--- title: "Serious Hotmail Vulnerability: Easily Reset Anyone's Password" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/8/serious-hotmail-vulnerability-easily-reset-anyones-password.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/8/serious-hotmail-vulnerability-easily-reset-anyones-password.html" published: "2003-05-08T11:57:00" updated: "2003-05-08T11:57:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "If you havn't heard yet, A 'bug' was discovered in Microsoft's Hotmail service which would basically allow you, using a simple typing of a URL to your explorer bar, to reset the password of any HotMail User you'd like.…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Serious Hotmail Vulnerability: Easily Reset Anyone's Password By Roy Osherove May 8, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published May 8, 2003; technical details may be outdated. If you havn't heard yet, A 'bug' was discovered in Microsoft's Hotmail service which would basically allow you, using a simple typing of a URL to your explorer bar, to reset the password of any HotMail User you'd like. **Any user**. No hacking needed. You can read all about it in [This Post](http://dotnetweblogs.com/pscott/posts/6707.aspx) By Phil Scott. There will probably be a lot of babble about it, and the sensless bug that is exposed there and how MSFT's "Safe Computing" initiative is a joke and what not. I'd just like to say this: Whatever MSFT did or did not do, this is some major screw-up. It is one of those bugs that  is sooo simple to find and repair, it's a shame it had to come out like this. It does not have anything to do with anything else MSFT's been up to. It was just an honest, very stupid, mistake. And MS should pay for it big time if any damage was done. It will ,with all the media hype anyway. I'm saying this because I feel compelled to say that the media frenzy (or "BullSh\*t Storm" as some call it) that is about to go into circulation about this will, no doubt, be  (partly) misleading, Panicky, and gloating about this more then it should be. The only thing that should be spoken of is: The amount of damage that was done, How to repair it, MSFT's press releases about this and any other "to-the-point" matters. I wonder what would have happened if something like this was discovered in another company's ultra-secure system. Would they hype be just as big? would it go laregly unnoticed, or fade in 2 days? I wonder. ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - May 9, 2003 ### [What's On My Bookshelf](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/9/whats-on-my-bookshelf.html) - May 8, 2003 ### [The Unofficial "Mort" Logo Is Available](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/8/the-unofficial-quotmortquot-logo-is-available.html) - May 8, 2003 ### [Geeky .NET Desktop Wallpapers](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/8/geeky-net-desktop-wallpapers.html) - May 6, 2003 ### [A Solid Text Editor](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/5/6/a-solid-text-editor.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/