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Digital Thieves Use Ex-Employees Accounts
prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running an article about a new generation of digital thugs. Using unsecured wireless networks, free e-mail accounts, a wealth of security knowledge, and, most important - employee passwords, thieves are getting access to valuable company databases. Once they're in, they start extorting the companies to pay up for them to leave. Otherwise phony e-mails to customers and sensitive information published publicly will lead to an embarrassment."
it seems like mostly smaller and medium-sized businesses would be vulnerable to this, not larger corporations, or perhaps a small division of a larger corp, because access to big cash usually requires the blackmailee to go through some kind of board of directors who are going to refuse to yield, while a more tightly-knit mom and pop shop is going to have no one to turn to. A big company could have all sorts of resources immediately available for damage control (e.g. warning customers of fraudulent information, quick access to high-level law enforcement, à la FBI). Sigh, and all because of wireless networks. When is Cisco, D-Link, Netgear, going to learn to turn on encryption by default? Microsoft learned the hard way; users are too damn stupid to secure anything on their own, and that includes business. That's what it comes down to, stupidity.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
3. Profit
But you do exactly one thing with a vehicle: you move stuff in it. It's an assembly of a few simple systems, including, usually, locks, AC, stereo, and the vehicle itself. Your car doesn't serve arbitrary media, facilitate content creation, and enable you to search the Internet and talk to your friends, as well as monitor itself, all with one complex system.
Sure, a computer isn't a single system, but it's a set of systems with a single interface, and your actions are rather more separated from effects than driving a car.
So if you want to have a computer that's configured so it'll 'just work', you need someone else to tell you what you're going to use it for. That's the only way to streamline the interface so people can maintain their laziness or stupidity, or not spend time they don't have to learn a complex interface.
Corporations, on the other hand, have special needs that a reduced interface would break. But they have the resources to hire people who do understand computers. Just like UPS hires mechanics to service its vehicles. There are two issues:
- Corporations don't want to spend more time and lose more money in implementing and testing secure systems--they want something that 'just works', not something that works well.
- The people being hired by corporations are probably incompetent or else uncaring, at least in the case of all those recent incidents such as the CardSystems breakin. Both factors are influenced by budgeting: corporations aren't spending enough to hire good IT people, and they aren't spending enough to pay their IT people to do a good job.
And I agree about Booth--he was a true champion of states' rights.
I think the main problem for the wannabe hacker is the getting paid bit. How the heck do they remain anonymous and get paid?
It's all very well to do that to a company, but you aren't exactly going to hand out your own bank details to the company in order to get paid.. heh.
- paul
http://pmp.deviantart.com/
Pmp @ DeviantArt
Nothing will change until a large attack steals congressional credit card numbers, blacks-out the entire East Coast for two weeks, diverts Taco Bell supply trucks to Canada, or shuts down all the free porn sites. We are a reactionary society. Even when tools like encryption and AV are practically free, 99.9% of the population won't use them until something really bad happends or they are forced. Security WILL be forced upon us after a "Digital Pearl Harbor" touches us all. It's not a matter of if, but when.
This is MUCH more effective... ...site that's already running "beneath the radar"
I don't know, I think there are plenty of companies that operate 'above the radar' that would be horrified at the thought of customers being able to see what's really going on in the back room. Getting the FBI involved can be thought of as riskier than just paying up. If they are detected while going to the authorities, the psycho that's threatening them can release all the secrets and just disappear. Screw the money, you're just plain going DOWN now. Just as kidnappers can threaten (and make good on that threat) that they will harm or kill their captive if you go to the cops. And, just because your business is legitimate on paper doesn't mean it's actually operating that way either.
There seems to be a lot of comment about the case, considering that he asked to have the cheque made out his own name.
This line even appears in court documents (pdf).
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Many theives really have trouble keeping their mouths shut. They just can't help but brag about how much they rule because they managed to pull off some scam. They end up talking themselves in to jail. Same holds true after they are arrested. If they were smart, they'd clam up and let their lawyer do all the talking, instead they run their mouth, and the police are able to start to play lies against eachother and eventually break their story.
I mean in the real world it's not usally as overdone as in the movies, but yes, lots of crooks really do wind up in jail because they couldn't stay quiet about what they'd done.
If M$ marketting, executive and legal were to die off tomorrow, users would be forced to seek a sys admin or learn (or get a Mac, which is STILL a step up)... which means, there would be less idiots on the net. Its about the same as requesting that ALL drivers be forced to KNOW how to identify and check fluids, and ANY damage done by negligence should be charged triple at the repair shop (just imagine those head gaskets being charged to some idiot at triple rate!!) A law like that would mean that I would have to do LESS repairs on cars with damaged head gaskets because the user/driver "didn't think they had to check oil unless the 5000 mile marker was coming up, and why would he/she have to know that driving a high revving engine in 110 degree weather (fahrenheit) without ever checking fluids first, might damage their 5000.00 to 10000.00 USD (BMW) motor... who'd believe that, eh?"
Until people are made responsible and PAINFULLY so , about their rights, and consequences of not being PROACTIVE on their own, then nothing will change. People put off RISK onto others expecting that others will take care of it for them.
Its like prostate cancer for men and breastcancer for women. If you don't proactively check for it, then you deserve the painful death you get for not bothering to so much as get a damn 100 dollar checkup each year. (granted it is QUITE unpleasant for men, yet for women it can even be done at home before they even GO to the doctor).
Besides, its easy to afford it. All we american IT types have to do, is stop eating supersized meals and get water instead of fries and a soft drink (water's better for health and weight reasons anyways). You'd be amazed how quick you'll save the cash for that checkup (or for spare hardware for that BSD rig in the corner).
Same thing goes with STD's, if you sleep around, get a damn checkup. There's free clinic's everywhere so you don't have to get sharked for 199 per checkup at the regular doctor joint.
The problem with all of the above, is as the PT said, people in our country are LAZY LUSERS!! They need to get hurt badly before they'll learn... and in doing so, they will get those of us that are in the "non ignorant, non idiot" minority to pay the price with them.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You're probably thinking of Dr. Sam Vaknin's, Narcissistic Leaders. My favorite topical quote;
Sound familiar?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."