Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

#Apollo45

July 20, 1969. I’ve blogged about it before. There are people who can write eloquently about events of such significance.  I am not one of them.  I hope that doesn’t stand in the way of folks remembering the amazing accomplishment that the Apollo program was.  

 

P0wned! Don't make the same mistake I did

I fell victim to an interesting attack, which I am recounting here so that others may avoid it. In a nutshell, I fell victim to a trojan, which the malefactor was able to place in a trusted location in my search path. A wrapper obscured the malicious payload. Additionally, a second line of defense did […]

 

Neil Armstrong, RIP

Neil Armstrong died August 25, aged 82. It’s difficult to properly memorialize this man, because, to a degree almost unheard of in our media-saturated times, he avoided the limelight. A statement by his family notes: As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world […]

 

we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which […]

 

A quick pointer

I wrote a blog post regarding the BSidesSF/RSA conf dust-up. (If I knew how to work Adam’s twitter integration thingy, you’d have been spared this)

 

Niels Bohr was right about predictions

There’s been much talk of predictions lately, for some reason. Since I don’t sell anything, I almost never make them, but I did offer two predictions early in 2010, during the germination phase of a project a colleague was working on. Since these sort of meet Adam’s criteria by having both numbers and dates, I […]

 

Sleepless in Seattle?

Reportedly, Seattle police have begun issuing tickets to drivers who honk their horns after 10 PM in support of the Occupy protest there. To the extent that the police are only doing this to those expressing a specific point of view, there seems to be a legitimate issue. I am certain that the police would […]

 

California gets a strengthened Breach Notification Law

Governor Brown of California has signed a strengthened breach notification bill, which amends Sections 1798.29 and 1798.82 of the California Civil Code in important ways. Previous versions had been repeatedly vetoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. As described[.DOC] by its sponsor’s office, this law: Establishes standard, core content — such as the type of information breached, time […]

 

OSF looking for DataLossDB help

The folks running the Open Security Foundation’s DataLossDB are asking for some fully tax-deuctible help meeting expenses. I’ve blogged repeatedly about the value of this work, and hope that interested EC readers can assist in supporting it. With new FOIA-able sources of information becoming available, now seems to be a great time to help out.

 

In Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which […]

 

Welcome to the club!

As EC readers may know, I’ve been sort of a collector of breach notices, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Open Security Foundation’s DataLossDB project. Recently, I had an opportunity to further support DataLossDB, by making an additional contribution to their Primary Sources archive – a resource I find particularly valuable. Unfortunately, that contribution was […]

 

Logging practices

Via a tweet from @WeldPond, I was led to a Daily Mail article which discusses allegations that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “hacked into the accounts of [Harvard] Crimson staff”. Now, I have no idea what happened or didn’t, and I will never have a FB account thanks to my concerns about their approach to privacy, […]

 

Another Week, Another GSM Cipher Bites the Dust

Orr Dunkelman, Nathan Keller, and Adi Shamir have released a paper showing that they’ve broken KASUMI, the cipher used in encrypting 3G GSM communications. KASUMI is also known as A5/3, which is confusing because it’s only been a week since breaks on A5/1, a completely different cipher, were publicized. So if you’re wondering if this […]

 

Albion

Courtesy of the BBC.

 

768-bit RSA key factored

The paper is here. The very sane opening paragraph is: On December 12, 2009, we factored the 768-bit, 232-digit number RSA-768 by the number field sieve (NFS, [19]). The number RSA-768 was taken from the now obsolete RSA Challenge list [37] as a representative 768-bit RSA modulus (cf. [36]). This result is a record for […]

 
 

A sociologist reads a Twitter feed

So, Adam retweets a hysterical reference to a viral email about an absolute genius of a Xmas light display made to look like an accident with a ladder, and the hapless homeowner left hanging from the gutter of his house. The email explains that the display was taken down after two days in large part […]

 

Mini Metricon 4.5 Call for Participation

[Posting this here to help get the word out – Chris ] Mini MetriCon 4.5 will be a one-day event, Monday, March 1, 2010, in San Francisco, California. Through the cooperation of RSA, the workshop will be held at the University of San Francisco, within walking distance of the Moscone Center, the location of the […]

 

July 20, 1969

The Apollo program took place at just about the right time for me. I was six (or, as I would quickly have pointed out at the time, six *and a half*) when the first lunar landing occurred, and barely ten when Apollo 17 splashed down. This was old enough to be fascinated by the technology […]

 

Ron Paul supporter inadvertently gets iPhones banned from U.S. aircraft

Via CNN: Steve Bierfeldt says the Transportation Security Administration pulled him aside for extra questioning in March. He was carrying a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution and an iPhone capable of making audio recordings. And he used them. On a recording a TSA agent can be heard berating Bierfeldt. One sample: “You want to […]

 

More breach visualization

I received some excellent comments on my previous breach visualization post, which I wanted to highlight for EC readers and take a stab at addressing.

 

Breach Visualization

I took the latest DataLossDB.org breach database and extracted all breaches involving a third party, omitting all columns other than the reporting entity and the third party. I then ran the resulting two-column CSV file through afterglow, and finally made pretty (3MB) picture with graphviz. This was done more for fun than for insight, but […]

 

Dept. of Pre-Blogging: Swine Flu edition

In no particular order, your friendly neighborhood Dept. of Pre-blogging hereby predictively reports on: Increased speculation, coupled with a spike in Twitter activity. Politicization of the event from the Right (blame Mexico and/or Big Government), the Left (if we spent money in the right places, this would not happen), and out in left field (this […]

 

Registration now open for WEIS 2009

Registration for The Eighth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2009) is now open. The deadline for the Early Bird registration is 1 June 2009. We’ve written here often (and favorably) about WEIS, and about papers delivered there.

 

Mo-mentum on centralized breach reporting?

A Missouri state bill requiring notification of the state attorney general as well as of individuals whose records have been exposed just took a step closer to becoming law. As reported in the St. Louis Business Journal on April 1: Missouri businesses would be required to notify consumers when their personal or financial information is […]

 
 

Metricon 4.0 Call for Papers

I suspect at least some EC readers will be interested in the Call for Papers for Metricon 4.0, to be held in Montreal, August 11. Metricon 4 – The Importance of Context MetriCon 4.0 is intended as a forum for lively, practical discussion in the area of security metrics. It is a forum for quantifiable […]

 

Brad DeLong on the bailout

Brad DeLong has a FAQ up about Geithner’s plan to purchase toxic assets on the theory that the market has undervalued them, and will in time price them properly. Among the items: Q: What if markets never recover, the assets are not fundamentally undervalued, and even when held to maturity the government doesn’t make back […]

 

Happy Sunshine Week

March 15-21 is “Sunshine Week“, a government transparency initiative described by its main proponents as a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know. The […]

 

What you talkin' 'bout?

The 110-story Sears Tower, tallest office building in the Western Hemisphere, will be renamed the Willis Tower, global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings said on Thursday. Willis said it was leasing multiple floors in the 1,451-foot (442-meter) structure in downtown Chicago to consolidate offices. As part of the deal, it will become the Willis Tower […]

 

Synthetic Identity "Theft" – The Mysterious Case of Prawo Jazdy

The BBC tells the tale of a Polish immigrant flouting traffic regulations across the emerald isle: He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines. However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address. As it […]

 
 

A nudge in the right direction?

I am surprised I hadn’t heard about the book Nudge, by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. I haven’t read it yet, but from the web page it seems to be about how policymakers can take into account the heuristics and biases characteristic of human decision-makers and create a choice architecture which yields “proper” decision-making. I […]

 

Pinch me…

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on […]

 

Change I Can Believe In

From (the new) Whitehouse.gov: Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/

 

Patch and Pray…

..or, Spaf‘s DVD players get bricked. In which, lies a tale…

 

Look how hip I am…

Normally, this would be something for Twitter, but…well…. Officiating at the NY v. Philadelphia game has been poor. Not biased, I don’t think, but poor.

 

No Fun

Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, dead at 60.

 

Security through obscurity

…or, antique car collectors are an honest lot. According to the Times (of London, dear chap), a recently-deceased British surgeon has left his heirs a rather significant bequest: a super-rare, super-fast, antique Bugatti which hasn’t been driven since 1960 and is expected to fetch several million at auction. This is the fabled “Imagine their surprise, […]

 

December 21, 1968

It was even more exciting on a black and white Zenith. Image: Nasa photo 6871798

 

DataLossDB announces awesome new feature

The Data Loss Database, run by the Open Security Foundation, now has a significant new feature: the inclusion of scanned primary source documents. This means that in addition to being able to determine “the numbers” on an incident, one can also see the exact notification letter used, the reporting form submitted to state government, cover […]

 

An early clue to the new direction?

Obama gave his first press conference as President-elect last Saturday. Pundits have noted his humor in responding to the urgent canine matter, but I was struck by a particular phrase used in response to a question regarding whether he’d be moving quickly to fill key cabinet positions: When we have an announcement about cabinet appointments, […]

 

This just in!!

MSNBC’s live streaming internet election coverage looks like it was filmed from within Second Life. Yuck.

 

You talk like a delinquent

This is interesting. Not sure how robust the finding is, but according to an analysis of LendingClub data on all past loans, including descriptions of the use for the money, applicants using certain words in their descriptions are much more likely to default. For our purposes define a Delinquency as either being late in your […]

 

Studs Terkel, 1912-2008

No Chicagoan stood up for the common man like Studs Terkel, although Nelson Algren was probably in the running. A security-related anecdote, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune: In 1997 he went to the White House to receive the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts with a group including Jason Robards, Angela Lansbury, […]

 
 
 

Submitted for your consideration

I added Bank Lawyer’s Blog to my set of RSS feeds some time ago, after I came across a decent post about ID theft there. I provide — without comment — the following quotation from a banking industry lawyer, as posted yesterday: Near the end of the Oscar-winning movie “Unforgiven,” the young assassin who calls […]

 

And I thought I didn't like Streisand

While Babs’ vocal stylings may be an “acquired taste”, today I have a new appreciation for the Streisand Effect. Thanks to Slashdot, I learned that Thomson Reuters is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia alleging that Zotero, an open-source reference-management add-on for Firefox, contains features resulting from the reverse-engineering of Endnote, a competing commercial reference management […]

 

University of Lake Wobegon?

Spaf has an excellent post up about Purdue’s decision to no longer be an NSA Center of Academic Excellence. He makes a number of thought-provoking points, among them that “excellence” loses its meaning if the bar is set too low, and that being an academic center and having a training (as opposed to educating) curriculum […]

 

Avast there!

You might not be able to think like one, but today you should certainly talk like a pirate. Yo ho ho, shiver me timbers, etc. etc. Image credit: charliekwalker

 

We're all in it together

Ryan Singel reports at 27B/6: The TSA was keeping the names of people who lost their wallets and needed to fly — even after ascertaining their identity and determining they were not a threat and could board a plane. It stored these names in a shared threat database. Then it decided that it won’t store […]

 

Keeping abreast of the threat

The German Bundespolizei have announced what the BBC are calling a “bullet-proof bra“. It may sound like a joke, but this is a serious matter – the policewoman who came up with the idea said normal bras can be dangerous when worn in combination with a bullet-proof vest. “The impact of a bullet can push […]

 

Reproducibility, sharing, and data sensitivity

What made this particular work different was that the packets we captured came through a Tor node. Because of this difference, we took extreme caution in managing these traces and have not and will not plan to share them with other researchers. Response to Tor Study I won’t get into parsing what “have not and […]

 

Ethics, Information Security Research, and Institutional Review Boards

Several weeks ago, in “A Question of Ethics“, I asked EC readers whether it would be ethical “to deliberately seek out files containing PII as made available via P2P networks”. I had recently read an academic research paper that did just that, and was left conflicted. Part of me wondered whether a review board would […]

 

Breach notice primary sources

Today on the Dataloss mailing list, a contributor asked whether states in addition to New Hampshire and Maryland make breach notification letters available on-line. I responded thusly (links added for this blog post): I know only of NH and MD. NY and NC have been asked to do it, but have no plans to. NJ […]

 

Passport-peeking probably pervasive

Back in March, we wrote about unauthorized access to Barack Obama’s passport file. At the time, a Washington Post article quoted a State Department spokesman: “The State Department has strict policies and controls on access to passport records by government and contract employees” The idea was that, while snooping might occur, it would be caught […]

 

Study: Firefox patched quickest, IE a laggard

A new technical report out of ETH Zurich, Understanding the Web browser threat, should appeal to EC readers. The authors were granted access to the USER-AGENT information recorded globally by Google between January2007 and June 2008. By examining the first visit per day by each browser, the authors are able to determine which clients were […]

 

I said "No, No, No"

After having seen some footage of Amy Winehouse’s performance at Glastonbury, I think she needs to immediately marry Shane Macgowan, preferably as part of a reality TV show.

