INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A security researcher has found several vulnerabilities in the popular open-source Horde web email software that allow hackers to
near-invisibly steal the contents of a victim inbox.
Horde is one of the most popular free and open-source web email systems available
It built and maintained by a core team of developers, with contributions from the wider open-source community
It used by universities, libraries and many web hosting providers as the default email client.
Numan Ozdemir disclosed his vulnerabilities
An attacker can scrape and download a victim entire inbox by tricking them into clicking a malicious link in an email.
Once clicked, the
inbox is downloaded to the attacker server.
But the researcher did not hear back from the Horde community
Security researchers typically give organizations three months to fix flaws before they are publicly disclosed.
NIST, the government
department that maintains the national vulnerability database, said this week that the flaws pose a &high& security risk to users.
Ozdemir
said some — though not all — of the vulnerabilities were recently fixed in the latest Horde webmail version
But the Horde community has not publicly acknowledged the vulnerability — or that users of earlier versions of the webmail are still
vulnerable.
&It is really very easy to steal people email,& he told TechCrunch.
His bug report filed with Horde remains open at the time of
We emailed Horde several times, but did not hear back until after publication
Jan Schneider, a core developer on the project, said the vulnerabilities &have indeed been fixed, won&t be fixed, or didn&t even exist
anymore at the time of the reporting.&
We found a massive spam operation — and sunk its server
