Category Archives: fiserv

A Little Sunshine, Abraham Vegh, CashEdge, Credit One Bank, defaultinstitution.com, fiserv, Netspend, Popmoney, TCF National Bank, Union Bank, Zelle

Fintech Giant Fiserv Used Unclaimed Domain

If you sell Web-based software for a living and ship code that references an unregistered domain name, you are asking for trouble. But when the same mistake is made by a Fortune 500 company, the results can range from costly to disastrous. Here’s the story of one such goof committed by Fiserv [NASDAQ:FISV], a $6 billion firm that provides online banking software and other technology solutions to thousands of financial institutions.

In November 2020, KrebsOnSecurity heard from security researcher Abraham Vegh, who noticed something odd while inspecting an email from his financial institution.

Vegh could see the message from his bank referenced a curious domain: defaultinstitution.com. A quick search of WHOIS registration records showed the domain was unregistered. Wondering whether he might receive email communications to that address if he registered the domain, Vegh snapped it up for a few dollars, set up a catch-all email account for it, and waited.

“It appears that the domain is provided as a default, and customer bank IT departments are either assuming they don’t need to change it, or are not aware that they could/should,” Vegh said, noting that a malicious person who stumbled on his discovery earlier could have had a powerful, trusted domain from which to launch email phishing attacks.

At first, only a few wayward emails arrived. Ironically enough, one was from a “quality assurance” manager at Fiserv. The automatic reply message stated that the employee was out of the office “on R&R” and would be back to work on Dec. 14.

Many other emails poured in, including numerous “bounced” messages delivered in reply to missives from Cashedge.com, a money transfer service that Fiserv acquired in 2011.

Emails get bounced — or returned to the sender — when they are sent to an address that doesn’t exist or that is no longer active. The messages had been sent to an email address for a former client solutions director at Fiserv; the “reply-to:” address in those missives was “donotreply@defaultinstitution.com”.

The messages were informing customers of CashEdge’s main service Popmoney — which lets users send, request and receive money directly from bank accounts — that Popmoney was being replaced with Zelle, a more modern bank-to-bank transfer service.

Each CashEdge missive included information about recurring transfers that were being canceled, such as the plan ID, send date, amount to be transferred, the name and last four digits of the account number the money was coming from, and the email address of the recipient account.

Incredibly, at the bottom of every message to CashEdge/Popmoney customers was a boilerplate text: “This email was sent to [recipient name here]. If you have received this email in error, please send an e-mail to customersupport@defaultinstitution.com.”

Other services that directed customers to reply to the researcher’s domain included Fiserv customer Netspend.com, a leading provider of prepaid debit cards that require no minimum balance or credit check. The messages from Netspend all were to confirm the email address tied to a new account, and concerned “me-to-me transfers” set up through its service.

Each message included a one-time code that recipients were prompted to enter at the company’s website. But from reading the many replies to these missives, it seems Netspend didn’t make it terribly obvious where users were supposed to input this code. Here’s one of the more profane examples of a customer response:

Many others emailed by Netspend expressed mystification as to why they were receiving such messages, stating they’d never signed up for the service. From the gist of those messages, the respondents were victims of identity fraud.

“My accounts were hacked and if any funding is gone your [sic] sued from me and federal trade commission,” one wrote. “I didn’t create the account. Please stop this account and let me know what’s going on,” replied another. “I never signed up for this service. Someone else is using my information,” wrote a third.

Those messages also concerned me-to-me transfers. Other emails came from Detroit-based TCF National Bank.

New York-based Union Bank also sent customer information to the researcher’s domain. Both of those messages were intended to confirm that the recipient had tied their accounts to those at another bank. And in both cases, the recipients replied that they had not authorized the linkage.

In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, Fiserv acknowledged that it had inadvertently included references to defaultinstitution.com as a placeholder in software solutions used by some partners.

“We have identified 5 clients for which auto-generated emails to their customers included the domain name “defaultinstitution.com” in the “reply-to” address,” Fiserv said in a written statement. “This placeholder URL was inadvertently left unchanged during implementation of these solutions. Upon being made aware of the situation we immediately conducted an analysis to locate and replace instances of the placeholder domain name. We have also notified the clients whose customers received these emails.”