 

Iowa breach law arrives a bit early

On May 10, Iowa became the 42nd U.S. state (counting D.C. as a state) with a breach notification law. The law itself is not remarkable. If anything, it is notably weaker than many other states’ laws. When can we expect to see the last stragglers finally pass their laws? Here’s a plot of each state’s […]

 

Because it is the weekend and I am lazy

Chris’s beach reading recommendations John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

 

Why the heck don't I ever have ideas this good?

Walkscore.com. Calculates a location’s “walkability” by using Google Maps to figure out how close various amenities (such as grocery stores, public transit, parks, etc.) are. Not a perfect service, but a great idea.

 

Please read more carefully.

A paper by Sasha Romanosky, Rahul Telang, and Alessandro Acquisti to be presented at the upcoming WEIS workshop examines the impact of breach disclosure laws on identity theft. The authors find no statistically [significant] evidence that laws reduce identity theft, even after considering income, urbanization, strictness of law and interstate commerce The folks at Bank […]

 

A question of ethics

Various estimates have been made regarding the quantity of personal identifying information which has been exposed by various mechanisms. Obviously, though, we only know about what we can see, so seeing more would make such estimates better. One way to see more would be to look in more places, for example on peer-to-peer file sharing […]

 

The messenger is the message

In a blog post entitled “Lending Tree A Little Late In Cutting Off Network Access?“, I read that in the recent Lending Tree breach: several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to Lending Tree’s customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders. Later, the author describes “an obvious […]

 

5754463f

The ACM has a list of classic computer science works put together based on responses to a survey of the membership. I’m no computer scientist (though I’ve lived with my share…) but I’m shocked that none of Knuth’s works is on this list, even if it is basically a beauty contest.

 

Security Metric?

Ross Anderson has made PDF versions of several chapters of his Security Engineering (second edition) available on-line. The entire first edition has been available for some time. I am sure this second edition will be outstanding. I would rank the first edition as one of the top three technical books I’ve read. It would likely […]

 

WEIS 2008: Register now

Registration is under way for the seventh Workshop on the Economics of Information Security , hosted by the Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business June 25-28, 2008 The call for papers, and archives of past workshops give a good sense of what you’ll find (and it is awesome and well worth […]

 

Edward Lorenz, 1917-2008

Edward Lorenz, most famous for research concerning the sensitivity of high-level outcomes to seemingly insubstantial variations in initial conditions (the so-called “butterfly effect“), died April 16 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Much more information concerning Lorenz’s life and work is available via Wikipedia.

 

Virginia gets it

[…]an individual or entity that owns or licenses computerized data that includes personal information shall disclose any breach of the security of the system following discovery or notification of the breach of the security of the system to the Office of the Attorney General and any affected resident of the Commonwealth without unreasonable delay. Virginia’s […]

 

Bot construction kit for non-programmers

We all know that ID theft and extortion bots are ubiquitous. Perhaps it is some consolation that a modicum of technical skill is needed to construct such things. That has changed. I (a complete non-programmer) have just built not one but two “bots” using materials available here and here! With these templates, any 8 year-old […]

 

Attrition ends Dataloss — NOT!

UPDATE: This was a belated April Fools’ from the Attrition people, which clearly suckered me in. Attrition.org’s Lyger has announced the end of Attrition’s Dataloss project (presumably including both the DLDOS and Dataloss mailing list). In the past few weeks, it has come to our attention that too many people are more concerned with making […]

 
 

Do you feel like we do?

As many EC readers realize, press reports about data breaches involving lost or stolen computers often contain statements something like “The actual risk is thought to be minimal, since a password is required to login to the missing computer”. Such statements are sufficiently numerous that the pre-eminent source of breach data, Attrition.org, have issued a […]

 

New, Improved Indiana Breach Law

Thanks to infosec expert (and Indiana resident) Chris Soghoian, and a receptive state legislator who listened to an informed constituent, Indiana now has a much improved breach notification law , closing a loophole we discussed previously. We’ve written about expert involvement in crafting improved state laws before, most recently here. BTW, the loophole Indiana has […]

 

Avoid ID theft: Don’t run for President

The Washington Post reports: The State Department said last night that it had fired two contract employees and disciplined a third for accessing Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file. Obama’s presidential campaign immediately called for a “complete investigation.” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the employees had individually looked into Obama’s passport file on Jan. 9, […]

 

Hannaford: 4.2 million card #s potentially exposed

Hannaford says the security breach affects all of its 165 stores in the Northeast, 106 Sweetbay stores in Florida and a smaller number of independent groceries that sell Hannaford products. The company puts the number of unique credit and debit card numbers that were potentially exposed to fraud at 4.2 million. The company is currently […]

 

Reporting on Data Breaches: US and Great Britain

Is the recent wave of reporting on British data breaches similar to what we’ve been seeing in the US? A couple of things seem true: the US has way more reported breaches per capita, but both locations have seen greatly accelerated reporting. Here’s a plot of all US (Country = ‘US’) and British (Country = […]

 

Speaking of Privacy….

I was dismayed to learn that footage of Spitzer’s (alleged) rent-a-babe “Kristin” performing in a class play while in elementary school has been featured at various web sites — among them serious sites that should know better. One could argue that this woman made her bed, and now she can lie in it (puns intended). […]

 

Belva's got a brand new blog

Ken Belva has a new blog at http://www.bloginfosec.com/. Looks like it is more “formal” and magazine-like than the typical blog, which many people will appreciate. There seems to be a pretty solid collection of contributors, and the hunt is on for additional qualified writers. There’s even a raffle for an iPod (but I already have […]

 

Friday Pogues Blogging

I saw the Pogues’ show at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre last night, exactly 22 years minus one day since the last time I saw them. Spider Stacy seems to have fared a tad better than Shane :^). The show was good, but of course nothing can compare to nostalgia. A particularly enjoyable feature for me was […]

 

US Banks Rated for Identity Theft

Chris Hoofnagle has completed a paper which ranks US financial institutions according to their relative incidence of ID theft, based on reports to the FTC by consumers who named an institution. Chris (like another Chris I know) would like to see more complete information on ID theft available to consumers, so they can make informed […]

 

Dubai banks hiring hackers (no word on if a drug test is needed)

Dubai, as Adam pointed out, is in something of a branding quandary. A hard line – some would say a retrograde and counterproductive line – on victimless crime doesn’t mix well with an image as a fun spot for the well-heeled. Meanwhile, there’s this (from Emirates Business 24-7, retrieved 2/21/2008): Dubai-based banks are recruiting former […]

 

Back in the ring to take another swing

Via Kable’s Government Computing, comes news that the British House of Lords “Science and Technology Committee has announced a follow-up inquiry to its ‘Personal Internet Security’ report”. Chair of the committee Lord Sutherland said: “The committee was disappointed with the government’s response to its report. We felt they had failed to address some of our […]

 

Here we go…

Experian sues Lifelock. I think I can hear the champagne corks popping at ID Analytics from here. They, arguably, provide a service which is similar enough (a detective control against new account fraud, rather than a preventative control), but theirs operates through a different mechanism. I’d like to see some numbers showing the efficacy of […]

 

By their fruits, ye shall know them

We’ve made frequent calls here at EC for improved breach breach reporting. In particular, we’ve said that governments (be they state, provincial, national, whatever) should provide standardized reporting forms, should collect a basic set of facts in each report, should require precision in reporting rather than accepting weasel-words, and should mandate centralized reporting, so that […]

 

Chill, dude.

Because Baltimore police officer Salvatore Rivieri seemingly was unable to tell he was being filmed. Pity. There’s some infosec relevance to obsessing and overreacting to one thing, while being oblivious to another that could prove far more damaging.

 

Empiricism

Unfortunately, this was easy to see coming.

 
 
 

"We have to be careful we don't release the wrong person"

Hence, we imprison and deport American citizens for immigration violations. Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he’s […]

 

Welcome, SecurityFocus readers

The inclusion of Emergent Chaos among the blogs featured at Security Focus happened, one might say, “on Internet time”. Specifically, it was a cool idea that people talked about for a while, and then it got implemented very quickly and surprised us. Quite apropos, given this blog’s title. Anyway, Adam, EC’s bandleader, is away from […]

 

One man's vulgarity is another's lyric

DOYLESTOWN, Pennsylvania (AP) — A man who wrote a vulgar message on the memo line of a check he used to pay a $5 parking ticket has apologized in writing, leading police to drop a disorderly conduct charge against him. David Binner sent the check after receiving a $5 parking ticket. He calls it “a […]

 

TSA's insecure "Traveller Identity Verification" site slammed by Oversight Committee

First exposed nearly a year ago, by DIY boarding pass mastermind Chris Soghoian, a TSA web site intended to help travelers improperly recorded on watch lists has been slammed by a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report: TSA awarded the website contract without competition. TSA gave a small, Virginia-based contractor called Desyne Web Services […]

 

Citibank limiting ATM withdrawals in NYC?

Title: Citibank limits ATM cash in city Author: KERRY BURKE and LARRY McSHANE Source: DAILY NEWS Date Published:January 3rd 2008 Excerpt: The New York-based Daily News reported today that Citibank has limited the cash amount its customers can take out of ATM machines. It is being reported that the security of Citibank’s ATM machines in […]

 

Evan Schuman: TJX gets the BB gun

Not much naughtier than other retailers: I’d say yes to coal for most of the major retailers for dropping the ball on security. Bigger chunks of coal need to go to state legislators and the U.S. House and Senate for failing to pass any laws protecting consumer data (although Minnesota got quite close). But to […]

 

Transparency lessons from the NFL

I think the NFL’s handling of spying by the New England Patriots is poor. Of course, I expect retrograde, authoritarian, clumsy behavior from the NFL, and I haven’t been disappointed in the few decades I’ve been paying attention. The New York Times covered this issue (the spying, not the decades). In their December 16 article, […]

 

So when's the Chicago gig, gents?

‘Good Times Bad Times’ ‘Ramble On’ ‘Black Dog’ ‘In My Time Of Dying’ (full version) ‘For Your Life’ ‘Trampled Under Foot’ ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ ‘No Quarter’ ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ ‘Dazed And Confused’ ‘Stairway To Heaven’ ‘The Song Remains The Same’ ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ ‘Kashmir’ ‘Whole Lotta Love’ ‘Rock And Roll’ Playlist via: […]

 

Thoughts on "Internet Miscreants"

I’ve been thinking about Franklin, Perrig, Paxson, and Savage’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants” for about three weeks now. This is a very good paper. For the infosec empiricist, the dataset itself is noteworthy. It consists of 13 million public IRC messages (that is, in-channel stuff, not […]

 

Gartner the omniscient

This in reference to the recent HMRC breach… However, [Gartner VP Avivah] Litan warned that the chance of identity theft was actually small, at just 1%. Digitaltrends.com The probability of this estimate being scientifically defensible is 0.00%. I’ll have something to say about learning (for real) from the HMRC breach in a soon-to-come post.

 

This stock is da bomb!

OK. So while researching the stock tout scam noted in another post, I came across a blog which discussed a similar mechanism, but one using text messages. An obvious variant, but the part I absolutely adored was when they linked to this August 31, 2007 article from MaineToday.com (emphases added to save your time): An […]

 

Open Letter to Chris Dodd

Dear Chris: I think you’re a smart person who cares about honesty and the rule of law. I also think your e-mail fundraising campaign is undermining that message by sending what I believe to be deliberately deceptive emails. To be clear, I am not referring to deception in the political message — spinning words, being […]

 

HMRC Data discs on EBay

Quite possibly the funniest infosec joke seen in 2007. Here we have two CD-R’s for auction. They are not blank, but seem to have some sort of database written to them. I found them in my local courier firm’s sorting office, addressed to “Her Majesties Audit Office – Child Benefits Section” and marked “Sensitive HM […]

 

Why can't the CIA hire guys like this?

