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Email Mishap Leaks Google Staff Data (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has suffered a data breach which compromised the security of its employees, after the company's staff benefits vendor mistakenly sent an email containing sensitive data to the wrong recipient. Google has sent a formal apology to an undisclosed number of affected employees. The letter notifies of the data breach and advises staff to register for free identity protection checks and credit monitoring for the next two years. The document explains how the third-party company, which provides Google with benefits management services, sent the personal information to a benefits manager at another firm by accident. The data included staff names and social security numbers, among other sensitive details.
Humans don't have unique identifiers that are easily accessible. We can use fingerprints, retina or DNA with physical presence, but we need a surrogate key if we want to track people in our digital world. The problem with most surrogate keys is that they have no meaning outside of the system that creates them. A SSN is a perfect surrogate key, in that it has a scope outside of the system (Social Security) that created it. But, that is also it's weakness. Since so many systems (like financial and medical) use this unambiguous key, it can be used for nefarious purposes. Any simple, global, constructed key will have these faults.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
No, SSNs were intended for identification. What SSNs were never designed for was authentication. A system where you give them your SSN in order to prove you are really you is flawed by design.
The SSNs are unique and that's great for identification purposes as people may share the same name and date of birth. But an SSN should be no secret, because if you send it to all entities you want to prove you really are who you claim to be, the secret ceases to be a secret.
Replace the SSN by hashes of a public key, and let the services send you challenges instead. That system will work, but probably nobody will want to use it.
The data included staff names and social security numbers, among other sensitive details.
Why the hell would they send sensitive employee data unencrypted over email? It should have made no difference at all if they sent it to the wrong address, because no one but the intended recipient should have the key to access the data. Yet clearly, not the case here.
People need to start going to jail for shit like this.