Berkeley Grads' Identity Data Stolen

yali writes "Did you get a graduate degree from Berkeley? Or maybe you just applied but didn't go there? If so, your identity may have been stolen. A laptop was stolen containing names, social security numbers, birthdates, and addresses of grad students, alumni, and applicants. University police suspect that the thief just wanted the laptop, but the irony of California's mandatory notification law is that the thief may now know they have something even more valuable. Berkeley has set up a website with information on the breach."

Comments

Secret

[BWJones]

Personal data need to be treated as government certification of Secret documents, or at least give it Collateral classification level treatment. When personal data is checked out and allowed to be placed on laptops or other portable devices for removal from the central location where the data is stored, personal responsibility needs to be ensured and access should be confirmed by 1) need to know basis and 2) those who are trained to undergo training with confidential data.

Granted, this will not prevent all leaks as even the State Department, CIA and FBI have had problems with missing laptops, but they are getting better about data confidentiality and security through training and implementation of protocols designed to limit leaks and unauthorized access.

Re:Secret

[hackstraw]

Personal data need to be treated as government certification of Secret documents, or at least give it Collateral classification level treatment. When personal data is checked out and allowed to be placed on laptops or other portable devices for removal from the central location where the data is stored, personal responsibility needs to be ensured and access should be confirmed by 1) need to know basis and 2) those who are trained to undergo training with confidential data.

That sounds fine and good, and what _should_ be done. But there first needs to be some desire or interest for the government to do such a thing, and there is no evidence of any interest whatsoever. I see government sponsored prime time TV ads reminding us to behave and not get high and to be good mommies and daddies by paying attention to our kids and their homework, but I have yet to of seen an ad about protecting my government initiated and issued social security number. Its still legal for just about anybody to ask for my government social security number with no laws protecting me if that person mishandles or misuses my SSN. Identity theft is practically legal, and there is little to no initiative to pursue or prosecute people that steal (or infringe for those people that are anal about the word "steal") people's identities.

So why doesn't the government actually care about this? Because people are adaptive, and will basically stay at their status quo after an identity theft. A poor person's identity theft will keep them poor, and being that they have little credit, not much theft is going on, and their credit is probably bad already, and they are already behind on their bills, etc. A middle class person will suffer a temporary setback (probably most vulnerable of the classes), but they aren't going to loose their job because someone opened up a bunch of credit accounts in their name. In other words the government will still get paid one way or another. Rich people will still be rich, regardless of an identity theft, and its likely they will take care of the pursuit of the thief themselves.

Basically, from the government's point of view, identity theft is a victimless crime. I know no one personally that has been affected by it, but I've read stories here and other places about it. It basically seems like a pain in the ass, kinda like being hassled by the law or a divorce, but life goes on, and I would only expect for it to escalate a little higher over the next couple of years and then taper off some.

Re:Secret

[stinerman]

You raise good points, but what must happen is that people need to be more careful with their personal information. Most people gladly give away their phone number to Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc. at the drop of a hat. I'll bet you ~50% of people would give their SSN to any brick and mortar retailer (but not those hackers on the internets) if asked to do so. Most of them don't know that they can refuse to give out any of their personal information (of course, the cost may be not being able to do business with that store), but probably would so they wouldn't be put-out by having to go to another store.

Convenience trumps all with security being a close second and privacy a distant third.

Why do they need the SSNs?

[lecithin]

This is a pet peeve and it is just getting worse.

Why does a school need our SSNs? Why does anybody outside the government?

Here in Minnesota, I need to provide my SSN now just for fishing and hunting licenses. WTF?

Re:Why do they need the SSNs?

[DarkTempes]

they use it as a personal identification number (which it isn't supposed to be used as but since everyone has a unique one it makes it easy for them to do it).

they don't NEED to but they CAN and so they do.

Re:Why do they need the SSNs?

[matth]

I bet you don't NEED to.. just tell them you don't have one... they can't make you give them something you don't have... that's what I do.. I've never had a problem.

Re:Why do they need the SSNs?

