Marriott Discloses Missing Data Files

An anonymous reader writes "Marriott International has admitted that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company." From the Washington Post story: "Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost. An internal investigation produced no clear answer. The company notified the Secret Service over the past two weeks, and has also told credit card companies and other financial institutions about the loss of the tapes."

Comments

why do they have SSNs for customers?

[rritterson]

Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?

Time-share owners, maybe, employees definately, but customers? Why?

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[User 956]

Time-share owners, maybe, employees definately, but customers? Why?

Look, they're just making sure you don't steal any towels. Towel theft is a big deal.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[QuantumG]

Unless your business model including some sort of recurring billing there is absolutely no justification for storing every digit of a credit card number. The first and last digits are more than enough for data matching purposes.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Pampusik]

I believe this concerns time share loans, in which case a SSN would be required in the credit process.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[cayenne8]

" I believe this concerns time share loans, in which case a SSN would be required in the credit process."

Well, even if so...why did they keep the numbers? I've run into things where people wanted my SSN....which I pretty much refuse to give to anyone not associated with ssn taxes....but, to get around it...I just give a deposit in lieu of SSN.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Pampusik]

They would need to keep the SSNs to share with their loan servicer(s?) and backup companies.

In most cases, when you take out a loan with somebody, your data is likely being shared with everybody they do business with related to the servicing of the loan... especially if you're a "high risk" customer (e.g., low credit score).

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[mmclean]

It is the Time Share division of Marriott, and they are required to have SSN's for those customers for mortgage interest reporting purposes.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Why do they keep this shit? And how come they are never held accountable when they do?

It seems to go like this: "Oops we just lost all your personal information (or had it stolen). Sorry." And that's the end for them. And that's the possible beginning of a nightmare for you.

I mean what the fuck? Where is the accountability? If they store that information, they should be held accountable for doing so.

Marriott should, at the least, be fined a LARGE amount ($$ millions) or have some sort of charges brought against them. That goes for anyone else holding my information and disclosing it.

Where the fuck is the outrage at this practice?

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[tq_at_sju]

i got a marriot towel..... i mean i'm kind of a big deal....people know me

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[timeOday]

Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?

What makes you think they do? I've stayed at Marriots and never been asked for my SSN, so I doubt the SSN loss refers to normal customers.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[toddbu]

Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?

I think that you're asking the wrong question here. Shouldn't you be asking "why does it matter if they keep your SSN?" Our whole system of using SSNs to identify people is broken, and if Congress would get off their lazy duffs and fix the problem then maybe it wouldn't matter if someone had my SSN number or not. A simple change to credit reporting laws that would require a second level of verification of the identity of a consumer before granting credit, like what happens when you put a fraud alert on your credit report, would go a long way toward fixing this problem. But those who issue credit are afraid that if you got rid of easy credit then their market would collapse. I'll agree that some people would be inconvenienced by such a system (like those who move around a lot), but it sure would reduce fraud. At the very least, I should have the option of making a fraud alert permanent, and to have complete control over who can view my credit history. Then maybe it wouldn't make such a difference if someone got my personal information.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[HD Webdev]

Well, even if so...why did they keep the numbers? I've run into things where people wanted my SSN....which I pretty much refuse to give to anyone not associated with ssn taxes....but, to get around it...I just give a deposit in lieu of SSN.

As far as loans, they keep the numbers because if a person defaults on the loan that's the only data they have that's unique to the person who defaulted. For example, if the debt gets sold cheaply to a debt collection agency, the collection agency needs that number to track the person if the person moves somewhere else. "John Jones of 123 Main St. Anytown, USA" isn't very useful if John Jones moves to another state.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[slick_rick]

Why stop there? Why does any entity need to hold on to my SSN? Why not just make it illegal to do so? I work with large databases every day (100k+ "souls") and it is insane to me that we keep the SSN for all these people. What a security nightmare/identity thief's dream. I've argued with my boss several times that we should dump the SSN and just keep a few hashes instead (md5/sh1/whatever). He doesn't like that idea for valid reasons (mainly compatibility with other systems that don't know shit about a hashed SSN).

I really wish congress would pass a law stating that no private entity without a federal charter can hold an SSN longer then 30-60 days. I could then share hashed SSNs with various other DBs because they would have to deal with those, or face the legal consequences.

Of course I think all commercial entities should be mandated to purge all customer data after two years as well. Why should Sears keep my SSN on file forever just because I had a credit card with them 10 years ago?

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[HardCase]

Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?

They probably don't. As the article says, the backup tapes contained credit card numbers and SSNs of workers, time share owners and customers. That reasonably means that they've lost the credit card numbers of time share owners and customers and the SSNs of time share owners and employees.

So they've lost this data, but it seems to me that they're being reactive in a positive way - they've notified the right people in government, they've contacted financial institutions and they've notified their customers, along with issuing a public statement about it.

The article claims that the data requires "special equipment" to retrieve the data - some comfort, I guess, unless that special equipment isn't just a DAT drive and a backup program.

I wouldn't call their measures "proactive", as did the Marriott spokesperson, but the company seems to be reasonably open about it.

-h-

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[llefler]

They need to keep your SSN for tax purposes. Depending on your agreement, the loan to 'buy' your timeshare is considered a mortgage. So they need to report interest to the IRS. Not to mention, a credit agency is going to use your SSN to avoid simple name collisions.

As far as keeping your credit card number, they could be requiring it to cover maintenance fees or it's possible customers are automatically having their loan payments charged to their credit card. I do that with a couple of my monthly expenses so I don't have to write a check. (having both electronic withdrawals and automatic billing to credit cards, I prefer the latter)

While I suppose you can get around these by buying the timeshare outright, and prepaying maintenance fees, most customers do not want to do that.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[lazlo]

I've argued with my boss several times that we should dump the SSN and just keep a few hashes instead (md5/sh1/whatever). He doesn't like that idea for valid reasons (mainly compatibility with other systems that don't know shit about a hashed SSN).

I could be wrong about this, but here's another reason to think of. Hashing the SSN's in the database doesn't raise the bar much for ID thieves. There are 1G possible SSN's. According to my calculations (and the output of "openssl speed md5"), calculating and storing the MD5 of all of them would take my computer about 30 minutes and would take up about 20GB of drive space. After which, looking up an ssn from the hash would be fairly easy.

