More security problems

I know a lot of people are putting all their eggs in the 2 factor authentication (2FA) basket as a solution to the recent breaches. Earlier this year, however, RSA had their internal systems breached and unknown data was stolen. Speculation from a lot of sources is that the information stolen from RSA by the attackers could be used to infiltrate systems protected by 2FA.
Today I, Cringely reports that a very large U.S. defense contractor may have been breached despite protection by SecurID. Anyone who has been around folks that work for defense contractors, or even just people with security clearances, knows that security and secrecy becomes second nature. They are naturally suspicious and careful, particularly when interacting with secure systems.
What should really concern anyone thinking about implementing security is that the defense contractor’s security folks implemented extra security after the RSA breach, but someone still managed to infiltrate their systems.
Whatever happens with RSA and the defense department, it’s pretty clear that 2FA is not a panacea. And even when we’re talking about security experts, including defense contractors and RSA, hackers can still get into their systems.
Many of the compromises start with spam linking to payloads. In fact, just last night another email expert had their gmail account compromised, resulting in virus being sent to multiple mailing lists and individuals. Some of the compromises happen through Facebook with links that fool people who should know better.
Security is critical for everything on the internet. But recently the attackers seem to be gaining the upper hand over the defenders. When even the experts are compromised, what chance does the average user have?
UPDATE: Reuters reports that the defense contractor was Lockheed.

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ESPs leaking email addresses

Two of my tagged email addresses started getting identical pharma spam over the weekend. It is annoying me because I am now getting spam in a mailbox that was previously spam free. The spam is overwhelming the real traffic and I am having to make some decisions about what to do with the email addresses and their associated accounts with the companies I gave them to.
One thing I did notice, though, is that both companies use iContact as their ESP. A cursory check of my other mailboxes shows that none of my other tagged addresses are mailed through iContact. I don’t think it’s very likely that these two individual, unrelated companies made deals with the same spammers to sell address lists at the same time. It’s much more likely that there was a compromise somewhere and address lists were stolen.
Edit: Checked my other account and, likewise, I’m getting the same spam to a 3rd address serviced by iContact. I’ve sent mail to all 3 companies involved and we’ll see how they react.
And, as I was thinking about this, iContact just laid off a bunch of staff about the same time they announced their partnership with Goodmail. Based on past history with companies in this situation, it seems possible this is a disgruntled former employee. I’ve also seen reports from other people noticing spam to addresses given to iContact customers.

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Time for a real security response

I’ve seen a number of people and blogs address the recent breaches at some large ESPs make recommendations on how to fix things. Most of them are so far from right they’re not even wrong.
One group is pointing at consumers and insisting consumers be taught to secure their machines. But consumers weren’t compromised here.
Another group is pointing to senders and insisting senders start authenticating all their email. But the failure wasn’t in authentication and some of the mail is coming through the ESP systems and is authenticated.
Still others are claiming that ISPs need to step up their filtering. But the problem wasn’t with the ISPs letting too much email through.
The other thing that’s been interesting is to watch groups jump on this issue to promote their pet best practices. DKIM proponents are insisting everyone sign email with DKIM. Extended SSL proponents are insisting everyone use extended SSL. But the problem wasn’t with unsigned email or website trust.
All of these solutions fail to address the underlying issue:
ESPs do not have sufficient security in place to prevent hackers from getting into their systems and stealing their customers’ data.
ESPs must address real security issues. Not security issues with sending mail, but restricting the ability of hackers to get into their systems. This includes employee training as well as hardening of systems. These are valuable databases that can be compromised by getting someone inside support to click on a phish link.
Not everyone inside an ESP needs access to address lists. Not everyone inside an ESP customer needs full access to address lists. ESPs must implement controls on who can touch, modify, or download address lists.  These controls must address technical attacks, spear phishing attacks and social engineering attacks.
What’s happening here actually looks a lot like the Comodo certificate attack or the RSA compromise.
It’s time for the ESP industry to step up and start taking system security seriously.

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Another kind of email breach

In all the recent discussions of email address thievery I’ve not seen anyone mention stealing addresses by abusing the legal system. And, yet, there’s at least one ambulance chasing lawyer that’s using email addresses that were never given to him by the recipients. Even worse, when asked about it he said that the courts told him he could use the email address and that we recipients had no recourse.
I’m not sure the spammer is necessarily wrong, but it’s a frustrating situation for both the recipient and the company that had their address list stolen.
A few years ago, law firm of Bursor and Fisher filed a host of class action lawsuits against various wireless carriers, including AT&T. At one point during the AT&T lawsuit the judge ruled that AT&T turn over their customer list, including email addresses, to Bursor and Fisher. Bursor and Fisher were then to send notices to all the AT&T subscribers notifying them of the suit.
This is not unreasonable. Contacting consumers by email to notify them of legal action makes a certain amount of sense.
But then Bursor and Fisher took it a step further. They looked at all these valid email addresses and decided they could use this for their own purposes. They started mailing advertisements to the AT&T wireless list.

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