Tag Archive for Target

| September 28, 2019
Comments Off on Data Privacy End Run

Data Privacy End Run

Data Privacy End RunIn an attempt to end-run stricter data privacy regulation the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of America’s largest companies, sent an open letter to the U.S. House and Senate urging the politicians to pass a comprehensive national data privacy law. According to CircleID, the heart of the letter is the creation of federal privacy laws that the companies argue should replace various state-level laws that have already been passed.

CEOs of America's largest companiesThe CEOs want one law that governs all user privacy and data protection across the U.S., which would simplify their lives. From the letter:

Now is the time for Congress to act and ensure that consumers are not faced with confusion about their rights and protections based on a patchwork of inconsistent state laws.

Among the items hidden deep in the CEO’s “consumer privacy framework [more here]” are some onerous provisions.

  • Private individuals should not be allowed to sue companies if those companies violate the data privacy law itself.
  • Potential pay-for-privacy schemes and
  • Overriding existing state data privacy protections already signed into law.

The Data Privacy Blog points out that in 2019, a number of states passed new and expanded data breach notification laws, including:

  • California.
  • data breach notification lawsIllinois,
  • Maine,
  • Maryland,
  • Massachusetts,
  • New Jersey,
  • New York,
  • Oregon,
  • Texas, and
  • Washington.

Also, since July 1, 2019, Delaware, New Hampshire, and Connecticut have enacted laws imposing new cybersecurity requirements on insurance companies.

ZDnet points out that many privacy advocates (and even some tech CEOs) believe the CEOs aren’t really looking after users’ interests, but their own. There’s a belief that companies are trying to aggregate any privacy lawmaking in Congress, where lobby groups can water down any meaningful user protections that may impact bottom lines. Open Secrets reports that the Business Roundtable has spent over $6.6M lobbying in D.C. so far in 2019. As followers of the Bach Seat know, money talk and citizens walk in D.C.

Among the CEOs who were involved in the end run included;

The Data Privacy Blog points out the coincidence that the CEO’s framework comes just months before the California Consumer Protection Act is set to go into effect in 2020.

throw money at the politiciansFollowers of the Bach Seat know many companies make money by selling customers’ personal or device-usage data. Privacy policies with too many teeth could prevent companies from selling your data to pay the CEO’s average salary of $17.2M. The LA Times reports that compensation for American chief executives increased by 940% from 1978 to 2018, while pay for the average worker rose only 12% over the same 40-year period.

rb-

Seems to me that the goal of this proposal of the leading CEO’s is not to protect our privacy. Their goal is to centralize the rule-making in the D.C. swamp and throw money at the politicians to do the Business Roundtable’s bidding. Then the CEOs will be able to maintain the status-quo and normalize the existing digital surveillance system that serves them well.

LobbyingThe CEO’s sudden interest in data privacy has more to do with the growing wave of real reform at the state level and the calculation that Trump will be booted from office and less business-friendly POTUS will take his place in 2020. And little to do with citizen’s privacy.

The digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation supports a private right of action for any national consumer privacy law, as such a right would further enable members of the public to fight back against companies that violate the law.

The EFF wrote the best way to protect ordinary people’s privacy is action.

It is not enough for government to pass laws that protect consumers from corporations … to ensure companies do not ignore them … empower ordinary consumers to bring their own lawsuits against the companies that violate their privacy rights.

Signatures from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook were notably absent from the list although both have, in the past, supported a comprehensive federal privacy law.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| January 5, 2019
Comments Off on Marriott Data Breach One Of Biggest Ever

Marriott Data Breach One Of Biggest Ever

Updated July 17, 2019 – The Brits slapped Marriott with a £99m ($124m) fine for “infringements of the GDPR.” The Information Commissioner’s Office said that Marriott failed to undertake sufficient due diligence when it bought Starwood, and should also have done more to secure its systems prior to the data breach.

___

Marriott Data Breach One Of Biggest EverThe internet is a dangerous place for data. Hotel chain Marriott (MAR) proved that once again. Marriott revealed that hackers stole personal information from 500 million Starwood Preferred Guest program participants. The data stolen in the data breach included sensitive personally identifiable information (PII).

Marriott

Marriott said it got an alert on September 8, 2018, about an attempt to access the Starwood database and enlisted security experts to assess the situation. During the investigation, Marriott claims to have discovered that the unauthorized access to the Starwood network started in 2014.