Indeed, the last email Vegh’s inbox received was on Feb. 26.

This is not the first time an oversight by Fiserv has jeopardized the security and privacy of its customers. In 2018, KrebsOnSecurity revealed how a programming weakness in a software platform sold to hundreds of banks exposed personal and financial data of countless customers. Fiserv was later sued over the matter by a credit union customer; that lawsuit is still proceeding.

Vegh said he found a similar domain goof while working as a contractor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia back in 2015. In that instance, he discovered an unregistered domain invoked by AirWatch, a mobile device management product since acquired by VMWare.

“After registering that domain I started getting traffic from all around the world from Fortune 500 company devices pinging the domain,” Vegh said.

Vegh said he plans to give Fiserv control over defaultinstitution.com, and hand over the messages intercepted by his inbox. He’s not asking for much in return.

“I had been promised a t-shirt and a case of beer for my efforts then, but alas, never received one,” he said of his interaction with AirWatch. “This time, I am hoping to actually receive a t-shirt!”

A Little Sunshine, American Banker, Ann Cave, Bessemer System Federal Credit Union, Charles Nerko, fiserv, Paul Schaus, The Coming Storm

Credit Union Sues Fintech Giant Fiserv Over Security Claims

A Pennsylvania credit union is suing financial industry technology giant Fiserv, alleging that “baffling” security vulnerabilities in the company’s software are “wreaking havoc” on its customers. The credit union said the investigation that fueled the lawsuit was prompted by a 2018 KrebsOnSecurity report about glaring security weaknesses in a Fiserv platform that exposed personal and financial details of customers across hundreds of bank Web sites.

Brookfield, Wisc.-based Fiserv [NASDAQ:FISV] is a Fortune 500 company with 24,000 employees and $5.8 billion in earnings last year. Its account and transaction processing systems power the Web sites for hundreds of financial institutions — mostly small community banks and credit unions.

In August 2018, in response to inquiries by KrebsOnSecurity, Fiserv fixed a pervasive security and privacy hole in its online banking platform. The authentication weakness allowed bank customers to view account data for other customers, including account number, balance, phone numbers and email addresses.

In late April 2019, Fiserv was sued by Bessemer System Federal Credit Union, a comparatively tiny financial institution with just $38 million in assets. Bessemer said it was moved by that story to launch its own investigation into Fiserv’s systems, and it found a startlingly simple flaw: Firsev’s platform would let anyone reset the online banking password for a customer just by knowing their account number and the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Bessemer claims Fiserv’s systems let anyone reset a customer’s online banking password just by knowing their SSN and account number.

Recall that in my Aug 2018 report, Fiserv’s systems were exposing online banking account numbers for its customers. Thus, an attacker would only need to know a target’s SSN to reset that customer’s password, according to Bessemer. And that information is for sale in multiple places online and in the cybercrime underground for a few bucks per person.

Bessemer further alleges Fiserv’s systems had no checks in place to prevent automated attacks that might let thieves rapidly guess the last four digits of the customer’s SSN — such as limiting the number of times a user can submit a login request, or imposing a waiting period after a certain number of failed login attempts.

The lawsuit says the fix Fiserv scrambled to put in place after Bessemer complained was “pitifully deficient and ineffective:”

“Fiserv attempted to fortify Bessemer’s online banking website by requiring users registering for an account to supply a member’s house number. This was ineffective because residential street addresses can be readily found on the internet and through other public sources. Moreover, this information can be guessed through a trial-and-error process. Most alarmingly, this security control was purely illusory. Because some servers were not enforcing this security check, it could be readily bypassed.”

Bessemer says instead of fixing these security problems and providing the requested assurances that information was being adequately safeguarded, Fiserv issued it a “notice of claims,” alleging the credit union’s security review of its own online banking system gave rise to civil and criminal claims.

The credit union says Fiserv demanded it not disclose information relating to the security review to any third parties, “including Fiserv’s other clients (who presumably were affected with the same security problems at their financial institutions) as well as media sources.”

