A year ago, the Zoom web-conferencing software was found to using a request to a local web server to open its application from a web page, with the result that 'a malicious attacker is able to forcibly join anyone with the vulnerable software installed into a video call with their camera active by default'.Sell more on Mercari with these proven methods. There is also the question of under what circumstances web browsers should allow requests to services running on localhost.

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - already transposed into law in the UK - is another relevant piece of legislation, setting out the conditions for when gathering personal data is lawful and giving individuals rights to obtain and erase personal data in most circumstances. The bank retorted that it was perfectly legal and argued that the port scans helped it to pick up evidence of malware infections on customers' systems. The Register has come across ThreatMetrix before, when Halifax bank was found to be conducting port scans, with some claiming that the practice was in breach of the UK's Computer Misuse Act. While it is likely eBay is using the practice to detect fraud, there are a number of issues concerning privacy, consent and security. There is no suggestion that eBay is trying to make use of services like VNC to connect to your computer. We have only seen it run on Windows, and normally only on the first visit to eBay after some unspecified period.īank on it: It's either legal to port-scan someone without consent or it's not, fumes researcher READ MORE The port scanning script does not always run. The script is running locally so it is not testing for ports exposed to the internet, but rather for what is running on your local network. The script attempts WebSocket connections to a number of ports, including 3389 (Microsoft remote desktop), 5931 (Ammy Admin remote desktop), 6333 (VNC remote connection), 7070 (realAudio and Apple QuickTime streaming) and more. The behaviour, however, was described as 'clearly malicious' by security researcher Charles Belmer. Updated Users visiting eBay have spotted that the website runs port scans against their computer, using the localhost address to inspect what may be running on your machine.įraud is a big issue for eBay, and if the purpose of scanning for remote-control access ports is an attempt to detect criminals logged into a user's computer in order to impersonate them on the tat bazaar, it could have some value.

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