Limo Company Hack Exposes Juicy Targets, 850k Credit Card Numbers

tsu doh nimh writes "A compromise at a U.S. company that brokers reservations for limousine and Town Car services nationwide has exposed the personal and financial information on more than 850,000 well-heeled customers, including Fortune 500 CEOs, lawmakers, and A-list celebrities. Krebsonsecurity.com writes about the break-in, which involved the theft of information on celebrities like Tom Hanks and LeBron James, as well as lawmakers such as the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. The story also examines the potential value of this database for spies, drawing a connection between recent personalized malware attacks against Kevin Mandia, the CEO of incident response firm Mandiant. In an interview last month with Foreign Policy magazine, Mandia described receiving spear phishing attacks that spoofed receipts for recent limo rides; according to Krebs, the info for Mandia and two other Mandiant employees was in the stolen limo company database."

Comments

A-List Spear Phishing

[ponraul]

That's hot.

Re:A-List Spear Phishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad Brian Krebs is always raining on our parade.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Exposing the personal information of 30 million people wouldn't bother those in power. But those in power having their information hacked? Finally, we may see some protection of data--at least for those in power.

Hold Them Responsible

[Jane Q. Public]

When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?

If things like credit card information are stored in cleartext, the corporation doing it should be fined and the people responsible prosecuted if there is a leak. It's just gross irresponsibility, for which nobody has seemed to get punished.

That needs to change.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?

Probably now since this actually targets someone in charge.

The problem is that the "fix" will be to only hold corporations responsible if someone "important" is hurt.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[andyjb]

They are resposible - if they have been deemed to be in breach of PCI compliance, they will not be granted "safe harbour" by their issuing bank / {AMEX, Visa, MC}. In a nutshell it means that they will find it more expensive to do business from now on. It does often happen however that a business will decide that being PCI compliant is more expensive than the fines...

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Thanshin]

When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?

Just as soon as we stop referring to "corporations" as if they were people?

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Sarten-X]

When are residents going to be held responsible for the security of their valuables?

If things like cash and jewelery are stored behind unlocked doors, the households storing them should be fined and the people responsible for the storage prosecuted if there is a theft. It's just gross irresponsibility, for which nobody has seemed to get punished.

That needs to change.

I'm exaggerating a little, but this is really how the law works now. The criminal responsibility falls to the guy who thought "I'm going to violate this obvious demarcation line and grab whatever I want", rather than the guy who thinks "That barely-visible boundary should be obvious enough". The concept applies broadly, affecting harassment, copyright, theft, injury, and discrimination suits, just to name a few. While there is some consideration given to whether the victim should have taken more reasonable precaution, being careless is not a crime in itself.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Sarten-X]

If you let carelessness run amok to the point of negligence, yes... but the circumstances for negligence must be defined in law. There is no such law for information security, outside a few particular areas (financial institutions, health care, and military).

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[sl4shd0rk]

When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?

It used to be that companies really feared being out of compliance with PCI standards but things must have changed. I don't know for certain but if I had to venture a guess, companies probably find it more appealing to take chances being non-compliant rather than invest in appropriate infrastructure (including competent staff) to support full PCI compliance .

It's *extremely* difficult to sell proper security to management based on potentials. They want numbers to plug into their spreadsheets to measure cost vs. benefit but when you are working with a gradient like a compromise those numbers fall anywhere from 0 to infinity depending on the depth of the compromise (think Stuxnet) and what assets are at risk (adobe Photoshop source code). For those reasons, many companies only implement the bare minimum and hope for the best.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[TheNastyInThePasty]

Having YOUR stuff stolen kind of is the fine. Your anology doesn't work because in this case, it's not the company's information that was stolen. It was their customers. A bank is a closer analogy but even that doesn't work. I'm pretty sure the bank will compensate you if the contents of your security box is stolen due to their poor security practices.

With this company and the recent Adobe breach, there's no compensation for their customers who had their data stolen. The company gets to just go "Well shucks, I'm sorry guys." Meanwhile, their customers have been exposed to possible identity theft or fraud and they're the ones who have to deal with the consequences.

A couple of years ago, my social security number was stolen from a local university that I took a summer class at. My parents then subscribed to one of those identity theft protection services. Were we ever compensated for the service fees needed to protect my identity? Nope. Would I have been compensated if someone stole my identity and destroyed my credit for life? Nope.

That's the problem.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Deadstick]

I'll believe they're people when Texas executes one.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[CODiNE]

Oh yeah for years the community college I went to would use SSN for student IDs. They'd pass around an "anonymized" roll sheet where everyone would sign next to their SSN. At the end of the semester your grades would be posted next to your SSN instead of your name.

Idiots.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Sarten-X]

I'm not saying it makes sense for a company to be unaccountable, but only that that's the way the law is set up now. There's a pretty strong fear of blaming the victim in legislature, so I doubt we'll see any such laws crop up soon. Legally, it's the same as a gym's locker room that says "not responsible for lost or stolen items". The law just doesn't make them responsible.

