TJX Fires Employee For Disclosing Vulnerability

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A TJX employee was fired for an online post mentioning that TJX hasn't beefed up security after the recent, massive data breach that saw 94 million credit card numbers copied by criminals and money from their accounts stolen. The employee mentioned that, at first, their usernames were the same as their passwords. After they required stronger passwords, some managers complained, so they 'compromised' by allowing blank passwords. The whistleblower said he discussed his concerns with management, but that it was like talking to a brick wall. In spite of the weak internal security, TJX now has a firm that scours the internet to find bad things posted about them, which is how they found the message and fired him for it. Too bad they don't appear to have hired anyone to beef up operational security or to convince people to use strong passwords."

Comments

um duh

[Brian Gordon]

If you non-anonymously whistleblow on your own company what do you expect..

Re:um duh

[gnosi]

Have they not learned from the others that have gone on before them. It is not the original error that will get you, but how you cover up your error that does.

Anyone remember Nixon... and a few others.

-- sig.com not found post halted

I was about to say...

[vertinox]

Who is TJX and how can I avoid doing business with them, but then I realized they were TJ Maxx and Marshall's and I don't do business with them anyways.

Re:I was about to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesnt matter if you do not do buisness directly with TJX or whomever you do not like.... if you use a check or a CC when making a purchase odds are it goes through one of a few companies for processing. I used to work for a financial institution that leaked 20+million personal info to the world.... so, did you make any purchases at bestbuy or compusa last year? if so, your name was probably in the lot.

Re:I was about to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's fine--if someone gets my debit card number, they're welcome to both of the dollars in the account

Re:I was about to say...

[ksd1337]

My wife once had her credit card stolen (physically stolen). We got the CC bill a week later.

"Honey, look! The bill's $700 cheaper than last month!"

Now I go out with her when she decides to buy something.

Re:I was about to say...

[LostCluster]

TJX is a range of store brands listed here.

Sad State of Affairs

[PacketScan]

Sadly this is business as a whole. They would rather spend a little after the fact to defend rather than spend just a few dollars to beef up security before a problem occurs. Management is completely inept most times when it comes to security concerns.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[Anonymous Coward]

If the cost of implementing security is greater than the estimated cost of lawsuits due to bad security, a company will not spend the money for better security. This is the same logic the blood banks used for AIDS testing of their blood (until the rhs eventually was greater than the lhs) and this is the same logic that automakers use for defects.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[Anonymous Coward]

What security people don't understand is that good security can be very, very, VERY expensive. Far more expensive than some simple PR. I'm not just talking about the up-front cost of doing security right in the first place, but the less noticeable costs of user training, user re-training, tech support, lost productivity (senior manager forgot his admin password), and the cost of letting people go who are very valuable and good at their jobs but too stupid to follow the proper security protocols.

Good managers understand this and realize that spending that much money on protecting something that's really not very important to the company (customer identities) is just not good business. Until people start hearing on the nightly news that "TJMaxx gave your credit information to terrorists who used it to buy nuclear weapons and assassinate Jesus," the negative publicity they'll suffer is negligible.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[AB3A]

Very expensive? Compared to what? Going out of business?

What if your bank decided that those pesky safe deposit boxes would be a whole lot cheaper if only they could use unlocked filing cabinets instead. Would you still want to do business with them?

The sad state of affairs here is that the problem doesn't become apparent until someone gets hacked.

I think a firm that has a security breech ought to be forced to make restitution to the customers. Managers may not understand security, but they will understand lawsuits and damages.

Only once you've rubbed a manager's nose in the problem can you expect a solution. We don't HAVE to address everything, but managers should at least be aware of the risks they're taking.

It's a telling point that they've chosen to persecute instead of promote the person who exposed the flaws. These idiots would rather hide in the corner than address the risks up front.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[moderatorrater]

This has been a struggle for centuries.

Engineer: "I don't care what you read in 'Feudal Lords Monthly', if you want this castle to be secure, we need 2000 foot tall walls, 700 feet thick with a moat of pure acid that's 200 feet deep."
Lord: "But I read that this spell of invisibility and Norton(tm) balsa wood framework is just as good. It leads the industry!"

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[Tom]

What security people don't understand is that good security can be very, very, VERY expensive. Maybe. But the point here wasn't about good security it was about minimum security.