Investigators found that an unauthorized party had copied and encrypted information from the database and had taken steps toward removing it. The company was able to decrypt the information on November 19, 2018, and found that the contents were from the Starwood guest reservation database. The hotel chain then waited until November 30, 2018, to tell its customers of the data theft.

What was lost on the data breach

personally identifiable informationFor about 327 million Marriott customers, the compromised information includes some combination of name, address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest (‘SPG’) account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences. Marriott added that the data breach included payment card information. About 170 million impacted Marriott customers only had their names and basic information like address or email address stolen.

Marriott says that about 20.3 million encrypted passport numbers and approximately 8.6 million encrypted payment cards were compromised in the breach.

Chinese hackers Several sources report that state-sponsored Chinese hackers working for the intelligence services and the military were behind the attack. The stolen data would be an espionage bonanza for government hackers. Sources point out that the Starwood attacks began in 2014, shortly after the attack on the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) compromised sensitive data on tens of millions of employees, including application forms for security clearances.

Sadly, the 500 million records Marriott hack only ranks as the third-largest known data breach to date. This list of fails illustrates, no matter what you’re doing online every time you put your information on the internet, you risk it being stolen.

RankCompanyAccounts HackedDate of Hack
1Yahoo3 BillionAugust 2013
2River City Media1.3 BillionMay 2017
3Aadhaar1.1 BillionJanuary 2018
4Marriott500 Million2014 - 2018
5Yahoo500 MillionLate 2014
6Adult Friend Finder412 MiltonOctober 2016
7MySpace360 MillionMay 2016
8Exactis340 MillionJune 2018
9Twitter330 MillionMay 2018
10Experian200 MillionMarch 2012
11Deep Root Analytics198 MillionJune 2017
12Adobe152 MillionOctober 2013
13Under Armor150 MillionFebruary 2018
14Equifax145.5 MillionJuly 2017
15Ebay145 MillionMay 2014
16Heartland Payment Systems134 MillionMay 2008`
17Alteryx123 MillionDecember 2017
18Nametests120 MillionJune 2018
19LinkedIn117 MillionJune 2012
20Target110 MillionNovember 2013
21Quora100 millionNovember 2018
22VK100 MillionDecember 2018
23Firebase100 MillionJune 2018

rb-

There is something else fishy here. Reports claim that the data was encrypted using AES-128 but not all the stolen data. Attackers were able to steal nearly 20 million passport numbers, and 8.6 million encrypted payment cards.

Marriott says that the attackers were able to gain access to 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers and 2,000 unencrypted payment card numbers.

I’m sure that regulators (GDPR) and lawyers will ask why unencrypted sensitive info like passports and credit card numbers lying around waiting to be stolen?

 

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| February 4, 2017
Comments Off on State of Michigan Data Breach

State of Michigan Data Breach

State of Michigan Data BreachData breaches are no surprise these days. I have covered a number of data breaches here on the Bach Seat here, here, and here. Now the State of Michigan (SOM) has joined the ranks of data leakers like Yahoo, Home Depot, Target, BCBS, and the US government. MLive is reporting that the State of Michigan has spilled the personal data of millions of Michigan citizens. On February 03, 2017, the Michigan Department of Technology Management and Budget (DTMB) announced the Michigan data breach. The breach leaked the Personal information of nearly 20% of Michigan residents who were vulnerable to unauthorized access for four months.

Unemployment Insurance Agency

Unemployment Insurance AgencyThe article reports that in October 2016, a software update to the Michigan Data Automated System (MiDAS) system was used by the state’s Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA). MiDAS was created by Fast Enterprises of Centennial, CO, and went live in 2012 as part of a modernization of the unemployment benefits and tax system. A flaw allowed employers and human resources firms to get access to names and social security numbers of nearly 1.9 million Michigan residents they were not authorized to view.

The state identified the Michigan data breach on Jan. 30 and fixed it on Jan. 31, 2017. Contracted payroll service providers had unauthorized access to the MiDAS system, according to UIA spokesperson Dave Murray. Anybody working for a company that uses one of those payroll service providers may have had their personal information compromised. DTMB official Caleb Buhs warned, “If you are an employee in Michigan and your company uses a payroll vendor to process payroll, then you can potentially be included.”

