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Network Solutions Suffers Massive Data Breach
dasButcher writes "Network Solutions, the domain registration and hosting service company, suffered a massive security breach that lasted three months and exposed tens of thousands of credit card numbers of its customers and of the businesses that use its hosting and online payment processing service. The company is just beginning the victim notification process. 'There is no information on how the code was planted on the sites. While examination of the code shows that it had the ability to ship data off to a third party, and Network Solutions believes that it did just that, the exact code is not available for public review. There is also no public information as to where the data believed to be stolen was sent.'"
This is exactly why you dont go with the *HUGE* companies. Theres a huge possibility that someone somewhere will target it and get around their security. It just takes one hack and all customers are affected. Security by obscurity is not always such a bad idea; go with the small ones who also can do their shit, and aren't such a big target.
There's nothing that says the data was stored on any publicly accessible server. What is said is that there was a code insertion that could have been used to transfer data out. The attackers probably patched into whatever lame backend system they were using for these transactions and added a little bit of code to simply copy the details out to a URL/irc bot somewhere. Cases like these typically involve some inside help or an ex-employee.
--- I do not moderate.
I do something similar. I use a prepaid WalMart card for all online purchases. Typically I use it along with my PayPal account (which has a fraud guarantee, that I've used on one occasion). If it gets hacked they won't get much.
I personally would never give my actual bank card to anyone over the Internet or Phone. To be perfectly honest I pay for most transactions with cash and I haven't written a check (other than payroll checks) in almost 10 years.
ed duval the very last person
I know for a fact that they do store credit cards - regardless of what they may or may not claim.
One billing application that allow you to search ALL historical purchases, what, when, card #, address, services etc...
The second for more recent purchases.
Primarily we used a single application - and that application gave you access to the entire database which included minor and major information, such as Name, Address, phone#, email, Your Challenge Question, the HINT tot eh challenge question, CC number, billing cycle and history, DNS, smtp, database passwords (if you host with NetSol), all email users and their passwords under that domain, ftp passwords, website passwords for the GUI designer and much much more!
If you have a domain with them that has other email address setup through the NetSol site, simply login and look at those accounts. Each of those users can change the oringial password you set for them once they log into their online mail. But you will always see the passwords as ****, but don't fret if you forgot one (or they changed it) and want to log into the email account of that user, pull up the source code - they are all in plain text (as of 1 year ago anyway).
They have certain "servers" that handle routing and other processes that are no more than a laptop - that's right, not a server - a laptop.
Oh and your cost of thousands of dollars to buy back your domain name - here is a little bit of info. Many users were irate about New Ventures grabbing doamins faster than anyone else when they expired, sometimes before it was to be released (grace period for renewal after it expired). All employees were told to let the customers know that we were not, nor were we affiliated with New Ventures. A month later at a financial meeting, it was announced that we've been making leaps and bounds in revenues and recently sold a domain name for nearly a million dollars!. A few of us started looking into this as NetSol is a registar supposedly with a set fee for domains. As it turns out New Ventures is in fact a part of NetSol - They're scamming everyone.
When I began working for NetSol, I was happy as a lark - until I got settled in and started digging into the processes, support and resolution chain and blatant lies were were telling people, I was so disappointed. I left not being able to stand the lies anymore. We'd tell people that their issue would have a resolution in 3 days, but they'd never hear from anyone. And in fact when someone would ask for someone higher up the chain of command, (ie: supervisor, etc) the supervisors would tell us to tell them they can't be transferred, get the number and the supervisor will call them in 5-10 minutes... would they be home? Issue is that they would never get a call back... only to call in again and be transferred to level II support once more and talk to yourself again, or a fellow Level II support person near you. We would all talk and discuss the deflection process. At that time their website were also riddled with iframe exploits, constantly being hacked and defaced for over a year and a half.
Unless anyone here actually works for NetSol - no one really knows what I know for a fact that goes on there. Given there history with customers and such, They've probably know about this for a long time.
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
Give me a break! - I too worked for Network Solutions as Level II support - I know all about the bullshit story lines in order to save face. iframe exploits throughout the customers sites, issues not followed through on, the denial of New Ventures having -any- affiliation with NetSol. The ease of gaining access.
In fact while I worked there, several Tech's uploaded basic http shell emulators onto their sites and all had root level access within minutes.
Your infrastructure was and still is seriously flawed and appears that it always will be - I know first hand!
I'll file this under TasteButDontSwallow
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
walmass is correct. This would only be a SOX issue IF they didn't have separate people/groups for development, QA, implementer, and production support/administration. This is more of a PCI-DSS issue which must be complied with if there is going to be any handling and especially storage of card numbers.