My first thought was "add some salt", but SSN's aren't passwords (although they're used like passwords fairly often), they're indexes. So if I've got info on my John Doe, and want to see what info you have on that same John Doe, unless we happened to use the same salt we're screwed.

The only solution I can see would be to use deterministic salt. store the MD5 of, for instance, the person's SSN.DOB. That would make it so that the problem for the attacker is (assuming he only cares about people 18-65 years old) 17,155 times harder. So now the database is over 300 TB, and it takes a year to calculate (on my machine). But it means that everyone has to start collecting DOB (which they mostly do anyway - but it would now be necessary) and would have to agree to use MD5(SSN.DOB) as a person's identifier. Thinking about it, that might not be so bad... But it'll still take an act of God or congress to get everyone to start doing it. And I'm guessing God might be more likely.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[(H)elix1]

Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?

They don't Credit card, yes. SSN, no. I logged 71 days in a Marriot last year, and never once have they asked for a SSN.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[froschmann]

But SSNs are also prefixed by state, so it wouldn't be very hard if you knew about when someone was born and where. Also, I think they probably issue sequentially.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Halfbaked Plan]

Not to mention, a credit agency is going to use your SSN to avoid simple name collisions.

Maybe in your world it's okay for SSN's to be routinely dancing around in credit agency computers to prevent 'simple name collisions' but not in mine.

They're in big trouble if the only 'tag' they have to distinguish between customers is the SSN. There aren't that many cases where people with a common street address have the same exact name. They can use Zipcode+4 if they really have that shaky a system that they need a distingushing number to use.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[c_forq]

There aren't that many cases where people with a common street address have the same exact name. They can use Zipcode+4 if they really have that shaky a system that they need a distingushing number to use.

Because we all know people don't move. Ever.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[llefler]

DOB and SSN are what distinguish my name from my fathers. I'd say it's safe to say that we have both had the same address in the past. There are plenty of other people with the same experience. My best friend, for example.

Zipcode +4 doesn't necessarily distinguish a unique street address. Address comparisons are notoriously unreliable. My address for instance is on a Drive. It could be spelled out or abbreviated DR. It could be left off, or it could be confused with a nearby Lane or LN. All of which would get my mail to me, because my mailman is a human, but would all kick out in a computer comparison as different addresses.

If you have any type of credit card, loan, or bank account and they don't have your SSN, then you definately live in a different world than I do. And you can bet, given that they have this unique data point, it is the first means of comparison they use.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Martin Blank]

They're providing free credit monitoring services to those affected. That's more proactive than most companies, who usually do little more than notify the affected people.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[bhmit1]

A simple change to credit reporting laws that would require a second level of verification of the identity of a consumer before granting credit, like what happens when you put a fraud alert on your credit report, would go a long way toward fixing this problem.

From what I've heard, people placing fraud alerts can frequently find places that ignore the credit warning and give out a card with little or no checking. And if everyone had fraud alerts, finding places that don't check would be even easier. Quite simply, credit reporting companies need to be 100% liable for reporting false information, and credit vendors (including banks and mortgage companies) need to be 100% liable for offering credit to and identity thief. And that liability needs to include paying you an hourly rate comparable to your existing job (if not more) for any time you spent repairing your credit and payment for any damages incurred from reporting false information (e.g. loss of a job, home loan, etc). The companies will only care when you make them financially responsible. Until then, they will make things as easy as possible for them to make a profit. The only reason this hasn't happened already is because politicians can be influenced by people with money.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[toddbu]

Quite simply, credit reporting companies need to be 100% liable for reporting false information, and credit vendors (including banks and mortgage companies) need to be 100% liable for offering credit to and identity thief.

I'm not sure how you make credit reporting agencies liable for false information since they're just reporting what other people tell them. As for making the credit vendors liable for granting credit to identity thieves, I think that you can only do this in a world where the credit vendor has the ability to get an independent review of the information that's presented to them at the time they make the decision to grant credit. For example, if I'm a bank and someone comes in with a bunch of information as well as something that looks like a valid driver's license, should I be liable for granting credit to them if they're committing fraud? I think that you can only hold them accountable if they have a back channel for verifying that the person who is sitting in front of them is actually who they say they are. And I also think that those committing fraud would be less likely to do so knowing that additional information other than that which they presented would be used in conducting the transaction. (As an interesting side note, I think that if you simply took a picture of every one asking for credit before you granted it that it would be a step in the right direction. Currently, a fraudster can easily get away with a crime because a loan officer can't give a description of a person who applied for credit just a few months earlier.)

For what it's worth, the other reason that I'm against just putting the burden on the credit issuers without fixing the system is that the only way that they'll stay in business is to pass the charges back on to the consumer. We'd likely see a system like the credit card companies have to insure against such loss, but we'll also see interest rates that mirror credit card rates for homes and cars. That would be very, very bad for everyone.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[mckyj57]

According to my calculations (and the output of "openssl speed md5"), calculating and storing the MD5 of all of them would take my computer about 30 minutes and would take up about 20GB of drive space. After which, looking up an ssn from the hash would be fairly easy.


Since using a hash secret to change the digest is just as easy and basic, your
point is?

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Halfbaked Plan]

A big red flashing light should come up at the credit bureau for anybody who has changed address without reporting it to their creditors. Then, if necessary, measures like the SSN should be manually used to locate them.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[bhmit1]

For example, if I'm a bank and someone comes in with a bunch of information as well as something that looks like a valid driver's license, should I be liable for granting credit to them if they're committing fraud?

Of course the person committing the fraud should be arrested and liable. But if the company gives credit to people that they are not really you, should you be liable? No, and yet with todays system, you are presumed guilty until you prove that it wasn't you, at your own expense. So credit companies are happy to send solicitations to people's pets and anyone else with minimal verification since you are responsible for proving that they gave credit to the wrong person. Making the credit company responsible for their mistakes gives them the motivation to fix their own problem. Credit reporting companies would also willing give you open access to view your own information to help eliminate errors since otherwise they could be held liable for any damages their mistakes cause.

Will that cause a greater expense on credit card companies? Yes, but only to those companies that are careless. Those that clamp down on ID theft and fraud will reduce their expenses and therefore continue to offer the low rates (speaking of which, you really should be paying your bill off every month).