Fiserv did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But Fiserv spokesperson Ann Cave was quoted in several publications saying, “We believe the allegations have no merit and will respond to the claims as part of the legal process.”

Charles Nerko, the attorney representing Bessemer in the lawsuit, said to protect the credit union’s members, the credit union is replacing its core processing vendor, although Nerko would not specify where the credit union might be taking its business.

According to FedFis.com, Fiserv is by far the top bank core processor, with more than 37 percent market share. And it’s poised to soon get much bigger.

In January 2019, Fiserv announced it was acquiring payment processing giant First Data in a $22 billion all-stock deal. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2019, pending an antitrust review by the U.S. Justice Department.

That merger, should it go through, may not bode well for Fiserv’s customers, argues Paul Schaus of American Banker.

“Banks should take this trend as a warning sign,” Schaus wrote. “Rather than delivering new innovations that banks and their customers crave, legacy vendors are looking to remain relevant by acquiring existing products and services that expand their portfolios into new areas of financial services. As emerging technologies grow more critical to everyday business, these legacy vendors, which banks have deep longstanding relationships with, likely won’t be on the leading edge in every product or channel. Instead, financial institutions will need to seek out newer vendors that have deeper commitments and focus in cutting-edge technologies that will drive industry change.”

Aite Group, Allen Weinberg, Data Breaches, fiserv, Glenbrook Partners, Julie Conroy, Kristian Erik Hermansen, secureinternetbank.com, The Coming Storm

Fiserv Flaw Exposed Customer Data at Hundreds of Banks

Fiserv, Inc., a major provider of technology services to financial institutions, just fixed a glaring weakness in its Web platform that exposed personal and financial details of countless customers across hundreds of bank Web sites, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Brookfield, Wisc.-based Fiserv [NASDAQ:FISV] is a Fortune 500 company with 24,000 employees and $5.7 billion in earnings last year. Its account and transaction processing systems power the Web sites for hundreds of financial institutions — mostly small community banks and credit unions.

Two weeks ago this author heard from security researcher Kristian Erik Hermansen, who said he’d discovered something curious while logged in to an account at a tiny local bank that uses Fiserv’s platform.

Hermansen had signed up to get email alerts any time a new transaction posted to his account, and he noticed the site assigned his alert a specific “event number.” Working on a hunch that these event numbers might be assigned sequentially and that other records might be available if requested directly, Hermansen requested the same page again but first edited the site’s code in his browser so that his event number was decremented by one digit.

In an instant, he could then view and edit alerts previously set up by another bank customer, and could see that customer’s email address, phone number and the last four digits of their bank account number.

Hermansen said a cybercriminal could abuse this access to enumerate all other accounts with activity alerts on file, and to add or delete phone numbers or email addresses to receive alerts about account transactions.

This would allow any customer of the bank to spy on the daily transaction activity of other customers, and perhaps even target customers who signed up for high minimum balance alerts (e.g., “alert me when the available balance goes below $5,000”).

“I shouldn’t be able to see this data,” Hermansen said. “Anytime you spend money that should be a private transaction between you and your bank, not available for everyone else to see.”

Hermansen said he told his bank about what he found, and that he tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of different Fiserv employees, including the company’s CEO via LinkedIn. But he wasn’t sure whether the flaw he found existed in all bank sites running on Fiserv’s ebanking platform, or just his bank’s installation.

Naturally, KrebsOnSecurity offered to help figure that out, and to get Fiserv’s attention, if warranted. Over the past week I signed up for accounts at two small local banks that each use Fiserv’s online banking platform.

In both cases I was able to replicate Hermansen’s findings and view email addresses, phone numbers, partial account numbers and alert details for other customers of each bank just by editing a single digit in a Web page request. I was relieved to find I could not use my online account access at one bank to view transaction alerts I’d set up at a different Fiserv affiliated bank.

A single digit changed in a Web browser request caused someone else’s alerts to pop up in my account at this small local bank in Virginia.

