One day I was logging onto MySpace using the iPhone app, I was curious to try using my username (it’s your vanity URL, if not set it’s your Friend ID), and it worked. Now I’m not sure why MySpace freaks out over being able to login by the username because Facebook intentionally allowed logging in by username earlier this month.

Since this login works on the iPhone/iPod Touch, there has to be a way to bring it to the computer in order to use this method. Since my router is pretty much a Linux server running DHCP on it, I could easily run a packet sniffer in the middle to find out how the iPhone/iPod Touch was communicating to MySpace. The packet sniffer I used was shell based and is called Justniffer.

After figuring out the packet sniffer I figured out that the iPhone app uses SOAP+XML to exchange data. Once you type in the username and password, it sends the password in clear text to MySpace in order to create a hash and salt of the password. I am not sure why they really need to do this since you already sent the password over clear text, they could just save themselves a HTTP request by doing it in the actually login process.

Update 11/5: MySpace has fixed this issue and logging in by username no longer works. The following error now occurs, “The email supplied is not registered to a valid user.”

The first step of the authentication request makes the following HTTP request:

POST /SecurityService.asmx HTTP/1.1
Host: mobileservices.myspace.com
User-Agent: MySpace/1.6 CFNetwork/459 Darwin/10.0.0d3
Content-Length: 595
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Authorization: OAuth realm="http://mobileservices.myspace.com/",oauth_consumer_key="1000002",oauth_token="",oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",oauth_signature="MC37B2CcYBDeJPlT%2BT1jsjCZPSM%3D",oauth_timestamp="1256437313",oauth_nonce="9EC617B6-DEB7-427A-9463-B6AE3CFD8F4A",oauth_version="1.0"
Soapaction: urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices/GetSaltAndHash
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Cookie: SessionDDF1=2962622b49c74a011793142740791e622b72e026b3477387; SessionDDF2=22b8f3a96cb338ae3990d279b29cefa01e58e2c5118f4486
Connection: keep-alive

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
<soap12:Header>
<MySpace xmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<Version>iPhone: 1.6</Version>
<DeviceID>b6aaa9591ef5811e499ee1bf04758b3533eaccd7</DeviceID>
</MySpace>
</soap12:Header>
<soap12:Body>
<GetSaltAndHash xmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<request>
<TokenType>Mobile</TokenType>
<Clear>p@ssw0rd</Clear>
</request>
</GetSaltAndHash>
</soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>

In this example the password simply is p@ssw0rd. Notice how there is no spot for the username in this request, all it does is create a salt and hash based on that password. I have no idea why this is necessary but knowing MySpace they obviously think it is.

This request will outcome the following HTTP response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Length: 547
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Server: 7b262264f255ce9e4eea78ee5ed43e765b933575b6ad33d5
Set-Cookie: SessionDDF1=8c39718f6f8758c74900ce98793335c96e886d8666f52130; domain=.myspace.com; path=/
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:52:01 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<GetSaltAndHashResponsexmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<Results>
<Status>Success</Status>
<StatusCode>Success</StatusCode>
<SecurityComponents>
<Salt>Q8NysHYF/cKqV/+RES0NdA==</Salt>
<Hash>N+HrTQhAJencbKruQ2e8/qDKhELcJDq824aoSYzl5MA=</Hash>
</SecurityComponents>
</Results>
</GetSaltAndHashResponse>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Now since they have received the salt and hash, we can proceed onto step two of the authentication. This actually verifies the login information with the salt and hash along with the username or email it has received. This step makes the following HTTP request:

POST /SecurityService.asmx HTTP/1.1
Host: mobileservices.myspace.com
User-Agent: MySpace/1.6 CFNetwork/459 Darwin/10.0.0d3
Content-Length: 858
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Authorization: OAuth realm="http://mobileservices.myspace.com/",oauth_consumer_key="1000002",oauth_token="",oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",oauth_signature="L3vOxtNAADDGBRv2i16UvMoP97g%3D",oauth_timestamp="1256437314",oauth_nonce="E493D130-9496-4A17-A861-5862C657DF57",oauth_version="1.0"
Soapaction: urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices/Authenticate
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Cookie: SessionDDF1=2962622b49c74a011793142740791e622b72e026b3477387; SessionDDF2=22b8f3a96cb338ae3990d279b29cefa01e58e2c5118f4486
Connection: keep-alive

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap12:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
<soap12:Header>
<MySpace xmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<Version>iPhone: 1.6</Version>
<DeviceID>b6aaa9591ef5811e499ee1bf04758b3533eaccd7</DeviceID>
</MySpace>
</soap12:Header>
<soap12:Body>
<Authenticate xmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<request>
<RequestData>
<Hash>N+HrTQhAJencbKruQ2e8/qDKhELcJDq824aoSYzl5MA=</Hash>
<CaptchaInfo>
<CaptchaLevel>Medium</CaptchaLevel>
<CaptchaGuid></CaptchaGuid>
<CaptchaImageSize>Sz120</CaptchaImageSize>
<CaptchaText></CaptchaText>
</CaptchaInfo>
<Salt>Q8NysHYF/cKqV/+RES0NdA==</Salt>
<Credential>somerandomusername</Credential>
</RequestData>
</request>
</Authenticate>
</soap12:Body>
</soap12:Envelope>

In this request we have used the hash and salt, along with the username which is called Credential here. In this example it is somerandomusername. Now since this is all sent the following HTTP response occurs:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Length: 566
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Server: 12e0f2a61ef7e974de69e6f93fc8612bb56e8a9e86e1792c
Set-Cookie: SessionDDF1=ee28a6c308e5ab151a34f39f979df9e80737ca2a9eeb80d7; domain=.myspace.com; path=/
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:59:28 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<AuthenticateResponse xmlns="urn:MySpace.IntegrationServices">
<AuthenticateResult>
<StatusMessage>Invalid username or password.</StatusMessage>
<Status>Error</Status>
<ErrorInfo>
<Name>InvalidCredentials</Name>
<Description>Invalid username or password.</Description>
</ErrorInfo>
</AuthenticateResult>
</AuthenticateResponse>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Since the the password to somerandomusername is invalid, we are presented with “Invalid username or password.” I honestly do not understand why there needs to be a creation of the salt and hash before the actual authentication request is made.

Now since I know how the requests are made, I’ve wrote a program to emulate these requests. The program was created with Eclipse using Java 1.6.

The program can be downloaded here.
The source code is included and the program may be modified and redistributed freely.
DISCLAIMER: I am not liable for ANY damages caused by this program.

Here are screenshots of the program in use:

Arguments for the program.

Example of a failed login.

Example of a failed login on a locked out account. Notice in the response it says “There was an error in processing this request.”

Example of a successful login.