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Target's Internal Security Team Warned Management
david.emery writes "According to this story, Target's own internal computer security team raised concerns months before the retailer lost millions of credit card numbers in an attack. (Quoting a paywalled story in the Wall Street Journal.) Target's management allegedly 'brushed them off.' 'At least one analyst at the Minneapolis-based retailer wanted to do a more thorough security review of its payment system.' This raises a more general question for the Slashdot community: how many of you have identified vulnerabilities in your company's/client's systems, only to be 'brushed off?' If the company took no action, did they ultimately suffer a breach?"
Yes, there are horrible security flaws where I work. Things as basic as changing passwords on a regular basis have been brought up repeatedly, and the answer is always, "we can't make people do that", or "that's something to keep in mind for the future, but we have more important things to worry about"
Years ago I worked for one of the two big American cable companies currently merging. I identified a security flaw in the public facing side of their customer service portal, essentially giving access to all the config files, which contained admin credentials in plain text. I proposed simple solutions, like not allowing directory listings of folders, among others.
They shrugged it off, and to the best of my knowledge, last year the vulnerability was still accesaible
There are security concerns in every company, without exception. Obviously, even the NSA itself had inadequate security!
Yes, many times security concerns are brought up, and brushed off. But this is not necessarily an indication of a problem. Every security risk must be weighed based on the likelihood of occurrence, and the severity of the impact, should it occur. Many of these calculations are inexact, and must be based on incomplete information.
Should Target have protected themselves better? Probably. But hindsight is 20/20. The difficult part is to anticipate the problems that might occur, without crippling your organization through impossibly tight security.
Years ago I worked for a government IT department. A vendor wanted us to try out a product. The device plugs directly into the Internet connection, and monitors every packet, in real time, looking for strings matching an array of string that you provide. We ran queries against our internal databases, and compiled a list of SSNs and CCNs. The vendor programmed that data into their device, which from what I can tell used an FPGA to perform deep packet inspections.
We expected that we might see maybe an email every week or two where someone accidentally sent that kind of information.
First hit occurred 12 seconds after turning the device on.
Second occurred .47 seconds later.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Within an hour, we had overrun the quota on the network directory where we were logging this data.
We found hundreds of separate systems that were transmitting this kind of data without authorization. We were planning a massive internal sweep to find and fix them all, when the following came down from management:
Shut it down. Remove the device. Destroy all logs, emails, EVERYTHING. Offer the vendor a payment in return for signing an NDA. All employees required to sign secrecy docs (unenforceable at that level of govt, but still.)
I believe this is how the acronym SNAFU came into existence.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
I got my first job in the industry due to that sort of screw-up. A network administrator was "let go" following a server crash and loss of months' worth of data. The backup system hadn't been working. I was hired shortly thereafter to get things back in order.
Now, that would be the end of the story, except that I was good friends with this administrator. The embarrassing subject of his dismissal didn't come up for about three years, but when it did, and I mentioned my surprise at a fairly intelligent guy allowing backups to lapse for that amount of time, he dug up an e-mail he'd sent to the president of the company, cc'ing the head of HR (who was more or less running the show, for some reason), pointing out the various problems they had - their "server," an old workstation, had been running for two years on a three-month evaluation copy of Windows Server 2000, there were no backup tapes working, and so on. The only excuse they could have had was that the backup thing was buried in a page-long list of serious issues. But when it blew up in their faces, they pinned it on the closest available peon. Assholes.
As long as you keep them in your wallet then writing them down is fine.
You're MUCH more likely to be aware when someone steals your wallet than when someone steals your password. So keep your passwords in your wallet if you cannot remember them.
Similar for home systems. Keep them safe at home. Criminals breaking into your home to steal stuff are not USUALLY going to be looking for a piece of paper with your passwords on it.
document, document, document. And keep copies where you can get them once you are frog-marched out of the building wearing the scapegoat collar.
Which is a perfect example of incompetence.
*raises hand* ooh! ooh! Pick me! Pick me! Been there! Done that!
Two things:
1. It's not that they need access to the CORPORATE network. It's that they need access to the INTERNET so that the machinery can report back to the vendor when something starts to go wrong. That's usually in the service agreement. The sooner detected the sooner fixed without problem.
2. For managers who like to look at stuff. There is usually an internal web server on the HVAC. You go there and it displays things like the temp and the humidity and blah blah blah.
Thus, dumb managers (I've dealt with them) want them on the corporate network. It's easier for everyone.* Including the crackers who are looking for these exact vulnerabilities.
*Security people are not included in this definition of "everyone" in this case.