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TJX Breach Began With WEP Crack

Posted by kdawson on Sat May 05, 2007 02:33 PM
from the pwn3d-by-Pringles dept.
Security Encryption Wireless Networking Hardware IT
An anonymous reader sends us to the Wall Street Journal for a detailed report on what is known to date about the TJX data breach. It seems that the loss of over 45 million credit card numbers and more than 450,000 SSNs, driver's license numbers, and military identifications began with someone using a "telescope-shaped" antenna at a wireless link at a Marshall's near St. Paul, Minnesota in July 2005. The link was encrypted using WEP, which had been known to be broken since 2001. The crackers who got into the TJX central databases are believed to be Romanians or Russians with ties to the Russian mobs. The eventual cost of the TXJ fiasco could exceed $1 billion — not including the numerous lawsuits filed against the retailer.
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[+] Developers: New Weakness in 802.11 WEP 5 comments
tim finin writes: "WEP is the security protocol used in the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN's. "Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4" by Scott Fluhrer, Itsik Mantin and Adi Shamir describes new results on RC4 with a practical attack against WEP -- an extremely powerful attack which can be applied even when WEP's RC4 stream cipher uses a 2048 bit secret key (its maximal size) and 128 bit IV modifiers (as proposed in WEP2). The attacker can be a completely passive eavesdropper (i.e., he does not have to inject packets, monitor responses, or use accomplices) and thus his existence is essentially undetectable. After scanning several hundred thousand packets, the attacker can completely recover the secret key and thus decrypt all the ciphertexts. The running time of the attack grows linearly instead of exponentially with the key size, and thus it is negligible even for 2048 bit keys." The brave can jump straight to the paper in pure, clean, postscript or PDF format.
[+] IT: TJX Security Breach Described 104 comments
Bunderfeld notes more details coming out about how bad guys got into the TJX network. Last time we discussed this, the best information indicated that a WEP crack had started the ball rolling. Now we learn that instead, or in addition: "Poorly secured in-store computer kiosks are at least partly to blame for acting as gateways to the company's IT systems, InformationWeek has learned. According to a source familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity, the kiosks, located in many of TJX's retail stores, let people apply for jobs electronically but also allowed direct access to the company's network, as they weren't protected by firewalls. 'The people who started the breach opened up the back of those terminals and used USB drives to load software onto those terminals,' says the source. In a March filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, TJX acknowledged finding 'suspicious software' on its computer systems."
[+] IT: How Much Does a Reputation For Security Matter Anymore? 98 comments
dasButcher writes "We often hear that businesses risk their corporate reputations if they don't have adequate security. It's been a common refrain among those selling security technologies: protect your data or suffer the reputational consequences. But, as Larry Walsh points out, the evidence is against this notion. Even companies that have suffered major security breaches — TJX, Hannaford, etc. — have suffered little lasting damage to their reputation. So, does this mean that reputational concerns are simply bunk?"
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  • Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krbvroc1 (725200) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:37PM (#19003867)
    WEP is seriously flawed. What hasn't it been recalled and all router manufacturers forced to replace the hardware (or firmware)?
    In most industries if you ship such a flawed product, the manufacturer has some liability. They are still selling them today too.

    Of course shame on TJ Max and the whole handling of this fiasco. Not that I ever did previously, but I would never shop there.

    • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by smitty_one_each (243267) * on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:45PM (#19003945) Homepage Journal
      WEP is 'good enough' for running your home network. It lets the neighbors now to keep out, like a lock on the door.
      Like any lock, (including WPA, no?) you can beat it with enough hardware.
      If you're that paranoid, you're running a wired network anyway, right?
      • At this point in time, WEP is more like the lock on your bathroom door. Fine to let people know that you don't want visitors, but not really designed to keep anyone out who wants to get in.

        WPA is more like a front-door with a keylock and a deadbolt. Someone could break in, but they'd have to at least take a little more trouble than pulling a coin out of their pocket like you can do with "interior" locks.