Good security can be expensive. But adequate security is fairly cheap. "password == username" and "blank password" are essentially equal to "no password". Having any password at all, even if it's weak from the POV of a security expert (say, a word from the dictionary) is still a whole lot better than having no password. And it's not very expensive. A billion people in millions of companies manage to remember their login password from monday through friday, and sometimes even over the weekend. I'm sure with just a little training, TJX managers would be able to do that, too.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

[Dog-Cow]

Anybody in a company that doesn't thinking their data is valuable, should be sent walking, immediately. I bet TJX takes the security of their data VERY seriously. But what was leaked was your data. That's not important.

One store

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a server at one store, not the TJX headquarters where the data is kept.

Re:One store

[Anonymous Coward]

"This was a server at one store, not the TJX headquarters where the data is kept"

The original loss of data was caused by weak passwords on wireless routers. War dialers parked outside a store (or stores) captured data that was then used to collect millions of credit card numbers from the HQ servers. One of the problems was that TJX kept CC numbers on file long after they had any use for the information. This is a case where bad security at one store compromised the whole corporation. Sounds like nothing has changed

Re:One store

[darkmeridian]

The war dialers logged into TJX HQ servers and were able to install applications that sniffed network traffic and logged passwords. TJX not only kept CC numbers long after they had any use for the information, they also kept transactional CC data that was not supposed to be kept after a transaction was done.

Re:One store

[jamstar7]

TJX not only kept CC numbers long after they had any use for the information, they also kept transactional CC data that was not supposed to be kept after a transaction was done.

Um, isn't this what the US government wants done with the new regulations? As well as sharing this info with the gov, of course...

Same happened to me :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I used the same password as this account, and obviously some people found out about it and have been posting under my username for ages! :(

Re:Same happened to me :(

[trolltalk.com]

I used the same password as this account, and obviously some people found out about it and have been posting under my username for ages! :(

That's what you get for using "12345" as your password, Mr. President!

Re:Same happened to me :(

[MooseMuffin]

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Another 23 year old realizes that McJobs suck

[elrous0]

Seriously, what did he expect, that a lazy corporation was going to reform its security policies because a 23-year-old hourly employee complained anonymously on a blog? And what did he think they were going to do when they caught him, give him a raise and a promise to change their cheap lazy ways?

Re:Another 23 year old realizes that McJobs suck

[pla]

Seriously, what did he expect, that a lazy corporation was going to reform its security policies because a 23-year-old hourly employee complained anonymously on a blog?

If they had any integrity - Yes, that sounds like the best possible outcome of this.

Think about it - The CIO didn't say "okay, after a major data breach, go ahead and keep using pathetic passwords". The order came down from On High to use secure passwords. This proved inconvenient to hundreds of piddling middle-managers, who ordered "their" IT guys to find a way around all that nasty security. The local IT guys complied, by allowing blank passwords (Corporate probably never expected anything that stupid, and so didn't have a policy stating otherwise).

So, sometime later, Corporate discovers what has happened, and it enrages them. They meet, discuss, take aim, and fire...

...At their own foot.


And what did he think they were going to do when they caught him, give him a raise and a promise to change their cheap lazy ways?

They could have addressed the problem and rewarded the child who dared to laugh at the naked emperor. By chosing not to, they have very effectively told me they care more about appearances than the security of my credit card data. As a result, I will no longer shop there.

Re:Another 23 year old realizes that McJobs suck

[dgatwood]

The heck it didn't. It had to do with a complete lack of security on computer systems that were used in financial transactions. It's hard to keep accurate financial records if key financial systems can be trivially compromised. It also represents a HUGE threat to the financial viability of the company, and technically, failure to include such risks as part of your regular corporate reporting to the SEC is a pretty major case of investor fraud, which was the whole point of Sarbanes-Oxley....

Sadly, covering up security problems seems to be the norm in banking circles. Really gives you a lot of trust in their ability to guard your money, doesn't it?

Oh, and here's a similar story from 2005 that also suggests that this is likely SarbOx territory.

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"So last August, Benson took to Sla.ckers.org, a website dedicated to web application security, and began anonymously reporting the shoddy practices in this user forum."

Re:RTFA

[TubeSteak]

began anonymously reporting the shoddy practices in this user forum." He was the squeaky wheel at the store, then went online and squeaked some more.
http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20080522/tjx-whistle-blower/

They tracked him down by IP (we're still not completely sure how they did this, but we think it may have to do with a DynDNS account he uses), contacted his ISP to find out who he was, brought him into the office, questioned him about what he found, asked for him to write down his thoughts on how to fix the issues and then promptly fired him. Long story short: You aren't anonymous unless you're going through an anonymous overseas proxy or three.
At least it'll be harder to get your IP from a foreign company.