The Telegraph is concerned that The most senior British intelligence official, appointed yesterday to oversee MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, has a website revealing his home address, phone numbers and private photographs of himself, family and friends. www.telegraph.co.uk The upshot seems to be that the gent in question, Alex Allan, lacks the circumspection one would demand […]

 

Splunk'd?

I have been playing with Splunk, for about 45 minutes. So far, I like it. I’ve previously been exposed to Arcsight, but what I have more of an affinity for psychologically is not so much a correlation engine, but a great visualization tool that automagically can grok log formats without making me write a hairy […]

 

Total Kabab Awareness

In a May, 2006 post entitled Codename: Miranda, I joked about having my grocery purchases linked to another Chicagoan due to poor schema design. There, I joked about buying: … granola, yogurt, hummus — the healthy stuff which probably alerts Admiral Poindexter’s Bayesian classifier to my fifth-column status. Maybe this wasn’t jocular after all, as […]

 

Informed discussion? Cool!

David Litchfield examines some public breach data and concludes that Word documents and spreadsheets mistakenly left on a web server or indexed by a search engine account for 20.6% of the 276 breaches, both physical and digital, recorded up to the 23rd of October. He further surmises that the proportion may be even higher, since […]

 

WEIS 2008 Call for papers

The call for papers for the 2008 Workshop on Economics and Information Security, to be held at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business in late June, has just been issued. […] The 2008 Workshop on the Economics of Information Security invites original research papers focused on the economics of information security and the economics of privacy. […]

 

Breach reporting rates

Adam’s comment to my previous post prompted me to think about breach reporting rates again. Above, there’s a slide (click for a larger image) from the presentation I delivered at FIRST 2007. It shows the breach reporting rate for different time periods, from different sources. I think the results are pretty interesting when combined with […]

 

15-30 dataloss incidents daily, sez top Fed cyber-beancounter

The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo in July 2006 requiring agencies to report security incidents that expose personally identifiable information to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team within one hour of the incident. By June 2007, 40 agencies reported almost 4,000 incidents, an average of about 14 per day. As of this […]

 

Egggsellennt!

I, for one, salute our entropy-increasing overlords….but I must confess to being mystified by this press release.

 

More on LLPersonae, Identity Oracles, and RCSL

Adam: But applying for a job is exactly what you describe, “organizations with whom you don’t have a lot of history and interaction.” For an awful lot of people, they apply for jobs broadly. One cashiership is as good as another. And there are a lot of places where I’d like to protect my privacy. […]

 

Bayesian battlefield

According to court papers referenced in this VOA report, U.S. sniper teams in Iraq are using an interesting tactic: [A] so-called baiting program developed at the Pentagon by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group….the baiting was described as putting items, including plastic explosives, ammunition and detonation cords on the battlefield then killing suspected insurgents who picked up […]

 

How unladylike

Like most EC readers, I have been following the story of the MIT student with the breadboard and Duracell fashion accessory who nearly got ventilated at Logan airport in the most LED-hostile city in the US, Boston. The Associated Press was quick to repeat the claim that the student was wearing a “fake bomb”, when […]

 

Free, as in milk

What the hell are the idiots at Facebook thinking? If there’s anything stupider than banning a woman from breastfeeding in public, it is banning a picture of a woman breastfeeding on the grounds that it is “obscene”, which is what the morons at Facebook have done, as reported (for example) by the Toronto Star. Attention […]

 

Trendspotting?

Adam mentioned the recently-announced Ameritrade incident. One thing I found interesting is their decision to hire ID Analytics to determine whether ID theft follows this data breach. According to an ID Analytics press release, the US Veterans’ Administration did something similar when several million veterans’ information was revealed. At a cost of $25,000 (according to […]

 

No word on the lupins

NSW Police are investigating the possible compromise of an online florist’s database and theft of customers’ credit card details. The Fraud Squad has set up Strike Force Parkview to investigate the case that involves the retailer Roses Only. There are unconfirmed reports that the details were used to make a string of luxury purchases in […]

 

"I'm in Love with a Girl"

Another in the occasional EC weekend series highlighting awesome covers. I’d like this video even if it was silent. That stage is perfect for a Big Star tune, and the sound is right on. [If only they also performed “Thirteen“…Chilton and friends are too old (or indifferent) to play it properly now].

 

The analog hole strikes again!

I had occasion to park at a rather large parking garage attached to a rather larger complex of hospitals in downtown Chicago today. The company that runs this garage does something smart — in addition to numbering the floors of the garage and giving them a characteristic color, they also play a well-known musician’s tunes […]

 

Happy Labor Day

…from Chicago. (May 1st was jettisoned as a date for reasons near and dear to EC — it was too political.)

 

Links of the day

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/ http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~rnau/choice/whoswho.htm (Also useful as a reading list for a possible upcoming cage match between Hutton and Bejtlich ;^))

 

Typical British overstatement

I saw a BBC headline, “Huge payout in US stuttering case“, and figured that somebody who stutters must have been harassed at work or something, and got a settlement of $5 mil. WRONG. What happened is this: Six US citizens who, as children, were used in an experiment that tried to induce stuttering have been […]

 

British House of Lords gets it

From a report published August 10 by the House of Lords select committee on science and technology: 5.55.  We further believe that a data security breach notification law would be among the most important advances that the United Kingdom could make in promoting personal Internet security. We recommend that the Government, without waiting for action at […]

 

Maybe if I yell at you, you'll trust in what I'm saying

Tourists visiting the White House must now adhere to a dress code which bans jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops, and flip-flops. Since this is an extremely important rule, signs were posted and emails sent White House staff (writes Al Kamen in the Washington Post). A telling detail, per the WaPo: The e-mail reminder […]

 

System Admin Appreciation Day

…is today, July 27. Pizza and beer retailers are standing by, much as florists do on Valentine’s Day. You know what to do.

 

Full Disclosure debate, 2.0

A poor choice of names (I guess “best UNIX editor” was their second choice), but Silicon.com is doing something that seems worthwhile by launching their Full Disclosure Campaign. Silicon.com wants the government to review its data protection legislation and improve the reporting of information security breaches in the public and private sectors. We are calling […]

 

Hamster Wheel of Pain™, FOIA edition

So, the USDA messes up and, in response to FOIA requests directed to them about tobacco subsidies, sends records containing taxpayer ID numbers (along, one presumes, with names) to the several FOIA requestors. Meanwhile, an enterprising lad sends a FOIA request about data breaches to North Carolina — a state known for tobacco production. That […]

 

You can't spell "Really pointless flamefest" without R-O-I

Rich Bejtlich, with whom I do not want to argue about definitions unless I have a much thicker dictionary than he, has taken aim at the (mis?)use of ROI by security people. EC readers may be interested in a blog post by Ken Belva, in which the guy who literally (co)wrote the book on establishing […]

 

Pete Seeger strikes again

The New York Times Magazine with a long article about swimming the Hudson River. Image:Clearwater.org

 

Electronic data: you can sell it and have it

Mike Rothman has the unmitigated temerity to go on vacation and deprive me of his daily rant^H^H^H^Hincite, but not before remarking on the Certegy data loss incident: So Certegy (a big check processor) loses a couple million records with information like bank accounts and credit card numbers. And Certegy’s president gets interviewed and says because […]

 

More controls creates more risk?

Over at his excellent blog, Chandler Howell referenced an interesting risk analysis performed by a home inspector: “The power switch for the garbage disposal in the sink could be accidentally turned on by a person standing at the sink while their hand was in the disposal.” That is to say, the switch is right next […]

 

Data on Data Breaches

At the FIRST conference in Seville, Spain, I delivered a presentation about “Data on Data Breaches” that Adam and I put together. The slides, with the notes I made to act as “cue cards” for me, are available as a large PDF file on a slow web server. The main points I tried to make […]

 

Maybe things are different (maybe they're the same)

The article to which Adam linked in his post about Dark Side of the Moon mentioned derivative versions of the album as performed by other artists. That got me thinking of memorable covers, such as Senor Coconut’s classic renditions of Kraftwerk tunes (like The Robots and Autobahn). Ultimately, I just gotta throw in a quick […]

 

Flower Power Sucks

Having the unfortunate luck to be in National Public Radio’s target demographic, I occasionally wind up hearing stories that clearly are pandering to what I will with all due sarcasm refer to as “my generation”. Actually, I’m in the one after that, but I recognize the pandering. Lately, not just on NPR but on my […]

 

New Hampshire, North Carolina overlap

New Hampshire’s requirement to clue in the AG’s office or your primary regulator took effect 1/31/2007. I have info from NH and NC (but not NY, yet) covering the period since 1/17, so we can see how much overlap there is: NewHampshire NorthCarolina New Hampshire 40 11 North Carolina 11 41 I am eager to […]

 

New Hampshire gets it

Via Lyger at Attrition.org, comes word that New Hampshire, one of a handful of U.S. states that require breaches involving personal information to be reported to the state as well as to affected individuals, has made at least some breach notices it has received available on the net. I haven’t had any time to read […]

 

Wanted: iPod organ donor.

I’m not throwing out a whole iPod just because the headphone jack is hosed. If you have a dead mini iPod (maybe with a smashed display, say?), and you don’t want to take up precious landfill space, leave a comment or send me an email.

 

I don't know much about art…

…but encasing a skull in millions of bucks worth of diamonds and thinking you’ve made some kind of statement strikes me as uninspired in the extreme. Of course, this matters not, because this is “the work with the highest intrinsic value in modern and contemporary art” according to a guy who works for an insurance […]

 

Venn and the art of empirical breach research

As EC readers may recall, I have made various Freedom of Information requests to state governments in order to obtain data regarding breaches reported to them under their various notification laws. This week, I received responses to the latest request I made to New York and North Carolina. New York has 822 pages to send […]

 

TSA on PBJ: No way

United States congressman Tim Ryan is interested in bringing attention to the meager allotment the U.S. food stamp program provides. This program, for those who don’t know, provides what amounts to scrip which can be used for qualified food purchases to persons who meet a certain needs test. The average food stamp recipient receives $21.00 […]

 

Premature optimization is the root of all evil

The observation is no less true of legislation than it is of code.
Case in point is the debate over whether to trigger breach notifications when a “reasonable” risk of harm or a “significant” risk of harm exists. Everybody is quick to cite California’s breach law, so I’m going to cite New York’s:

 

A quick pointer

Adam has made several posts about it being ‘good for you’ to open up about data breaches. Unfortunately, keeping a lid on the info is a stable equilibrium. This situation is what economists would call an Assurance Game. A quick pointer to a post I made reviewing a very good book on how to get […]

 

What, me worry?

TJX sales up, again. Via StorefrontBacktalk: …TJX reported Thursday that its April sales increased another 2 percent, to $1.28 billion…. More importantly, for the thirteen weeks ended May 5, 2007, sales reached $4.2 billion, a 7 percent increase over last year’s $3.9 billion.

 

"The vendor made me do it"?

Via StorefrontBacktalk comes news that Following lawsuits in February against some of the nation’s largest retailers for illegally revealing too much credit card information on printed receipts, two of those retailers are now suing their POS vendors. In the last couple of weeks, two of those retail defendants—Charlotte Russe and Shoe Pavillion—have sued their POS […]

 
 
 

New Hampshire joins the club

The Granite State requires that security breaches involving PII be reported to the Attorney General: Any person engaged in trade or commerce that is subject to RSA 358-A:3, I shall also notify the regulator which has primary regulatory authority over such trade or commerce. All other persons shall notify the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. […]

 

See, it can be done

I’ll keep this short since you should all be reading Mordaxus’ latest, not this, but speaking of data… This breach report [pdf] from Community National Bank wasn’t sent to consumers, but you can’t say it was short on details.

 

Ptacek scores, Pre-Blogging Department with the assist!