        If it's something you need to be secure, then yeah, you should be running encrypted traffic over a physically secure wired connection, not broadcasting everything to the neighborhood.
        • So WEP is like jaywalking, and WPA is using the crosswalk.
          Yet getting smacked by a bus is likely fatal in either case.
          Just getting hardware that is compatible and configuring it for proper use is daunting.
          Under Gentoo, my ipw3945 has been an absolute mother to get configured. Udev this, regulatory daemon that, kernel driver the other, firmware the fourth. Good thing that I'm into pain and suffering. ;)

          • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by sumdumass (711423) on Saturday May 05 2007, @07:09PM (#19006299) Journal
            The real way to secure a wireless connection is to set the wireless devices outside the network and VPN any access that needs to be inside the network. It is difficult and sometimes expensive but thats what really needs to be done. End then your not completley safe, you just have one more layer to defeat. And if you IDS is functioning properly, it should alert you to most attempts and possible sever the connection.

            I have talked to (business) customers who had their "son" or neighbor who is a part time rocket scientist put wireless in because they didn't want to run cables and I have cracked it while letting them tell us how secure it is. I'm not using anything special either, it is just commonly available script kiddie tools.

            I'm not knocking WPA, I just know physical access to the network is a key part of any security. You wouldn't run a couple ports out to the street for anyone to connect to and do whatever. This is essentially what your doing with wireless. And once they do "whatever", you need another layer that you can detect intrusions with before the real network gets accessed in order to remain secure.

                  • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                    by chihowa (366380)
                    So you're either referring to this dictionary attack [wifinetnews.com] or you're just making stuff up. All of the reported WPA cracks are for WPA-PSK and are brute force cracks. I don't see why you'd need modified firmware to do a brute force attack (although I guess you could make it faster that way, but ideally you'd do the attack on captured traffic, so it wouldn't make a difference). If you're instead referring to some super secret uberleet method to take advantage of a flaw in the crypto of WPA (like the weak IV's or

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by bentcd (690786)
            cracking WPA requires only the 4 way handshake and the use of a decent dictionary or brute force attack
            You seem to have left something out: Cracking WPA also requires that the administrator decided to use a weak key, i.e. one that is susceptible to brute force or dictionary attacks. But if you are allowed to assume this, then any encryption is "easily" cracked. Even OTP is trivially cracked if the key sequence is easy to guess.
      • Which brings us to the question of why a major retailler is using wireless in the first place. I'm personally no more than an interested amatur, but I've read professionals running corperate networks who, if they have to include a wireless component at all, keep it completely seperate from the secure, WIRED, network. You get internet access, but no accessing the company databases from the wireless. Can anyone come up with a scenario where it would be ESSENTIAL for store operations to be able to send SSNs a

        • Which brings us to the question of why a major retailler is using wireless in the first place.
          Major retailers do not attract the best IT staff, it's really cheap and easy to set up WEP, and the moment you get into WPA 2 and a Radius server it becomes a more complex, expensive and administrative-heavy issue to deal with. I say, run wires, baby! Wireless is just a insecure easily DOS'able crap technology!

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by hankwang (413283) *

          Can anyone come up with a scenario where it would be ESSENTIAL for store operations to be able to send SSNs and drivers license #s over a wireless connection?

          If you had read the article, you would have noted this passage:

          After they used that data to crack the [WEP] encryption code the hackers digitally eavesdropped on employees logging into TJX's central database in Framingham and stole one or more user names and passwords, [...] collected transaction data including credit-card numbers [...] They were able

        • OK, so WEP is the United Nations of encryption schemes--only slightly better than no encryption at all.
          This December 2005 blog post (the first google hit for "WPA hack") http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/wireless/networks/arch i ves/cracking-wpapsk-6730 [ittoolbox.com]
          says

          The other tools that caught my interest are Aircrack and Airdecap because they work for both WEP and WPA encryption, which in my experience thus far hacking tools are typically limited to WEP.

          Fine. Bash WEP. But what's the point of killing myself getting WP

          • IPSec, SK/IP or even just an SSL tunnel should be used in any wireless environment in which you want meaningful security. SK/IP has better recovery, but isn't quite as tough.

            WEP and WPA should - by now - be entirely replaced with 802.1x at the very least. Neither of those has any business being used on a modern wireless network. I can accept that not everyone can upgrade to firmware that supports adequate security, but that only excuses the users. The manufacturers have no such excuse, because they're the

            • should - by now - be entirely replaced with 802.1x at the very least.
              Which, too, shall be compromised eventually.

              • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:4, Interesting)

                by jd (1658) <imipak@y3.14ahoo.com minus pi> on Saturday May 05 2007, @09:13PM (#19007039) Homepage Journal
                Oh, certainly. 802.1x isn't perfect, by any means. The first rule of IT security, though, is to always be two steps ahead of those doing the compromising. One step means that you're secure when you install, but will have indefinite periods of uncertainty when you COULD be vulnerable. This is typically the way things are done, and it is stupid beyond belief.

                No, the logical method is to expect some component - any component - of the security to be compromised between now and the end of use. You then have a second, wholly independent, component which must simultaneously be compromised in order to be vulnerable. You upgrade when EITHER fails. It is then virtually certain that both have not failed, so everything remains intact, and you use that lead time to perform the upgrade.

                You could regard this as a variant on the Byzantine General's Problem. There, some number of components are "traitors" (in this case, compromised), yet you have to make sure that the orders (data) received come from an authorized source alone. Other variants of this problem deal with making sure that that data does not fall into the wrong hands, such as using Byzantine key distribution.

                Three algorithms, three block ciphers, three hashing functions. Any one of those gets broken, simply roll onto the next in the list. If you're sneaky enough, you have some mechanism for automatically switching combinations when the key is refreshed, making it much harder for an attacker to know which combination is actually being used at the time.

                Security doesn't have to be perfect to be truly secure, it just has to be impassable in the time you detect an attacker bypassing one component and the time you can replace what has been broken. The defender in a real-time situation always has the advantage when it comes to what happens next. The attacker ONLY has the advantage when it comes to what has already happened. So long as there is no usable relationship, the attacker must always lose.

    • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:5, Informative)

      by arth1 (260657) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:50PM (#19003991) Homepage Journal
      There's plenty of older hardware that doesn't have the processing power to do WPA, and has to rely on WEP. This is especially true for embedded devices (like print servers and bar code scanners) and PDAs. And for larger companies, replacing every single access point AND WiFi-device isn't a small thing.
      Could you imagine being the IT manager who has to tell upper management that the big expense you added to the budget two years ago, which was supposed to last five years before being incrementally replaced, now has to be completely trashed and replaced in one go because the encryption turned out to not be safe?

      The best thing many companies can do short term is to limit the damage, by restricting the use of WEP to data that they can afford losing. But even that requires admitting flaws, and is likely to get your head chopped off for bringing the bad news.

      • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by krbvroc1 (725200) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:16PM (#19004191)

        Could you imagine being the IT manager who has to tell upper management that the big expense you added to the budget two years ago, which was supposed to last five years before being incrementally replaced, now has to be completely trashed and replaced in one go because the encryption turned out to not be safe?
        Except WEP has been known to be broken since 2001. Also your IT manager example is putting profit above the safeguard of customer information such as their credit cards. Didn't Ford Motor company balk at the expense of adding an $11 fuel bladder to prevent the Ford Pinto from exploding? They figured they would just pay whatever damages, but when they were punished by a jury, the damages for a single death totaled more than their entire estimate. The damages were so high partly because the jury was made aware that Ford actually made a thought process like your IT manager that they understood the risks, but didn't want to spend money on the problem.

        If there are older devices that only support WEP, those can be moved to a separate router and firewalled/VLAN/etc.

        I wonder how much money the 'Credit Monitoring' services make out with all these breeches?

        It seems to me the only solution to this is to pass strong data ownership protections for consumers. Right now, the companies place very little value on the data (except for marketing/advertising purposes), but this needs to change somehow.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by maxume (22995)
          There needs to be some sort of data protection regulation, but there also needs to be some legislation that says that I'm not responsible for anything and everything that somebody impersonating me does, simply because I'm in no position to prevent those attempts. At the moment, individuals bear the brunt of the consequences when a credit card issuer gives a card to somebody committing fraud; that's insane, the issuer should be forced to face the consequences, because then they would quickly become much more
      • Said IT manager could point at this very disaster as a good reason for upgrading all your hardware. Really Bad PR + Lawsuits by the dozen Replacement of WEP-enable hardware (because there's just so much of it lying around, right?). If said company's a good customer of some hardware provider they could even inquire about discounts on new inventory for this very reason to spice things up in their favor.

      • Could you imagine being the IT manager who has to tell upper management that the big expense you added to the budget two years ago, which was supposed to last five years before being incrementally replaced, now has to be completely trashed and replaced in one go because the encryption turned out to not be safe?

