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Equifax Blames Open-Source Software For Its Record-Breaking Security Breach (zdnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the finger-pointing dept.

The blame for the record-breaking cybersecurity breach that affects at least 143 million people falls on the open-source server framework, Apache Struts, according to an unsubstantiated report by equity research firm Baird. The firm's source, per one report, is believed to be Equifax. ZDNet reports: Apache Struts is a popular open-source software programming Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for Java. It is not, as some headlines have had it, a vendor software program. It's also not proven that Struts was the source of the hole the hackers drove through. In fact, several headlines -- some of which have since been retracted -- all source a single quote by a non-technical analyst from an Equifax source. Not only is that troubling journalistically, it's problematic from a technical point of view. In case you haven't noticed, Equifax appears to be utterly and completely clueless about their own technology. Equifax's own data breach detector isn't just useless: it's untrustworthy. Adding insult to injury, the credit agency's advice and support site looks, at first glance, to be a bogus, phishing-type site: "equifaxsecurity2017.com." That domain name screams fake. And what does it ask for if you go there? The last six figures of your social security number and last name. In other words, exactly the kind of information a hacker might ask for. Equifax's technical expertise, it has been shown, is less than acceptable. Could the root cause of the hack be a Struts security hole? Two days before the Equifax breach was reported, ZDNet reported a new and significant Struts security problem. While many jumped on this as the security hole, Equifax admitted hackers had broken in between mid-May through July, long before the most recent Struts flaw was revealed. "It's possible that the hackers found the hole on their own, but zero-day exploits aren't that common," reports ZDNet. "It's far more likely that -- if the problem was indeed with Struts -- it was with a separate but equally serious security problem in Struts, first patched in March." The question then becomes: is it the fault of Struts developers or Equifax's developers, system admins, and their management? "The people who ran the code with a known 'total compromise of system integrity' should get the blame," reports ZDNet.

13 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. A poor carpenter... by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Always blames his tools.

    1. Re:A poor carpenter... by ScienceofSpock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the financial sector, proper security is THE most important thing. If you are offering services and you cannot secure your customer's data absolutely, then you shouldn't be offering services.

      If proper security is "too expensive" for your profit margin, then you have a failed business model, and shouldn't be offering services.

      Financial institutions KNOW this. This is the business they choose to be in, it has a high operating cost and they get paid VERY well to perform these services. They shouldn't be let off the hook for taking the cheap way out, and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to profit from these tactics. They only understand money. The only way to punish these institutions when they do stupid shit like this is to hit them hard in the purse.

    2. Re:A poor carpenter... by Xest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If you are offering services and you cannot secure your customer's data absolutely, then you shouldn't be offering services."

      This is absolute drivel, there's no such thing as absolute security. The choice you're offering therefore is to simply not do business at all, or to hire people who don't understand security sufficiently to falsely believe they have absolute security rather than people who understand absolute security is non-existent and that it's simply a measure of risk.

      "If proper security is "too expensive" for your profit margin, then you have a failed business model, and shouldn't be offering services."

      Again, nonsense. As absolute security is a myth then you're basically saying every business model in the world ever has failed and every company should shut down. That's complete and utter nonsense, obviously.

      You've not considered another possibility - that Equifax actually did the best they could and it just wasn't good enough. Given that all security can be compromised given sufficient effort this could simply be a case of them falling foul of measured risk.

      That also might not be the case, it might also turn out to be absolute incompetence of course, but until we have more details we simply do not know. The summary pre-supposes they were victim to an old known exploit and not a recently publicised zero day - it's possible that the recently publicised zero day was in fact discovered precisely because of this hack for all we know - the idea that it was an old unpatched vulnerability is entirely speculation right now.

      We just don't know how much blame they deserve right now. What I personally know is that it's hard to recruit good security professionals precisely because those who truly understand security often don't want to touch it precisely because they know there's always a chance someone determined could breach security. What I do know is that as a result of this most the industry is full of people parroting the myth you have of being able to implement absolute security and as a result creating a false sense of security.

      Stop it. It's not helpful, it just puts you in the same basket as all those in the industry who peddle the myth and create the problem in the first place. I'd take someone who accepts that there's always a risk, but is honest about to what extent they believe they've been able to mitigate it, and then give them a waiver from blame if something happens any day over someone like you that pretends they can implement perfect security. But because people like you exist peddling the myth we instead find ourselves with an industry full of you, and we find ourselves with problems like this happening time and time again.

      We need to accept that security is always imperfect, and we need to start blaming only on relative effort applied to try and make the system secure - if someone took reasonable measures and still got fucked we need to accept that that's an inevitable consequence of the fact that absolute security doesn't exist, and that therefore due to simple statistics even some of the most fortified companies will inevitably be hit.

