UK Bank Laptop Stolen With 11M Customer Records

daveewart writes "BBC News reports that the UK Building Society Nationwide has admitted that a laptop containing account records of more than 11 million customers has been stolen from an employee's home. This story raises a number of worrying questions: The theft happened three months ago, why has the news only just been made public? Why was it possible (indeed, why was it necessary at all) to put data relating to their entire customer base on an employee's laptop stored at an employee's home? Why was the information on the laptop not encrypted?"

Comments

worrying questions

[homer_s]

This story raises a number of worrying questions:

The worrying questions should be
Why should anyone be able to ruin your finances by just knowing some numbers?
Why should someone be able to borrow in your name by just quoting some number?
Why is my future dependent on whether some data entry operator in some company follows the proper security precautions?

I hate how everyone is using the term 'identity theft'. No one can steal someone else's identity (for now anyway).

What 'identity theft' really means is that the the methods the financial industry uses to identify people is broken.Whenever the govt holds hearing on 'identity theft' they are only legitimizing these methods and making the people responsible for the failures of the financial industry.

Re:worrying questions

[Anonymous Coward]

This very very insightful. For instance when I lived in the US by social security number had to be used for almost everything I did. FOor example, it was my employee number at work and printed on everything. In Canada, where I am from, your number is more closing guarded, basically only used for tax purposes. If I get a form from my stock broker it says "number on file" and doesn't prtint the number, because there is no reason too.

Anyway the parent is right on the money, but we could start by taking easy baby steps and we don't even do that.

Re:worrying questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone should come up with two large prime numbers p and q the moment they're born, state p*q for the birth certificate, and compute arbitrary cube roots mod p*q in their head to prove their identity.

Re:worrying questions

[ShieldW0lf]

I left a job once when I first started working in IT, and one of the projects I'd done was for a web hosting company. I wanted the project to finish before I quit so I could use it on my resume, so I sent myself home the files I needed to work on to finish it so I could quit.

One of the databases I was working on had hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers in it. I deleted it, of course, but it was trivial to bring it home... at that time, to me, it wasn't a collection of credit card numbers, it was just "the database I needed to have present to finish my work".

It's SOO easy to be trivial about these types of things when you're an overworked IT pro. Security procedures exist BECAUSE it's so easy to forget that the stuff that you deal with in such a routine fashion is sensitive. It's just like reality tv stars forgetting about the cameras.

Re:worrying questions

[mspohr]

Why should anyone be able to ruin your finances by just knowing some numbers? Why should someone be able to borrow in your name by just quoting some number? Why is my future dependent on whether some data entry operator in some company follows the proper security precautions?

This is the crux of the problem. The entire basis of the credit industry is that they collect all of your personal information and then sell it freely without your knowledge or permission. They profit from each sale and thus have a big incentive to make the information available to as many people as possible. They've been burned by past practices and have had to eliminate outright fraudsters from their sales prospects (much to their dismay) but they still make big bucks by selling to just about anyone else prospecting for suckers for their credit cards, "financial services", and every other hair-brained marketers wet dream.

If people could actually claim ownership of their data and have it released only when they specifically agreed to the release with proper notification, the identity theft problems would go away (but so would the business model of the credit agencies).

Re:worrying questions

[ummit]

Why should anyone be able to ruin your finances by just knowing some numbers?

Excellent question.

One big problem is that in the U.S., at least, we've generally conflated identification with authentication. But they're two very different problems.

If, for example, Social Security numbers were only ever used for identification -- telling two different John Smiths apart, for example -- it wouldn't matter if they were public. In fact I've heard that one of the Scandanavian countries publishes a freely-available database of everyone's identification numbers. Besides being convenient, this ensures that nobody ever sets up a scheme that stupidly uses an identification number as an authenticator.

The big problems arise when the same number that's widely used for identification -- e.g. a SSN -- is also used for authentication.

It wouldn't be so bad if all it took to pove to my bank that I'm me was a number or word, as long as that number or word is secret, and only used for that purpose, so that it has a decent chance of staying secret.

Re:worrying questions

[Fastolfe]

This is absolutely insane. You do not need a full account database in order to do a project. A project like this should have a test database that contains bogus customer information for testing purposes. I work for a major telecommunications company on our billing-related application team, and I have never seen or heard of our developers doing things like this.

I can understand, though, how some smaller companies may not have the resources to do things like this properly, but for the benefit of other readers, not everyone handles customer data the way you/your client did here.

Re:worrying questions

[ivothamdrup]

The bit about identification numbers is actually true. In Estonia, everyone's [1] SSN can be looked up from a public LDAP directory (ldap://ldap.sk.ee). The SSN is used, as you said, only for identification. There are however some people who view it as a security hazard, but the same people can't tell the difference between identification and authorization...
[1] - Everyone who's been issued an ID Card; that is, about 90% of the population.

