books/forms/td/tdspecialed01.html
    
    itself is secure, as noted by the "https" at the beginning of the URL,
    when you click the "Submit Order" button, the html in that page
    reading:
    
    <FORM METHOD="post"
    action="http://cgi.pathfinder.com/cgi-bin/magsubs/cc/booksubs/tdspecialed01">
    
    sends it to a non-secure server, as noted by the "http:" instead of the
    "https:" in the preceding URL.
    
    This causes the credit card number to cross the internet in
    un-encrypted form.
    
    The browsers I've used on this page (Netscape 4.08 on NT, NS 4.74 on Linux
    and Mozilla 0.9.5 on Linux) all popup a window warning the user that this
    will happen.  I didn't really believe it, so I started up ethereal, then
    went ahead.  Ethereal showed that, indeed, the credit card number did go
    across in the clear.  [That credit card account has been closed.;) ] 
    
    I notified via email , then phone, (to help.singleat_private and
    1.800.274.6800); the phone folks were not clue-full, but referred me to
    another number, where they understood my complaint, and told me others had
    complained of the popup message from the browsers, but that their
    programmers swore up and down that the connection was secure.  I explained
    the problem in some detail to that person and sent follow-up email.  So
    far, no response other than auto-responder.
    
    These coversations occurred yesterday morning.  This should be easy to
    fix, but so far, no response and the page still has this flaw.
    
    
    
    - Bob Niederman 
    
    Fight UCITA! http://www.4cite.org, 
    
    Free Dmitry Skylarov.  Repeal DMCA.  http://freskylarov.org  
    http://eff.org
    



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