outlandish security concern re: anonymous user account creation

Posts: 3
Joined: 08/31/2008

i feel a little insecure about the way ubercart creates accounts for anonymous users and shares the username/password.

when an anonymous user checks out with an email address that doesn't match any accounts, a new account is created and the username and password are shown on the "order complete" page.

if an anonymous user checks out with an email address that matches an existing account, no new account is created and the text does not make it clear that an account already exists.

which means that, if i know that ryan@ubercart.org is going to buy something from http://www.enormousshop.com, i can buy something anonymously using his email address BEFORE he does, and i'll get the username and password for his account.

later he buys something anonymously, and ubercart does not show him the username and password since there's already an account for his email address.

assuming ryan is too busy to recover his password and change it, or doesn't even know an account was created, i can come back in and see his order details, get his address, maybe download his downloadable items, etc. etc. etc.

again, it's a pretty unlikely scenario, but it seems like it would be safer to suppress the username/password info from the order complete page and just keep it in the email.

Posts: 1300
Joined: 08/14/2007
Bug FinderEarly adopter... addicted to alphas.Getting busy with the Ubercode.

Can you just remove the password from those checkout messages? I thought you could...

(admin/store/settings/checkout/edit/messages)

--

"Pain don't hurt." - Dalton

Mike Nelson's RiffTrax! www.rifftrax.com

Posts: 5348
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Yeah, you can adjust the messages to your liking... also, in this particular scenario, I would've been notified when you first created the account via e-mail. If I just ignored it and some time later came to that store and ordered without ever checking in... I'm not sure you'd get any new information other than my home address. Of course, there are much easier ways to find out where I live. Eye-wink

At least it wouldn't affect any actual transactions, but it's still something to think about. If you wanted, you could just turn off anonymous checkout and enable e-mail verification of new accounts. Also, last I thought, the checkout message does indicate when an order is attached to a previously existing user account.