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[Ohreally_factor]

Whatever you do, DO NOT install the towel on your computer. Marriot has placed some pretty nasty TRM (Towel Rights Management) on their towels.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[walstib]

I had a couple of Visa cards that had the same first and last digit, so just those two may not be enough. Maybe the last 4 would be better.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[QuantumG]

heh, I wasn't suggesting the first and last digit were adequate, just that storing all the digits is bad.

Re:why do they have SSNs for customers?

[losycompresion]

I suspect that any employee/customer, that calls/writes to get the exact details of what was lost will be given nothing additional. That is what is wrong, now that they have announced these few facts that is all they will say. Basically here is a little credit monitoring and now F#$$%#@off. I feel that this situation is wrong, and the number of times that it has happened is scary.

Lost != Stolen

[LiquidCoooled]

We can only hope these tapes have been misplaced or actually lost rather than stolen for the information they contain.

All backups should be done on VERY obscure hardware to reduce the danger of things like this ;)
If the crooks can't read the tapes theres no problem (same goes for strong encryption)

Re:Lost != Stolen

[quarkscat]

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Considering the time of year, no doubt some Marriott PHB who was looking for some extra X-Mas cash decided to "sell their list". While many companies have absolutely no qualms about selling customer information (AKA creating a new "profit center"),
I am more inclided to believe that the backup tapes were lost or stolen, rather than a conscious effort to create a new corporate profit center.

Then again, John Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" project (entirely DoD databases) was morphed into "MATRIX", which was designed to make use of multiple commercial (and commercially available) databases. So, perhaps, it was was merely an "extra patriotic" Marriott employee.

Considering recent events in the news (non-FISA approved wiretapping), perhaps one possibility is just as scary as the other...

Re:Lost != Stolen

[nolife]

Security through obscurity in not a reliable form of security. You have to pay for that obscurity by having a one off system that is not supported and you pay through the nose to keep it running reliably in your enterprise. A standard LTO3 backup tape is almost $100, imagine what some specialized tape would cost when your company is the only one buying them.
Basically, you pay a lot of money for some unknown amount of obscurity and reliability that has not been tested by more then a few people. Not cost effective at all when compared to standard equipment coupled with good security practices like accounting, tracking, and encryption. Is there even an enterprise backup system sold in the last few years that does not support some type of encryption?

IT is a cost center, not a revenue generator. Trying to squeeze security hardware, software, or better practices into IT budgets and manpower is a hard and normally plays out some combination of two ways.

Proactive and shot down -
IT managers have a hard time getting others outside of IT to listen to potential issues. This changes rapidly after a breach and IT managers may be replaced.

Coast and milk -
IT managers do not even want to bring up or even know about things like security because doing things the way they have always been has worked so far and makes the technical part of the manager job easier. Why rock the boat? That system was in place when I got here and we've been doing it this way for years and certainly "they" up there no about it so I'll go with the flow. That method of brown nosing and coasting with your other manager peers for a while typcially leads to the unemployment line with a knife in your back after a security breach! As it should IMHO.

Re:Lost != Stolen

[MichaelSmith]

All backups should be done on VERY obscure hardware

In a previous job we did all our backups on nine track tape. Older backups were impossible to read because the magnetic coating would just stick to the read head.

Nobody was going to steal that data!

Re:Lost != Stolen

[baadger]

Running "entirely unique code"? Lmao. More like "running an operating system the bad guys can't be arsed with yet because it has less market share than what's produced when Microsoft passes wind".

Re:Lost != Stolen

[sfjoe]

"So, perhaps, it was was merely an "extra patriotic" Marriott employee."

J.W. Marriott is a MAJOR contributor to George Bush and the Republican party.
'Nuff said.

And THAT is why...

[Winlin]

I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Re:And THAT is why...

[MeNeXT]

You think HI is any better with security? I hope you din't leave your CC...

Great.

[User 956]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million. That should stop those crooks!

Re:Great.

[dc29A]

Why is the job of Homeland Security to secure the data storage of a random company? Start putting out heavy fines on companies who fail to securely store customer data and the problem will go away. Right now there is no "incentive" for companies to keep personal data stored safely. A little PR can take care of a hack.

Companies need to be held liable for the safety and security of their customer's data. The problem then will go away.

Re:Great.

[User 956]

Companies need to be held liable for the safety and security of their customer's data. The problem then will go away.

I'm hearing you. I think the way the SSN system works with the financial system is horribly inefficient, insecure, and pront to abuse. But you need to cover both ends. Security on the front end, and proper policing on the back end. Cutting the DHS budget certainly isn't going to help-- especially when hundreds of millions are allocated for projects like the bridge to nowhere.

Re:Great.

[dangitman]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million. That should stop those crooks!

Given the lack of competence of DHS, eliminating their funding can only be a good thing. They only seem to make things worse, and haven't really shown any evidence of being effective at doing anything other that waste money and erode civil liberties.

Re:Great.

[gasjews]

Can we say inefficient and bloated government administration?

I always vote down school tax proposals becuase our local school system has yet to manage to improve the quality of education or teaching while managing to find all sorts of things to spend money on like new toys for the administration to play with, overpriced school complexes (65 million dollars for a school that reasonably holds 3000 at best?), marketing campaigns, etc.

DHS doesn't need more money. They need to be smart. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are just an extension of modern democracy and modern democracies are largely incapable of meaningful consensus or leadership.

Re:Great.

[Dhalka226]

I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.

That's misleading. Their RESEARCH budget for CYBERSECURITY is cut to $16 million, and that's only down 7% from last year, which means under $2 million in cuts.

You can argue it should be higher if you wish, but don't make it sound like the entire DHS--or even cybercrime enforcement in general--is funded that sparsely.

Re:Great.

[Ravatar]

That won't necessarily eliminate carelessness on the companies' part. If the fine is less than the cost to properly secure the data, nothing will change.

The only group that benefits in this case is the government.

Re:Great.

[User 956]

Unfortunately, bureaucracies are just an extension of modern democracy and modern democracies are largely incapable of meaningful consensus or leadership.

Judging by your website, I'm suddenly not sure a society-wide consensus is a good thing.

Re:Great.

[finkployd]

Because they have been doing such a bang up job in this department so far right?

Re:Great.

[HardCase]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million. That should stop those crooks!

I think that you are mistaken.

Cyber Security is enhanced in the budget to augment a 24/7 cyber threat watch, warning, and response capability that would identify emerging threats and vulnerabilities and coordinate responses to major cyber security incidents. An increase of $5 million is proposed in the budget for this effort, bringing the program total to $73.3 million.

