Credit bureau Experian just fixed a weakness with a partner website that let anyone look up the credit score of tens of millions of Americans just by supplying their name and mailing address, KrebsOnSecurity learned. Though the flaw has been fixed according to Experian, the researcher, Bill Demirkapi, who reported the finding says he fears the same weakness may affect other lending websites that work with the credit bureau.
Demirkapi found he could access the Experian API directly and without any sort of authentication. He also noted that by entering all zeros in the “date of birth” field, he could pull a person’s credit score.
“No one should be able to perform an Experian credit check with only publicly available information,” he said. “Experian should mandate non-public information for promotional inquiries, otherwise an attacker who found a single vulnerability in a vendor could easily abuse Experian’s system.”