Matasano’s Thomas Ptacek had a Groucho-like reaction to being included as a “Top 59” infosec influencer in ITSecurity.com’s recent list. EC’s Pre-Blogging Department was initially caught flat-footed on this, but predicted in an update that Tom’s view would gain traction. And it has. Meanwhile, Mark Curphey has stirred the pot by leaving the Security Bloggers’ […]

 

We're number 18, but we try harder…

Adam (or perhaps EC?) is one of the top 59 infosec influencers, sayeth itsecurity.com Cool. 18. Adam Shostack http://www.emergentchaos.com/ Emergent Chaos is a group blog on security, privacy, liberty and economics – a self-declared “Emergent Chaos jazz combo of the blogosphere. ” While the EC bloggers tend to drift off topic with political posts, they […]

 

No, seriously

Somebody — I want to say Rich Mogull, but I cannot find the reference — wrote sarcastically about breach notices almost always saying “At $COMPANY we take security seriously….” as they report how, well…you know. I just finished scanning 183 notice letters I got from New York, covering the last half of 2006. Using an […]

 

A telling remark

In the “inconvenient coincidences” category, it seems that Al Sharpton’s great-grandfather was a slave owned by relatives of the late segregationist US senator Strom Thurmond. Thurmond’s niece, Ellen Senter (via an AP report) provides an interesting perspective: I doubt you can find many native South Carolinians today whose family, if you traced them back far […]

 

Why We Fight

TJX appears to have suffered little financial fallout. Its stock fell just 2 percent yesterday after the company disclosed the new problems, along with its fourth-quarter earnings. For the three months ended Jan. 27, TJX said, profit fell to $205 million from $288 million in the same period a year earlier. Store closings led TJX […]

 

Award-winning scrotum

The New York Times writes about “The Higher Power of Lucky“, a children’s book which recently won the Newbery Medal. As someone who has purchased his share of kids’ books, I assure you that the Newbery — and its companion the Caldecott Medal — signal quality to buyers. In this case, though, some parents and […]

 

Visualizing Breach Data

Using IBM’s cool “Many Eyes” service (now in alpha), I played for a few minutes with some breach data. Nothing more than the size of each entry in Attrition’s database, and its date. Looks kinda cool, I think.

 

Department of pre-blogging, II

A bit of background. Sun recently got hit with a 0-day that was 13 years in the making, by seemingly repeating a coding worst practice that bit AIX back in 1994 — trusting environment variables under the control of an attacker. A slightly more complex variant bit Solaris’ telnetd in 1995. From the advisory (NSFW) […]

 

Party like it's 1994

A 0-day in Solaris {10,11} telnetd is reported. SANS has some details. Anyone who remembers the AIX “rlogin -froot” vuln will appreciate this one. (h/t to KK on this one)

 

Breach irony

According to Courtney Manzel, Counsel – Office of Privacy, Sprint Nextel Corporation, reporting a breach pursuant to NY’s notification law: A laptop computer was stolen from the human resources department of Velocita Wireless during a rash of office burglaries in the Woodbridqe, New Jersey area. The laptop computer was one of many items stolen. It […]

 

Why Johnny Can’t Bank Safely

Stuart E. Schechter, Rachna Dhamija, Andy Ozment, and Ian Fischer have written a paper which examines the behavior of persons doing on-line banking under various experimentally-manipulated conditions. The paper is getting some attention, for example in the New York Times and at Slashdot. What Schechter, et. al. find is that despite increasingly alarming indicators that […]

 

Department of Pre-blogging

Make sure to check out the blog posts Bruce Schneier and a host of others will soon make regarding the paralyzing effect that silly Blinkenlights ads for Aqua Teen Hunger Force had in Boston. The coordinated response by all departments proves the system we have in place works. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino Behold the power […]

 

Is this idea feasible?

With all the reports of lost backup tapes, I wonder if it would be technically feasible to keep an eye on them using RFID tags. If a tape “tries to leave” a facility without having been pre-authorized, bells go off. If a tape can’t be found, there’s a record of where it was last detected […]

 

A compromising position

Does Pete Lindstrom need to buy a dictionary? You make the call. In a recent post at Spire Security Viewpoint, he suggests that the folks at Privacyrights.org might be liars: I am starting to see (and hear) this “100 million records lost since February, 2005” figure referenced in a number of places such that it […]

 

Report: Approaches to Security Breach Notification

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa has published a report entitled Approaches to Security Breach Notification[pdf]. From the Introduction: This White Paper considers the need for an explicit obligation in Canadian privacy law to notify affected individuals of a breach in an organization’s security that places those individuals’ […]

 

Going the extra mile

As a control against identity theft, firms operating on-line often send snail mail confirmations to their customers when such things as site passwords, beneficiaries, or customer addresses have been changed. This allows the customer to review such changes and catch any that may have been unauthorized. I was the recipient of two such pieces of […]

 

A Request

My latest request for documents under New York State’s freedom of information law was just responded to. There are 1289 pages of documents covering the period 6/2006 to 12/2006. By way of comparison, my two previous requests covered the period 12/2005 to 5/2006, and yielded 400 pages or so. The nice folks in NY made […]

 

Let’s look at some data

Paul Murphy has made some predictions for 2007. EC readers can judge their value.
Mr. Murphy makes one comment on data breaches that I can’t resist reacting to (after the jump), however.

 

I knew those Bratz were trouble

As if Barbie isn’t a bad enough role model, it seems that at least one Bratz doll came complete with actual marijuana as an after-market accessory. The unlucky recipient’s mom quickly called 911 when she found the contraband packaged with the doll she received in the mail, having thought it was an identical doll she […]

 
 
 

DHS says one thing, does another. Film at 11.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Privacy Office conducted a review of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) collection and use of commercial data during initial testing for the Secure Flight program that occurred in the fall 2004 through spring 2005. The Privacy Office review was undertaken following notice by the TSA Privacy Officer of preliminary […]

 

Read any good books lately?

Do share your opinions and suggestions. Personally, I don’t read enough, and I stay within a too-narrow comfort zone of UNIX geek material. Help me, and other EC readers similarly situated. It’d be nice if the techie side of infosec was not the subject (Rich Bejtlich has that covered anyway) I wrote up a review […]

 

One passport, please…

hold the RFID. I just got my US passport renewed, and I was pleasantly surprised when it came back Old Skool — no RFID.  I’m happy…until 2016 anyway.

 

Quotable quotes

History teaches you that dictators never end up well. Augusto Pinochet, November 25, 1915 – December 10, 2006

 

Farts on a plane!

Or, “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup”. It may be one problem airline security officials never envisioned — a passenger lighting matches in flight to mask odors from her flatulence. The woman’s actions resulted in an emergency landing on Monday in Nashville of an American Airlines flight bound for Dallas from Washington, D.C., said […]

 

Radiation

How’d you like to be the person at British Airways who has to write the letter to 30,000 people explaining that they might have been exposed to a radioactive poison while traveling on BA flights? Remarkably, authorities will not confirm that the substance detected was Polonium, yet passengers on the flights are being asked to […]

 

Fanning the flames, security metrics style

Amidst the to and fro over insider v. outsider threats, whether security metrics can be “gamed”, and so on, and in recognition of the best buddies that security geeks and economists have now become, I offer the following.  The saying often quoted from Lord Kelvin (though the substance, I believe, ismuch older) that “where you […]

 

England and Wales to fingerprint motorists at traffic stops

Via the Beeb: Drivers who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people’s identities. A hand-held device being tested by 10 forces in England and Wales is linked to a database of 6.5m prints. Police say they will save time because […]

 

Carole King said it best

“It’s too late, baby” Yeah, I’m dating myself, but Tapestry was huge, and she and Goffin had some serious songwriting chops. Anyway, the “it” about which it’s too late is, yes, a relationship. An important relationship. A relationship which, while admittedly not exclusive, is “open” in a hopefully honest, fulfilling, respectful way. That relationship is […]

 

SANS Top 20 has competition!

SANS has just released their annual Top 20. I won’t bother linking to it — Google knows where to find it, and if you’re reading this blog, you probably do too. Anyway, it seems like the SANS people have a bit of competition. Check out this list: Failing to assess adequately the vulnerability of its […]

 

New Zealand to literacy: "l8r!"

Via CNN: WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use “text-speak” — the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers — in national exams this year, officials said. Text-speak, a second language for thousands of teens, uses abbreviated words and phrases such as “txt” for “text”, “lol” […]

 
 

Better Dead than Red?

Via the Beeb, writing about a county board election in South Dakota: Marie Steichen, who died of cancer in September, beat a Republican rival by 100 votes to 64 and became a county commissioner posthumously. The election list closed on 1 August, but Ms Steichen’s name was kept on the list for Tuesday’s election. Voters […]

 

Popping pills

Breach disclosure foes say that notifying those whose personal information may have been revealed in many breaches is costly, and often not commensurate with actual risk to consumers. A well-written example [pdf] can be had from the Political and Economic Research Council, which reports that direct notification costs are about $2.00 per notified person. So, […]

 

Happy Halloween

                   Sometimes it’s OK to take candy from strangers.

 

BT buys Counterpane

And so it continues…. Reuters has a few details. Unsurprisingly, Bruce Schneier also has a blog entry up on this.

 

Diebold goes open source

Well, not intentionally. Seems that multiple versions of source code (including the one used to run the 2004 primaries in Maryland) were delivered anonymously to a former legislator who has been critical of Diebold. Note that this is not the same source examined by Avi Rubin, et. al., and found wanting from a security perspective. […]

 
 

No soup for you!

Harkening back to Adam’s post a while back concerning EC being blocked or miscategorized by various “security” products, tk of nCircle posts that nCircle.com has been blocked from some security vendor sites. This reads to me like the equivalent (speaking of analogies) of Toyota blocking Honda.com, rather than the categorization of nCircle.com as evil in […]

 

Measurement

There are a bunch of ways to estimate how many people have died in the Iraq war.  One is to keep track of news stories and official reports of combatant and civilian deaths, and add them up. Another is to employ the tools of epidemiology and demography.  Until now, we’ve had essentially only the former […]

 

BOOM, there it is

If, as is being suggested, North Korea has tested a nuke, things will be getting mighty interesting. I don’t know what to make of it, frankly. Update, 2350 CDT: Looks increasingly like there was, indeed, a test.

 

No Expectation of Privacy

Here in the U.S., one of our Old Order Amish communities has recently suffered an infamous crime — the murder of several schoolchildren.  Interest in this case has been high.  Naturally, the public’s right to know has been ably served, as journalists took plenty of funeral photographs, despite the fact that the Amish, on strict […]

 

Less than zero-day

[This was prepared the morning of October 1, but not posted because I expected more to come of the story rather quickly. It now appears that 1. is true.] OK, so at Toorcon a couple of guys — one of whom works at SixApart — reported on a Firefox 0day. These gents claim to have […]

 

Words to live by

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of […]

 

Comment pointer

Mike Cook, author of the ID Analytics report referred to in a recent Breach Tidbit post, has responded in the comments.

 

Breach Datasource Design Criteria

 Most readers of these words are probably familiar with at least one of the lists of data breaches commonly referenced in the media and in specialized blogs.  Among these are Attrition.org’s Dataloss, and Privacyrights.org’s Breach Chronology.  The ID Theft Center also maintains a list (available, it seems, only as a PDF), and various academic researchers […]

 

Breach Tidbit

One of the things people would like to find out is how likely it is that improperly-revealed personal information will be used to commit real fraud. ID Analytics has done some research which they interpret as suggesting that even with focused attacks, where the bad guy is going after SSN and account information, the probability […]

 

Darn kids! Get off my lawn!!

“Until Solaris became open, students were only interested in Solaris for the same reason they were interested in NextStep Unix — because it was this arcane, old-fashioned thing,” said Asheesh Laroia, a graduate student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University. Via NetworkWorld.

 

Stick a fork in her…

..’cause she’s Dunn! What’s the over/under on how long Hurd lasts? Image credit: progodess

 

10-second MBA, por favor?

I have read repeatedly, most recently at Bejtlich’s blog, that with the IBM-ISS and now Secureworks/LURHQ deals, Counterpane “must” be looking to get bought out. Why? As with management consultancies, could there not be room for a boutique that does one thing really well? Help me out, here.