[russler]

Think of how many institutions we deal with require our SSN. With Social Security supposedly going defunct in 2041 (from the headlines) do you suppose all of these organizations are going to be so forward thinking as to choose a new "key" for each of us by then? How much is it going to suck for kids in the future to be issued a Social Security Number when it's used for pretty much everything under the sun EXCEPT for obtaining Social Security benefits.

Re:Why do they need the SSNs?

[vettemph]

Score:+5 Funny?
More like
Score:+5 Scary!

Privacy

[Tom]

Let's hope the sheer amount of identify theft problems will spearhead a push for more privacy protection.
I don't just mean everyone gathering less personal information, I also mean making sure that what they do gather is adequately protected. You have a resonsibility to your clients, customers, whatever.

Yeah, but what's the thief gonnado with it?

[91degrees]

Identity information is only useful to people who know how to perpetrate identity theft. If this crook knew how to do this the chances are he'd already have looked. And he has to realise that it is the laptop he stole.

It's a problem if he knows this and knows someone who knows what to do with the data, but at least with disclosure the victims know they are at risk.

My identity stolen?

[anthony_dipierro]

No, my identity may have been copied, but my identity certainly wasn't stolen.

Re:It's easy to encrypt in Windows

[Zemplar]

"Windows, love it or hate it, makes it very easy to secure your data on a laptop. Just right click, and buried somewhere in there (Advanced options or something) tick the Encrypted option."

I'd bet your paycheck that the password to login is on a post-it stuck to the laptop's keyboard!

"Of course, there are issues with losing the encryption key, but as it's a laptop, and probably only has the one harddrive, I would expect the person to be keeping a backup somewhere else."

HAHAHAHAA! A Windows user? I wouldn't count on it!

Why all on a latop?

[WebHostingGuy]

Why was all of this on a laptop?

Sensitive information should be placed in a central repository and then encrypted and guarded. The mere fact that someone can download this to a laptop shows that their mindset is that this information is just normal stuff like a word document. Before you can have true security organizations need to get this first.

Re:Too much

[tuxette]

I was about to ask the same thing.

What a lot of "security officers" seem to neglect is that an important part of security is to make what one would want to steal physically difficult, even impossible, to do so. This would perhaps work as a last resort against other stupidities such as forgetting to encrypt or letting non-authorized persons in a restricted zone.

Incidentally, a laptop doesn't even need to be stolen. Call any train station or airline and ask them how many laptops are forgotten each day. Each week. Each month.

Nobody raises an eyebrow when they see someone carrying a laptop on a university campus. Someone trying to haul a big machine would draw more attention.

Re:It's easy to encrypt in Windows

[canuck57]

Windows, love it or hate it, makes it very easy to secure your data on a laptop

I am not sure Windows has anything to do with it as any OS supports crypto, the question is why did an application designed to hold social security numbers on a insecure PC not encrypt the data store?

Users will not do anything they do not have to. An encrypting/decrypting files leave copies of data un-encrypted on the disk. So blaming the user is not it either.

I would blame whomever aquired and authorized the use of the software (even if it is the user). This application was not designed for this type of use. And how did the data get on the laptop? Likely unencrypted ftp or perhaps a insecure CIFS share where the passwords are routinely cracked.

And how much spyware did the use load on the system?

Far too few are really too interested in security. For many it is lip service as they continue to practice careless computing.

get them SSN's

[Anonymous Coward]

They will need one eventually.

Without an SSN you can't get financial aid. I was born on a commune near the Canadian border and didn't have either a birth certificate or SSN for many, many years.

Eventually I got the opportunity to go to Moscow. It took me almost 2 years to get a passport. Needless to say I missed the trip.

I then applied to college and got accepted. Since we are dirt poor I applied for financial aid. They promptly said, sorry you are not enlisted with the selective service. I said no shit. They said no money. I then went to enlist with the SS (selective service) and they said "who the fuck are you, what do mean you don't have an SSN, get one and come back." I finally got a SSN when I was 17 years old, enlisted Selective service, got financial aid, went to UCLA and now am your typical suburban programmer with a wife and family (my way of rebelling against being born in the fucking woods).

