Is there some part of PCI auditing requirements that is getting misinterpreted by some auditors to demand this? Though in my experience with standards like this what auditors want to see and what the standards say often have only loose overlap anyhow.
It's pretty counterintuitive from an auditing perspective. If the PCI standards require server racks to be painted red, it's entirely normal for an auditor to ask to see them, and very suspicious for you to say that they're in an encrypted box where nobody can check if they're red or not. I don't mean to excuse it, but I can understand how the error happens.
This is true. Maybe it's someone seeing a requirement like "all passwords must conform to these rules" and deciding that it means they need to check them directly, instead of looking at the systems that enforce that constraint.
Right until the end I thought the guy was doing a social engineering penetration test, checking whether he could brow beat the server admins into bending over backwards to reveal this information.
The FSFE justly drew the line at providing private information of supporters. How many other customers of Nexi simply handed over such data 'because audit'?
Nexi’s mid-2025 statement notes that they’re finalizing imposition of a ‘one process, all subsidiaries’ auditing costs reduction program across all of their subsidiary banks. The FSFE was likely being (incorrectly) audited under business-provides-services rules imposed by the parent megacorp, rather than as whatever human-led interpretation the bank had used formally, or as whatever charities or PACs are called in the EU. Ironically, had they switched exclusively to freedom-restricted passkeys, they could have structured their credentials store to divulge no private information and no usable credentials while formally complying with the bank’s efforts to find cause to fire them as a customer. But I think the bank would still have just found another way to fire them regardless.
> Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. (“Nexi”) requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters.
I must be missing something, but why is there an expectation that clear text passwords would even be known?
We work with MLS provider(s) that requires us to keep plaintext password for our users and provide it on request in case of breach in the security of MLS Listing Information or a violation of MLS Rules.
The user is accessing only copy of their data in _our_ systems, the user has no contact with MLS itself directly or indirectly.
Sounds like someone is being "overenthusiastic" about interpreting the KYC/ALM regulations.
Combined with the FSFE not being your "usual" charitable or business organization so setting off auditor red flags and perhaps raising the risk profile of Nexi as a payment processor.
As an Italian living in another EU country, I always thought that the amount of (broken) bureaucracy of Italy was not particularly worse. However this story comes after a couple more I heard this week, in a line of absurd practice possibly due to absurd regulations.
Just a follow up: I wrote nexi germany via some contact form, that I will avoid using their services because of that story. They called me back and told me, that they asked the fsfe for a test account only. They also made an internal investigation, if someone asked for passwords of real accounts, which is a clear no-go for them.
27 comments
[1] https://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-audito...
> Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. (“Nexi”) requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters.
I must be missing something, but why is there an expectation that clear text passwords would even be known?
breach in the security of MLS Listing Information or a violation of MLS Rules.The user is accessing only copy of their data in _our_ systems, the user has no contact with MLS itself directly or indirectly.
Combined with the FSFE not being your "usual" charitable or business organization so setting off auditor red flags and perhaps raising the risk profile of Nexi as a payment processor.