-h-

Re:Great.

[kfg]

. . .haven't really shown any evidence of being effective at doing anything other that waste money and erode civil liberties.

You say that like you think it's a bad thing.

KFG

Re:Great.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.

Is this a real budget cut, or a cut in projected increases?

Government budget cuts are the most preposterous lies I've seen in a long time. Say the next year's budget is slated to increase 8%. Let's just say that increase is reduced to 4%. Politicians, pundits and media people can then claim (or complain of) a 4% cut, despite that in reality, it was still an increase, the cut was from an imaginary budget that was never enacted. I wish my pay suffered a government budget cut.

Re:Great.

[dbIII]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.

It doesn't matter - this type of crime isn't in their brief. If you need to have some horses judged, that's when you should call them.

Re:Great.

[urbanRealist]

Just for reference, I happen to know off the top of my head that the school I went to in Tuscaloosa, AL in 1990 cost 7 million and holds at least 600.

bc 1.06
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
65000000/3000
21667
7000000/600
11 667

Re:Great.

[dc29A]

That won't necessarily eliminate carelessness on the companies' part. If the fine is less than the cost to properly secure the data, nothing will change.

The only group that benefits in this case is the government.

I disagree. How many times a year we see a car manufacturer do a major recall of some cars? Very rare. How many times a year we see horror stories about lack of security related to software/IT systems? Lawsuits by people and/or the governement will force companies to consider security extremely important. This year was a perfect example of companies not giving a damn about security. Afer MasterCard lost a boatload of information to hackers did they get a fine? No. They blamed it on a small 3d party company and shoved it under the rug. See no evil, hear no evil. As soon as there is a problem with some kind of car component, tires for instance, there is already talk of class action lawsuits, car maker recalls cars and whatnot.

The IT industry needs to be held liable for the security holes in their products, only then will we have an improved security. Cars today are safe because there is regulation in the industry. IT needs the same thing.

Re:Great.

[mckyj57]

I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million.

That's misleading. Their RESEARCH budget for CYBERSECURITY is cut to $16 million, and that's only down 7% from last year, which means under $2 million in cuts.

Not only that, unless you look at the budget lines, this type of number
can be totally misleading. For instance, the previous year's budget may
have included $5 million in extraordinary expenses, meaning that this
year's number actually represents an increase.

Numbers in and of themselves are often meaningless.

Woo Hoo!

[brentyl2]

8th post! On a more serious note, even if this data was lost through no fault of Marriott's (stolen, say), I think this points out the need to legislate a consumer notification requirement. If there is a reasonable chance that my name and info are on one of those tapes, I think Marriot has the obligation to let me know. They will never do so without being compelled.

Re:Woo Hoo!

[ScottCooperDotNet]

even if this data was lost through no fault of Marriott's (stolen, say)

In that case the company has some responsibility; cutting corners on data security is something no shareholder should allow.

Re:Woo Hoo!

[MichaelSmith]

need to legislate a consumer notification requirement.

How about a law requiring them to pay for the losses they have caused?. Doing that might make companies think twice before retaining data on their customers.

I know it is busy during the holidays, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mid November? I think some people would have wanted to know sooner. Why are we just now finding out about this?

Re:I know it is busy during the holidays, but...

[Clover_Kicker]

I imagine they were searching high and low for the missing tapes.

Re:I know it is busy during the holidays, but...

[Bush Pig]

... saying, "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!" and imitating a flock of headless chickens.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh thank you thank you thank you!

[rleesBSD]

Now wifey will never know.

Re:Identify theft a fad?

[MaineCoon]

Back in ancient days (pre-500 AD for example), it was not a rare thing for vaguely look-alike, or not even look-alike people, to claim to be someone famous/important in a village or town where nobody could invalidate the claim (or those who would validate it were being duped or willing participants).

This is a quite old crime. The difference is that now identity theft of everyday people can be lucrative, and you don't even need to look like them or deal with tricking others. And you don't have to worry about being lynched or stoned, just going to jail.

Re:Identify theft a fad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason you're now hearing about is because states (California and others) have begun passing laws requiring companies to disclose these types of events.

This kind of thing keeps happening...

[dlaur]

Let me ask a simple question: Why don't they encrypt this stuff?

Re:This kind of thing keeps happening...

[HermanAB]

No, only the *reporting* of leaks will stop instantly...

Re:This kind of thing keeps happening...

[Bishop]

Encryption is not always the answer. A single block error could render an entire encrypted archive useless. There is also the problem of managing the encryption keys. Security is about more then just denying access to data. Ensuring access to data is an aspect of data security that is just as important.

Re:This kind of thing keeps happening...

[Anonymous Coward]

> A single block error could render an entire encrypted archive useless.

Huh? Where in the world did you come-up with that?

That would only be true if your encryption uses CBC (Cipher Block Chaining) mode. That's where you XOR each block with the ciphertext of the previous block. An error in one block affects that block and every subsequent block like you describe.

When you use ECB (Electronic Code Book), the regular DES algorithm, you encrypt each 64-bit block independently. Errors only affect the data in the block containing the error. This is the faster and easier to implement than CBC mode so it's what a lot of products use.

I've seen a couple of companies play around with using encryption on their backups, but they stopped for the same reason I've seen more intentionally not use it. You don't want to pull-out a tape from a library and not be able to read it. Do you really want to keep-up with a list of passwords for a decade or more? Would you want to be the IT director someone that has to tell a CEO that the $250k you've spent on backup tapes and storage costs was for naught since you can't read the tape? I saw a CTO fired for exactly that.

Of course since I'm responding to a register user, I'll be marked as a troll or flamebait so this response will never be read. I don't know why I bother posting on this cesspool. Posts like the one I'm replying to that are just plain wrong are given points, but the best posts are given -1's if they're from people that aren't logged-in.

Re:This kind of thing keeps happening...

[carlislematthew]

A single block error could render an entire encrypted archive useless.

I no cryptographer, but I personally have worked with encryption standards that work on 64bit blocks. If that was corrupted, the rest of the data would be fine...

Also, I would propose that the problem of key management is less of a problem than the problem of unencrypted data out in the wild. If you lose it - who cares!

Hats off to Marriott

[TheFlyingGoat]

Many companies out there wouldn't even know if their tapes had been misplaced or lost. At 3 companies I've worked for, we've had tapes lying around in managers' offices and server rooms, many that contain information that could be used for identity theft.