But it was not difficult to find hundreds of other Fiserv-affiliated banks that would be just as vulnerable. If a bank is using Fiserv’s platform, it usually says so somewhere at the bottom of the bank’s home page. Another giveaway is that most of the bank sites using Fiserv display the same root domain name in the browser address bar after login: secureinternetbank.com.

Fiserv said in a statement that the problem stemmed from an issue with “a messaging solution available to a subset of online banking clients.” Fiserv declined to say exactly how many financial institutions may have been impacted overall. But experts tells KrebsOnSecurity that some 1,700 banks currently use Fiserv’s retail (consumer-focused) banking platform alone.

“Fiserv places a high priority on security, and we have responded accordingly,” Fiserv spokesperson Ann Cave said. “After receiving your email, we promptly engaged appropriate resources and worked around the clock to research and remediate the situation. We developed a security patch within 24 hours of receiving notification and deployed the patch to clients that utilize a hosted version of the solution. We will be deploying the patch this evening to clients that utilize an in-house version of the solution.”

This author confirmed that Fiserv no longer shows a sequential event number in their banking sites and has replaced them with a pseudo-random string.

Julie Conroy, research director with market analyst firm Aite Group, said the kinds of banks that use Fiserv’s platform mostly are those that can’t afford to build and maintain their own.

“These financial institutions use a core banking provider like Fiserv because they don’t have the wherewithal to do it on their own, so they’re really trusting Fiserv to do this on their behalf,” Conroy said. “This will not only reflect on Fiserv’s brand, but also it will impact customer’s perception about their small local bank, which is already struggling to compete with the larger, nationwide institutions.”

Allen Weinberg, partner and co-founder at Glenbrook Partners LLC, said the ability of fraudsters to edit account transaction alerts somewhat negates the value of these alerts in helping consumers fight fraud tied to their online banking accounts.

“If a fraudster can just turn off the alerts, there’s one less protection that consumers think they have,” Weinberg said. “I think consumers do rely in large part on these alerts to help them detect fraudulent activity.”

The weaknesses in Fiserv’s platform is what’s known as an “information disclosure” vulnerability. While these are among the most common types of security issues with Web sites, they are also perhaps the most preventable and easily fixed.

Nevertheless, disclosure flaws can be just as damaging to a company’s brand as other more severe types of security errors. Other notable security incidents involving recent information disclosure issues include a weakness at Panera Bread’s site that exposed tens of millions of customer records, and a bug in identity protection service LifeLock’s site that revealed email addresses for millions of customers.

A Little Sunshine, Associated Bank, Brent Hoeft, Columbia Bank, Customers Bank, FIS, fiserv, Jack Henry, Joe Smits, My Credit Union, The Coming Storm, United Airlines

What Is Your Bank’s Security Banking On?

A large number of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions just pushed customers onto new e-banking platforms that asked them to reset their account passwords by entering a username plus some other static identifier — such as the first six digits of their Social Security number (SSN), or a mix of partial SSN, date of birth and surname. Here’s a closer look at what may be going on (spoiler: small, regional banks and credit unions have grown far too reliant on the whims of just a few major online banking platform providers).

You might think it odd that any self-respecting financial institution would seek to authenticate customers via static data like partial SSN for passwords, and you’d be completely justified for thinking that, too. Nobody has any business using these static identifiers for authentication because they are for sale on most Americans quite cheaply in the cybercrime underground. The Equifax breach might have “refreshed” some of those data stores for identity thieves, but most U.S. adults have had their static details (DOB/SSN/MMN, address, previous address, etc) on sale for years now.

On Feb. 16, KrebsOnSecurity reader Brent Hoeft shared a copy of an email he’d just received from his financial institution Associated Bank, which at $30+ billion in assets happens to be Wisconsin’s largest by asset size.

The notice advised:

“Please read and save this information (including the password below) to prepare for your online and mobile banking upgrade.

Our refreshed online and mobile banking experience is officially launching on Monday, February 26, 2018.

We’re excited to share it with you, and want you to be aware of some important details about the transition.

