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The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

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Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#91

Post by dpark »

afdbcreid wrote: post #83
dpark wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exploit has essentially nothing to do with AI and everything to do with a terribly designed account recovery flow. This exact same flow could have been (and may have been; I don’t know how much the chatbot here actually does) statically coded.

This is not true. Well, it kinda is, but nobody will be stupid enough to hand-code an account recovery where you get to type any email address. The reason it worked there is that the designers of the system didn't anticipate that the AI will agree to accept any email (maybe they even put guardrails against it in the system prompt, we don't know). It's more like social engineering than bad-security-code, except that l…

Maybe? I don’t know what logic was actually in the LLM vs it just using a bad tool. Unless I missed it, the article had no actual context on that either.

This looks like a terrible design rather than an AI problem to me, though.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#92

Post by Barbing »

mediaman wrote: post #46
footydude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code. Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written? It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you…

I think he likely means "code that is hand-reviewed" and not directly controlled by the agent. He's probably meaning to differentiate it against the in-process agent writing the code. It doesn't matter too much if that fixed code was written by an LLM under guidance and review of the SWE, outside the agent.

Agreed, “literally written by hand” didn’t cross my mind. Not by keyboard or pen.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#93

Post by simonw »

stronglikedan wrote: post #81
joao wrote: post #79

I'm among the first 6000 users of Instagram and my first name username was stolen a few years ago. Support for verified accounts acknowledged the issue, but couldn't do anything about it. This turn was an AI exploit, in my case was an outsourcing support 'exploit', where someone paid for my username to be manually changed and given to another user. There will always be a way to get access to accounts if human account…

> with criminal consequences for employees that violate it lol, no. The day someone is criminally charged with "stealing" a username is the day that humanity has lost

The good usernames generally are valued at thousands of dollars or more. Surely stealing something worth that much money should be a crime.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#94

Post by econ »

macintux wrote: post #27
toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I manage customer identity and access management ("CIAM") for a financial services firm. Passkeys are primary, recovery can be performed by providing a government credential remotely (which costs us ~$2-3 per recovery). I do not think it is hard, based on what we have built and spent to enable these capabilities. NIST Special Publication NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines is a helpful resource on this topic.…

I’d wager your range of tech literacy/capabilities for your firm is much narrower than big tech.

Someone gained access to a Instagram account (belonging to a business by the same name) connected to a fb account (by the same name) that they still had access to. The only thing fb could do was terminate the Instagram for impersonation.

It's an impressive level of incompetence.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#95

Post by recursive »

jgalt212 wrote: post #22
spullara wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

fair enough, but what's the actual point of 2FA if it's so easy to override?

In some cases, checkbox-compliance with customer requirements.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#96

Post by kennywinker »

dpark wrote: post #91
afdbcreid wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Well, it kinda is, but nobody will be stupid enough to hand-code an account recovery where you get to type any email address. The reason it worked there is that the designers of the system didn't anticipate that the AI will agree to accept any email (maybe they even put guardrails against it in the system prompt, we don't know). It's more like social engineering than bad-security-code, except that l…

Maybe? I don’t know what logic was actually in the LLM vs it just using a bad tool. Unless I missed it, the article had no actual context on that either. This looks like a terrible design rather than an AI problem to me, though.

Porque no los dos?

An AI enabled terrible design. AI acted as a black box of stupidity, that obscured the stupidity of the design.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#97

Post by guestbest »

hbn wrote: post #21

It's insane the AI has been provided the tooling to send emails to arbitrary addresses like that. Like, getting it to send a 2FA code at a user's request is one thing. But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code. It shouldn't have access to the 2FA code itself, or the message subject, or body, or the recipient address, etc. Wh…

One would have to assume that this was by design.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#98

Post by daheza »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #42
footydude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code. Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written? It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you…

Maybe not hand-written, but definitely static, and at least human-reviewed/tested to only allow sending to previously-validated email addresses.

Right, as in, does not accept an email as a parameter. If its anything like my company they are turning out "agents" super fast and just hooking them up to internal APIs usually via a light MCP wrapper. Since MCP doesn't have any security or auth built in, and internal APIs usually are light on security you have issues like this.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#99

Post by StilesCrisis »

SoftTalker wrote: post #20
spullara wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

It's a tough problem, because people forget passwords, change phones, lose access to 2FA devices, but still need to use their accounts.

It's worse than "forgetting." Having seen older folks just set up new accounts for a move, they make zero attempt to even try to keep them! Oh, the phone company needs a login/pass? Just type in anything, don't write it down. If something goes wrong, they're going to call in anyway, not use the website.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#100

Post by [deleted] »

dpark wrote: post #91
afdbcreid wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Well, it kinda is, but nobody will be stupid enough to hand-code an account recovery where you get to type any email address. The reason it worked there is that the designers of the system didn't anticipate that the AI will agree to accept any email (maybe they even put guardrails against it in the system prompt, we don't know). It's more like social engineering than bad-security-code, except that l…

Maybe? I don’t know what logic was actually in the LLM vs it just using a bad tool. Unless I missed it, the article had no actual context on that either. This looks like a terrible design rather than an AI problem to me, though.

[deleted]
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