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Vudu Resets User Passwords After Burglary
New submitter Chewbacon writes "If you can't hack it, smash and grab it. Video streaming service Vudu has emailed customers informing them of the theft of hard drives containing customer information. CNET reports the information on the stolen drives included: names, e-mail addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, account activity, dates of birth, and the last four digits of some credit card numbers. Vudu's Chief Technology Officer Prasanna Ganesan said while no complete credit card numbers were stored on the hard drives and expressed confidence in password encryption, he felt the need to be proactive with the password reset and encouraged users to be proactive as well should the encrypted passwords become compromised. Vudu fails to mention, perhaps in a downplaying move, the last 4 digits of a credit card and much of the other information stolen is often enough to access an account through virtually any company's phone support."
Physical security is just as important as online security you can get just as much info out of a PC in a skip as you can online if it wasn't wiped correctly for instance.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Maybe they had a night watchman, and he's the guy that stole the drives.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Who watches the watchmen.
I know! That movie is like three hours long.
Wish I knew which fucktard started that. The first 4-6 digits identify your card issuer, so if I knew you had a discover card (6011) and the last 4 digits, it would halve the search space for your card and LUHN will take care of a huge chunk of the rest. I once freaked out a coworker by reading her credit card number aloud as she typed it from across the room - she had the same university CC I had, the first 8 digits were the same. Look in your wallet and tell me how many cards you have from the same bank? If you were given back the first 4 digits of the card # on your receipt, you'd know exactly which card you used. Nobody else needs to know.
Where does it say what type of drive was stolen or what it was in? Backups of a production database on a developers' laptop hard drives for instance would still fit the story if laptops were taken. Or if they were on external drives but used for the same purpose.
Even if they were "enterprise drives" in a server, NAS, SAN, etc there is some used market for them. Probably not the same market that wanted them new, but they'll still sell for the right price.
It strikes me as a little silly to think that the type of personal information on those drives is somehow going to stay a secret. You have to give it to dozens of organizations: banks, employers, stores, and so on. So using this information as a security identifier is a very flawed approach. We seem to accept this since the level of fraud is tolerable. Plus the alternatives such as smart cards are extremely expensive to implement across all of society.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
How much do you bet this data was copied onto someone's laptop, sitting on a desk, rather than a thief breaking into a datacenter and pulling an entire server?
If a thief thought he was getting a storage container full of SSDs, that could be enough motivation. Even used they go for big bucks, especially the enterprise ones.
My step-mom had her checking account put on hold once after a spurious transaction showed up on it. Come to find out a computer system from the electronic check processing company that Walmart uses was stolen by an employee and sold to some nefarious group.
Yup, I use and love VuDu. I currently have 38 movies in my collection on their service. Why, because they are the best online streaming service that supports Android tablets and they also offer the highest resolution streaming in their HDX format for my HTPC and laptop. You can also download local copies for viewing offline on Android tablets. I got much of my collection from redeeming UltraViolet codes from BluRays and also got some as free promotions. WalMart has also partnered with them to put any of your current BluRays or DVDs into your VuDu collection for only $2 a piece, $5 if upgrading a DVD to HDX.
Nevermore.