OkCupid Vulnerabilities Let Hackers to Steal the Personal and Sensitive Data of Users

OkCupid is one of the most popular dating apps that has more than 50 million registered users and used in 110 countries. The app was launched first in 2004 by four friends from Harvard.

In 2019, the app claims that they made 91 million connections at an average with an average of 50,000 dates arranged every week. In the pandemic, they observed a 20% increase in the conversation.

Here to make connections, OkCupid builds personal profiles for all its users by requesting detailed personal information to make a match. The sensitive information is used by hackers to launch targeted attacks.

Multiple Flaws Discovered

The vulnerabilities found by researchers with app version Version 40.3.1 which was released on Apr 29, 2020, the most recent version is Version 43.3.2, which was released yesterday.

The app uses deep links functionality which lets attackers include a custom link with the app manifest file to open a web view (browser) window with JavaScript enabled and it returns the user cookies.

Check Point researchers found https://www.OkCupid.com, is vulnerable to an XSS attack. The injection point found under user settings functionality.

In the web, the platform found that the CORS(Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) policy of the API server api.OkCupid.com is not configured properly and any origin can send requests to the server and read its’ responses.

The chain of vulnerabilities could allow attackers too;

• Expose users’ sensitive data stored on the app.
• Perform actions on behalf of the victim.
• Steals users’ profile and private data, preferences, and characteristics.
• Steals users’ authentication token, users’ IDs, and other sensitive information such as email addresses.
• Send the data gathered to the attacker’s server.

Check Point Research reported the vulnerabilities to OkCupid and they managed to fix the vulnerabilities in 48hrs. “Not a single user was impacted by the potential vulnerability on OkCupid,” the company said.

Users are recommended to update with the laters version(43.3.2) to mitigate the risks.

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