TEMPORARY PASSWORD

Use this temporary password the first time you sign in after the upgrade. Your temporary password is the first four letters of your last name plus the last four digits of your Social Security Number.

XXXX#### [redacted by me but included in the email]

Note: your password is all lowercase without spaces.

Once the upgrade is complete, you will need your temporary password to begin the re-enrollment process.
• Beginning Monday, February 26, you will need to sign in using your existing user ID and the temporary password included above in this email. Please note that you are only required to reenroll in online or mobile banking but can access both using the same user ID and password.
• Once you sign in, you will be prompted to create a new password and establish other security features. Your user ID will remain the same.”

Hoeft said Associated Bank seems to treat the customer username as a secret, something to be protected along with the password.

“I contacted Associated’s customer service via email and received a far less satisfying explanation that the user name is required for re-activation and, that since [the username] was not provided in the email, the process they are using is in fact secure,” Hoeft said.

After speaking with Hoeft, I tweeted about whether to name and shame the bank before it was too late, or perhaps to try and talk some sense into them privately. Most readers advised that calling attention to the problem before the transition could cause more harm than good, and that at least until after Feb. 26 contacting some of the banks privately was the best idea (which is what I did).

Associated Bank wouldn’t say who their new consumer online banking platform provider was, but they did say it was one of the big ones. I took that to mean either FIS, Fiserv or Jack Henry, which collectively control approximately 70 percent of the market for bank core processors (according to FedFIS.com, Fiserv is by far the largest).

Image: Fedfis.com

The bank’s chief information security officer Joe Smits said Associated’s new consumer online banking platform provider required that new and existing customers log in with a username and a temporary password — which was described as choice among secondary, static data elements about customers — such as the first six digits of the customer’s SSN or date of birth.

Smits added that the bank originally started emailing customers the instructions for figuring out their temporary passwords, but then decided US mail would be a safer option and sent the rest out that way. He said only about 15 percent of Associated Bank customers (~50,000) received instructions about their temporary passwords through email.

I followed up with Hoeft to find out how his online banking upgrade went at Associated Bank. He told me that upon visiting the site, it asked for his username and the temporary password (the first four letters of his last name and the last four digits of his SSN).

“After entering that I was told to re-enter my temporary password and then create a new password,” Hoeft said. “I then was asked to select 5 security questions and provide answers. Next I was asked for a verification phone number. Upon entering that I received a text message with a 4 digit verification code. After entering the code it asked me to finish my profile information including name, email and daytime phone. After that it took me right into my online banking account.”

Hoeft said it seems like the “verification” step that was supposed to create an extra security check didn’t really add any security at all.

“If someone were able to get in with the temporary password, they would be able to create a new password, fill out all the security code information, and then provide their phone number to receive the verification code,” Hoeft said. “Armed with the verification code they then would be able to get right into my online banking account.”

OTHER BANKS

A simple search online revealed Associated Bank wasn’t alone: Multiple institutions were moving to a new online banking platform all on the same day: Feb. 26, 2018.

My Credit Union also moved to a new online banking service in February, posting a notice stating that all customers will need to log in with their current username and the last four of their SSN as a temporary password.

Customers Bank, a $10 billion bank with nearly two dozen branches between Boston and Philadelphia, also told customers that starting Feb. 26 they would need to use a temporary password — the last six digits of their Social Security number — to re-enroll in online banking. Here’s part of their advice, which was published in a PDF on the bank’s site:

• You may notice a new co-branded logo for Customers Bank and BankMobile (Division Customers Bank).
• Your existing user name for Online Banking will remain the same within the new system; however, it must be entered as all lowercase letters.
• The first time you log into the new Online Banking system, your temporary password is the last 6-digits of your social security number. Your temporary
password will expire on Friday, April 20, 2018. Please be sure to log in prior to that date.
• Online Banking includes multi-factor authentication which will need to be reestablished as part of the initial sign in to the system.
• Your username and password credentials for Online Banking will be the same for Mobile Banking. Note: Before accessing the new Mobile Banking services,
you must first login to our enhanced Online Banking system to change your password.
• You will also need to enroll your mobile device, either through Online Banking by visiting the Mobile Banking Center option, or directly on the device through the
app. Both options will require additional authentication.