Marriott has handled this correctly and deserves some credit for doing so. At least they're not trying to cover it up like some companies would.

Re:Hats off to Marriott

[humphrm]

Umm, I hate to say it, but a tape missing since last November constitutes a cover-up. Marriott only came out and admitted to the loss because their internal investigation turned up nothing.

ABN Amro lost a tape with my data on it. The news was out that week. DHL found it, and even though the news agencies didn't cover it much, I got a follow-up letter from ABN Amro AND they extended the free credit tracking service from 3 months to 1 year.

Marriott on the other hand waited over a month before they even notified the Secret Service, for crying out loud.

No kudos to Marriott for this one. They're lucky that their month-long cover-up isn't criminal (yet).

fraud monitoring

[spoonyfork]

I'm glad to read Marriot is offering credit fraud monitoring to the affected people like how Ford offered to its employees when they recently lost 70,000 employee/retiree SSNs. Unless it is lifetime monitoring I fail to see the long term value.

Wait a second, why don't the credit bureaus offer free lifetime credit fraud monitoring to everyone in the first place?

Re:fraud monitoring

[Dhalka226]

Wait a second, why don't the credit bureaus offer free lifetime credit fraud monitoring to everyone in the first place?

Because they are not not-for-profit's?

Re:fraud monitoring

[vorok]

Wait a second, why don't the credit bureaus offer free lifetime credit fraud monitoring to everyone in the first place?

I hate to state the obvious, but why offer a service which invariably takes up some form of resources, if not they are not receiving some benefit for it? Because they do offer it, just not for free. Not to say that they shouldn't, I think that especially with computers the amount of money that it would cost them would be more than made up for if they offered it for "free", but they don't see it that way, and never will. As long as they can make money off those who think it is worthwhile to buy, they will continue to charge.

Damn right (was:Great.)

[Lead Butthead]

With $105 billion in this type of crime in 2005, I'm glad the Department of Homeland Security has had their budget cut to $16 million. That should stop those crooks!

After all, the ability to monitor at will of all forms of communications between every American resident and "potential terrorists," is FAR more important than such trivial matter as preventing identity thieft or credit fraud. (Yes, I am being sarcastic.)

This is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the reason why we never make backups. What does not exist, cannot be stolen :)

Secret Service?

[moosesocks]

Forgive me for being uninformed, but why would the Secret Service be the agency responsible for investigating this type of incident?

Unless Valerie Plame had a timeshare.....

Re:Secret Service?

[rritterson]

The Secret Service also serves as the branch of law enforcement that investigates financial fraud and counterfeiting. From The Secret Service web page:

"The Secret Service also investigates violations of laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States; financial crimes that include, but are not limited to, access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure."

Re:Secret Service?

[hrvatska]

From http://www.secretservice.gov/mission.shtml/:

The Secret Service also investigates violations of laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States; financial crimes that include, but are not limited to, access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure.

Re:Secret Service?

[ctr2sprt]

The Secret Service is part of Treasury. They also deal with things like counterfeiting rings. As Treasury is going to be involved in large-scale financial fraud investigation, and Secret Service is an enforcement arm of Treasury, this makes sense to me.

It all seems like stuff the FBI ought to be doing, but I think that's mainly an artifact of how crime has changed. Federal law enforcement was originally designed to go after the mob, and you get the mob by following the money. So it makes sense for Treasury to handle that, and so they got the Secret Service. (Think Elliot Ness in The Untouchables.) But as the mob dwindled in significance, or perhaps as other interstate crimes became more significant, the FBI, which was a more general-purpose agency, became dominant. Now just about anything can fall under the FBI's purview. So I'm sure Treasury will jealously guard any area where it can claim authority or Secret Service will become what everyone already thinks it is: nondescript guys with earbuds and suits who hang out with the President all day. Well, nondescript guys who can somehow conceal assault rifles under their suit coats.

Or maybe, what with the name and all, they're happy about the relative anonymity.

Re:Secret Service?

[bloo9298]

Their mission includes:

The Secret Service also investigates violations of laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States; financial crimes that include, but are not limited to, access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure.

Conspiracy

[kevin_conaway]

I read about this in the post almost a week ago. Its finally posted to slashdot on a Sunday, and a "holiday" Sunday at that.

Discuss.

</Linda Richman>

Re:Conspiracy

[jridley]

Slashdot. News you've heard before. Stuff when we get around to it.

That's nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

AC for obvious reasons...

I work the front desk at a competing 4-star hotel chain. I work the night shift ($10/hr to sit there babysitting the desk and reading/fiddling on my laptop, great job for students ;-)). Anyway, the first day, FIRST DAY! I was working there I had access to all the back-up tapes for the past month with every guests name, address, phone number, what government agency/corporation they work for, and CC#'s/expiration dates. The tapes are all sitting in a filing cabinet in the front office.

So many people touch the tapes, front desk staff/accounting/reservations/IT, that if one went missing it would be impossible to track back to an individual. What's more, if I just picked up my own tape and made a dupe at night in 35 minutes while I'm there alone nobody would ever know.

This is a 400 room hotel in a major U.S. city, access to literally tens of thousands of names, addresses and associating credit card numbers, all for filling out a standard job application that I may or may not have filled out accurately. Unbelievable.

Re:That's nothing...

[MichaelSmith]

This is a 400 room hotel in a major U.S. city, access to literally tens of thousands of names, addresses and associating credit card numbers, all for filling out a standard job application that I may or may not have filled out accurately. Unbelievable.

After my wife and I returned from Malaysia in 2004 we started seeing charges on her credit card from resorts and shops in Japan. It took months to get our bank to accept that these charges were not legitimate.

I have no problem believing your story.

Re:That's nothing...

[bhmit1]

every guests name, address, phone number, what government agency/corporation they work for, and CC#'s/expiration dates

If the CC information is unencrypted and usable, I'm sure that the various CC companies would be interested in knowing about it. Various retail companies that I know have all sorts of security that they have to comply with to do business with a CC company. Some data is in the form where one person has access to the encrypted form, another has half of the key, and a third has the other half. I'm not saying that everyone goes through such strict measures, but having completely unencrypted and unsecured CC data with the name and expiration would get CC processing rights removed if the CC company (visa, mc, amex, disc) discovered this.

Re:That's nothing...