 

Breach Data

I just received a response to my second Freedom of Information request to the state of New York. I’ll report on this more deeply soon, but in the spirit of breach analytics week, I wanted to throw out a couple of things, based on an extremely superficial examination of the approximately 285 pages I received, […]

 

CfP: 19th Annual FIRST Conference

The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) has put out a call for papers for its nineteenth annual conference.  The theme for 2007 is “Private Lives and Corporate Risk: Digital Privacy – Hazards and Responsibilities”. Full details at: http://www.first.org/conference/2007/call_for_papers.html FIRST 19th Annual Conference, June 17 – 22, 2007, Melia Seville hotel, Seville, Spain […]

 
 

Does anyone remember laughter?

Via Stupid Security, I learned of a gent whose T-shirt was deemed a security risk because it showed crossed pistols and could upset passengers. He was allowed to board the plane, but only after turning his shirt inside out. Good thing he wasn’t wearing a Zeppelin shirt. I guess Bush would be OK (ironic, given […]

 

I couldn't have said it better, myself

Pseudonymous contributor “DK”, of Josh Marshall’s blog expresses several worthy thoughts about national character with a brevity and nuance I envy: OK, I’ll admit to a bias here. I think the Netherlands is one of the best places on the planet. They have our entrepreneurial spirit, but with good taste. Like us, they have completely […]

 

Are they stupid, or just lying?

On the recent House of Representatives vote to ban the slaughter of horses:  “It is one of the most inhumane, brutal, shady practices going on in the U.S. today,” said Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., a sponsor of the ban.     Sweeney argued that the slaughter of horses is different from the slaughter of cattle and chickens […]

 

New PCI DSS is out

The Payment Card Industry Digital Security Standard, version 1.1, has been released [pdf].  This was widely anticipated, and has been remarked upon here at EC. A noteworthy change is that stored card numbers needn’t be encrypted: Compensating Controls for Requirement 3.4 For companies unable to render cardholder data unreadable (for example, by encryption) due to technical […]

 
 

Wells Fargo to laptop-losing auditor: buh-bye

Via David Lazarus, writing about yet another lost laptop, this one belonging to an an outside auditor working for Wells Fargo: “The auditor had this information because we are required by the Internal Revenue Service to have our health plans audited by independent, qualified public accountants,” said Julia Tunis, a Wells spokeswoman. “The auditor is […]

 

If I want your opinion…

…I’ll beat it out of you: President George W. Bush’s proposal for trying suspected terrorists captured overseas would allow the use of evidence obtained by coercion and let judges bar defendants from hearings where classified evidence is discussed, a Senate Republican aide who has been briefed on the plan said. Or, as Firesign Theatre put […]

 

The "Seal" that Doesn't

From this photoessay, it appears that the seal Diebold places on its electronic voting machines doesn’t do a darn thing.  It is possible to remove the card from which the thing boots, and replace it with one of your choosing, leaving no trace — the seal itself remains unchanged.  Elapsed time, a bit over four […]

 

Google whitewash

The Tom Sawyer kind, that is, known formally as Google Image Labeler: You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you […]

 

Data Dilemma

Various folks at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism have done some great work, which they call Data Dilemma: Privacy in an Age of Security. I was led to this by various stories about the US Department of Education feeding information on financial aid applicants to the DHS for five years without bothering to inform those […]

 

Blog finds

I’ve come across some blogs I find interesting. Maybe others will, too. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science Weblog of a Syrian Diplomat in America Decision Science News Social Science Data and Software (SSDS) Blog SecuritySauce (Marty “Snort” Roesch’s blog) Plus, a special bonus non-blog: UCSB’s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

 

Outsiders! Insiders! Let's call the whole thing off.

I have no idea whether outsiders or insiders are responsible for more losses, and while the topic is somewhat interesting, it seems to me to be something of a marketing-generated distraction. I’ve worked in environments where I am absolutely certain that insiders were the predominant threat, in environments where they probably were, and in environments […]

 

Who's next?

                            Now that ISS has been purchased by IBM? Or is consolidation not really happening?

 

Breach numbers

I just got a response from North Carolina to my freedom of information request, asking for records pertaining to security breaches resulting in the exposure of personal information. North Carolina requires that such breaches be reported centrally. The data were sent in printed form, in a table obviously derived from a spreadsheet. I hope to […]

 

AOL data release fallout

AOL’s CTO has “decided to leave” the company, “effective immediately”, according to an email message sent to remaining employees by CEO Jon Miller. Additionally, CNet news reports that the researcher who posted the data, and the researcher’s supervisor (a direct report of ex-CTO Maureen Govern) have been fired.

 

Ruling issued in NSA wiretap case

The Permanent Injunction of the TSP requested by Plaintiffs is granted inasmuch as each of the factors required to be met to sustain such an injunction have undisputedly been met. The irreparable injury necessary to warrant injunctive relief is clear, as the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Plaintiffs are violated by the TSP. See […]

 

Birthday paradox bites FEMA

Via the SacBee: WASHINGTON (AP) – FEMA will replace locks on as many as 118,000 trailers used by Gulf Coast hurricane victims after discovering the same key could open many of the mobile homes. One locksmith cut only 50 different kinds of keys for the trailers sold to FEMA, officials said Monday The article continues: […]

 

Clue me in?

I have to fly (from PDX to MDW) Sunday AM. Anybody flown domestically who can tell me what the real-world impact of the new rules has been in terms of delays at security? As Leslie NielsenLloyd Bridges might say “I picked the wrong four days to go on vacation”. Updated: Lloyd, not Leslie. Thanks, Asteroid.

 

AOL search records 'research'

Most readers will have read by now of America Online publicly releasing a large sample of search records. From the README supplied with the data: The data set includes {AnonID, Query, QueryTime, ItemRank, ClickURL}. AnonID – an anonymous user ID number. Query – the query issued by the user, case shifted with most punctuation removed. […]

 

Dear Sandman Hotel, Vancouver

Thanks for understanding that after a day and a half hiking through Garibaldi Provincial Park, all I want is a quiet room that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, and a shower. At first I shuddered at having a room between the elevators and the ice machine, but it was quiet as a tomb. […]

 

The butler did it

There’s a feeling you get when you watch a formulaic movie. After seeing a half-hour’s worth, you just know how it will end. You can see the decision points characters reach, and you know they’ll make the bad choice. Indeed, the very predictability of such films is what allows hilarious parodies such as Airplane! or […]

 

Indiana's Breach Law

Indiana’s breach notification law went into effect on July 1, 2006. An excerpt relevant the “lost laptop” phenomenon: Sec. 2. (a) As used in this chapter, “breach of the security of the system” means unauthorized acquisition of computerized data that compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of personal information maintained by a state or local […]

 

I don't know if this or the 'White Pages' breach is worse

Via America’s Finest News Source: Postmaster General Loses Laptop; Zip-Code Data Of Millions At Risk July 25, 2006 | Issue 42•30 WASHINGTON, DC—The U.S. Postal Service has confirmed that a laptop computer issued to Postmaster General John Potter and containing the zip-code information of over 280 million Americans was allegedly left in a taxicab Monday […]

 

I smell a movement

No, not that kind, silly. I just read over at Bejtlich’s blog, that he has decided to start NoVA Sec, having been inspired by Chisec, which was begun by Matasano honcho Thomas Ptacek. ChiSec is fun, and has been rapidly imitated by other Matasano folks, yielding Seasec and NYsec (I’m hoping it will go next […]

 

ACLU: Feds snooping on Fedwire?

Press release describes a FOIA request seeking info on governmental surveillance of Fedwire, among other programs. This would be troubling. It is difficult to overstate the extent to which the Federal Reserve System values its reputation for ethical behavior and fair play. A reputation, I might add, that based on my observations it deserves.

 

North Carolina is in the club

From North Carolina’s breach notification law, which took effect on December 1, 2005: (f) In the event a business provides notice to more than 1,000 persons at one time pursuant to this section, the business shall notify, without unreasonable delay, the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s Office and all consumer reporting agencies that […]

 

CSI/FBI Survey considered harmful

The latest 2006 CSI-FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey has been released. Already, it is making waves, as it does each year. I want to simply state that there is no reason to give this survey any credence. The survey instrument is sent only to CSI members. This time, it was sent to 5,000 of […]

 

In every dream home, a heartache

Barry Ritholz, an NYC hedge fund manager, blogs about a WSJ story. The gist: On Sept. 21, 2001, rescuers dug through the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center. Across town, families buried two firefighters found a week earlier. At Fort Drum, on the edge of New York’s Adirondacks, soldiers readied for deployment halfway across […]

 

Skype reverse-engineered?

According to Charlie Paglee, Skype has been cracked, and a compatible client implemented. This promises to have wide ramifications, about which Charlie writes at length.

 

Belated happy birthday

…to the United States’ Freedom of Information Act, a national law signed on July 4, 1966, by a reluctant Lyndon Johnson, after having been championed by U.S. Representative John Moss.

 

New rules, you say?

Vystar Credit Union was hit by “hackers”, who obtained personal info on 10% or so of their 334,000 customers. The information included “names, addresses, social security numbers, birth dates, mothers’ maiden names and e-mail addresses”, according to Jacksonville.com. Credit union CEO Terry West took a rather old school approach: West said the company noticed the […]

 

Debian CVS server compromised

Here’s news of a breach that (I presume) involved no PII, but which could be significant. I wrote about a previous Debian breach back in December, 2003. I hadn’t realized it had been so long! Update: Local vuln used to elevate privs. Local access gained due to weak developer password. Details here.

 

Bye, Syd

Syd Barrett has died.

 

Enforcement

People whine about Sarbanes-Oxley as if it were government accountants with a sense of neither humor nor proportion watching everything an executive does, 24/7. Thing is, much of the actual regulation is courtesy of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a private corporation. My hat is off to the accounting profession, which successfully met an […]

 

Chivalry isn't dead

Regarding the theft of Coca Cola intellectual property and its attempted sale to arch-rival Pepsico, we learn PepsiCo was offered a new product sample and confidential documents in May, in a letter from someone calling himself ‘Dirk’. But instead of taking the bait it tipped off Coca-Cola, which brought in the FBI. […] Coca-Cola’s chairman […]

 
 

Sorry for not posting this earlier…

…but my internet tube was flooded. If you want to know what the heck that means, the good folks at 27B Stroke 6 (easily the best blog name I’ve seen this year), provide the details. The short and sweet is that U.S. senator Ted Stevens ain’t exactly Vint Cerf: I just the other day got, […]

 

Flippin' sweet!

Maybe IBM does have a sense of humor. “Knock it off, Napoleon! Just make yourself a dang quesa-dilluh!”. This phrase, from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, is the cipher key IBM are using to publish encrypted XML at this year’s Wimbledon grand slam. But is this a rather glaring lapse in security, or simply an anticipatory […]

 

Indistinguishable from magic

The press relase you won’t see. For Immediate Release CATAWBA COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM, June 26 — The Catawba County Public School System (NC) announced today that district web site administrators have remedied a configuration error which accidentally resulted in the social security numbers and names of several hundred students being made available via the popular […]

 

Breach Roundup: 6/17 – 6/24

This week’s roundup is large. Rather than push other newish posts off the bottom of most people’s screens, it has been deemed preferable to prepend this introductory paragraph, at the bottom of which readers may elect to see more.

 

Gartner to Google: Learn to read minds

Concerning a school district which misconfigured its web server and wound up posting student social security numbers for all — including Google’s spiders — to see, Gartner’s Avivah Litan weighs in: They say the Internet is free and open, and you can’t stop them,” Litan said. “But they ought to scrutinize some of the content […]

 

SWIFT spies

The United States Treasury Department has had secret access to records maintained as part of the SWIFT system, which it has been using secretly for years to identify financial ties to terrorist entities. The Washington Post has more.

 
 

Remembering the Maine

From Maine’s Public Law, Chapter 583, passed April 2006: Sec. 9. 10 MRSA §1348, sub-§5, as enacted by PL 2005, c. 379, §1 and affected by §4, is amended to read: 5 . Notification to state regulators. When notice of a breach of the security of the system is required under subsection 1, the information […]

 

Prediction

A merchant is going to feel some pain from the FTC. Visa and MC are going to look bad for not talking about who this merchant is. Jun. 8–Federal officials cannot disclose what national merchant or merchants were involved in a recent debit card security breach that spurred at least two local banks to reissue […]

 

Is encryption worth it?

