Amtrak.com is storing your password in plaintext | Hacker News Reader

Amtrak.com is storing your password in plaintext

18 pointsmaheswaran6 comments

i just forgot my amtrak.com password and tried to reset it, this is what i got

Dear <your-name>,

Thank you for contacting Amtrak. The login information you requested is listed below. Please save this information for future reference.

User ID: <youremailid@yourprovider> Password: <yourp-passwod>

If you encounter any login difficulties, contact us online at http://www.amtrak.com/contactus.html or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245).

Thank you for choosing Amtrak.

View on HN

I hate to be pedantic, but just because they send you your password in plain text, doesn't mean they are storing it in plain text.

Does it mean they are doing a shitty job? Yes. Is storing a password using two-way encryption more secure than plaintext? Laughably. Still...

Presumably if the passwords are hashed they have no way of telling you your password. They can only reset it.

So yes, generally if they send you the password then that means they store it in plain text. While it isn't always that hard to crack a password hash, it is unlikely that Amtrak went through that length to retrieve the password.

I think you proved my point. There's a 3rd option - they could be using a symmetric-key algorithm. This would make it trivial to decrypt for Amtrak - while difficult for anyone else to decrypt.

The problem with this, and why people don't view it as much better than plain text, is because it's a single point of failure - and if your DB has been compromised, your secret keys (in a config or in source) probably isn't too far behind.

I just tried it and they sent me the same email. They don't necessarily store the password in plaintext as latch has explained.

They don't seem to store credit card information for future use, which is a good sign. However, they do store a lot of personally identifiable information that might make sending a password via email illegal in some states (at least Massachusetts [1]).

[1] http://www.mass.gov/Eoca/docs/idtheft/201CMR1700reg.pdf - (3)Encryption of all transmitted records and files containing personal information that will travel across public networks, and encryption of all data containing personal information to be transmitted wirelessly.

was that your actual password you had used or a random password they created and sent you?!

I got an email like this from my domain provider the other day. I was curious if someone might be able to sniff the network for SMTP messages then go request a bunch of password resets from the website. There support staff was not too interested in the idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com