PayPal has patched a security issue which could allow attackers to
exploit the platform for the purpose of sending malicious emails. The flaw, now patched, could be exploited to send malicious emails from the PayPal platform.
Disclosed on Vulnerability Lab
this week, researcher Kunz Mejri revealed the existence of an
application-side mail encoding web vulnerability and filter bypass issue
in the official PayPal online Web application. Granted a
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 3.9, the security
problem is considered a "medium" threat to the online payment provider's
services. If exploited, cyber-attackers are able to inject malicious
codes into the mail header of emails sent via PayPal's portal.
Cyber-attackers were able to compromise PayPal's systems by injecting a
malicious payload into the owner name field of a new PayPal account
linked to the intended victim's email address. By using a bypass method
to process the request, attackers could then click the confirm button
and an email asking for verification sent via PayPal will be sent to the
target inbox, laden with malicious code.
These kinds of security issues are bad news for users. If exploited,
fraudulent emails sent from compromised -- but legitimate -- domains
could be leveraged as part of a phishing campaign, in which
cyberattackers send fraudulent emails to targets in order to dupe them
into revealing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links and
downloading malware.Given a legitimate edge, such as an email sent from the
PayPal platform, victims may not be able to tell such an email was
malicious -- and, therefore, they would be far more likely to fall for
such a scam.
PayPal was notified of the security issue on 28
October 2015. A patch was developed in March this year, and after the
fix was deployed, the researcher was able to publicly disclose his
findings. Mejri was awarded $1,000 for disclosing the flaw as part of PayPal's bug bounty program.
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