        Can you imagine being the IT manager who has to tell upper managment that criminals just got millions upon millions of credit card numbers and SSNs off of the network? Oh, and then tell them you n

        • and you chose not to do nothing.

          God damn lack of coffee. Should read: "and you chose to do nothing."

      • Even Wii uses WEP. What's up with that? Saving cost for Nintendo?
        • You must be new here (to IT).

        • Re:Why isn't WEP recalled? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by lordDallan (685707) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:57PM (#19004511)
          Sure, or maybe the "I have a business major and/or MBA!" Senior Execs who the IT managers undoubtedly report to, need to get a clue and allocate a real budget to their IT staff.

          I bet replacing/upgrading/changing the hardware/software that was to blame across TJX's entire corporate infrastructure would have cost much less than the $1 billion dollars that dealing with the current situation could purportedly cost.

          [Rant begins here]Now I'm not saying the IT management were blameless either. But the greater issue IMHO is that IT is treated with disdain. IT managers are often treated as something to be tolerated by businesses. This is a horrible backwards, outdated mindset. Unfortunately, IT professionals seem to be doing very little to change this.

          At this point, IT is vital, vital to any $10M/year or higher in revenues (to pick an arbitrary number) business. But it is often treated as though it's some glorified janitorial service. Attention MBAs, IT is not there to clean up your screwed up PC and make sure your blackberry works. Sure, that's part of their bailiwick, but until corporate managers start realizing that their business live and die by their IT infrastructure (as the TJX debacle clearly demonstrates), these mistakes will happen over and over again.

          The other side of the coin are the people who work in IT itself. I don't know if it's because we were the ones who were picked on in junior high, or what. But I do know that IT professionals are the most ill-treated group of highly-skilled professionals around. Why there isn't some sort of real guild/league/association of IT professionals eludes me. Look at doctors and lawyers. They have the AMA, and the bar (forgive me if my details here aren't exactly correct, but I think my point is clear), they have specialized degrees, and they don't take sh*t from anyone. Why because they know they have unique knowledge and they expect to be compensated accordingly. And when someone tries to muck up their good racket they have going, their professional organizations lobby groups kick into high gear and start shredding whoever it is that wants to take their candy.

          On the other hand, when anyone even tries to mention the idea of some formalized "union-like" IT organization, all of the IT types start screaming bloody murder, and all this weird pseudo-libertarian, free market babble starts gurgling out from their pie holes. Attention IT professionals, this isn't about political philosophy. It's about fighting, scratching, "give me my piece of the pie you *sshole" capitalism. IT professionals need to wake up and take control of their situation. I assure you the big boys at the top of the heap love watching you scramble about at their beckon call while their billions of dollars are funneled through systems you keep running with wire and glue because you don't want to rock the boat by asking for a bigger, strike that, realistic budget.

          I'm not sure what the right steps would be to start moving towards forming a professional IT organization with real power (as in you can't get jack done on your computers unless you use someone from our guild anymore than you can litigate or perform surgery with out a bar certified lawyer or board certified doctor), but until that happens, IT workers will be thralls and TJX's and TSA laptop debacles, and IBM outsourcing hoo-ha's etc. will happen based solely on the whims of people who think that Excel macros are software and phone cords are what connect computers on a LAN. And just to be clear, Microsoft, ITT Tech, COMP-TIA, CISCO certifications do not cut the mustard as they do not exist to help you in anyway. The benefit you gain is a sliver of what the organizations who dole them out make from your labor.[Rant ends here]

          • Its our own fault. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by LibertineR (591918) on Saturday May 05 2007, @04:21PM (#19004687)
            "I don't know if it's because we were the ones who were picked on in junior high, or what. But I do know that IT professionals are the most ill-treated group of highly-skilled professionals around."

            This is because as a group, we are the LEAST professional of the professional vocations. With our paper MCSE's to our lack of communication skills, our refusal in some cases to "dress for success" and sometimes questionable bathing habits. Everybody who has worked in IT knows someone personally who fits this description.

            You are correct, we do need organizations to screen our professionals as much as any other field. The 'soft' skills are just as important as technical prowess to be a true professional. It always helps when people assume that instead of spending all of your free time memorizing Battlestar Gallactica scripts, that you might actually have time for a girlfriend.

            We did this to ourselves.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Have YOU bothered to read the article?