Columbia Bank, which has 140 branches in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, also switched gears on Feb. 26, but used a more sensible approach: Sending customers a new user ID, organization ID and temporary password in two separate mailings.

ANALYSIS

My tweet about whether to name Associated Bank attracted the attention of at least two banking industry security regulators, each of whom spoke with KrebsOnSecurity on condition of not being identified by name or regulatory agency.

Both said their agencies would be using the above examples in briefings with member institutions as instructional on how not to do online banking securely. Both also said small to mid-sized banks are massively beholden to their platform providers, and many banks simply accept the defaults instead of pushing for stronger alternatives.

“I have a lot of communications directly with the chief information security officers, chief security officers, and chief information officers in many institutions,” one regulator said. “Many of them have massively dumbed down their password requirements. A lot of smaller institutions often don’t understand the risk involved in online banking, which is why they try to outsource the whole thing to someone else. But they can’t outsource accountability.”

One of the regulators I spoke with suggested that all of the banks they’d seen transitioning to a new online banking platform on Feb. 26 were customers of Fiserv — the nation’s largest online banking platform provider.

Fiserv did not respond to specific questions for this story, saying only in a written statement that: “Fiserv regularly partners with financial institutions to provide capabilities that help mitigate and manage risk, enhance the customer experience, and allow banks to remain competitive. A variety of methodologies are used by institutions to enroll and authenticate new users onto online banking platforms, and password authentication is one of multiple layers of security used to protect customers.”

Both banking industry regulators I spoke with said a basic problem is that many smaller institutions unfortunately still treat usernames as secret codes. I have railed against this practice for years, but far too many banks treat customer usernames as part of their security, even though most customers pick something very close to the first part of their email address (before the “@” sign). I’ve even skewered some of the airline industry giants for doing the same (United does this with its super-secret frequent flyer account number).

“I think this will be an opportunity for us to coach them on that,” one banking regulator said. “This process has to involve random password generation and that needs to be standard operating procedure. If you can shortcut security just by supplying static data like SSN, it’s all screwed. Some of these organizations have had such poor control structure for so long they don’t even understand how bad it is.”

The other regulator said another challenge is how long banks should wait before disabling accounts if consumers don’t log in to the new online banking system.

“What they’re going to do is set up all these users on this brand new system and give them default passwords,” the regulator said. “Some individuals will log into their bank account every day, others once a month and sometimes quite randomly. So, how are they going to control that window of opportunity? At some point, maybe after a couple of weeks, they need to just disable those other accounts and have people start from scratch.”

The first regulator said it appears many banks (and their platform providers) are singularly focused on making these transitions as seamless and painless as possible for the financial institution and its customers.

“I think they’re looking at making it easier for their customers and lessening the fallout as they get fewer angry and frustrated calls,” the regulator said. “That’s their incentive more than anything else.”

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

While it may appear that banks are more afraid of calls from their customers than of fallout from identity thieves and hackers, remember that you the consumer can shop with your wallet, and should move your funds to another bank if you’re unhappy with the security practices of your current institution.

Also, don’t re-use passwords. In fact, wherever possible don’t use passwords at all. Instead, choose passphrases over passwords (remember, length is key). Unfortunately, passphrases may not be possible because some banks have chosen to truncate passwords after a certain number of characters, and to disallow special symbols.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to use the same password across multiple sites, then a password manager is definitely for you. That’s because password managers pick strong, long and secure passwords for you and the only thing you have to remember is a single master password.

Please consider any two-step or two-factor authentication options your financial institution may offer, and be sure to take full advantage of that when it’s available. Also, ask your bank to require a unique verbal password before discussing any of your account details over the phone; this prevents someone from calling in to your bank and convincing a customer service rep that he’s you just because he can regurgitate your static personal details.

Finally, take steps to prevent your security from being backdoored by your mobile provider: Check out last week’s tips on blocking mobile number port-out scams, which thieves sometimes use in cashing out hacked bank accounts.