Impacted by the Michigan data breach

According to a report on MLive, the 31 vendors with unauthorized access to Michigan citizens’ PII included:

  • 7-Eleven
  • Aatrix
  • Accountants World
  • Acrisure
  • ADP
  • Benepay
  • Casper Willson Wilson
  • Computing Resources
  • Connectpay LLC
  • CoStaff National Services Inc
  • Craft Accounting
  • CSS Payroll Inc
  • DTMB
  • DM Payroll
  • Dominion Systems
  • GT Independence
  • Heins Acctg
  • Hewitt Assoc
  • Highpoint Business Services LLC
  • Infiniti HR LLC
  • Julie Lepper Acctg
  • Mercantile Bank
  • My Pay Solutions
  • Nieland & Kosanke PC
  • One Source Virtual
  • Paychex
  • Paycomm Payroll LLC
  • Paycor
  • Paylocity Corp
  • Payroll 1
  • Payroll Tax Mgt
  • Professional Systems
  • Ultimate Software
  • VenSure HR Inc
  • Wayne County Regional
  • Zen Payroll

Data security is a top priority for the state of MichiganDTMB Director and State CIO David Behen stated, “Data security is a top priority for the state of Michigan … We will work with our third-party vendors and our state team to check our processes and procedures to avoid incidents like this in the future.”

Recommendations

Here’s what the SOM is recommending those who may have had their PII exposed do:

  1. Call the state hotline at 855-707-8387 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays to make inquiries about this issue.
  2. Monitor financial account statements and immediately report any suspicious or unusual activity to financial institutions.
  3. Request a free credit report at www.AnnualCreditReport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. Consumers are entitled by law to one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – for a total of three reports every year. Contact information for the credit bureaus can be found on the Federal Trade Commission.
  4. Take steps to monitor their personally identifiable information and report any suspected instances of identity theft to their local law enforcement.

MiDAS has been in the news before. MiDAS’ “robo-adjudication” feature wrongly flagged at least 20,000 people for unemployment fraud between October 2013 and August 2015. MiDAS would automatically flag a discrepancy and send a message to a seldom-used internal unemployment system. When the victims didn’t respond, the system would automatically find they had committed fraud and issue a 400% fine.

rb-

The way data breach report work is that the originating firm under-estimates the number of records lost by half. So it is possible that the SOM has released nearly 4 million or 38% of all Michiganders personal records.

Michigan State Police Cyber CommandDespite the Michigan State Police Cyber Command being on the job, it is likely that nothing will happen to the perpetrators – nothing ever does. DTMB spokesman Buhs said, “We are learning from this.” I hope so.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| December 30, 2015
Comments Off on Target Wish List Leaking Your Data

Target Wish List Leaking Your Data

Target Wish List Leaking Your DataThe holiday shopping season has not been merry for mega-mart Target. You would think the mega-retailer that leaked info on 110 million customers would learn how to keep their customers’ info secure but NOOOO. The anti-virus firm AVAST has discovered the Target (TGT) Wish List app is leaking your data, your personally identifiable information (PII).

Data leakThe Avast Blog says that if you created a Christmas wish list using the Target app it is leaking your data.  it might be accessible to more people than you want to actually receive gifts from. The Target app keeps a database of users’ wish lists, names, addresses, and email addresses.

Alarmingly, for a firm that has privacy issues, the Target app’s backend interface is not secured. This allowed the database to be accessed over the Internet. The author reports that the Application Program Interface (API) is easily accessible over the Internet. An API is a set of conditions where if you ask a question it sends the answer. Also, the Target API does not require any authentication. The only thing you need to parse all the data automatically is to figure out how the user ID is generated. Once you have that figured out, all the data is served to you on a silver platter in a JSON file.

Leaking your data

while developers investigate

The JSON file that the AVAST researchers requested from Target’s API leaked lots of interesting data. The leaked data included: users’ names, email addresses, shipping addresses, phone numbers, the type of registries, and the items on the registries. The AVAST researchers did not store any PII, but they did aggregate data from 5,000 inputs for statistical analysis.

The AVAST researchers took the sample and looked at which some of the data they got. It included; brands, states the Target app users are from, and the most common names of people using Target’s app.

Leasked info

This appears to be a classic case of security by obfuscation. The app developers created the online API for data that is uploaded by Target. They also set up a separate API in tandem so that the retail chain could download and process the uploaded data – but without any security measures in place.

Target has reached a $39.4 million settlementIn a post on Ars Technica, a Target spokesperson said that it has suspended elements of the app while developers investigate. Hopefully, this should mean that the data-leaking has stopped while the backend has been disabled.