You do bring up an interesting point... why does a university need your federal retirement savings account number?

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[cheater512]

Every credit card related info leak is in breach of PCI compliance.
Even if they got audited just a week previously and passed with flying colours.....

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Gr8Apes]

I'll believe they're people when Texas executes one.

I guess Texas did

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[Jane Q. Public]

"Just as soon as we stop referring to "corporations" as if they were people?"

Corporations can be held legally responsible for their actions. Hell, that's one of the reasons corporations were invented.

Re:Hold Them Responsible

[TheNastyInThePasty]

My point is that they're not really the victim. Their customers are. The businesses are the conduit. They are the means by which the attacker is able to cause you damage. Framed that way, it becomes clearer that they deserve consequences for their failure.

850K

[pr0t0]

Also known as a list of 850,000 people making a hell of a lot more than I do.

St Louis in the House!!!!

[turp182]

Hey, I have to take every chance I get to promote my hometown, and that's where this company is based.

A coworker for mine knows someone that used to work for the company, it sounds like they used a custom (homebrew) encryption scheme for the passwords. This could be incorrect, the guy hasn't worked there in a couple of years.

Anyway, we didn't win the World Series, but apparently we can give you Tom Hanks credit card info...

Re:St Louis in the House!!!!

[HornWumpus]

East St Louis is the best St Louis.

That's a slight exaggeration. But St Louis really is a shithole.

Re:St Louis in the House!!!!

[turp182]

I'm assuming you were trying to be offensive, but no offense taken. STL is a good "live in" city, better than So Cal (where your 2nd job is sitting in traffic and the state/federal officials seem to be... out of touch with reality - watch out for cancer!!!). Better than Phoenix as well (summer sucks and I prefer "character" rather than a 15 square mile suburb). Same for Vegas on the suburb. All are nice for visiting, but not for living, unless you have millions to spend/waste. Washington state is probably nicer...

I live in a walkable neighborhood (food, drinks, entertainment, groceries, frozen yogurt) in a house that was built in 1885. Built to last, which time has proven. I do commute to the boring suburbs for work, such is reality (against traffic). Soulard is my home.

East St. Louis is hell, that is for sure. But where I'm at I can walk a couple of minutes and get almost any type of food and listen to bands from Ireland almost any night of the week (McGurk's - fantastic).

And it's where my family is. Which is important, having kids (people who like to take the kids over the weekend - coming up this weekend in fact).

It's also a very good market for software developers, it's a job seeker's market right now.

Why did I type so much...

We are a limo company not an IT one the outsourcer

[Joe_Dragon]

The outsource is the one who messed up.

and use adobe PDF reader

[Joe_Dragon]

that just auto hacks your system when some opens an PDF loaded with hacker tools in it.

not THAT rich

[cellocgw]

Pffft... if they were really rich, they'd have their own fulltime bonded limo drivers on staff. Before you laugh, remember that the suckily rich own huge yachts which have a permanent crew whose only job is to make sure the yacht shows up at whatever port the owner wants his next party to be at.

Re:not THAT rich

[swb]

"...at whatever port the owner wants.." is kind of a small list of boats.

Just moving even a smallish yacht (75 feet or so) ocean distances is really expensive and/or really slow. Sport yachts capable of 20+ knots cruising speeds can eat double-digit quantities of fuel per hour. Moving from Miami to NYC could take days and tens of thousands of dollars in fuel and most don't have the fuel capacity for major blue ocean transits. Trawler styles use less fuel, but have cruising speeds in the single digits.

I think even most million-dollar class yachts that are crewed aren't crewed by permanent crews but are crewed as needed when the owner wants to use them, maybe with a preferred captain and generally don't move ports but may move to alternate berthings with the general vicinity, but even then you can't just show up with a big boat and expect to find a berthing for it.

Of course there are ocean-going ships permanently crewed, but this is a pretty small list because now you're talking really large boats that are ships with operating costs on par or exceeding large jets.

Re:not THAT rich

[rickb928]

The rich use their yachts primarily as vacation homes. And they rent them out to defray the costs. Or lend them out to impress their buddies.

Prostitution / Mistress Detection

[arthurpaliden]

Ok now all one has to do is to find out what the most common destinations, other than their homes, were and there you have who possibly uses prostitutes or have mistresses.

Re: Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Car

[globalist]

You must be new here, right?

Uncle Leo?

[peter.kingsbury]

Is that you?

Re:Limos != yachts

[uncqual]

Or, just fly your cars (multiple needed for backup and for security details) in your second 747. Poor folks may have to cram the cars into the cargo hold on their primary (and only) 747 -- but that's pretty low class and only trailer trash would consider it.

850,000 Limo Riders?

[edibobb]

There are sure a lot of people who ride in limousines.

Cricket

[shimul1990]

Cricket is now a days a very popular & interesting game all over the world.