Re:worrying questions

[RAMMS EIN]

``This very very insightful. For instance when I lived in the US by social security number had to be used for almost everything I did. FOor example, it was my employee number at work and printed on everything. In Canada, where I am from, your number is more closing guarded, basically only used for tax purposes. If I get a form from my stock broker it says "number on file" and doesn't prtint the number, because there is no reason too.''

Right. It's interesting to see how, in the USA, where (more) people are (more) paranoid about "them" watching them, you need SSNs for nearly every transaction beyond every day stuff, whereas in Canada and the EU, where people are, generally, much more trusting, the local equivalents of SSNs are much more closely guarded and restricted in their purpose.

Having said that, mine is printed on my passport, so, I suppose, everyone who has ever seen my passport could have my SSN...but that's not a whole lot of people, actually. In fact, there are probably more people who know whatever number I used as an SSN when I lived in the US for half a year than there are people who know my actual, Dutch, SoFi number.

Re:worrying questions

[ShieldW0lf]

In my defense, at that time, I had negligible real-world experience to speak of and was attempting to single-handedly reverse engineer, repair and extend a huge mess that looked like it had been written by a secretary. I think they migrated the db from Access with a wizard and then poked around looking for ways to make it worse.

The idea of not using "live data" in that particular case was a bit of a joke.

Why was the info. on the laptop not encrypted?

[msobkow]

Why was the information on the laptop not encrypted?

That is the one question that doesn't step on internal business processes, data, or procedures.

With free "hard" encryption tools out there such as TrueCrypt and encfs, there is no excuse whatsoever for customer data to leave the data center without an encryption envelope/container.

Re:Why was the info. on the laptop not encrypted?

[AnonChef]

there is no excuse whatsoever for customer data to leave the data center without an encryption envelope/container.

When did stupidity stop being a valid reason?

Why, why, why?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Obviously, the UK Building Society Nationwide does not read Slashdot, otherwise they would have known about the risks.

It is not often I say . . .

[Don_dumb]

Thank god I have only £30 in my Nationwide account.

Re:It is not often I say . . .

[pr0digy25]

Thank god I have only £30 in my Nationwide account.

Or is that *had* in your account? :)

a reason to SMILE

[cliffski]

Another good reason I use smile (www.smile.co.uk) They have great customer service (best ive encountered), reasonable interest rates, a great,usable website, and are consistantly ranked the top UK bank for security. On top it all, they are an ethical bank who restrict where they invest your cash.
It amazes me that people still use high street banks. I haven't set foot in a bank in 5 years.

Re:a reason to SMILE

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that this couldn't happen to them?

Seems like you're nothing but a petty shill.

Re:a reason to SMILE

[xwizbt]

Nobody's suggesting it couldn't happen to them, but you may want to check their website and see just how obsessed they are with security. However, this doesn't mean those silly systems where you get a random number through the post and have to input various digits every now and then, which you promptly forget. Their security is simple but effective. Coupled with great customer service, I can totally see where the original poster is coming from.

And hey - how many other banks have two rabid fans that are prepared to stand up and say 'Hey, my bank's great!' for no reason at all other than they've had a great customer experience? Yeah, so I guess it's very nearly off-topic, but there you go. Online banking is a valid alternative to places like Nationwide, and because they're on the internet security seems to be more of a concern for these banks.

Sounds like they should be prosecuted

[Colin Smith]

The Data Protection Act requires that businesses and individuals take precautions to protect personal data.

Suck it up

[Toby The Economist]

Well, I think it's clear from the repeated stories of millions of confidential files being lost that enough large organisations simply don't understand security enough to get it right.

However, we all carry on using their services because we're stuffed if we don't - if your university loses your details, what are you going to do? quit? if your morgage is with your bank and they lose your account information, are you going to change bank?

Because there is basically, when all is said and done, no *real* pain for organisations, for loosing information, there is no *real* need for them to understand security enough for these data losses to stop.

So suck it up!

Personally, I'm trying to get out from under. I gave up my mobile phone last week - I do not accept having my mobile phone calls logged for a year. I'm moving over to Tor, because I do not accept having my browsing logged for four days (current UK retention). I'm thinking about getting rid of the phone, too, and moving over purely to encrypted email which will be sent/receieved from my own home-run POP/SMTP server.

Re:Suck it up

[Fnkmaster]

Well, this is one of those cases where government intervention would actually be useful. If there were a mandatory penalty of $10 per record lost, plus the requirement that the company covers identity theft protection insurance for at least 2 years for all affected customers, well, you wouldn't ever see 11 million records leave the office, period.

When the customers have low bargaining power due to a natural oligopoly market scenario with few large, powerful competitors, the government needs to provide some protections from this sort of abusive behavior.

Re:Banking competition...

