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Yahoo Repeatedly Didn't Invest In Security, Rejected Bare Minimum Measure To Reset All User Passwords: NYTimes
If it wasn't already enough that the mega breach at Yahoo affects over 500 million users, a new investigative report on The New York Times states the extent to which Yahoo didn't care about its users' security (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). The report says Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer refused to fund security initiatives at the company, and instead invested money in features and new products. Despite Edward Snowden warning Yahoo that it was too easy of a target for hackers, the company took one year to hire a new chief information officer. The company hired Alex Stamos, who is widely respected in the industry. But Stamos soon left partly due to clashes with Mayer, The Times adds. And it gets worse. From the report:But when it came time to commit meaningful dollars to improve Yahoo's security infrastructure, Ms. Mayer repeatedly clashed with Mr. Stamos, according to the current and former employees. She denied Yahoo's security team financial resources and put off proactive security defenses, including intrusion-detection mechanisms for Yahoo's production systems. [...] But during his tenure, Ms. Mayer also rejected the most basic security measure of all: an automatic reset of all user passwords, a step security experts consider standard after a breach. Employees say the move was rejected by Ms. Mayer's team for fear that even something as simple as a password change would drive Yahoo's shrinking email users to other services.
They did it twice in recent memory. One time was in 2015 and came out of the blue, possibly as a result of this hack.
Honestly, I don't think passwords are the bigger thing here. When my password was compromised as part of the Gawker leak, Yahoo locked down their system so that you couldn't log into accounts from new IPs. You had to change your password from an IP you've used before before you could log in again.
Getting hacked (seemingly phished) was really bad. Having a system where people in the company can give away this data is also really bad. Not resetting everyone's password seems kind of small potatoes next to all that.
Not one organization I have ever worked for has seriously cared about IT security. The second anyone mentions security, the next question is how much it costs. So I don't think it's a Yahoo thing - I think it happens everywhere. Even banks and healthcare companies, who have some of the most regulated data in the world don't go beyond lip service and a few token defenses to protect it. Companies will continue to offshore vital functions to companies that don't care what happens to data. They'll also continue to ignore key parts of new product development relating to security. I think one of the problems is that IT security guys can't articulate this to executives. They're either from the physical security world, or they're so tech-focused that they can't give a coherent presentation to people who only understand what dollars are.
Companies have insurance, and it's always cheaper to say "oops" and give out free credit monitoring for a year than it is to build a serious defense against security breaches. Until it becomes too expensive to ignore, whether in the form of lost business, fines or lost intellectual property, nothing will change.
I mean, I maybe she could do better, but usually you wouldn't call a person who took command of the Titanic as it scraped the iceberg a bad captain.
But, apparently, she deliberately kept going full speed through a cluster of icebergs and ignored all hits. That's pretty damn bad.
Not one organization I have ever worked for has seriously cared about IT security.
When it comes to rolling out new products, ignoring security is the norm.
This is because the "window of opportunity" is only "open" for a short time - until the first, second, and maybe third movers go through it and grab most of the potential customers. Companies that spent the time to get the security right arrive at the window after it closes.
This happens anywhere the customers don't test for and reject non-secure versions of the "new shiny" - which means enterprises sometimes hold suppliers' feet to the fire (if the new thing doesn't give them an advantage commensurate with, or perceived as outweighing, the risk) but consumer stuff goes out wide open.
Then, if you're lucky and the supplier is clueful, they retrofit SOME security before the bad guys exploit enough holes to kill them.
I expect this will continue until several big-name tech companies get an effective corporate death penalty in response to the damages their customer base took from their security failings. Then the financial types will start including having a good, and improving with time, security story (no doubt called "best practices") among their check boxes for funding.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In fairness, yahoo was almost a lost cause when she came on board, while Carly...
Not quite sure if anything could have been done to save them. They lacked meaningful sources of profit, and improving efficiency would not be enough. I think Mayer realized that the spinoff was the only hope when they unveiled the new logo. Just took too long to execute.