Simon Willison's Weblog: hotmail

The Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack

2009-07-20T00:55:35+00:00

Long-winded explanation of the recent Twitter break-in, but you can scroll to the bottom for a numbered list summary. The attacker first broke in to a Twitter employee’s personal Gmail account by “recovering” it against an expired Hotmail account (which the attacker could hence register themselves). They gained access to more passwords by searching for e-mails from badly implemented sites that send you your password in the clear.

Tags: gmail, hotmail, passwords, security, twitter

Google wants your Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL contacts

2008-09-15T10:39:47+00:00

Google wants your Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL contacts

And they’re using the password anti-pattern to get them! Despite both Yahoo! and Hotmail (and Google themselves; not sure about AOL) offering a safe, OAuth-style API for retrieving contacts without asking for a password. This HAS to be a communications failure somewhere within Google. Big internet companies stand to lose the most from widespread abuse of the anti-pattern, because they’re the ones most likely to be targetted by phishers. Shameful.

Tags: aol, ffs, google, hotmail, oauth, passwordantipattern, phishing, security, shameful, yahoo

Why I can't put Tibet in my Hotmail address

2008-08-10T22:41:18+00:00

Why I can't put Tibet in my Hotmail address

Apparently it’s because “TIB” is name of a bank in Florida, and Microsoft are trying to prevent phishers from creating e-mail addresses that include the names of financial institutions.

Tags: hotmail, microsoft, phishing, tibet

Find Your Friends

2008-04-01T01:01:38+00:00

Find Your Friends

Flickr have added a characteristically classy friend import feature, pulling from Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail address books without any unhygienic password sharing. It’s a crying shame that the Yahoo! contacts API they are using isn’t available outside the company.

Tags: flickr, gmail, hotmail, passwordantipattern, portablesocialnetworks, yahoo

Windows Live Contacts API

2008-03-07T17:57:03+00:00

Windows Live Contacts API

I didn’t realise Microsoft already have a contacts API for Live (which presumably covers hotmail as well).

Via Ewout

Tags: contacts, hotmail, microsoft, portablesocialnetworks, windowslive

Migrating Microsoft Hotmail from FreeBSD to Microsoft Windows 2000

2007-05-04T17:54:46+00:00

Migrating Microsoft Hotmail from FreeBSD to Microsoft Windows 2000

I’d like to see them try that with Yahoo!’s 100+ properties.

Tags: freebsd, hotmail, microsoft, open-source, windows, yahoo