Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Database Company Hacked
fermion writes "The NYT(FRR) and others are reporting that a hacker has broken into a Acxiom server. Acxiom evidently is "one of the world's largest consumer database companies" and serves most top credit card companies and retail banks. There are a few items that stand out in this case. First, Acxiom had no idea that the breach occurred until the company was contacted by the police. Second, the theft was an inside job. The suspect, now in police custody, was an employee with legitimate access to the information. It amazes me that a such a company would have such lax security as to allow an insider to browse supposedly private data at will. Third, the company is taking no responsibility for the break in other than reporting it to the clients, who then may or may not inform their customers." Acxiom is a Certified Participant in the BBBOnline Privacy Program.
This is, unfortunately, the real world. Lax security such as this is the norm. "Need-to-know" is a term which doesn't seem to exist in the security policies of these companies. Insider information will always be leaked by someone out of curiosity or some malicious impulse. They're lucky they were able to find out who it was! At least maybe now they're more likely to improve their security and get it up to scratch. (But probably not.)
Bash script for FP whores
Translation: The names of the directories weren't personal data...The files in the directories? well they had the SSN/DOB/Address etc. So, technically, some of the data was personal and some wasn't.
whenever a company gives you a chance to Opt Out, take it, no matter what the hassles. this keeps your personal information from getting into databases like this and ensures that even if - as in this case - the information "owner" denies accountability, you still have some protection from recent state and federal legislation.
...
sometimes it's good to use the system
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
At least as of a couple of years ago, INTERNAL security threats were really the major issue for most companies. Despite the fact that insider breaches probably tend to get less press, I bet this is still the case, although I don't know for sure. Anyone?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
While it isn't really anyones fault if a good hacker gets to them (especially on the inside!) This raises a really good legal point. YOU SHOULDN'T DATA MINE UNLESS YOU CAN PROTECT THE DATA!
That company took on a huge responsibility when they started tracking millions of consumers. And they should be held responsible for any damages that occur do to dissemination of private information.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Since the alleged hack was an 'inside job' by a person who had access to the data, is it news at all? I mean, we heard recently that some Pakistani broke into Passport .Net and could reset passwords at will. That was more dangerous.
Mere access to credit card numbers and the corresponding user list does not constitute a major threat, IMO. Most credit card users are indemnified against thefts, misuse etc. The same can't be said about Hotmail hacks or even Windows hacks.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Acxiom warned TRUSTe members in late 2002 that "conditions look right for the 'Perfect Storm' of privacy legislation next year." Yeah, scary, the government might insist that customers have some privacy.
I wish I could have seen the look on their faces when the government called them up to let them know their own employee had stolen their customers' private data.
So not a hacker then. Or a cracker either, to keep another section of the crowd happy.
This sounds like straight abuse of confidential information. No computers required, no lax security required. A person with legitimate access to data went bad. As such, it's not really a criticism of Axiom's security policies . It is, however, a criticism of their hiring and monitoring policies.
Cheers,
Ian
Anybody know how the recent California law requiring companies to disclose when their data is compromised would apply to this case? If the primary victim in this case notifies its clients (call them secondary victims), are they then required (if they do biz in California) to notify the tertiary victims (their customers)?
Just wondering how all of this may play out...
The person had legitimate access to the system. I wouldn't call using your legitimate access to then, *GASP*, access that system, a hack.
About a year or so ago people started getting spam addressed to the wrong "John Smith". Some folks tracked the spam to Axciom. It appears that they'd started selling epending services for their clients.
Basically a client supplies information about the consumer (name, partial address, etc.) to Axciom. Axciom then takes their best guess as to what the Email address for the consumer might be.
Where the problems come with this approach when you have a common name and your address information is incomplete. Axciom will happily give the client the buest guess, and the client will happily spam the living ****loads out of whoever's email address they can get their hands on.
But, hey, you can always opt-out...one client at a time...
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
"Third, the company is taking no responsibility for the break in other than reporting it to the clients, who then may or may not inform their customers."
Saddly, our government doesn't seem to be too... enthusiastic about stopping this type of stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm a libertarian at heart, I think the government should stay out until absolutely necessary, but this is a case where it's gone too far. I don't trust the consumer enough to protect his own rights.
Anyway, with the current corporate situation, and the examples set by Microsoft et al, IT has grown into a industry with no personal responsibility and very questionable morals.
I can't say this surprises me much.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
General Conditions
The organization's website or service is online. If not yet launched, the organization's website or service is substantially complete and available for evaluation.
The organization has adopted and implemented an online privacy notice (including an effective date) and posted this notice on the website or online service.
The organization has paid the application and evaluation fees; completed the BBBOnLine Privacy Business Application and required portions of the BBBOnLine Privacy Assessment Questionnaire. The organization has signed and returned the BBBOnLine Privacy Participation Agreement.
A specific individual has been charged with the responsibility for implementing and overseeing the privacy notice for the website or online service. If the organization's application for a BBBOnLine privacy seal does not cover all its websites or online services, and all the websites and online services of its corporate affiliates, then it must be clear to web-visitors relying on the display of the seal, which parts of the websites or online services are covered and which parts are not.
Any organization whose website or online service is directed to children under the age of 13, or who collects personally identifiable information from a particular individual actually known to be under the age of 13, must comply with the substantive requirements of the BBBOnLine children's seal program in addition to the requirements of the general BBBOnLine privacy seal.
