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LexisNexis and Other Major Data Brokers Hacked By ID Theft Service
gewalker writes "Have we reached the point where it is time to admit that the ID thieves are winning and will continue to win as long as their incentives are sufficient to make it lucrative for them? According to Krebs On Security an analysis of a database pilfered from commercial identity thieves identified breaches in 25 data brokers including the heavyweights Dun and Bradstreet and LexisNexis."
And they had access for months to most of them. From the article: The botnet’s online dashboard for the LexisNexis systems shows that a tiny unauthorized program called nbc.exe was placed on the servers as far back as April 10, 2013, suggesting the intruders have had access to the company’s internal networks for at least the past five months. The program was designed to open an encrypted channel of communications from within LexisNexis’s internal systems to the botnet controller on the public Internet." The companies compromised aggregated data for things like "credit decisions, business-to-business marketing and supply chain management. ... employment background, drug and health screening."
No real excuse for this. This is exactly what network IDS/IPS programs/appliances are for.
Any data center dealing with sensitive information should have an IDS/IPS installation which should have shut down nbc.exe's access out to the Internet, or at least raised a red flag in Splunk or whatever logging console application in use. Most data centers have a list of authorized IPs that internal sites communicate out to, and if some machine communicates to an IP repeatedly on a sensitive network, it would be investigated, or at the minimum, looked at. Multiple machines communicating encrypted data to site out on the Internet is something that IDS applications are designed to detect, and IPS offerings designed to cork until someone takes a look at it.
Security isn't rocket science. It is using basic concepts to compartmentalize information and applications to check for known/unknown attacks, and buying/using the tools needed.
Dot exe. I think I see the problem.
This might be a good thing. Once we have a major "privacy apocalypse" and millions of people get screwed over something might be done about it. Otherwise there will just be endless "minor" breeches where a few hundred thousand people get ripped off and no-one really cares.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Lexis Nexis has a database of all united states citizens compete with full address history, SSN, DOB, associations such as relatives and neighbors, and you can cross reference and search the different relationships. They purchase the info from the government and then banks use them to verify information on credit applications by paying for the service and simply accessing a web interface via ssl over the public internet. I know this because I used to work for a large bank doing just that.
Let's stop calling it that. These numbers we call our identity is not our identity. The whole notion of doing things like this were an invention of mega-business interests who wanted to expand their business range without having to employ a whole bunch of people. You see, long ago, people were given credit by a process which involved references... actual people who could vouch for your reputation. But this is too much of a hassle and involves the use of people and people, of course, are very expensive. So much better to track a whole bunch of people with a computer system where they are tagged with a unique number -- say a social security number which we were promised would never ever ever be used for anything but social security account tracking. Several legal filings surrounded the controversy long ago but the serfs of the USA lost out and here we are.
Stop feeding the machine. Stop being in debt. Stop relying on credit and build a savings instead. It's harder to get started if you're already accustomed to the debt financing game, but it's the difference between LIFO and FIFO where your money is concerned. Stop spending money you don't have. Of course, this message goes out to people who aren't reading this... everyone here has "good reasons" for using credit instead of cash.