Hackers could steal your Amazon account via pirated e-books

Downloading e-books for you Kindle from someone other than Amazon could actually be putting your account at risk, according to German researcher Benjamin Daniel Mussler.

Apparently a security flaw allows malicious code to be added to the e-book’s metadata, code which activates when you open up the Kindle Library web page, giving it access to your Amazon account.

Mussler reportedly told Amazon of this flaw back in 2012, and they promptly fixed the issue. It seems, however, that it was accidentally reintroduced in a later update. Whoops. The Digital Reader tested the bug, and confirmed that it is indeed possible access someone’s Amazon account with the code. So get your act together and fix things Amazon.

Fortunately Mussler says that books that are book through Amazon’s own Kindle store are unlikely to be affected by this problem.

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