Gartner’s Avivah Levitan says it’s better to spend money on encryption than on cleaning up after a data breach, according to a news report on her recent testimony before the US Senate. The problem? Gartner’s method in researching this claim, as best I can tell, relies on looking at a few high-profile cases. Sure, if […]

 

Words of Wisdom

We live in a society of laws. Why do you think I took you to all those “Police Academy” movies? For fun? Well, I didn’t hear anybody laughin’, did you? — Homer Simpson Marge Be Not Proud

 

Maybe they can borrow a few million from the IRS

[T]he VA’s inspector general, George Opfer, said that the agency had been unable to formally notify the affected veterans because “we don’t have 26 million envelopes.” via the Bradenton Herald Now that the funny part is out of the way… Asked the cost for preventing and covering potential losses from identity theft, [VA Secretary] Nicholson […]

 

Illinois credit freeze now law

Public Law 094-0799 now allows Illinois residents to have a freeze applied to their credit reports. The maximum fee (not applicable to those 65 and over) is $10.00. The law, according to a press release from the governor’s office, takes effect January 1, 2006. Look for other states to continue to pile on, now that […]

 
 

A small, but hopeful sign in state breach legislation

A bill sits on Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s desk. If he signs it, Illinois will take a step toward meaningful central reporting of breach notifications: 5 (815 ILCS 530/25 new) 6 Sec. 25. Annual reporting. Any State agency that collects 7 personal data and has had a breach of security of the system 8 data […]

 

Never say die?

I’m not sure what to expect out of this story of a guy who, left behind in a crazed state and presumed to have died, overnighted above 8000 meters on Everest and was found alive the next day, prompting a rescue effort expected to take three days. (Note that this is a different climber from […]

 

"Encryption is hard, let's go shopping!"

On upcoming changes to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard: “Today, the requirement is to make all information unreadable wherever it is stored,” Maxwell said. But this encryption requirement is causing so much trouble for merchants that credit card companies are having trouble dealing with requests for alternative measures, he said. In response, changes […]

 
 

The Human Element

In one of the soon-to-be countless articles about the VA Incident, Network World’s Ellen Messmer writes: The sad irony in all this is that there are many at the VA who have worked hard to design and install network-based security. But in the “multiple layers of security” everyone is so fond of discussing, the human […]

 

Breach round-up

Ohio University I: On Friday, April 21, the FBI advised the Technology Transfer Department at Ohio University’s Innovation Center that a server containing office files had been compromised. Data on the server included e-mails, patent and intellectual property files, and 35 Social Security numbers associated with parking passes. Ohio University II: 300,000 alums and friends. […]

 
 

An Apollo Program for our times

Teach Florida’s alligators to feed on sharks. Unfortunately, this would deprive CNN of much of its material, so they will oppose it strenuously.

 

US reporters under surveillance

Looks like the Bush administration is tracking reporters’ phone calls. Also, the FBI admits that it uses the Patriot Act to obtain journalists’ phone records in an attempt to determine to whom they have been speaking. Read more here and here, from an ABC News reporter who has received some “attention” from the government. Photo: […]

 
 

That didn't take long

Verizon is facing a $5 billion lawsuit over its alleged law-breaking. The NYT reports today that this suit may actually involve as much as $50 billion in damage. Previously, a $20 billion suit had been filed regarding the aspects of the NSA program that had become publicly-known in December. Interestingly enough, when you don’t take […]

 

Tip of the iceberg

A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said Thursday he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to […]

 

Cell phone records market seemingly no longer important?

Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey asks Dennis Hastert whether legislation protecting mobile phone users’ privacy has been sent to a “legislative ‘Guantanamo Bay’” in order to modify it so that intelligence gathering activities analogous to those affecting land lines would be unimpeded.

 

Half empty

I think Adam is too kind to Arizona’s new breach law. My issues have to do with how various elements of the law might be interpreted: “materially compromises”: Maybe I am reading too much Sarbanes-Oxley stuff and my sense of what constitutes materiality has been warped, but I would need to be reassured that this […]

 

Here’s to you, New York

I’ve mentioned before that other than New York, only New Jersey requires that security breaches involving personal identifying information be reported centrally. I hazarded a guess at the time that, unlike NY, NJ would not respond favorably to a freedom of information request for such records, because the mandated reporting is to the state police, […]

 

Code Name: Miranda

I admit it, probably ten or more years ago I actually signed up for a supermarket affinity card. Of course, I promptly lost it during the great migration to the suburbs, and for a good while I would simply claim to have left it at home and the cashier would cheerfully use a “store card”, […]

 

Automated code scanners do have their uses

Slashdot is carrying the story of a rather large bug find in the X11 code. Judging by the patch, it looks like the problem was due to a lack of caffeine: if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid != 0) The OpenBSD code auditors seem to have found this one independently: This is one of those […]

 

DoD Tricare Management Activity system, SSNs, credit card numbers, health info, 14K people

Via Army Times: The Pentagon said routine monitoring of the Tricare Management Activity’s public servers on April 5 resulted in the discovery of an intrusion and that the personal records had been compromised, leaving open the possibility of identity theft among the members affected. The information contained in the files varied and investigators do not […]

 

aetna insurance,38K customers, names+SSNs, health info, stolen laptop

Report via Reuters. Aetna declined to to say where this occurred or which law-enforcement agency they are working with, but it looks like the employer whose folks just got their PII exposed was the US Department of Defense. Stars and Stripes has the scuttlebutt from HQ: The laptop was stolen from an employee’s personal car […]

 

Purdue University, 1351 applicants+students, SSNs, "unauthorized electronic access"

“Unauthorized electronic access”. Not sure if that’s a poorly configured web server, or what. Press release today. Happened in February. Notices sent at some unspecified time. Indiana only requires state agencies to disclose breaches, the law isn’t in effect yet, and the legislative and judicial departments aren’t considered state agencies. Quoth “Mark Smith, head and […]

 

Homo Economicus?

Researchers have identified brain cells involved in economic choice behavior: The scientists, who reported the findings in the journal Nature, located the neurons in an area of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) while studying macaque monkeys which had to choose between different flavours and quantities of juices. They correlated the animals’ choices […]

 

Imagine

I second Alec Muffett’s recommendation of ThePartyParty. In particular, the cover of Imagine is dumbfoundingly bittersweet. Happy Earth Day. [Image: NASA]

 

Statistics

In the latest in the ongoing saga of debit cards being reissued after a breach at an unnamed merchant, 3rd-party, or card processor, we learn that unless a crook stands a chance of getting caught, he’ll keep on stealing: These crooks get away with it, and that’s why they keep doing it. They’ve got about […]

 

The law is an ass

Nevada is one of a small number of states that actually defines the term ‘encryption’ as used in its breach disclosure law. To wit: NRS 205.4742 “Encryption” defined. “Encryption” means the use of any protective or disruptive measure, including, without limitation, cryptography, enciphering, encoding or a computer contaminant, to: 1. Prevent, impede, delay or disrupt […]

 

State disclosure laws

I’ve written up a comparison of what I believe to be all existing US state disclosure laws with regard to three loopholes that have been discussed by, among others, Rob Lemos and Bruce Schneier recently. I’m experimenting with Blosxom, so I posted this over here. The executive summary is all the state laws could use […]

 

What Would Jesus Compile?

Generally, when I talk about religion, it’s in the Emacs vs. vi sense. One of my RSS bookmarks contained a somewhat thought-provoking article about the similarities between the philosophy advanced by Free Software Foundation, and certain aspects of Catholic doctrine, and ‘Christian charity’ more broadly. It’s an interesting take on Open Source, and perhaps appropriate […]

 

Why trackback spam is bad

% prstat PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/NLWP 14135 nobody 16M 12M sleep 60 0 0:00:11 4.2% mt-tb.cgi/1 14207 nobody 14M 11M run 55 0 0:00:08 4.1% mt-tb.cgi/1 14203 nobody 14M 11M run 56 0 0:00:08 4.1% mt-tb.cgi/1 14209 nobody 14M 11M run 54 0 0:00:08 4.1% mt-tb.cgi/1 14215 nobody 14M […]

 

Bad neighbor policy?

Many years ago, I needed to deploy a bunch of UNIX machines very quickly. When I created the golden system image, it included an ntp.conf file that pointed to a nearby public stratum 2 server not under my administrative control. This was dumb, because I could (and should) have just had my boxen chime against […]

 

Low-quality DATA

The other day, I wrote about the Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA), which has been received well by consumer and privacy advocacy organizations. For example, “We’re pleased with the compromise ‘trigger’ language relating to when a business must notify individuals of a breach of their personal information,” said several privacy advocacy groups in a […]

 

Competition among laws

Declan McCullagh writes cogently on the matter of national security breach legislation. His article makes many important points, and should be read widely. However, his overall thrust — that federal legislation is inferior to state legislation as a means of addressing security breaches — touches too briefly on an important point: we can have both. […]

 
 

National breach list? Pinch me!

H.R. 3997, the Financial Data Protection Act, is one of the many pieces of legislation proposed in the US to deal with identity theft or notification of security breaches. It was approved by the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives on 3/16. I haven’t read the full text of the bill (and it […]

 

Laptop theft

The Register has been on Ernst & Young’s case. The latest Exclusive! talks about a laptop stolen in early January, and how we now know it had info on BP employees, along with those from IBM and others. The article also observes that: It’s difficult to obtain an exact figure on how many people have […]

 

You can't buy publicity like this!

UCSB has a project to digitize wax cylinder recordings. They have thousands cataloged, with the majority downloadable as mp3s. It’s awesome. Naturally, I wanted to see what software they used. Being archivists, they of course go into great detail, including this gem: We’d like to use this space as a soapbox to say that Cleaner […]

 

Art Imitating Life?

Many laughs, and perhaps a tear or two, from The Cubes              

 

Breach notification escape mechanisms

In a somewhat incendiary piece published today at Securityfocus.com, Robert Lemos reports on loopholes in notification laws which permit firms to avoid informing people that their personal information has been revealed. According to the article, which along with unnamed “security experts” also cites industry notable Avivah Levitan, “[t]here are three cases in which a company […]

 

I find your faith disturbing

Adam, I learned of the flick via a blog unrelated to either Star Wars or computing, so no need for Google. Not to get all “vi vs. emacs” on you, but I never understood the fascination with Star Wars. :^) Photo cred: kemikore

 

St. Patrick would know what to do

The movie “Jaws” made a lot of money. People like money. Hence, people made derivative movies, “Orca” for example. One copycat, IMO, was so dreadfully bad that it was good. That movie was “Grizzly“, which I saw on its first run. It told the tale of a rogue bear which, you know, basically roamed around […]

 

NJ prosecutor reports debit card ring has been busted

Story at CNET. In related news, OfficeMax says there’s no evidence they were broken into, and back it up with help of outside experts. I’m done being a Kremlinologist on this one, for now. With as little solid info as has made it into the press, it’s just not worth it. Perhaps some facts will […]

 

Stolen Ernst and Young laptop had 84,000 SSNs

Information courtesy of the Reporting Form E&Y filed pursuant to New York state law. The consulting firm has been criticized for the delay in reporting this breach, which occurred on January 4.

 

Some additional info on the debit card breach

American Banker has a useful article about the debit card/PIN breach that has been making news. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall. After reciting the background, the article presents some additional info in Q and A form. Herewith, some fair-use excerpts. All italics emphasis is added. If you have access, I urge you to read […]

 

New Jersey's breach law

New Jersey’s breach notification law went into effect in mid-December 2005. Like New York’s, it requires that a state entity be notified, in addition to the persons whose info was exposed: c. (1) Any business or public entity required under this section to disclose a breach of security of a customer’s personal information shall, in […]

 

"I've turned into my mother!"

…or, more generally, “I’m now doing that weird thing I saw an influential elder do, but now it seems to make sense”. I have several examples from my own life (generally rather predictable for a balding 40-something suburbanite), but just today I found another one, and I didn’t see it coming.