          The security issue was not the existence of WEP on the network. The issue was having a wireless network with full access to the rest of the network including financial systems etc.. (plus, as the article vaguely mentions, not implementing some other security they had available... VPN? SSL? Who knows.)

          WPA (particularly WPA-PSK, which is a relatively common form of WPA, due to less support for WPA-Ra
    • It's a rather frightening notion that people think of WEP or WPA as their sole means of security. The underlying data were apparently unencrypted, which implies open protocols like telnet and http. WEP was intended to make wireless as "secure" as wired networking, which means not much. WEP shouldn't be used because it's completely compromised, but even WPA shouldn't be the sole level of security. WPA should be viewed as a means to thwart casual snooping of network traffic, but I'd still hope secure data lay

      • Hm, Newton also becomes significantly flawed as we approach c/10. Time to force all publishers to recall all those classical mechanics textbooks.
        bad analogy, relativistic effects are irrelevant, stolen credit cards are not.

  • 45 million or 200 million? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by E IS mC(Square) (721736) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:39PM (#19003897) Journal
    TFA says "A person familiar with the firm's internal investigation says they may have grabbed as many as 200 million card numbers all told from four years' records."

    Gets better, doesn't it?
    • Not to belittle the problem here, but do that many people really shop at TJ Maxx/Marshall's? I know there are a few in my area, but they seem to be crappy little stores in crappy little strip malls. I didn't realize 45 million people shopped there, let alone 200 million.

  • Sue? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PetriBORG (518266)
    So, as someone who had at least their CC number stolen thanks to these ass hats, when can we sue them and take a major chunk out of their ass? People in TJX should be jailed...
  • Fortunately, the mobsters only used a telescope shaped device to improve their range.

    Imagine if they had known enough to make a satellite dish [youtube.com], of sorts...

  • Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by segedunum (883035) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:57PM (#19004041) Homepage
    It's ironic really. Many thought it might be some insider job, a complicated back door, some flaw in an internet facing system - but no. The company was daft enough to put their internal data over a network that is explicitly designed to get around physical barriers to access, and no one, and I mean no one, seems to understand this.

    A friend of mine has a reasonable but small IT business in the UK, and recently he started pushing the wireless expertise side - setting up wireless networks, explaining why they are a bigger risk than a wired network, securing them (and what do do if you are really paranoid) and trying to guarantee QoS more by setting it up correctly. Positioning your access points properly, doing wireless scanning to pick out any interference spots etc.

    No one is interested, and I don't just mean small businesses, but some quite large companies who should know an awful lot better. It's not a UK thing either, because most people believe setting up a wireless network is about popping down to the local store, picking up a Netgear, switching it on and letting Windows attach you to the nearest wireless network it can find. Astonishing.

    The only thing that shocks me is that this doesn't happen all the time, because many networks are just an open invitation. I mean OK, it's not that easy because you have to watch the network traffic and find out where the useful juicy bits of data are. That isn't completely straightforward, but once you are inside an average company's network it's doable because everything tends to act as if it is safe and fenced off.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by trav242 (645556)

      The only thing that shocks me is that this doesn't happen all the time, because many networks are just an open invitation.

      I'm with you there. It's really unfortunate that people seem to think this is an isolated incident. I mean, it's not like these guys are your average junior high kids with a laptop and some time to kill -- they are professionals. This is an industrial-strength cracking operation where people are out there in search of networks to exploit. It's a business. For every TJX that we hear about, I'm sure there are many, many more that go under the radar.

  • .... will there be another story on slashdot today about another data leak?

  • Leave the WEP out for a moment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Actually, I do RTFA (1058596) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:59PM (#19004049)
    WEP comprimised the communication of one retail store. Apparently enough information was stored in that one store to compromise a database with 4 years of records. So, an inside job at that level (assistant cashier probably had enough access to their wires) would be trivial. A better question... why would 4 years of CC number, etc. be accessible over the internet at all. Why not have that server offline, with updates posted occassionally via sneakernet? And hash the CC numbers. And otherwise, protect consumer information.

    • Good point. What's to say that some employee, either through a plant or bribe simply plugs a wireless access point into a spare RJ-45 jack in the back room.

      As for their databases, they should be shamed for not improving the security for accessing them, such as tiered levels of access (what in hell is a store employee/manager doing with full database access?), adding something like RSA SecerID pin generators and the like.

