Reporters Threatened, Labeled Hackers For Finding Security Hole

colinneagle writes "Scripps News reporters discovered 170,000 records online of customers of Lifeline, a government program offering affordable phone service for low-income citizens, that contained everything needed for identity theft . Last year, the FCC 'tightened' the rules for the program by requiring Lifeline phone carriers to document applicants' eligibility, which led to collecting more sensitive information from citizens. A Scripps News investigative team claims it 'Googled' the phone companies TerraCom Inc. and YourTel America Inc. to discover all of the files. A Scripps reporter asked for an on-camera interview with the COO of TerraCom and YourTel after explaining the files were freely available online. That did not happen, but shortly thereafter the customer records disappeared from the internet. Then, the blame-the-messenger hacker accusations and mudslinging began. Although the Scripps reporters videotaped the process showing how they found the documents, attorney Jonathon Lee for both telecoms threatened the 'Scripps Hackers' with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)."

Comments

Try to do something right

[Anonymous Coward]

That will teach you to use responsible disclosure.

Re:Try to do something right

[Anonymous Coward]

But the reporter can't be anonymous and trustworthy. The press are as full of shit as every other profession, so a reporter needs to put her/his name to it or it's worth as much as an empty cup of coffee. By attaching their reputation (good or bad) to a story they can defend (rightly or wrongly) what the've published.

Re:Try to do something right

[kasperd]

But the reporter can't be anonymous and trustworthy.

Sometimes the evidence itself is more important than the source. In the particular case, it sounds like the evidence was strong enough that it wouldn't matter which source it came from.

But the trend with threats and lawsuits against those, who discover security holes, must stop. That trend is a major threat against data security across the entire IT industry.

People will keep finding security holes. Sometimes you just stumple upon them, without even looking. What are you going to do, once you have found a security hole? Report it and try to get it fixed? Ignore it? Abuse it? If those who do the right thing are going to be the target of threats and lawsuits, that certainly removes incentive to do the right thing. So fewer people will report security holes. And some of those who would have reported it, might instead decide to abuse it.

If we ever get to the point where doing the right thing is more likely to get you into a lawsuit than abusing the security hole for personal gain is, then the industry is in big trouble.

Luckily a few companies are taking steps in the opposite direction and are offering cash rewards to those who find security holes. At some point users will have to start taking that into account when deciding what software to trust. But it is a very real problem, when the systems you don't trust are those used by any branch of government. You can't just go somewhere else. And the lack of competition has lead to situations where security concerns are just ignored.

Re:Try to do something right

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Or you know... people could start writing decent secure code to begin with... :)

Did you ever write a program? Did it work the first time, doing exactly what it was supposed/specified to do?

Took a lot of debugging and error correction, didn't it? Even if you are a programming expert.

Now write a program where "what it's supposed to do" includes "not get cracked and used by any malware, known or unknown, past or future".

Think you'll get THAT right the first time? Even if you are a security expert?

Never expose any security holes

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, two business principles apply:
1. It is none of your business when shit hits the fan, and
2. It is never our fault.

PR, lawyer greed, revenge, or abject incompetence

[interkin3tic]

I honestly can't understand the point of shooting the messenger here. Is it entirely to try to convince their customers (who are likely not very tech savvy) that they have nothing to worry about? I can understand the letter they sent out blaming the reporters for that, but to actually sue them doesn't make sense. Do they actually believe they can spin this to the FCC as the reporters going all James Bond to access files that were reasonably secured? Or is this just a lawyer who is racking up more billable hours, and his clients are too stupid to realize what a waste it is? Is this actually a roomful of executives saying "FUCK THOSE GUYS! Send the lawyers after them! That'll learn the press to google us!"

I realize these companies have made some seriously bad decisions, and dumb decisions by committee are even worse, but this makes no sense.

WGET? The Devil's Tool!

[eldavojohn]

Lee added that the Scripps Hackers eventually used Wget to find and download "the Companies' confidential files." (Wget was the same tool used by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in the film The Social Network to collect student photos from various Harvard University directories.) The rest of the letter pretty much blamed the "Scripps Hackers" for the cost of breach notifications, demanded Scripps hand over all evidence as well as the identity and intentions of the hackers, before warning that Scripps will be sued.

Folks, there was a big bad security breach. Now, *adjusts his massive belt buckle* we're investigating this like we would any other serious crime. And right now we're just trying to identify weapons used in this heinous attack. Now, we've discovered that the hackers were using a very vicious mechanism in this attack. In a murder, you might find a revolver used to put two bullets into the back of a poor old defenseless lady's skull in order to get all her coupons and a couple of Indian head pennies out of her purse. Or perhaps in a pedophile case, you'll find the "secret candy" that was used to lure the children into a white panel van with painted over windows.