Re:RTFA

[moxley]

However they found out who he was it can't have been legal.

He should fixate on this and sue them.

Re:RTFA

[immcintosh]

If there's anybody he can sue, it would only be his ISP for divulging his information without his permission and also without a warrant. While the company was certainly out of line in the lengths they went through to accomplish this, there's nothing ILLEGAL about discovering an internet persona's true identity. They were perfectly free to ask all the questions they did. Whether the ISP had any right to divulge that information is another matter I don't really care to guess on.

Re:RTFA

[conlaw]

AFAIK, there is no federal law that would apply in this situation and the only Kansas statute that I could find on whistleblowing applies only to government employees. However, there appear to be a couple of Kansas cases holding that firing someone for whistleblowing is against public policy.

Re:RTFA

[mwvdlee]

Asking somebody to break the law can be illegal too, depending on the exact details.
Trouble is, due to their own well-documented incompetence in security, they'd have a pretty good chance to claim they simply didn't know it was illegal.

Re:RTFA

[compro01]

And whatever happened to "ignorance of the law is no excuse"? One would think that should be doubly so for large corporations with legal departments to tell them what is and isn't legal.

Re:RTFA

[ConceptJunkie]

You're assuming large corporations are actually subject to the law.

Re:RTFA

[frank_adrian314159]

Oddly enough, even though ignorance of the law is not an excuse, it can be a mitigating factor. If you get caught, you're more likely to get a reduced sentence if what you are charged with is not obviously illegal. If you check and find out an action is illegal and then get caught, you're more likely to get the book thrown at you. It's sort like patent infringement. If you do a search, find a device/process you're infringing upon, and use it anyway, it's willful infringement and the patent holder can get triple damages; if you don't know it's infringement, you only get normal damages. As such, managers are advised to ask about legality sparingly.

P.S. I am not an attorney. Do not take this as valid legal advice.

Re:RTFA

[Zero__Kelvin]

It seems likely to me that he is protected by the Whistle Blower Law, since he posted to the thread:

News and Links

If you have some interesting news or want to throw up a link to discuss it, here's the place. Anything is okay, even shameless vendor launches (since that is often applicable to what we work on).

He tried to resolve it internally, and when the internal approach failed, he posted it to a news portion of the sla.ckers.org website.

I concede that IANAL, so of course, I could be wrong, however the courts have already ruled that blogs and other web based news sites qualify under protections provided to the media.

Does the CEO condone this firing act?

[ee_smajors]

This guy should be promoted to CIO for the company and given carte blanc to clean house on the asshole who did not deal with the original issue. Until I hear that this guy is justly treated, we will not ever spend another penny in TJX stores. Enough of us and the CEO will be looking for a new job.

Weak American Dollar

[SlshSuxs]

This data is implicitly safe now by the weak American Dollar, it would be like stealing Pesos.

Good for him

[sleekware]

I don't blame him at all. There is far too much incompetence out there regarding data security. I am lucky to work for a company that listens, but I have quite a few friends who work for companies that don't seem to give a damn. It's a shame.

I think there are laws. . .

[JSBiff]

To protect whistleblowers, aren't there? Although, that might only be in the government, and maybe government contractors. Not sure if it extends to the private sector.

The thing I'm puzzled about is, I thought that the electronic payment networks (MasterCard, Visa, Discover, Amex, etc) had very specific requirements for data security, including audits, which filter down to merchants (I realize that merchants don't generally do business directly with the networks [unless, maybe, they're Walmart or Sears], and instead go through intermediate companies that 'resell' the network services, but I thought the security requirements, and audit regimen, bubble down through the whole hierarchy?)

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[athakur999]

The whistleblower protection laws in the USA protect an employee from termination for reporting the employer acting illegally. Shoddy security may be stupid but I don't know if it's illegal or not. Also, the employee needs to be reporting to the proper authority, not a random Internet forum.

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[kmahan]

And who would the "proper authority" be in this case? His management doesn't care.

Apparently PCI Compliance doesn't allow for input from the "little people" -- or would someone care to post a link that allows for submitting information to them?

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[TubeSteak]

The whistleblower protection laws in the USA protect an employee from termination for reporting the employer acting illegally. Yea and construction workers can legally refuse to work on an unsafe site.
Neither set of laws will keep you from getting fired for coming back from lunch 3 minutes late.

If your company wants a reason to fire you, unless you're perfect, they'll find one.