 

North Carolina Transportation Department, 16,000 credit card #s, outside intruder

The Associated Press is reporting that: An Internet server used by the state Transportation Department’s Ferry Division to process credit card payments for ferry fares may have been breached by outsiders, the agency said Friday. The computer database contained 16,000 credit card numbers, the DOT said. The Office of the State Controller has notified its […]

 

The wall starts to crack

Merchants and credit card processors are not allowed to store a host of sensitive data, according to Visa and MasterCard. That includes personal identification numbers, or PINs, used to withdraw cash, the three-digit code on the signature panel, and data on the magnetic stripe on the back of credit cards. A Visa spokeswoman would not […]

 

Citibank card cancellations are likely due to Sam’s Club

So says Gartner analyst Avivah Levitan, as reported in Computerworld. Much has been made recently about a purported “class break” of Citi’s ATMs. A class break being “an attack that breaks every instance of some feature in a security system”. The term was popularized by Bruce Schneier, in Beyond Fear, from which this definition comes. […]

 

Direct Marketing Association opposes consumer right to see, correct information

Access and correction rights are something the DMA wants removed from the bill, Cerasale said. For one thing, it would be expensive for list brokers and compilers to set up procedures enabling consumers to access and correct data. For another, the same hackers who caused the breach could also change the data. Multichannelmerchant.com You can’t […]

 

Medco (prescription drug service)/ 4600 people, birth dates, SSNs, drug info/lost laptop

Executive summary: Prescription drug benefits provider Medco employee loses laptop with Ohio government employee (and dependents) info. Waits six weeks to let Ohio know. Ohio complains vociferously. Interestingly, the names of the affected individuals were not on the laptop. Money quote from a Medco spokesperson: You’re as efficient as the lessons learned in the last […]

 

Security Breach Resources

I’ve put together a small set of web pages containing links to current and pending legislation, breach listings, various on-line resources, and so on. There is probably not much there that is new to most readers of these words, but the fact that it is in one place may be helpful. The URL is http://www.cwalsh.org/BreachInfo/ […]

 

Leverage

Consulting firms are interesting beasts. Often, they are able to make great changes in their clients’ organizations, perhaps not so much because their people are smarter, or even more knowledgable, but because they aren’t subject to the same incentives (pecuniary and otherwise) that client employees face.

 

The future belongs to the quants

The title is of course stolen from Dan Geer. By now, many readers of these words will be familiar with the recent finding in Guin v. Brazos Higher Education Services [pdf] that a financial Institution has no duty to encrypt a customer database. In dismissing the case with prejudice, the court took note of an […]

 

More CFIUS fun

UAE running our ports? CFIUS is cool with that. Israeli ownership of an IDS company? Now hold on there, pardner. Hat tip to Richard Bejtlich.

 

"It fell off the truck. No, really."

Via news.com.au: BANK statements, including customers’ private details, were left on the side of a busy Sydney road after the documents fell off the back of a truck. The confidential account information and credit card statements of thousands of Commonwealth Bank customers were left lying on the Hume Highway at Warwick Farm, in Sydney’s south-west, […]

 

Ephemeral port security

By now, most have heard about Dubai Ports World, a foreign entity, assuming control of operations at various U.S. ports. The arguments around this transaction are predictable and uninteresting. One thing that is clear is that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is legally mandated to consider such deals. In fact, […]

 

Metadata strike again!

Brian Krebs wrote about a botnet and the 733t d00d who ran one, nom de hack 0x80. Well, turns out the doctored on-line photo the Washington Post ran contained metadata identifying the gentleman’s rather small home town. Coupled with information in Krebs’ article concerning businesses near 0x80’s residence, identifying the young criminal would seem a […]

 

Book Review: The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure

Brian Skyrms’ The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure addresses a subject lying at the intersection of the social sciences, philosophy, and evolutionary biology — how it is possible for social structures to emerge among populations of selfishly-acting individuals. Using Rousseau’s example of a Stag Hunt, in which hunters face a decision between […]

 

Police report on Cheney shooting incident reveals license info

Yet another incident of ineffective redaction? Adam’s del.icio.us bookmarks alerted me to this blog entry, in which commenters describe the ease with which the drivers’ license numbers of witnesses to the VP’s recent hunting accident are revealed. If this stuff is worth blocking, it’s worth blocking properly.

 

The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band?

Ok, so the Stones are playing, free, in Rio. I figure the crowd will be big. Maybe huge. Apparently not a record-breaker, though: Saturday’s crowd may not be as big as that at Rod Stewart’s 1994 concert, also at Copacabana beach, which drew a crowd of 3.5 million. Rod Stewart?

 

University of Northern Iowa, 6000 W-2 forms, virus-infected laptop

An IT person troubleshoots dodgy printing of US earnings documents by loading 6,000 of them onto a laptop. Hilarity ensues when the laptop later turns out to be infected with malware detected during “routine monitoring”. Via wcfCourier.com: The University of Northern Iowa has warned students and faculty to monitor their bank accounts after someone accessed […]

 

Risk aggregation and the living dead

Light blue touchpaper is a new web log written by researchers in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. You should read it. As for the headline, zombies eat brains. There’s plenty of ’em [edited to add: brains, that is!!] in close proximity in Ross Anderson’s group. ’nuff said.

 
 

Free advice for merchants accepting payment cards

3. Protect Stored Data 3.1 Keep cardholder information storage to a minimum. Develop a data retention and disposal policy. Limit your storage amount and retention time to that which is required for business, legal, and/or regulatory purposes, as documented in the data retention policy. 3.2 Do not store sensitive authentication data subsequent to authorization (not […]

 

Here's a name: Wal-Mart

Via lyger of the Dataloss mailing list, I learned of an article claiming that Wal-Mart may be the big-box retailer involved in several high-profile card reissues stemming from a breach which led to an international series of card frauds. In what appears to be a widening incident, Bank of America, MasterCard and Visa all announced […]

 

Naming names isn't always bad

In a comment to an earlier blog entry concerning a ‘he who must not be named’ policy for card processors and others who get breached , optionsScalper asks “given Adam’s recent series on “Disclosure” (at least five posts back to the BofA post on 1/21/2006), how do you (or Adam) assess the disclosure in this […]

 

That's gotta sting

This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even […]

 

Nations Regions Bank, 100,000 credit cards, breach at unnamed(!) processor

From Indychannel.com: Regions Bank is canceling the credit cards of 100,000 of its customers in 15 states — including Indiana — saying a separate company put their credit information at risk. Regions said the security breach involves a company that processes credit and debit cards nationwide. The bank, which says it was not responsible for […]

 

New OpenSSH, with nifty feature

OpenSSH 4.3 is out. It has one new feature: Add support for tunneling arbitrary network packets over a connection between an OpenSSH client and server via tun(4) virtual network interfaces. This allows the use of OpenSSH (4.3+) to create a true VPN between the client and server providing real network connectivity at layer 2 or […]

 

An unethical strategy?

Voting is a means of aggregating individual preferences in order to obtain a collective choice from a set of potential outcomes. Arrow notwithstanding, various voting schemes are often used for very important decisions. Voting is also used to select the winner of the Guy Toph Award, in Hillsborough County, Florida. In this case, the voters […]

 

Sports Authority in another Point-of-Sale data retention SNAFU?

I posted this to the Dataloss list earlier today. Sports Authority Inc. confirmed this week that it recently launched an investigation into its information system after four international banks alerted it to a potential intrusion into its network in December. With help from the Secret Service and Cybertrust Inc., the sporting goods company determined that […]

 

The following is not to be construed as legal advice. Or anything else.

The acronym “IANAL” is no doubt familiar to anyone reading these words. Well, I Am Not A Lawyer, but Paul Rianda is, and he wrote an interesting article for Transaction World’s September 2005 issue, that I happened to run across. In it, Mr. Rianda, esq., discusses his view of why the breaches we are all […]

 

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 2500 employees, SSNs, "virus"

Looks like a worm hit a personnel department PC. From the Colorado Springs Gazette: Personal information on about 2,500 current and former employees at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has been compromised by someone who hacked into a computer and infected it with a virus. Names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses […]

 

Breach disclosure insurance

A common argument used against state-level breach notification laws, and in favor of federal legislation overriding state laws, is that existence of these numerous state laws with their differing requirements and conditions raises the cost of compliance unacceptably. Just to be prepared to comply with potentially fifty distinct notification regimes, a firm would need to […]

 
 
 

Providence Home Services, 365, 000 people, health records, theft from employee vehicle

From Computerworld (via Slashdot) we learn that a home health care business deliberately sent patient info home with an employee as part of their disaster recovery plan. I’m serious. Now, unless this guy lives under Cheyenne Mountain, I’m saying that’s a dumb plan. Anyhoo, some of the information was encrypted, but much of it was […]

 

UDel breach twofer

The University of Delaware “UDaily” reports on two breaches: [A] computer in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy was attacked sometime between Nov. 22-26 by an unknown hacker, and it contained a portion of a database that included Social Security numbers for 159 graduate students. […] A back-up hard drive was stolen from […]

 
 

Various Oregon credit unions, debit cards, organized fraud ring?

This one seems to have slipped below the radar. From the January 25 Corvallis, Oregon Gazette-Times: Fair Isaac Corp., a Minnesota-based data security provider, late last week alerted the OSU Federal Credit Union, Citizens Bank, Benton County Schools Credit Union and Central Willamette Community Credit Union that customer debit cards bearing the Visa imprint may […]

 

Notre Dame, SSNs+CC#s+Check Images,hacker

Not much detail on this one, but it looks like a box used for fundraising purposes got 0wned. The intrusion was detected by “security software” on January 13, but the intrusion itself is said to have occurred between November 22 and January 12. [I guess they run Tripwire monthly ;^)]. Information potentially obtained by the […]

 

Do no evil

As readers of this blog probably are already aware, Google has been subpoenaed. The United States government is demanding, in part, that they provide a list of all URLs they index. This is something I’d expect them, or any other search firm, to want to keep secret. Imagine my surprise when I read this in […]

 

Known unknowns?

Oracle has just released fixes for 82 vulnerabilities. After taking several paragraphs to say “Many experts external to Oracle feel that patches for critical vulnerabilities are too slow in coming from the esteemed database giant, and have criticized the company for its slowness in responding to reports originating with outsiders”, Brian Krebs notes that security […]

 

Brokerage account zero liability

E*Trade is implementing a program under which it will reimburse on-line fraud victims for their losses, according to a New York Times report This is an interesting step. Now the question is whether investors who prefer to use their pet’s name as a password will shift their accounts to E*Trade :^)

 

Illinois Department of Human Services, client names and SSNs, misconfigured voicemail

“To leave a message, press ‘1234’ and listen to confidential client voicemail containing SSNs and other identifying information”. The compromised information dated back to mid-November 2005. Additional details at the Belleville News-Democrat, which notes that this is a repeat offender — the same office left unshredded confidential documents in a trash bin until the paper […]

 

Friendster this ain't!

When you’re facing hard time, and the chips are down, you need to hunker down and dig up all the dirt you can on the stool pigeon who fingered you. That’s where whosarat.com comes in: Who’s A Rat is a database driven website designed to assist attorneys and criminal defendants with few resources. The purpose […]

 
 

Brain fingerprint clears prisoner

Wow. An innocent man has been freed based upon his “brain fingerprint”. This happened over a year ago, but hey, I’ve been busy. The murder conviction of an Iowa man was overturned last year by that state’s highest court on the basis of a new technique called “brain fingerprinting”. Terry Harrington had served more than […]

 
 

University of San Diego, 7800 people, W-2 information, "hackers"

One that I missed. The executive summary is that somebody, somehow, got into the machine that prints W-2s for the university. The University sent out an undated disclosure letter which was very sparsely detailed — “one of the worst” seen by Beth Givens of privacyrights.org, who’s seen plenty of ’em. Story is at the San […]

 

Iowa State (again!), 3000 SSNs+2500 encrypted CC#s, "hacker"

The Des Moines Register reports on a December, 2005 breach at Iowa State: [3,000 ISU employees’] personal data might have been viewed by hackers who infiltrated two computers earlier this month. One held about 2,500 encrypted credit card numbers of athletic department donors. The second computer contained Social Security numbers for more than 3,000 ISU […]

 

Identity Theft Poster Girl

..may just have been found! The Associated Press reports that Fashion model Beverly Peele was arrested on identity theft charges for allegedly buying around $10,000 worth of housewares, appliances and furniture by using credit card numbers without permission, authorities said Friday. […] The complaint filed against the 30-year-old alleges she charged furniture, a refrigerator, a […]

 

Slipping through the analog hole

I have a number of LPs which gradually I am ripping to disc, using The Analogue Ripper (which is adequate but I’m not raving). At the moment, I’m recording an old blues album I haven’t listened to in probably ten years. Naturally, then, I thought of “The UPS Song“, which you can even listen to. […]

 

WMF Vuln fix

Courtesy of IDA Pro developer Ilfak Guilfanov. Details are available via his web log, the existence of which I learned via the seemingly indefatigable Thomas Ptacek of Matasano.