[jabuzz]

It's a mutual building society, so firstly it is not a bank anyway. Secondly it cannot just be brought out unless a majority of it's current customers vote that way. The Nationwide in line with most of the other remaining building societies in the U.K. have made the process of de-mutualization much harder in recent years. It therefore unlikely that it could be brought out by anyone.

Not a Huge Surprise

[segedunum]

Having worked indirectly, contracting for a few UK banks, I can't say this is a huge surprise. The people that work at these places aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box, and quite frankly, they can't attract anybody with any intellect. When a UK bank or building society says they're tightening security or doing anything, it's always a panic reaction and things revert to normal when the whole thing goes away.

People are asking various questions like "Why wasn't it encrypted?" That's a pointless question. I want to know how on Earth you get 11 million customer records on to a single laptop in the first place.

But, Barry Stamp, former director of CIFAS, the fraud prevention service, said it was unusual for an entire customer database to be stored on a laptop......."We've seen cases like this almost every week at the moment, but on the other hand you have to ask why that information was contained on a laptop and why the security was lax at Nationwide in such a way that you could download the entire database to a laptop. "This is really unusual."

It's not that unusual at all sadly. All customer details are stored on mainframes or in big databases centrally, so no, there's no chance of stealing everything to do with a customer. This is where the disorganisation of UK banks' IT systems comes in handy. I'm wondering if this is perhaps a dirty great Access database or something used for mailing list or money laundering (ironic, I know) purposes. If so, this kind of thing happens all the time.

well its a good thing they don't.....

[3seas]

allow the use of 4 gig thumb drives.....

Oh wait, Did I say "don't"?

Re:Death Penalty

[Dunbal]

We need to implement the death penalty for this sort of thing.

      Nahh, just 1 day in jail for the directors of the company, for each individual's information that was stolen.

      See you in 11000000/365 = about 30,000 years!!!

TFA

[Chris_Keene]

TFA does not say that the laptop had infomation on "their entire customer base" (not saying the submitter is wrong, but the BBC article certainly doesn't say this). It seems that it included names and account numbers but not pins, balances or passwords.

More infomation
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/security/news_and_aler ts/

This was a domestic burglary, there's a chance that the theif has no idea this laptop was special, and has already sold it cash in hand down the pub. It's probably being used right now by someone browsing for porn or doing 'ebay' unaware of what sits of that disk.

Not to say they should not presume the worse and react accordingly of course.

What they're doing is breaking the law.

[Colin Smith]

"7. Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data."

From the UK Data Protection Act 1998.

If this hasn't been followed then the law has been broken and the perpetrators should suffer the consequences. Which is currently a fine of up to £5,000 per offence. Directors being liable. With potentially 11 million offences that could add up to a lot of money.

Re:How can we stop this happening so often?

[einar2]

Because some people conduct their business very incompetent.

I work for a Swiss bank. All notebook harddisks are encrypted by default. There is no way our employees could get access to the customer database to replicate data!!! The Swiss banking law is rather harsh on such issues. For the employee as well as the bank.
In the end, you have to severly punish enterprises for being lax with customer data. The loose of reputation is not incetive enough. It has to hurt so that execs decide to recognize the issue.

Utter tosh

[mccalli]

Having worked indirectly, contracting for a few UK banks, I can't say this is a huge surprise. The people that work at these places aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box, and quite frankly, they can't attract anybody with any intellect.

Ah, the 'I know everything better than you do' type of genius. Tell us, oh great one, of how your towering intellect dwarfs the mere minnows you have dealt with in the past.

I too have contracted around various UK and foreign-owned but UK-based banks. Some of the people I met there were fools. Some were amongst the brightest people I've known. As ever, and particularly in organisations that huge, there's a large mix of people involved. There are also a number of bright people in banks who's area of expertise isn't computing - they're banks remember?

There may well be an issue of education, and also I'd like to know why these things didn't have full-drive encryption installed. Then again, we don't know that it didn't - despite the article summary, Nationwide have refused to give any details. That's any details, whether positive or negative, nor have they confirmed any numbers. 11 million is just the number of customers they have, not necessarily the ones on the laptop.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Probably not enough ID..

[Gandalf_the_Beardy]

I've seen people stealing these out of letterboxes before now on our estate. I can't personally think of any other useful reason to pinch a gas bill, unless you've been dumpster diving ot have bought a laptop for £50 with 11 million acount numbers on it.... Since the postie doesn't deliver until midday in many locations, and since it's easy to stick your fingers in a floor level letterbox and fish the mail back out again it's amazing anyone accepts a utility bill as proof of ID. All it is proof you have access to the mailbox of that address.

Profit!!

[RAMMS EIN]

1. Withdraw all money from account

2. Write letter to bank, complaining that all money was stolen, and demanding compensation. The bank can't refute your claim, because your authentication data has been stolen, so they can never prove it was _really_ you who did the withdrawal.

3. Profit!!!