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I think you've pretty much got to the root of the problem there: if this behaviour isn't criminally negligent, it should be. In a world where identity theft is one of the fastest growing (and most damaging) crimes in town, dealing with a business that has previously shown itself to be incompetent in handling personal data and is actively avoiding improving the situation, it's time to start throwing the directors in jail.

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[Pepebuho]

I am not a lawyer, but I think there might be some way to tie Sarbanes-Oaxley into this.
As a Public Company, TJX is subject to Sarbanes Oaxley.

Section 302 demands the certification of Internal Control on Financial data. With such shoddy password system I fail to see how they can comply with it.
Section 404 demands management to assess risk and solve it
Section 802 accrues criminal penalties for violations to Sarbanes Oaxley and (TADAM!!!)
Section 1107 accrues criminal penalties for retaliations against whistleblowers.

I think this guy should get hold of Section 1107 and run it for all it is worth!!!!

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Section 1107 of the SOX 18 U.S.C. 1513(e) states:[23]

" Whoever knowingly, with the intent to retaliate, takes any action harmful to any person, including interference with the lawful employment or livelihood of any person, for providing to a law enforcement officer any truthful information relating to the commission or possible commission of any federal offence, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both. I am not sure if posting to a blog could be construed as "providing to a law enforcement officer any truthful information bla bla bla", but I think this is his best shot.

My 2 cents

Re:I think there are laws. . .

[geekoid]

true, but when you show up to court, there going to be looked at real carefully.
Has anyone else been 3 minutes late and not fired? what does your policy say?

The courts are suspicious of those kind of amazing coincidence.

Even if you are 'perfect' they can find one, no doubt. That doesn't mean you don't have recourse.

In case you're wondering who TJX is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the TJX web site [warning: Flash], where you'll learn that they are TJMaxx, Winners, Marshalls, HomeSense, HomeGoods, TKMaxx, AJWright, and Bob's Stores. You can also read a nice letter from the TJX president and CEO describing how they have "...worked diligently with some of the world's best computer security firms to further enhance our computer security."

Blank passwords. Wow. No bad guys would ever try that. Disclosing that policy would really compromise security, wouldn't it?

Another older guy loses his capacity for outrage

[spun]

Hey, yeah, what was this guy thinking, doing the right thing in spite of the risks? He deserved to get screwed over, right? Everyone just play along, don't rock the boat, do what you're told, and shut the hell up. Thanks so much for sharing your sage wisdom and mature outlook.

Maybe he expected exactly what happened and blew the whistle anyway. So, wise elder, what would you have done?

Dear TJX

[Archangel Michael]

Dear TJX,

We're the Slashdot community, and would like you to meet Ms Barbara Streisand, who can help you with your media relations problem.

Yours Truly,

Slashdot Community.

Re:ah well

[ivan256]

Wait... He was an hourly associate in one of their retail outlets?

McDonalds is always hiring. It'll be a step up for him.

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

[elrous0]

Being a whistleblower means sacrifice. No one gives you a medal for doing the right thing, nor should you expect anything but scorn.

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

[compro01]

Yes, things currently work that way. Things shouldn't work that way.

Luggage? Pfft

[autocracy]

I've got the same key for my ssh sessions (with apologies to Debian).

Re:Luggage? Pfft

[trolltalk.com]

I've got the same key for my ssh sessions (with apologies to Debian).

President Skroobs' director of IT recomends using 2-4-6-8-10 for ssh, since it's obviously double secure over the standard 1-2-3-4-5.

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

[spun]

Assuming this is how things actually are, what makes you think this kid expected anything different? Where do you see him begging for a medal?

But it really sounds like you are going further, saying that not only is this how things are, but how they ought to be. It really sounds like you are coming down on the guy for doing the right thing.

Or maybe you are trying to say that everyone should be as cynical as you are? Maybe you believe that we should all expect to get fucked over for doing the right thing, and anyone who doesn't expect that is an idiot who deserves what they got.

Please clarify, do you think this guy got the treatment he deserves? Should we not be outraged here? I'm confused as to your motives for posting what you originally did.

Since when?

[MrNougat]

Since when is "allowing blank passwords" a compromise, and not stupid?

Additional Information

[mrkitty]

http://www.cgisecurity.com/2008/05/11

Gold Mine

[Nom du Keyboard]

In spite of the weak internal security, TJX now has a firm that scours the internet to find bad things posted about them, which is how they found the message and fired him for it.

Then they've found a Gold Mine here on Slashdot.