      So wait until we have the facts before assuming they did much wrong.

    3. Re:A poor carpenter... by Cederic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Overall I agree with everything you've said, but one thing to add.

      it's hard to recruit good security professionals precisely because those who truly understand security often don't want to touch it precisely because they know there's always a chance someone determined could breach security

      You will suffer data loss. Assume that, plan for it, understand how to detect and mitigate it.

      Given the impossibility of perfect security it would be naive to do anything else, no matter how great (and well resourced) your data security is.

  2. Blame the software not the License. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How the product is licensed doesn't affect the quality of the software.
    If the software is of significant complexity, then chances are flaws will be there, and often just like commercial licences software a flaw can be overlooked by many eyes, until the flaw is found.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. It is open source ... by AnthonywC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have NO ONE to blame but themselves, it is OPEN SOURCE which means they can actually review the code and fix issue.

  5. Yes Yes by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think that if we've learned anything from this incident, it is that Equifax is a competent, professional organization that prides itself on its honesty and transparency, and that they are tirelessly acting in the best interests of the general public.

    --

    Obliteracy: Words with explosions

  6. Equifax Corporate Officers by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> is it the fault of Struts developers or Equifax's developers, system admins, and their management?

    None of the above. It's the officers on the corporate board, who demanded "cheaper" rather than "secure." The managers who carried out their demands (putting emphasis on cheap contractors vs. quality work and investment in patching dependencies) were just doing their jobs, the sysadmins really don't have much to do with it (if you know how Struts works) and the developers are pretty blameless because their either do what management told them or not eat.

  7. Root cause = SJW hiring practices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You hire a liberal arts music major as head of security to fill a gender diversity quota, and then you're surprised by this?

    1. Re:Root cause = SJW hiring practices by i286NiNJA · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't think it was SJWs. I think she was well connected and managed to land a bunch of compliance gigs that have nothing or little to do with technology and Equifax regards security as a good starter position for c-level executives and PHBs instead of being a terminal position for some former teen-hacker.

      Let it soak for a second. If you work in IT.. even as tech takes over the world.... even as infosec mismanagement crises have been first page news for several years.

      YOU ARE WORTH LESS THAN THE MANAGEMENT CASTE.

      No matter how smart, no matter how educated, no matter where you work and no matter how much money you make... Unless you're born rich and connected or embed yourself into bureaucracies for access to such people .
      You are of a lower caste.

  8. It's cheap for us to inspect the tools daily by raymorris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For a thousand bucks or so, Equifax could have had our company inspecting their tools daily, scanning for any accessible systems with security issues, including the issues in the Struts plugins.

    We would have also provided them with detection systems that would have caught the attempt to load the massive amount of data via the vulnerability, and systems to detect the attempt to exfiltrate the data, again at a very reasonable cost. These include 24/7 monitoring by our SOC. So if they had been even competent enough to simply sign up with a decent security provider, they would have been protected three times over.

    ALL software beyond "hello world" has bugs.* A competent CIO, or even a competent programmer or network engineer, knows that and plans accordingly. Any CIO or CSO whose security planning pretends that there server software is perfect is incompetent. A software bug didn't cause this - plenty of other organizations used the same software, but didn't get breached because they had scanning and alerting set up, so they mitigated the flaw immediately after it became known.

    *. All software has flaws, and well known proprietary software such as Windows, MS Office, Flash, and Oracle Java are an order of magnitude worse than well known open source software such as Linux, Libre office, Apache httpd, etc. My database I manage at work has almost every known vulnerability cataloged and rated for several measurements of severity. There's no comparison - there simply is not pride of workmanship in code nobody is allowed to see. Open source programmers know they are being judged personally for the code they put on display and it makes a HUGE difference in code quality.

  9. About costs, what works for fire safety is by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Companies don't want to pony up the costs and resources to fix this crap. Good intentions are failing to keep companies secure

    Fire safety was a similar issue a hundred years ago. The insurance companies created Underwriters Laboratories (UL Listed) and the National Fire Protection Association, which writes the fire code. Companies buy insurance against fire, and their insurance company, in order to reduce their own cost of claims, insists that the companies meet fire codes and otherwise operate safely to minimize the risk of fire. That has worked well.

    The costs are a very real and legitimate issue. A magazine publisher should NOT spend $50 million to protect from the names of their subscribers being leaked. The cost would be too high relative to the risk. Spending too much on security is a mistake just as spending too little is. Spending on security increases costs, it makes products and services cost more for the consumer. It's all about calculating the *right* amount of spending to mitigate the risk by the right amount.

    As it happens, insurance companies are experts at calculating risks and costs. I expect over time they'll get involved in cyber security in a similar way as they are involved in greatly reducing fire risk.