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Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

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Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#141
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't use a real phone number with any of these services. They don't need my phone number to operate either.

g has been demanding a valid phone for years, as have most other major providers. if you lose the number you sign up with, you can potentially get locked out of the account. whats your mo?

Their own policies place a limit on how "demanding" they can be.

Initializing a new (or power-washed) android/ChromeOS device _requires_ a Google account, so if you don't have one (or claim not to) they device initialization process will generate a new Google account for you. Even if there's no phone number or SIM card in the device.

I've had a number of Android/ChromeOS devices over the years, and I've had each one generate a new Google account. None of these accounts have phone numbers associated with them.

I generally don't use these accounts for much more than downloading free apps from the Google Play store -- maybe more extensive use would trigger a "You must add a phone number to this account to proceed"?

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#142
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking practical. I know you can reduce networks further BUT there is plenty of stuff that could break.

What stuff?

Crappy network devices may not handle it properly, SLAAC obviously, I'm sure there are IPv6 tools that expect /64 for host, almost all blacklist setups for IPv6 assume /64.

This RFC has things that may not work properly not to use /64. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7421#section-4.2

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#143
post #83
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your argument seems to make sense on the surface, it fails in deeper inspection. What security implications did Google Reader have? I do understand keeping older APIs and endpoints for authentication and authorization are indeed dangerous. However, if your architecture causes the mere clients of those authorization infra to be exploited, I think the problem isn't keeping the products running. You designed somet…

Google Reader used Google accounts for authentication, so an exploit in Reader could potentially be compromising to your entire Google account. This very article gives an example of that; Looker Studio was used to reveal the name on any account, even though most accounts have likely never used Looker Studio. Google could mitigate this by not having universally shared accounts across all services, but they're not goin…

Since you're the person that didn't answered with "hah you say: don't code bugs", I'll take some time to answer you.

> Google Reader used Google accounts for authentication, so an exploit in Reader could potentially be compromising to your entire Google account. This very article gives an example of that; Looker Studio was used to reveal the name on any account, even though most accounts have likely never used Looker Studio.

Guess what else uses Google Accounts? Everything that Google needs authentication for. When designing software, so much effort is put into its design, possible user stories and architecture. We put so much effort into unit tests, integration tests, regression tests whatnot.Security is no different. When designing services, considering the data flow is critical for security. An engineering organization should take into account of data that needs authentication. Those should be separate isolated services.

They can crate security islands for critical parts. Why Looker needs to get the full name from an e-mail that this person hasn't initiated a two-way contact? Or even, why it can in the first place? There is a service that does this resolution (Contacts?). Google failed to consider that limiting this kind of queries when creating this service. It has nothing to do with the functionality of Looker Studio. Now anything touches this service has problems. The old and the new products. You'll not be able to resolve these problems by deprecating Looker Studio nor deprecating Reader solved these issues.

> Google could mitigate this by not having universally shared accounts across all services, but they're not going to do that because most users would find that inconvenient.

It is not the sharing of the authentication provider but the authorization of the kinds of queries is the problem here. It is not the problem with the age of the service Looker provides either. Yes you may be able to extract some data if the pod running Looker Studio got compromised, maybe even PII data. The dependencies can get old or can have critical bugs. However, they shouldn't be able to be exploited to extract large swaths of data due to layering and consideration of security architecture. That's why creating those security narrow-waist points are so important. They need to be given the same care of the correctness of the software and other UX goals.

Even a smaller company needs to consider these architectural details when designing integrated services. With GDPR, you should be able to delete every piece of PII. It gently forces you to do the right thing already. It is totally unacceptable that bigger companies like Google skipping this.

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#144

I’m mostly impressed that he can throw 40k requests per second at a server for a prolonged period and not somehow spike the resources enough to set off some alarms.

maybe he used a botnet for that? i.e. different IP address for every request or somewhere in between

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

g has been demanding a valid phone for years, as have most other major providers. if you lose the number you sign up with, you can potentially get locked out of the account. whats your mo?

Their own policies place a limit on how "demanding" they can be. Initializing a new (or power-washed) android/ChromeOS device _requires_ a Google account, so if you don't have one (or claim not to) they device initialization process will generate a new Google account for you. Even if there's no phone number or SIM card in the device. I've had a number of Android/ChromeOS devices over the years, and I've had each one…

They can just take your number anyway if you ever insert a SIM, since they control "your" phone.

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#146
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[BuyVM]( https://my.frantech.ca/cart.php?gid=37 ), a popular host for shady operators, gives a /48 even with their cheapest plans ($2/month, though only $7/month is in stock right now)

A bit more context: BuyVM is a legitimate business, popular with hobbyists, and has features that are hard to get elsewhere (e.g., BGP sessions). They do take a pro-free speech stance but they are a far cry from bulletproof hosting ("shady operators"). An imperfect comparison at a massively bigger scale would be Cloudflare's prominence in certain contexts.

they are pretty well-known as a "DMCA ignored" hosting site. Search "dmca ignored buyvm lowendtalk" and you'll find lots of forum threads of people recommending buyvm for hosting pirated content. They were also once mentioned by the RIAA for ignoring copyright law https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/files/2025/01/USTR-20... There's also at least one mention I can find of them hosting a CSAM website.

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#147
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stuff?

Crappy network devices may not handle it properly, SLAAC obviously, I'm sure there are IPv6 tools that expect /64 for host, almost all blacklist setups for IPv6 assume /64. This RFC has things that may not work properly not to use /64. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7421#section-4.2

The RFC only mentions issues with a shorter prefix, not a longer one. There should be no issues whatsoever with longer prefixes.

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be rather surprised if IPv6 hasn't done some damage to the idea of IP blocking on the whole. It's possible, even as a residential Internet user, to request a /56 or /48 automatically with DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation. I have a /56 with Comcast. That's potentially up to 65536 /64 blocks, just from a residential user, so if you're going to attempt IP filtering for IPv6, it's got to be a lot smarter than swapping out yo…

It is already pretty common to start with IP blocking but upgrade to blocks when the bad behavior continues. Assuming a /64 as a starting point is an easy win and bumping it up with repeat offenders seems pretty easy in the grand scheme of things.

Doesnt CGNAT make these methods obselete though? All my webscraping is proxied through my phone and I rarely get IP blocked and im very aggressive even on CF protected sites.

Re: Bruteforcing the phone number of any Google user

#149
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit more context: BuyVM is a legitimate business, popular with hobbyists, and has features that are hard to get elsewhere (e.g., BGP sessions). They do take a pro-free speech stance but they are a far cry from bulletproof hosting ("shady operators"). An imperfect comparison at a massively bigger scale would be Cloudflare's prominence in certain contexts.

they are pretty well-known as a "DMCA ignored" hosting site. Search "dmca ignored buyvm lowendtalk" and you'll find lots of forum threads of people recommending buyvm for hosting pirated content. They were also once mentioned by the RIAA for ignoring copyright law https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/files/2025/01/USTR-20... There's also at least one mention I can find of them hosting a CSAM website.

"Dmca ignored" is substantially not the same as "shady operators"
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