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US Postal Service Hacked, 500k+ Employees and Public Data Breached
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Postal Service has admitted that it has suffered a massive security breach, with the disclosure to hackers of the personal details of over 500,000 USPS workers, along with details supplied by members of the public when contacting Postal Service call centers between January and mid-August of 2014. The breach is a hard blow to the integrity and reputation of the USPS's internal security set-up, the Corporate Information Security Office (CISO). In 2012 CISO reports that it blocked 257 billion unauthorized attempts to access the USPS network, 66,734 attempts to distribute credit-card information, 1,278 attempts to reveal USPS-ordained credit-card transactions and 345,342 attempts to distribute social security numbers.
First 2015 post?
It's good to see a government agency innovating their data privacy breaches to keep pace with private sector companies like Target and Home Depot.
The USPS *is* the future.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Good grief. I guess persistence does pay off in the end.
Negative really.
Hackers from the FUTURE!
From TFS: "when contacting Postal Service call centers between January and mid-August of 2015."
No worries, there's over a month to get it fixed before that.
> the personal details
Home address? Worthless shit.
Annual salary? Meh.
"Private" phone number? Oh woe, wail, the end of the world.
Social security number? Only the naive think these are never-leaked-superdupersecure, but now we're talking serious.
Security credentials? Man the harpoons.
Never, ever, anywhere should you gloat about your security, we are ALL vulnerable. If you think otherwise and gloat about it you only increase your risk.
Slashdot lay off the dabs
I for one *love* news from the future. Please post more.
How about the NSA identifying open doors in US Gov't entitity's systems!
2015? No problem:
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor wormholes stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
"In 2012 CISO reports that it blocked 257 billion unauthorized attempts to access the USPS network, 66,734 attempts to distribute credit-card information, 1,278 attempts to reveal USPS-ordained credit-card transactions and 345,342 attempts to distribute social security numbers." ...hear the bullet that hits you.
See, the government can do just as good a job as private corporations like Home Depot or Target when it comes to storing sensitive data!
Being a former USPS employee, this just seems about right. The USPS, at least at the local post office level, has a mismatch of crazy tight security or almost nothing at all. I mean everything is watched (or believed to be watched) at the post office, but then once your mail leaves the office, the carrier can do practically anything he or she wants to do with it. Of course there's laws against this, but still, there's no security, nothing, once the truck leaves the office. No GPS, no cameras, nothing. And if you're a rural carrier, no one inspects your vehicle to make sure you cleared all mail from it. So this type mismatched security probably follows upward to the higher offices.
fuobeta its so yukky
" 66,734 attempts to distribute credit-card information..and 345,342 attempts to distribute social security numbers."
Is there a definition of distribute that I'm not aware of? If I break into a bank, I'm not trying to distribute a million dollars. Who are these hackers, Robin Hood?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
When I consider all of the "online voting" stories and ideas that float around during election time, I am forced to think of stories like this one.
Beware of the Leopard.
1 breach out of over 257 billion attempts seems like a pretty good track record. That's a failure rate of 3.89E-12.
Doesn't sound like a "hard blow" at all. It sounds more like close to 12 9s of "uptime" when it comes to breach attempts.
If the private sector - let's say Target and all the other corporations that have been breached over the years - came anywhere near that kind of track record, we'd be celebrating it. But because it's government, of course, that's an unacceptable failure rate.
In 2012 CISO reports that it blocked 257 billion unauthorized attempts to access the USPS network
Post Office Zone Alarm alerts for Windows 98SE sitting on public IP address space shouldn't be counted in my opinion.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
In the future public data also need to be hacked.
You have been warned.
If they got into the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program systems?
IBM manages the USPS computer systems, they also manage Amtrak's systems, I worked for them and it was never disclosed to the public that Amtrak's PCI systems were breached.
After all.
Postal Service employees steal more than 2 trillion dollars US from USA citizens alone.
The amount they steal from Mexicans and Latinos is Gargantuan by proportion.
Stop blaming the credi^H^H^H^H^H, i mean the ban^H^H^H, I mean the retai^H^H^H^H^H, I mean the conglam^H^H^H^H^H^H, I mean the USPS.
They are a govt entity after all, and they have really, like slow turtles
- SK
Good news: The USPS is actually relevant to someone. That hasn't happened much this century.