  • Well, I Wouldn't Shop With Them - Ever (Score:4, Interesting)

    by segedunum (883035) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:23PM (#19004249) Homepage
    Just read through the article more thoroughly, and several things worry me:

    TJX declined to comment on those numbers, but says it is undertaking a "thorough, painstaking investigation of the breach," hiring a team of 50 data security experts in December and taking a charge of $5 million in its first fiscal quarter.
    Well, we all know how brilliant data security experts are, and I really hope that sentence doesn't mean that they are simply throwing $5 million at them. You know what consultants are like - give them enough money and they will tell you everything you want to hear, even if the reality is a horror show.

    It says it will also pay for a credit-card fraud monitoring service to help avert identity theft for customers whose Social Security numbers were stolen. "We believe customers should feel safe shopping in our stores," says a letter from Chief Executive Carol Meyrowitz posted on TJX's Web site.
    The whole bloody point of this is that you don't get to that point in the first place. Stable door, horse bolted?

    The TJX hackers did leave some electronic footprints that show most of their break-ins were done during peak sales periods to capture lots of data, according to investigators.
    What the hell were they using this wireless network for?

    The TJX hackers did leave some electronic footprints that show most of their break-ins were done during peak sales periods to capture lots of data, according to investigators. They first tapped into data transmitted by hand-held equipment that stores use to communicate price markdowns and to manage inventory.
    So they were using an unsecured wireless network to enable hand-held equipment to function - and they used this to run their day-to-day business?! Christ. At first I thought this was just some wireless network someone had plugged into the network somewhere arbitrarily, not something they actually used in day-to-day operations.

    The company says the hackers may even have lifted bank-card information as customers making purchases waited for their transactions to be approved. TJX transmitted that data to banks "without encryption," it acknowledged in an SEC filing.
    I'm not 100% sure what system is used for credit card purchases in the US now, but this highlights why I like using cash a bit more with the advent of chip and pin. I would also never, ever use a debit card in one of these things. You transmit your card details, and the pin as well. Brilliant. Access to your bank account, and that hard earned pay that just went in today. I'm slightly confused though, because surely this communication with banks would all happen on another network?

    At that point, TJX hired forensics experts from International Business Machines Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. and notified the U.S. Secret Service, which spent a month trying to catch the hackers in the act.
    So you take no responsibility for your own systems, and you have no internal expertise? Wonderful.

    Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in March he believes Congress will move to require a company responsible for allowing a breach to bear the costs of notifying customers and reissuing cards.
    That's probably the only way, because some companies simply believe they don't have to take responsibility for IT, data, security and especially wireless security. It's something that is best swept under the carpet, and setting up a wireless network is as easy as spending a bit of money on a little access point you've seen at a local store, right? Why spend money doing it properly?

  • The entire credit industry is complicit in the design of the credit-card as an open invitation to replay attacks. Then this distract our attention from the fact that this horrendous credential is being compromised exactly in the manner the design dictates while telling us that it's *our* identities that are under fire. Let's get this straight: my indentity remains secure, it's only my credit-card credential is additionally compromised with every use.

    The central problem here is the architecture of the huma
  • A lot of people are going to be criticizing the wireless link and arguing that they should have used a physical link for this kind of stuff. The fact is, at some point you're going to have to get secure data over an insecure network, whether it be the internet or a wireless link.

    If you're building a wifi link, you really should be using VPN over your WPA (not WEP!) link. If this was a database backup between servers then the protocol they were using should have been secure (SCP). If it was a client acces

  • Put Management's Data In The Databases (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NeverVotedBush (1041088) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:35PM (#19004343)
    And shareholder's data. Make a law that puts the money-grubbing CEO and other officer's data in the databases with the customer's data. Then sit back and see what kind of directives management gives to their IT departments to secure data, networks, and workstations. But put their personal data to the same risk as what they deem is sufficient for all the people they don't know or care about. Then see how responsible they get.

  • The real issue isn't WEP, though. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Artifex (18308) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:48PM (#19004433) Journal
    (the following is speculation. TJMaxx, don't sue me, I'm not claiming to know what really went on, or real details of your network. This is just my impression from reading the story)

    Yes, WEP is insecure for real stuff. It's like the little latch on a high school display case. It's to keep honest people honest. It shouldn't be used in a commercial network as the only encryption.