*expels a long tortured sigh*

Well, I gotta say, in my thirty years on the force, I wish we were only dealing with something like that today, honest to God Almighty I really do. Instead this artifact was discovered at the scene of the crime. Now, I'm not asking you to understand that -- hell, I'd warn you against even openin' up your browser to the devil's toolbox. But let me, a trained law enforcement professional, take the time to explain the gruesome evidence just one HTTP request away from you and your chillun'. The page is black. Black as a moonless night sky when raptors swoop from the murky inky nothing to take your kids and livestock back up with them silently. On it is a bunch of white text that makes no sense to any God fearun' man on this here Earth. That's what they call a "man page" probably because it is the ultimate culmination of man's sin and lo and behold it displays a guide to exact torture on innocent web servers across this great and holy internet.

Even if you want to use this "man page" for WGET to learn how to use Satan's server scythe, you would have to read through almost twenty pages of incomprehensible technobabble like what that kraut over in Cali -- the one who took his wife's life -- spoke. And if you want to just see an example, it's not at the top! No, why, it's all the way down at the bottom. For this one, they don't even have examples. Just enough options to kill a man. Probably gave Steve Jobs cancer, they never proved all these options in these pages didn't. Buried in the mud of a thousand evils lie more evils.

And why, oh why are we even wasting taxpayer money on these Scripps Journos? Who needs a trial when the evidence is in the tools they used? Folks, I think it's time we WGET one last thing, I'll WGET a rope and you WGET your pitchforks and torches ... let's go down to Scripps and put all this computer business behind us. Okay?

Typical distraction

[intermodal]

Call 'em hackers enough time, and people will be distracted by their alleged malice to the point where they forget or don't even believe anymore that the files were literally just out there for anyone to see. It's like leaving a $100 bill on the sidewalk and waiting to see who turns it in at the lost and found so you can call 'em a thief to distract from your own leaving it lying around.

Mandatory study for Lawyers and Judges...

[Moppusan]

...should be a course in Computer and Internet Obviousness (naughty words omitted to make it sound more official, fucking god dammit). And certified as passing this course should be a requirement to be a judge or lawyer in the US with a 6 month renewal term. Any lawyer not holding a certificate should be disbarred post haste and any judge should be removed from his/her seat post haste. Post haste. Haste.

Re:PR, lawyer greed, revenge, or abject incompeten

[DougOtto]

It's deflection.

If they were "hacked" then the folks who's data was leaked blame the wily hackers. If they let it stand that the data was just freely available on the web, it's a liability to the telecoms involved; i.e. "it's not our fault, it's THOSE guys."

Re:WGET? The Devil's Tool!

[webmistressrachel]

Wow, I'm scared to fire up my console now. GUIs only from now on for me - I had no idea that I was invoking the devil with my black backround and myriad switches and parameters passed!

Having been a "builder" from a very young age, I can identify with being considered "heathen" for being able connect things that other people had no idea could work together (yet obviously could work together - for example I've used a decent amp and speakers with whatever source was playing since I left home, but using the AUX input with my NICAM video recorder was blasphemy to my parents - and connecting the computer (Amstrad CPC464) to the speakers must have been like summoning demons - because they put a stop to that quickly - and no, it wasn't loud either.)

This perception of me as "hacker" carried on through school and college. Despite me having more integrity than anyone else around me at the time, and an innate sense of "right" and "wrong" and natural justice, I found myself distrusted because people couldn't understand how I did the things I did with so little (and such a crap background. Computer books were NOT on any shopping lists. I had the CPC464 manual, and POKE.)

This is good news

[gr8_phk]

Usually reporters tell stories of "hackers" finding such things and we wonder weather the reporters understand how "non-hacking" the activity really was. Well in this case it's abundantly clear to them since it was they who discovered the data in plain sight. No question the reporters see the absurdity of the "hacker" label in this case.

Been to the web site?

[Frosty Piss]

First of all, both these comapnies web sites are identical. Second of all, they look like some 14 year old put them together.

Look, this is just some sweatshop lawyer who wrote q $200 threatening letter. The threat has no value, and should be ignored.

Re:Why use wget?

[mrbester]

1. wget is just a means to automate. Would you type all the URLs manually?
2, 3, 4. As insecure as anybody else downloading it. They have no duty of care that publicly available data that shouldn't be publicly available is not publicly available.
5. A blurred screenshot allows plausible deniability. After all, the blurred bits could be anything. It could even be a completely different page blurred in Photoshop to smear the good name of these dickheads^W fine upstanding members of the community.

If they have a complete data dump, it is most likely someone else does as well. Someone who is more interested in profiting from shoddy practices.