[imipak]

Sadly all too believable. As you move out of education into the real commercial world you'll notice this sort of crap happens routinely, virtually everywhere you look. Word of advice: be careful how you go about it if you try to raise such things with management. It's rare that you'll get thanked for it, because they will have to spend time & money on fixing stuff that in their eyes, doesn't need fixing. Go read Bruce Schneier's writings about externalities (CryptoGrams passim). He's been harping on about this sort of thing for years - how the cost of security isn't borne by the ones responsible for fixing stuff, so they have no incentive to do so. How you fix this sort of things is something of a topic in economics. I guess Wikipedia'll have something too, come to think of it, hmmm where's my other tab...

This is why apparently lame legislative and regulatory setups can be a good thing. Certs such as ISO17799, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, NIST etc etc actually connect how well a company does with how secure it is. Much of security that would seem like common-sense no-brainers to most of us are actually not worth the org's time and money. (Of course then you get into risk management topics, and quantifying risks, which is very hard to do. How likely is it that your 150 staff, who all use Internet Explorer, will get infected with a drive-by trojan? If they use Firefox? What about Firefox on OS/X? Now, how do you back up your intuitive answers with emperical evidence from the real world?

Fancy a career in infosec? It's a lot more fun than it sounds, actually ;)

I am REALLY starting to think

[ScrewMaster]

that if these large corporations can't be trusted to play with their computers safely, maybe they should have them taken away. At the very least, I think some adult supervision should be required by law. And if that doesn't work, send them back to using typewriters and filing cabinets.

Some private data loss statistics

[michaelaiello]

Lists of incidents

• http://www.privacyatchoicepoint.com/common/pdfs/Da tadisclosures2005.pdf
• http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches. htm

A report (with pretty graphs) from a recent financial engineering class. Data was from Feb to Sep 2005...
The 83 recorded loss events were categorized by loss event type and by industry sector. The data is relevant over 232 days. This yields a probability of a loss event occurring in any sector on any given day 35.7%. If only events affecting financial services institutions are counted, the probability is 7.5%.

http://privacydata.michaelaiello.com/paper.pdf

Bring forth the math corrections

I don't know...

[Chabil Ha']

and maybe I'm just ignorant, but WHY DON'T THEY ENCRYPT ALL THAT INFORMATION WHEN IT LEAVES THE MAIN DATA WAREHOUSE? It seems to me that by encrypting its contents, you put some security around it should it be lost/stolen/etc. Can anyone explain why this isn't done?

Re:I don't know...

[Detritus]

• It's additional work to generate and manage keys.
• It burns CPU cycles and may slow down a backup process that is already too slow.
• The backup software may not support it.
• Lack of funding or interest by management.
• No security policy.

Re:I don't know...

[HD Webdev]

and maybe I'm just ignorant, but WHY DON'T THEY ENCRYPT ALL THAT INFORMATION WHEN IT LEAVES THE MAIN DATA WAREHOUSE? It seems to me that by encrypting its contents, you put some security around it should it be lost/stolen/etc. Can anyone explain why this isn't done?

If you encrypt a database backup and there is an error on the tape, the backup could easily be useless.

For this same reason, many Linux users still do not compress backups of their data. Even though there is media these days that is much more reliable than tape, one scratch on a burned DVD can easily make the DVD useless.

Re:I don't know...

[Vellmont]

There's no technical reason why they don't do it. The short answer is that the companies are too cheap and short sighted to do it. Changing their data backup system to have the proper key management to assure both data security, and recoverability would cost money. Big companies like these are often run by bean counters who don't understand the risk. After a few more of these very public losses, maybe they'll start listening to the security guys in the company.

Re:I don't know...

[Vellmont]

If you encrypt a database backup and there is an error on the tape, the backup could easily be useless.

Only under certain modes of block cyphers. If you use an electronic code book mode of a block cipher you only lose the block with the error on it. It's not as secure of course, but it's a lot better than nothing.

Re:I don't know...

[carlislematthew]

Lack of funding or interest by management is, right now, on the reverse. CEOs and boards of directors are asking their CIOs if their tapes are safe, and if they encrypt the data. The answer is "give me the money" and then things change.

But it does take time, and companies do need money to invest in this. Without legislation, the road to change can be a long one and can depend as much on consumer interest than anything else...

Re:I don't know...

[TallMatthew]

Too, file storage systems are so redundant nowadays that backup tapes are seldom referenced.

Who'da thunk it?

[Paraplex]

Data retained falls into the wrong hands. Lets all sit around silently twiddling our thumbs until that data stops being your financial and residency data and starts being your movement data

Hooray for data retention

Other possibilities

[HermanAB]

1. The tape monkey didn't make the backups in the first place and tried to cover his ass by reporting them stolen. 2. The tape monkey re-used the tapes for another backup session. 3. The janitor stole the tapes thinking that it may be a porn movie. 4. The CFO took the tapes to hide a case of insider trading. 5. The CEO took the tapes thinking that they are from the security cameras and he didn't want a trist exposed. 6. ???

Re:Other possibilities

[llefler]

6. they are misfiled in a million tape library.
7. the boxes were improperly labeled when they were sent to offsite storage and are misfiled.
8. they were accidentally destroyed with other old tapes.
9. the tapes were mislabeled. (internal label doesn't match physical label)

BTW, that's Tape Ape. You're confusing that with Code Monkey.

Re:Other possibilities

[HermanAB]

Tape Ape - of course - my sincere apologies to all Code Monkeys and Tape Apes.

206K dupes

[geneing]

AFAIK timeshares have pretty bad reputation because of the shady methods of selling them. So, many people who had their identity stolen may have already been (perfectly legally) swindled.

Not surprising at all

[IntelliAdmin]

It is amazing the number of companies I have done consultation for where the person that is responsible for the tapes has no idea how much information is on them. I have heard of people leaving them in their car unlocked over the weekend, or while they shop. Not to mention the fact that extreme heat, and cold can destroy the things...anyone could come along and steal them.

The Marriot case study

[stimpleton]

Some years back when at University, we did a case study on an IT project that Marriott did in partnership with Rental car agencies - a booking system tie in.

It was terribly over budget, and delayed a long time.

A significant factor was the project manager lieing about timeline milestones and being within budget.

Later, once it was too late, a report slammed marriot for not reviewing the project reports, which stated time and time again that "all is well". Marriott had next to no QC or risk analysis. They allowed it to be a free wheeling disaster.