    But what the heck kind of network design allows IPs from local stores direct access to central databases? The big issue here isn't that a few dozen or hundreds of cards were snagged by being sent through WEP -- we don't know, maybe the company ran a tunnel across that WEP link for those transactions, and they didn't get anything locally. The big issue is that it looks like the company was storing historical data on transactions online, and in databases that apparently were accessible from that link. WEP was a weak entry point to the network. But where was the security inside the network?

    It sounds like possibly either the designers of the overall network hadn't limited access sufficiently to just IPs/MACs from their account department, on a secure network, or the hackers managed to break through security layers in between, perhaps by knocking over a server that was straddling networks or something. If they designed in layers, with firewalls as gatekeepers between layers and IDS and IPS monitoring, I don't think they would have servers straddling, to start. IDS and IPS would also help them notice, for example, if someone spoofed an email from a store to an accounting department person, included a trojan, and attempted to gain access that way.

    I'm saying this not so much just to point out what sound like potential design issues with this company's networks, but to get people thinking about their own networks, instead of blowing this off as a WEP issue. If you administer a small network, and haven't had training on how to set it up and maintain it securely, you ought to look into Cisco's SAFE blueprint at bare minimum. It's free and the lessons can be applied to almost any brand of networking gear out there. It basically builds the network up from modules, which are easy to figure out. If you're administering a large network, well, as someone with CCSP training, I'd suggest you hire someone who's been properly trained, obviously. Cisco's track or someone else's. At the very least, everyone should consider thinking in terms of layers, like an onion, and discreet modules residing in, but not crossing, those layers. You should be really wary of any packets from across any WAN link to your core systems, obviously, but you should also set up security policies so that you know which administrative departments have access to which internal networks, too. Ask yourself, if an attacker can get into my network, what can he or she do?

    One last thing: network security can't just be set up and left. It has to be monitored and maintained, both to respond to immediate attacks, and to see when people are just poking around, doing reconnaissance.

  • RBC Visa (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jjohnson (62583) on Saturday May 05 2007, @03:48PM (#19004435) Homepage
    pre-emptively changed my Visa card number a couple months before this became public. I found out that I was not affected by this break-in later, so I'm unsure whether or not it was in response to

    The question in my mind is, given the basic vulnerability of a long-term CC number, why they don't move to something like SecureId token one-time passwords? If you can have a different six digit number every sixty seconds for five years on one device, surely the same (now public domain) algorithms could be embedded in a credit card. The infrastructure for real-time verification is already in place. With one stroke, the whole CC# theft business could be out of business, and the first mover CC company on this would have a huge marketing advantage: "No one can ever steal your Visa number again".
  • I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt both the big card processors and many banks knew what was going on. But they were loathe to admit it because to do so would be to admit the gaping holes in bank security. It's all based on the demand draft principle. In essence, if I knew your account number I could write it on a napkin and the bank is pretty much honor bound to cash it. Same is true for credit and debit cards except in those cases, no tangible evidence is required since it's purely electronic.

    Th
  • We've been getting our balls busted by customers to become PCI compliant so they can maintain their status with the Credit Card industry... where the hell are they when this crap goes down? Four years running a weak wep protected network and nobody bothered to question them on it?
    • Well, I could only hope that further intrusion from the government and Homeland Security will not happen. Well, at least I try to be optimistic. Realistically, TJX should be punished because it was widely known that WEP is weak encryption. Presumably, TJX should have a competent IT Department. At my job, we have wireless, which on its face appears to be open. It is instead protected by IPSec. Anyone can get an IP address but without IPSec, you'll get absolutely nowhere. I would really like to see con
      • well my comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek ... but you're right the only way to think of wireless is open - it's by definition outside your corporate fire wall even if the hardware is physically inside your building - you have to treat it always as such - so WEP to make it hard to get in but a VPN of some sort as real security

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by C_L_Lk (1049846)
      I run a small business and this is exactly how the credit card transactions take place. A customer comes in to the store and purchases something and wishes to use their credit card - the card is swiped through a terminal that uses a dial-up modem connection back to the bank's clearing house - a conversation takes place between the terminal and the remote server (at a mighty 9600bps) - and either a "approved" or "declined" is returned and a *PAPER* receipt (2 part) is thermally printed. The customer gets one

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