23 hoursWhy not just give the app away and let people access the content without having them sign up? Oh right… The people are the product.
As it often is, the source has more information, and significantly so. I also find it much easier and more informative to read. Simple direct speech, headlines, more concrete on what is exposed, more technical details, etc.
They didn’t just send one email to report the vulnerability.
and on January 3rd I emailed nine people: the general info address, six individual staff members at clicktopray.org, and two contacts at popesprayer.va (the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network). No response. From any of them.
For July they have three entries of ‘reported to Journalist’ (“Dark Reading”), journalist contacted the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, and ‘still no response’.
They also posted an update about it being fixed on 2026-07-24 that it has been fixed.
The authorization check is there now: request your own user ID and you still get your email back, request someone else’s and you get a public profile. Names are supposed to be public on a platform where you pray alongside other people, so what’s left is what was always meant to be visible.
I also never got an email. Not an acknowledgment, not a thank you, not a “we’ve addressed this.”
Given that The Register posted this article on 2026-07-24 22 UTC it must have been very unfortunate timing. Presumably they didn’t check the source again before pressing publish? And also haven’t noticed or bothered to include an information update.
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
the API endpoint GET
[]will return user data for any account - not just your own account - so long as you supply a valid, five-digit user ID. It doesn’t perform any authorization check or ownership validation. “Just increment the number and get someone else’s data,” she wrote.This data includes users’ email addresses, first and last names, country, dates of birth, and whether the account has been deleted, and the API exposes all 719,517 accounts on the prayer site. “With sequential user IDs and no rate limiting, an attacker could enumerate every single account on the platform,” the hacker explained. “One GET request per user. for i in range(1, 719518): scrape(). That’s it. That’s the exploit.”
My God, that’s horrific. Plus it doesn’t even delete your data if you delete your account, it’s still vulnerable.
I wonder of the vatican is part of the gdpr…
Would be funny to read about the church getting sued for that.- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
I don’t know much about GDPR… is it illegal to have badly written software like this? Technically the user is bypassing normal usage and “hacking” the API
Negligence to delete the account data after termination is a reason to be fined.
They don’t need to keep that data.
Afaik the only reason would be if MTX were offered (for book-keeping reasons)
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
Maybe I should remove that from my comment lol, I feel like I’m contributing to a data breach or something
- 1 day
It is in the article doesn’t matter if you remove it. The moment the article became public it is already too late.
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
I know, but a lot of people don’t click the article, they just look at headline + comments, so it’s still a reduction of visibility or an extra step. My comment is like exposing the endpoint right there front and centre. Plus, I don’t like being personally responsible for any data breach. Maybe it’s just a tiny thing but it felt like the right thing to do
- Zeoic@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
5 digit user ids, yet over 700k users? Im sure they must have gone up to 6 digits
- ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
I tried the endpoint. 5 digits always gives you a valid user, 6 stops working after some point.
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish1 day
They probably meant 6 digit and it was a typo. The rest of the article references 6 digits. If it’s just an integer (highly likely) it would go up to 10 digits or roughly 2 billion max users. My old coworkers and I used to joke that hitting
INTEGER.MAX_VALUEfor your customer ID is a good problem to have - Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Unless by “digit” they mean any alphanumeric.
You’ve got a lot of options if you go to a 5 characters with letters.
Which they’d kind of have to with 700k users if it’s 5 characters.
If it’s case insensitive, you’ve got 60,000,000+ combinations, and if case sensitive then 916,000,000+ combinations.
- ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish1 day
It’s numerical only, but the number doesn’t need leading 0s so anything from 1 to 6 digits might be a valid user ID.
- Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
That would be an absolute nightmare to administer lol. Though I guess that tracks.
1, 01, 001, 0001, and 00001 would all be different users
- Tetragrade@leminal.spaceEnglish22 hours
I expect they’re using some kind of authentication framework that supports full names in its User entity, and just went with that without considering whether it’s sensible.
Looks like you can leave comments on prayers? Could also be that they want a particular aesthetic where everyone has their innate “Christian Name”, instead of a username, which is assocated with left wing ideas like digital utopianism. Because…
Real names also enforce a complex of related authoritarian information structures i.e. they provide information about a person’s culture, race, gender, which you can use to assign them a place within your religion’s moral hierarchy.
- jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
So they know what sins I’ve committed.
They don’t follow my mastodon feed. It’s much easier that way.
They need the list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
Or is that the other fella?
- tacosanonymous@mander.xyzEnglish2 days
Historically? Abuse.
I’m sure they say it’s for security : blocking bots, etc and getting their newsletter or some shit.
- darthinvidious@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
“We are gathered here today because your thoughts and prayers did not secure our app”
- Gork@sopuli.xyzEnglish2 days
The Catholic Church is known for a lot of things. Keeping up with the times (or cyber security) isn’t one of them.
- jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
Cyber security isn’t in the bible. Time for an update.
Cyprus 1:1
…. Copy pasta of NIST security standards circa May 2026 …
Nothing could go wrong with this.
I thought they were known for keeping things under the rug/hidden. Only priest’s not follower’s personal data I guess.
- username_1@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish2 days
Vatican Programmer: Oh, mighty Lord, sitting in the Sky, show me the way to this bug I seek and eliminate ineffectiveness. Amen.
It connects users across the globe to pray for the Holy Father’s intentions, and as of July 2026, it has 719,517 registered accounts
The only two screenshots they have on GPlay feature prayer scheduling and sharing your prayer.
Damn, with that many people praying these prayers are about to get real effective. I’m surprised we haven’t heard of their effects and effectiveness yet.
- caurvo@aussie.zoneEnglish2 days
I’d like to see the media mix modeling data to really assess the ROP of these prayers. Cross check that against miracle count and we’ll really be cooking.
- it_depends_man@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
See, humans are smart. Praying and blessing things yourself? By hand, so to speak? Boooo! Pedestrian! Ain’t nobody got time fo dat!
the Tibetans believe the prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread the good will and compassion into all pervading space. Therefore, prayer flags are thought to bring benefit to all.
By hanging flags in high places the Lung ta will carry the blessings depicted on the flags to all beings. As wind passes over the surface of the flags, which are sensitive to the slightest movement of the wind, the air is purified and sanctified by the mantras.
I choose to believe that the prayer app is just a hip, new and with it innovation in prayer spreading.
It still works lmao
No email and some other stuff though… maybe they just removed that from the endpoint?
From the source blog post, which has the update
The authorization check is there now: request your own user ID and you still get your email back, request someone else’s and you get a public profile. Names are supposed to be public on a platform where you pray alongside other people, so what’s left is what was always meant to be visible.
If sinners go to hell, do you even have to do due diligence? Let us pray for the vulnerability to disappear.
- jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
That’s the official Catholic hook up app. It’s different.
Actually….
- CriticalMiss@lemmy.worldEnglish1 day
Why should they care about security user data? We’re all equal before God.
I’ve seen so many stories about leaks that I skip most of them. I’m glad I didn’t skip this one.