No particular point to this, but reading "Marriott" bought back memories.

Re:The Marriot case study

[cger68]

I remember this project as well, but to be fair it wasn't run by Marriott. It was a joint project with several hotel chains (including Hilton) and, as you point out, car rental agencies. It was run by a subsidiary of Sabre (then part of American Airlines), and those guys botched the project every way conceivable. Every client was fooled, and they all lost a fortune. The project was eventually scrapped.

Bah

[ddx Christ]

This shouldn't be happening. Recently, all of my parents' information was "lost" as well. Not by Marriott, but by my the mortgage company. Apparently, it was with the courier and then *gone*. Yeah. The best they could do was offer some tips to avoid _future_ identity theft.

Re:Bah

[night_flyer]

if it was ABN-AMRO http://info.mortgage.com/ that tape was found

Re:Bah

[ddx Christ]

Hey, thanks! :D I appreciate the info.

What if?

[Quirk]

What if this stuff falls into the wrong hands? There's only a little flippancy built into the preceeding question. Very few criminals are intelligent or innovative. Most survive by a code of silence and a threat of violence. While still an undergraduate in Toronto I foolishly took a night job as a doorman/bouncer in a downtown club that had as a clientelle "made guys" in the Vagas knockoff bar upstairs and a well known motorcycle gang as patrons of the bar downstairs. At the time I wanted to be a writer and thought I needed street smarts. I got to know whores, pimps, and assorted "organized crime" guys. All but one were pretty much just people with no where else to go and no way to get out of where they were. Only one would have been able to have made good use of large identity theft.

Identity theft is a growth industry. The demands by government for ever increasing rights to track its citizens coupled to the fetish corporations have for tracking their customers are just now providing the means for massive, efficient criminal use of stolen identities.

There are now criminal organizations that are eagerly recruiting IT people and when the mix is right my guess is we'll see some staggering criminal activity.

Re:What if?

[TallMatthew]

Very few criminals are intelligent or innovative. Most survive by a code of silence and a threat of violence.

This "code of silence" you reference is the reason you never met any criminals that have anything to them. Street hustlers don't steal backup tapes. They run game on undergraduate writers with romanticized notions about crime.

Old

[OrGoN3]

This was in the papers LAST WEEK. To add to this, by law they have to notify every person that potentially has their identity stolen. Marriott has yet to do this.

Possible salvation is obscure database

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mentioned obscurity through hardware regarding backups.

I'm about 95% sure that this group of Marriott is running the D3 database (formerly known as The Pick System, O/S, etc.) It's been a few years since I have spoken with them, but they used to be my client.

D3 in and of itself would provide some level of obscurity, as the "Pick" data format is unique, with embedded metacharacters to delimit it's "Multi-value" item (record) structure, plus, a unique storage method for tape archives.

The possible bad news is that Pick data structures are all ASCII, including it's tape backups, unless Marriott had saved these as "binary backups", which would then only be useful for restoration on the exact same machine configuration from which it was saved. So it's likely these are in what is known as "file-save" tapes.

And there is no intrinsic encryption available in D3, so that is off the table.

So, someone with malicious intent who got their hands on these would have to either know D3 or be able to read blocks off the tapes and try to noodle out how to extract the data to make any use of it.

Or, they could just cheap version of D3 and restore the tapes, then have a data orgy with D3's terrific inherent natural language reporting.

This is why ...

[operagost]

My company's credit union clients are being encouraged by both us and the NCUA to encrypt their tape backups. Our software runs on OpenVMS and we are reselling HP's Encryption software and training the CUs to use it. Their data can thus be reasonably well secured when exposed enroute to their offsite storage or to us for their disaster recovery testing. Unfortunately, some of our clients use third parties as their DR and some of them, despite their huge size and supposedly sophisticated facilities, can't seem to support this encryption product although it is now included with OpenVMS 8.2.

They offer self-service

[lorcha]

They don't do free monitoring, but if you're willing to do the legwork of monitoring yourself, you can monitor your credit file yourself, free of charge. clicky

Re:They offer self-service

[John Courtland]

It's retarded that you can only pull the file once per year though (per place, I know, but still that's only 2 times a year and I've had some pretty big discrepancies between those three...). It's a negligible amount of data to transmit just so you can keep tabs on it. I don't mind not having some machine automatically watching my accounts (and for $15 - $20 a month, it's not worth it, what a racket) but I can't be vigilant if I can't get the data more frequently. It's a goddamn scam and is set up to rape everyone.

Much more common than you think

[greg_barton]

In one of my first jobs as a programmer my first assignment was to go to a local ISP and help them restructure their customer database. So on my first day I ask the lead programmer to give me the DB structure. End of the day comes and he hands me a disk. I get back to the office and find that it contains the ENTIRE DATABSE: ~100,000 names, addresses, CC numbers, and SSN's. (After that we did an extensive security audit of their software...)

All backup software should encrypt the backups.

[Futurepower(R)]

All backup software should encrypt the backups. Unfortunately, backup software is still very primitive.

Backup software should also automatically do a compare and determine if the backup is actually usable. In about 5% of our tests, Acronis TrueImage software, for example, has made a backup that it won't read.

It's simple enough to solve Marriot's problem. Pass a law that anyone storing more than 100 credit card numbers must use encryption. Provide cross-platform open source backup software that meets the requirements of the law. The law should provide guidance concerning the keeping of the passwords.

Re:All backup software should encrypt the backups.

[Chmcginn]

It's simple enough to solve Marriot's problem. Pass a law that anyone storing more than 100 credit card numbers must use encryption.

I find it pretty entertaining how the same group of people (not necessarily you in person) who bitches about so many unnecessary laws, like, say, something from Indiana, starts proposing new laws whenever their personal issue is messed with.

Can't do it. Wouldn't be prudent.

[Chmcginn]

copyright all your personal information.

There's plenty of other points (including the endless lawyer-bashing) I could pick apart, but I'll start with this one. I'm assuming you're in the US, cause you're talking about social security numbers. Well, at least in this country, you can't copyright a fact, or even a collection of facts (although you can copyright the arrangement of them, provided it's not an obvious one.)

And, no, you can't copyright your name either.

And before you start ranting, no, I'm not a lawyer, I'm actually an electrician. (My sister is a lawyer, though, and was recently involved in a case where the plaintiff attempted to copyright his name & address, and then sue her employers for copyright infringement.)