Geez, even the submitters don't RTFA, do they? From the NYT:
The suspect was not an Acxiom employee, but an employee of one of Acxiom's clients (banks, cc companies, etc.). He had access to the server, but he cracked the server to access information from other Acxiom clients as well. So yes, this is a cracked server, which BTW was placed outside the company firewall. I'm no security expert, but doesn't that sound stupid to anybody else?
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
So you're "amazed" that a database company has employees who have access to their database(s)? How excactly is it that Acxiom should do its job while preventing its employees from ever working with the data? Unless the description of the theft is inaccurate, this has nothing to do with hacking and is merely a misuse of priviledges. If the armored car driver steals the contents of the armored car, is it because the car wasn't secure enough?
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
I read three versions of the story (courtesy of the Google News link). None of them specified what the job description of the perpetrator was, although I'll infer that because he had "legitimate access" (wording per the SilconValley.com verison of the story) to the servers where the information was kept, he wasn't, say, a janitor. So why the histrionics on the submitter's part about how "such a company would have such lax security as to allow an insider to browse supposedly private data at will." Dude, the guy had access. I'm a systems administrator, I can read my co-workers' email at will. If I suddenly "went rogue" without warning, not a lot you could do about it, huh? At some level, you just have to trust your employees.
What's funnier is the universal use of the word "hacker" in the various writeups of this incident. The guy had access already. He didn't hack his way into anything. Back when I worked retail, if our credit card receipts didn't add up to what the system thought we should have at the end of the day, we'd have to do a "list print" - we'd go to our little VeriFone CC terminals and have it print a record of every transaction it could remember. It had a 255 transaction memory, if my own memory serves, complete with amount, timestamp, and - wait for it - credit card number. So, if I printed out a list of 255 credit card numbers and went on a buying spree with other people's money, would you say I was a "hacker" then?
The reaction of the company in this case, not notifying potential targets, and not putting safeguards in place, suggests that their attitude is to wait and hope that the problem will go away. However, the biggest security hole (in terms of potential damage) in any system is the possibility of abuse by trusted insiders. This suggests that Axciom will have this problem again.
Oh, and some kind of link to an article would have been nice.
The Amazing Bread Nipple
Credit Card information? That's nothing....
I work in Benefits Delivery, and odds are if you work for a Fortune 100, I have access to every bit of your retirement income data. The depth and breadth of the personal information we store is staggering. The number of people with unfettered and untraceable access to that information is disturbing. The fact that we will begin outsourcing many of our operations to India in a few months is downright frightening.
At any point, someone who has been with the company for only a few days would be able to change your 401(k)investment elections, transfer your retirement savings money between funds, set up an unauthorized beneficiary for you... all without the possibility of being traced.
Even assuming that all of our employees are honest, the possibility for errors is enough to make you want to start storing all of your savings under your mattress in a sock! Without going into too much detail, last week one of our client teams accidently wiped out all of the balances for the entire population in their production database. That was 10,000 people who suddenly lost their retirement incomes! How was it fixed? They used a week old backup and guessed about what the updated amounts should have been.
Of course, there is nothing that you can do about any of this but keep a vigilant watch on your retirement accounts. There is no "opt-out" option. In many cases, you wont even know that we are managing your benefits.
This is the world we live in. There is no privacy any more and nothing is ever truly secure.
People carry their wallets in their back pockets. People leave windows unlocked. People trust their neighbors. People think their data is secure.
A good thief/crook/whatever is someone who exploits this feeling of security, not breaking into a secure system.
This guy just screwed up and got caught. I bet this happens a lot more than we think, thanks to our sense of security.
First rule of database administration..
THE ADMINISTRATOR DOES NOT EVER, FOR ANY REASON, TOUCH THE DATA.
Second rule?
The people inputting the data cannot query the data.
Third rule?
The people who query the data, cannot modify the queries.
The second and third are not nearly as important as the first. If you work in a company that violates the first rule, you should immediately walk into the office of your CEO and demand he commit seppuku.
I keep seeing posts from the clueless whining about, "Well of course they had access!" True, someone ultimately has to have some type of access to the data. However, the access should be restricted far beyond the idea of, "Oh, the DBA can just pull up whatever he wants."
Sheesh. Now I know why I can't get a job, and companies who are laying you people off are checking out India and Russia.
I'd be fucking sour on US 'techs', too.
As a former employee at Acxiom (Conway offices), let me jump in here.
I worked as a developer on one of their primary marketing campaign management tools. As part of this, I had access to all of our particular customers (not in the company, just the customers who used our tool) data. This was absolutely nececesary for us to track down client-specific problems.
The comapny did have very good policies restricting access to data access to only those who needed it (and only the data that they needed). Keep in mind that Acxiom is one of the largest data processing centers in the world.. manay many many terrabytes of information are processed at their facilities. So it's possible for someone to get at quite a bit of data if they worked for the right company.
More than once people where fired during the two years I worked there for misuse of data. Usually, it would be people looking up data about famous people or someone that was making news for whatever reason. Curiosity and all..
The person that did the 'break in' was likely either a programmer or more likely a data auditor. The auditors are people who randomly grab information from the database and check it against other sources to verify that a 3-year old kid didn't somehow make it into the database or what not. They have access to the data, and can pull out large pieces of it without raising eye-brows. I know this was raised as a security concern at some point..
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!