 

Totally unforeseeable.

Herbicide-resistant genetically-modified crops cross-breeding with weeds? Shocking. Via Slashdot.

 

Gartner to Visa, MasterCard: Play fair

Oft-quoted Gartner analyst Avivah Litan weighs in on the intriguingly gentle treatment of Sam’s Club by Visa and MasterCard: Recommendations […] * MasterCard and Visa: Show far greater transparency in enforcing PCI standards. There is still too much confusion about the standard and how to comply with it — confusion that is increased by seemingly […]

 

BancorpSouth, 6500 debit cards, unknown

In a report remarkable for what it doesn’t say, WLBT TV of Jackson, MS reports: A possible security breach has one bank giving customers new debit cards. BancorpSouth is sending out new cards to about 6500 customers. The vice president of the banks security department says account numbers were either lost or they were somehow […]

 

Florida workers claim outsourced HR system reveals PII, lacks audit trail

The Tallahassee Democrat reports on an interesting disclosure instance: whistleblowers revealing allegedly shoddy data security practices at their former employer. The twist is that those doing the talking are not the folks whose jobs were outsourced, but former employees of the outsourcing firm. From the article: In an affidavit taken for a lawsuit by five […]

 

Update on ABN Amro (Lasalle Bank) tape

Lasalle Bank’s tape of mortgage-related information on 2 million customers has been found by DHL. (Thanks to Adam for the heads-up) No word on whether the tape was in a container which would show evidence of tampering, so this doesn’t foreclose (pardon the pun) the possibility of PII being stolen: […]the tape had been located […]

 

I'll have to check with my manager

If you watch “The Simpsons”, you’ve probably seen “Puberty Boy“, the pimply-faced kid who appears in many episodes in a variety of menial jobs. Well, it looks like he may be working for the NSA: Q If FISA didn’t work, why didn’t you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally? ATTORNEY GENERAL […]

 

" L'état c'est moi"

Via USA Today: Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the head of the National Security Agency met his workforce at the nation’s eavesdropping and code-breaking headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., near Washington, for a pep talk. “I told them that free people always had to decide where to draw the line between their liberty and […]

 

The shame of it all

[Adam updates: The reporter has recanted his story, “Federal agents’ visit was a hoax .”] Apparently, the Staasi are watching what we read. A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.” Two history professors […]

 

Lasalle Bank, 2 million mortgagees, SSNs, acct #s, "lost" tape

From Crain’s Chicago Business: LaSalle Bank Corp. says a computer tape bearing confidential information on about 2 million residential mortgage customers disappeared last month as it was being transported to a consumer credit company in Texas. The Chicago bank has alerted law enforcement authorities and is also monitoring transactions closely to detect any unusual or […]

 

No good deed goes unpunished

The folks at the Alabama Credit Union were informed that 500 of their customers were among those whose payment card information was stolen in the Sam’s Club breach. They took a conservative approach and reissued the cards for all 500 customers, and also informed them of the breach. As we’ve commented on previously, information concerning […]

 

SANS.edu

Via Bejtlich, I learned that SANS is now offering degree programs. I have not been able to determine whether they are an accredited institution of higher learning, however.

 

Firm breached in Scottrade incident to sell business unit

From the press release: SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — silex technology america, Inc. and TROY Group, Inc. signed a definitive agreement effective today stating that silex technology america will acquire the Wireless & Connectivity Solution Business of TROY Group, Inc. […] “We are pleased to announce this transaction as we believe that the […]

 

"Aid to the Church in Need", 2000 donors to charity, "personal details"

Not sure if the personal details obtained by hackers include CC#s, but names and addresses are certainly involved in this breach at a UK charity. A couple of interesting twists to this one, as reported at Silicon.com. First, the thieves weren’t content with just stealing the info — they used it to extort victims directly: […]

 
 

Estimating breach size by fraud volume

Much is being made of a press release from ID Analytics. Based on results from that firm’s fraud detection products, a conservative estimate is that one of every 1000 pieces of PII lost in a data breach results in an actual fraud. An additional finding is that the likelihood of a fraud being committed using […]

 

Sam's Club, CC #'s and more?, they're not saying

American Banker(12/7/2005) reports [warning: paywall] on the tight-lipped reaction of Sam’s Club, MasterCard, and Visa to a recent data breach involving credit and debit card mag stripe data from Sam’s Club gas stations. The affected cards seem to have been primarily from two issuers, and hundreds of actual frauds have already occurred. Nobody is talking […]

 

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Bruce Schneier demonstrates the truth of the old saying in a must-read blog entry. In a nutshell, Nature published an article written by a physicist with little or no background in cryptography, claiming to have devised a mechanism foroptically transmitting encrypted messages using a “chaotic carrier”. Bruce trains his skeptical and expert eye on the […]

 

More info, thoughts on Troy Group breach

In an interesting article, The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports new information about the recent breach of the “eCheck Secure” system run by Troy Group. According to the article, the number of potential Scottrade victims is 140,000. Troy Group published a news release revealing they got hacked, and notified their financial sector customers, including Scottrade, […]

 

Defensive driving

As most parents of young children would no doubt attest, when driving with “precious cargo” — lives you particularly want to protect — you typically take extra precautions. Special safety seats with five point harnesses, specialized mounting hardware, taking that bit of extra care that maybe you wouldn’t if driving alone. Well, that may all […]

 

Scottrade, Millions of "E-secure" system users, SSNs, account numbers, etc, "hacker"

Info is spotty on this, but according to a WFMY TV News report, Millions of names, addresses, social security numbers, and bank account numbers could be in dangerous hands. Officials with Scottrade, an investment company with an office in Greensboro say a security breach compromised the information of some of its account holders. A letter […]

 

A great idea whose time has come

Ben Edelman explains how Sony can use a messaging mechanism already built into the XCP system to inform people who are not yet aware of the “Sony rootkit” they’ve unwittingly installed, and what they can do about it. This is so obviously the right thing to do that I can almost guarantee Sony will not […]

 

Indiana University, 5300 students, malware

According to an Associated Press article appearing in the Indianapolis Star, Personal information about nearly 5,300 Indiana University students might have been accessed by a computer hacker, school officials said. Technicians discovered during a routine scan that three malicious software programs had been installed on a Kelley School of Business instructor’s computer in mid-August, said […]

 

"To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice."

The United States senate voted today to deny habeas corpus to prisoners at Guantanamo. The United States Supreme Court had recently held that United States courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. The vote today would […]

 

This is convergence, too :^)

The Amazon Mechanical Turk. Basically, you have your code do a remote procedure call, where the bulk of the work on the remote side is performed by a human being.

 

This is convergence

A gamer who spent £13,700 on an island that only exists in a computer game has recouped his investment, according to the game developers. The 23-year-old gamer known as Deathifier made the money back in under a year. The virtual Treasure Island he bought existed within the online role-playing game Project Entropia. He made money […]

 

Digital Pearl Harbor

[U]se of commercial products with unbreakable cryptography could seriously undermine the ability of law enforcement to perform critical missions such as protecting against threats posed by terrorists, organized crime, and foreign intelligence agents This from a rather lightweight report prepared by the Congressional Research Service. I may have read it with a jaundiced eye, but […]

 
 

We want it all, and we want it now

Bob Sullivan provided excellent “mainstream media” ChoicePoint coverage, and is doing some good blogging about breach legislation. From the blog post cited above, it’s clear that Sullivan considers the Act in question to be nigh-on to a total cave-in to industry. That things would have taken this turn is not surprising, but is nonetheless somewhat […]

 

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

Sony’s DRM rootkit has been harnessed by folks selling a program which hides game cheats from detective measures shipped with WoW and affectionately known as The Warden. Somehow, I am reminded of a Simpson’s quote [.mp3]

 
 

Porsches make you healthy

Well, I don’t know that for sure. But I am pretty sure that Porsche owners overall are healthier than those who don’t own Porsches. Maybe you have to control for age. Similarly, it seems that being a customer of certain companies apparently somehow causes less nastiness to befall ones computing infrastructure. Jaquith handily, yet unwittingly, […]

 

Quick pointer to virtual worminess

If Nick Weaver and Jose Nazario are writing about it, it’s probably way over my head, or interesting, or both. I am happy to say this is in the second category.

 

Check images increase forgery and ID theft risks?

The October 26 on-line edition of American Banker (gotta pay to see it, so no link from me) discusses new technologies as possible enablers of check forging, in an article by Daniel Wolfe, “The Tech Scene: Check Images A New Frontier For Forgery?” The overall point is that since banks store check images and provide […]

 

White Sox futures market

For the last couple of weeks, peddlers have set up shop just outside Chicago’s Union Station to sell White Sox paraphernalia. Once the Sox were in the Series, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Hats were selling for $10.00 after game two of the series. After game three, they were down to $5.00. After game 4 […]

 

Dog bites man really is boring

Red Herring reports on a claim by Cybertrust that recovering from Zotob cost the average infected company $97,000. Sounds moderately interesting, until you learn that the industry hardest hit, healthcare, had 74% of its respondents totally unaffected. For financial firms, 93% were totally unaffected. Overall, nearly 90% of firms had no impact. Nada. Alternative headlines […]

 

Business lobbies engage in rent-seeking. Masses not moved. Film at 11.

Various data protection bills to be consolidated? [P]ressure to act isn’t coming from the public clamoring for protection of their private information, it is coming from the business community that fears 50 different state laws. In many ways this improves the chances for a new federal law, because while the onslaught of data breach stories […]

 

The hand is quicker than the eye

Arlen Specter and Pat Leahy have proposed the “Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2005“. This is a comprehensive proposal, and is opposed big-time by various industry lobbies. As reported in the October 21, 2005 American Banker, this bill has hit a snag, and is languishing in Committee. Meanwhile, another bill, courtesy of Jeff […]

 

Bubblicious

As we now know courtesy of the Philippines’ National Capital Regional Police Office, a typical terrorist is “a man aged 17 to 35, wearing a ball cap, carrying a backpack, clutching a cellular phone and acting uneasily” [manilatimes.net]. This critical piece of intelligence, I am sorry to report, seems to have taken a step closer […]

 

Liability for bugs is part of the solution

Recently, Howard Schmidt suggested that coders be held personally liable for damage caused by bugs in code they write. The boldness of this suggestion is exceeded only by its foolhardiness, but its motivation touches an important truth — alot of code stinks, and people are damaged by it. The reason good programs (which means those […]

 

The prescience of the Beeb

Via Alec Muffett’s dropsafe, I learned of a British SF television program which eerily predicted a future Britain in which a sinister governmental department that has abolished individual rights and introduced ID cards for all citizens, rationing and sophisticated electronic surveillance I would have preferred to have gotten a transdimensional police box.

 

Here's to you, New York…

From New York’s Information Security Breach and Notification Act: 7. (A) IN THE EVENT THAT ANY NEW YORK RESIDENTS ARE TO BE NOTIFIED AT ONE TIME, THE PERSON OR BUSINESS SHALL NOTIFY THE STATE ATTORNEY GENER- AL, THE CONSUMER PROTECTION BOARD, AND THE STATE OFFICE OF CYBER SECURI- TY AND CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE COORDINATION AS TO […]

 

Thanks, Adam

I’ll confess to some stage fright, since this blog’s readership is probably two or three orders of magnitude larger than what my fortnightly rants over at my place probably garner. Anyway, I hope to have posts forthcoming about a few things, among them CVSS, and research into estimating the impact of security events (variously defined) […]