Bush league crime

[JehCt]

With the frequency of big companies losing personal data, if they were required to report it to us, we'd get so many useless form letters that it would all mean nothing. In practice, the great majority of identity theft involves small-scale cons, not backup tapes. Identity thieves do not have the motivation to systematically rip off large numbers of people. (Those with such skills inevitably find a way to manage a big company, or run for elected office.)

The great majority of identity thieves are skimming credit card account numbers at the restaurant point of sale, dumpster diving, or phishing for grandma's personal information.

ENCRYPTION!!!!

[carlislematthew]

I'm getting fed up of these irresponsible companies backing up sensitive data with NO ENCRYPTION. We're talking about International companies here, sending plain-text data around on tapes. Sometimes, companies have been caught sending tapes through UPS!

It's realistic to expect that there is sensitive data out there - the answer is not to say "don't store my SSN", although that should certainly be restricted.

It seems to me that the answer is ENCRYPTION! Encrypt the data and you can back it up on fucking postcards and send it to my grandmother for all I care..

Re:ENCRYPTION!!!!

[vialation]

While yes, I suppose it is careless of these companies doing mass transit of sensitive data in plaintext, easily acquired, encryption is not a panacea... Many people have posted that some type of law should be made that requires companies to encrypt sensitive data such as CC#s and expiration dates, but two things here: People entrust this information with these companies. The responsibility should be put upon the individual; ie, Dont submit this number if you dont want us to be driving around your data in plaintext. No law should be made on the company itself -- they can do whatever they want with something given to them.

Re:ENCRYPTION!!!!

[Threni]

If someone suffers a material loss due to this sort of thing, then they'll sue. If they sue then it'll be worth the companies while making sure that there's less chance of it happening again. So clearly no-one is suing (perhaps there's no harm in having others know your SSN or credit card numbers because in the latter case it's the bank that loses out, other than the slight inconvenience of having to inform them about fraudulent charges). Or maybe they're suing for amounts so small that it's not worth the huge cost of setting up a security policy which involves encryption.

Re:ENCRYPTION!!!!

[TallMatthew]

I'm getting fed up of these irresponsible companies backing up sensitive data with NO ENCRYPTION. We're talking about International companies here, sending plain-text data around on tapes. Sometimes, companies have been caught sending tapes through UPS!

The reason that tapes are sent offsite in the first place is to guard against disasters at the home office, e.g. fire, flood, etc.

If you encrypt the data and the encryption keys are stored at the office and that office is destroyed, then you've reduced your backups to garble. Same goes if your backup server goes out completely. You can make backups of your keys and send those offsite I suppose, but most backup software virtualizes the encryption process and most backup operators aren't clued to those mechanisms (and most senior SAs avoid backup operators like the plague).

Good in theory, bad in practice.

Use error correction; encourage the right thing.

[Futurepower(R)]

Additional comments to my parent post:

Companies storing sensitive data could be expected to use software that provided error correction codes (like those generated by ICE ECC).

Laws about this would enable companies to spend the money without worrying that they were making themselves uncompetitive because of expenses. They would know their competitors must do it also.

Top managers are generally not wise about technology; they need someone to guide them toward doing the right thing.

Use a stream cipher

[Myria]

When backing up, generate a random "tape" key. Encrypt this "tape key" using a block cipher and your official key. Store the encrypted tape key several times at several locations on the tape. The locations of the key must be known without needing to read the tape to find them.

With that set up, encrypt the main contents of the tape with a stream cipher (say, RC4) with the tape key.

This way, damage to a certain area of the tape will not result in a complete loss of data. Using a random key for each tape eliminates the big cryptographic no-no of using a stream cipher key twice.

Melissa

So what ?

[Mr Europe]

Well, the SSN is not actually confidential information. Most of the shop workers, hospital workers, school workers etc can access tens or even hundreds social Security Numbers.

Re:Marriott DID let it's customers know

[PenguinBoyDave]

Marriott sent our one of four letters, depending on your status...lost data, safe data, etc. ALL had offers of Free Credit monitoring, etc.

All in all, Marriott did a good job handling this, and taking care of their timeshare owners.

I got the letter telling me my data was safe...

Re:Old News

[pembo13]

You guys really have to stop your bitching and contribute to fix what you see as wrong

Famous Last Words

[TallMatthew]

IT Manager: "Datasafe's here to pick up the backup tapes."

Marriott soon-to-be-ex SA: "Um, didn't they already come this week?"

Digital leakage of citizen data..

[3seas]

.. This is just another of many many cases of digital leakage of data on human beings. Data that may be used to thenm harm the party the information is about,

What do you suppose the solution direction is going to be, considerning that even having some sort of unique ID won't stop worngful use of such information?

Why even have a single government-owned indentity?

[jimbro2k]

These arguments miss the real point.
You have permitted a government to define, control and essentially own your identity.
There is no commercial or honest need for this.

Most of us using Slashdot have multiple identities (user names) for the different boards we log into on the net. For each one we have established a reputation for good or ill that serves as our good-will or "credit" on that board.
If the government wishes to issue a Tax ID, OK. But only I and they need to know it.
If a credit company wishes to issue a credit ID to track my credit history, maybe OK, but they do not need to know my SSN, or even if I have one.

I'll go farther: no one needs to know my real name, or even if I have one.

Only those with a purient lust to know about others "need" to know everything. Rememeber that such lusts are insatiable, and that tolerating them feeds them. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Re: VS8 has so many problems

[AlexBereznyi]

Hi Melissa,
Sorry to digress from the topic. I've read your 'VS8 has so many problems' post, it's VERY useful.

BTW, VC has has built-in variable-sized stack allocation: void *_malloca(size_t size); Allocates memory on the stack. This is a version of _alloca with security enhancements as described in Security Enhancements in the CRT. I used _alloca() a lot sincelong time ago. I hope it'll be useful to you too.

You also wrote:

- VC8 does not have __asm in x64. This is a terrible mistake. It would have been very easy for Microsoft to have implemented this feature (it's not very different from x86)! This is the most severe problem my company has with Visual Studio 8. We have resorted to using a GCC cross-compiler to compile our x64 C programs with embedded x64 assembly language.

I agree. Could you share with me some build or Makefile samples on how use GCC this way? I am trying to do the same (compile our x64 C programs with embedded x64 assembly language on x64). My email: abereznyi@hotmail.com

Thanks, Alex