The moral, get your kids a SSN. Don't punish them because you hate the government.

Is it really irony?

[Sigma 7]

but the irony of California's mandatory notification law is that the thief may now know they have something even more valuable.

Unless there is going to be an unconditional format of the hard drive in question, either the thief or the fence (i.e. buyer) would have discovered the data eventually. Given that it's most likely an MS Access database, it shouldn't be too much of a problem extracting those numbers from the file.

In the event that difficulties are encountered, it's not too hard to find someone on the black market who will crack the information (e.g. brute forcing login passwords to gain access to whatever that follows.)

Any irony obtained by the law will only accelerate what would have occurred normally.

Los Alamos

[goombah99]

The problem is not just education. One has to create situations that engender proper handling of data. For example, if confidential data is only permitted on removable media and that media has to be a vault every night, signed in and signed out then its you have a situation where the person using the data and all of his or her collegues can tell by inspection if the person is not fulfilling their obligations. If its up to the person to always rememeber then eventually conveinence will override caution.

Los alamos national lab, contrary to the implied conclusions of all its bad press and false accusations, has in fact shown that the removable disk method is an excellent means of both tracking secret data and minimizing copies of it.

And even better approach is to make it even easier for people to maintain their data in secure forms without inhibiting their use of it. A good example of this is the macintosh laptop. Every macintosh laptop can transparently AES128 encrypt the users home directory and decrypt it upon log in. Of course you can set that up on a linux or Windows machine, but that's not the point. The point is it's already there on every mac ready to go by chekcing a box. It's not something that one has to spec. If you have to trasnfer the data to another machine you dont have to worry about setting this up. Co-workers know your machine has it. It departments can even enforce its use without penalizing the user. Ubiquity and ease of use is the key to getting encryption part of peoples work habits.

I work in aplace where wireless internet connections are not allowed in the building. Yet when I go on travel I use it. Like everyone else I have to remember to turn off the wireless in the laptop before jacking into the building ethernet. So do you think people remember to do that. Well a lot of the time yes but many times no. but with a mac laptop its trivial to configure it so the wireless and ethernet adapters cant be on at the same time. it's impossible to forget. By the way my company spends money to pay people to walk the halls with wireless sniffers and has to discipline workers that forget. All of that is lost productivity as well as the security exposure.

So in conclusion, any company that is concerned about data security that does not use macintoshes is wasting its money. Sure you can make a windows system secure but its the little daily things that keep it secure.

Whoever lost the laptop should be liable

[blueZ3]

This kind of thing just ticks me off no end. Some Berkeley bureaucrat leaves a laptop in their car, which will no doubt result in 1000s of stolen identities, lives ruined, tens-of-thousands of wasted hours? and they?re likely not even going to get a slap on the wrist. Personally, I?d make any individual who is responsible for this kind of thing financially liable for damages. I?d also try them for criminal negligence and possibly for aiding and abetting fraud. Then I?d let each person who has their identity stolen take one swing at them with an aluminum baseball bat. Currently, there?s just no accountability for this type of thing.

So what is the answer?

[Some Slashdot Reader]

So what is the answer? Consider the following:

-An application requires that the user be able to process personal data about clients.
-The Social Security Number and other "sensitive" data is required by US government.
-The application must work across a wide geographical area. The application is on PCs that although locked up in buildings, could be stolen.
-Regardless of connectivity the data application must perform all functions, access all historical records of the client. So it must have some sort of local cache to enable work when connectivity is not available. (Yes, there are many places where reliable high speed network access is not available.)
-Data is reported periodically for aggregation by encrypted synchronization to a central repository.

Considering this, what does one do?
What local cache of the data could you possibly use and how would you secure it?

If someone steals the pc, how would they NOT be able to get into it? And how do I secure hundreds of pcs spread over hundreds of miles that are not connected to a single network?

If I encrypt individual fields in the local database, how do I know when I have done enough of them?

For that matter, what if someone steals the entire central database repository? How would it be possible to guarnatee they can't get it?

I'm dealing with shades of gray- when is the gray dark enough?