In other Target data breach news FierceITSecurity reports that Target has reached a $39.4 million settlement with banks and credit unions over claims they lost millions of dollars as a result of the massive 2013 data breach at the retailer. The massive data breach at Target exposed the credit and debit card numbers of 40 million customers to hackers and personal information on another 70 million.

The settlement, if accepted, will resolve class-action lawsuits by the banks and credit unions seeking reimbursement for fraudulent charges and issuing new cards. Of the $39.4 million, $20.25 million will be paid to banks and credit unions, and $19.11 million will be paid to reimburse MasterCard card issuers.

cautionary taleThis follows settlements that Target reached with Visa card issuers for $67 million and with customers for $10 million. Target estimated that the breach so far has cost it $290 million, with insurers picking up $90 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. Target is not out of the woods yet. It still has to deal with shareholder lawsuits and a probe by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general related to the data breach.

Fred Donovan at FierceITSecurity says Target is a cautionary tale for any enterprise. Despite handling billions of dollars in credit card transactions, the retailer did not have one person responsible for IT security at the time of the breach. While it had a network security system in place, it did not have IT security personnel skilled enough to recognize an alarm the system set off months before Target discovered the breach.

rb-

Cash is king, especially at Target.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
| March 17, 2015
Comments Off on Banks Scramble to Fight Apple Pay Fraud

Banks Scramble to Fight Apple Pay Fraud

Banks Scramble to Fight Apple Pay FraudSearchFinancialSecurity reports that Apple Pay fraud is on the rise and banks are rushing to fix sloppy authentication processes. Sloppy bank authentication processes are at the heart of growing Apple Pay fraud and experts worry about potential fraud with other mobile payment systems.

Apple Pay logoWhen Apple Pay was first unveiled by Apple (AAPL) in October 2014, it was touted for its increased security thanks to tokenized Device Account Numbers and the Touch ID fingerprint system. eWeek.com provided a good overview of how Apple Pay’s approval process works:

  • The camera of an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus takes a photo of the credit or debit card
  • Apple Passbook software extracts the name and expiration date, then encrypts and transmits the data to Apple
  • If the photo doesn’t allow for extraction (poor quality or card is too worn), users are allowed to manually enter the card number
  • Apple checks to see if the card is already on file in iTunes, verifying it through a match
  • But most cards aren’t already in iTunes – so Apple sends card data, phone data, and iTunes account info to the card-issuing bank
  • If verified by the bank and approved, it’s added to Apple Pay and the Apple Passbook, and it’s ready to be used for purchasing

If this provisioning is successful, the bank will automatically accept (Green Path) the info and then beam an encrypted version of the card details to be stored.

criminals have set up iPhones with stolen cardl info from Target and Home Depot hacksAccording to reports, criminals have set up iPhones with stolen personal information, which has been tracked back to accounts compromised in Target’s big data breach at the end of 2013, the Home Depot hacking in 2014, and likely the Anthem breach of 2015. The criminals take the stolen PII and call banks to authenticate a victim’s card on the new device. This is so-called “Yellow Path” authentication, where a card isn’t or rejected (Red Path), but requires more provisioning by the bank to be added to Apple Pay.

When Yellow Path authentication is required, the bank may send a one-time authorization code to the customer’s email or mobile phone that must be entered into the Apple Pay set-up.  Other banks may ask the customer to call a toll-free number where a customer service representative will try to verify the person’s identity with a series of questions about recent purchases or a home address according to the WSJ.

If this provisioning is successful, the bank will then beam an encrypted version of the card details to be stored on the Secure Element of the phone (PDF). The author contends that the heart of the problem is that some banks have lax Yellow Path processes, only asking for the last four digits of a Social Security number, leading to criminals using stolen identities and credit/debit cards to buy high-priced goods, often from Apple Stores.

Avivah Litan, a VP at Gartner (IT) said that this kind of fraud is a fundamental flaw that will affect all mobile payment services. “This isn’t necessarily an Apple Pay problem. The responsibility ultimately lies with the card issuer who must be able to prove the Apple Pay cardholder is indeed a legitimate customer with a valid card,” Ms. Litan wrote in a blog post. “That always appeared to me to be the weakest link in mobile commerce — making sure you provide the app to the right person instead of a crook.”

rb-

With the iPhone 6’s NFC capabilities, the physical card may not be required for such “purchases.” Maybe someday this will keep merchants from holding card data but for now, seems like the banks need to get their act together.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Entries