Category Archives: Technology Risk

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A Weekend of Hacker Attacks

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Over the weekend, pharmacy giant Walgreens fell victim to a computer criminal that stole its email marketing list from a third party. The hacker then sent out realistic looking spam that asked people to enter their personal information into a web page controlled by hackers. Even worse, those customers that had opted out of receiving marketing emails from the drug store had their information stolen as well.

McDonald’s also experienced a data breach via a third party attack. Arc Worldwide is a company hired by McDonald’s to manage its promotional email campaigns. Arc Worldwide hired another company to actually send these promotional emails. It is that company, the name of which remains anonymous, that was the target of hackers. Though the stolen data did not contain sensitive information such as Social Security numbers or credit card information, it did contain names, phone numbers and physical addresses.

And lastly, Gawker media sites were targeted this weekend with hackers going after their more than one million commenters’ usernames and passwords. Those responsible for the attack, a group of hackers known as Gnosis, had a few words for Gawker.

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“We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance”—possibly towards the hacker community—”It took us a few hours to find a way to dump all their source code and a bit longer to find a way into their database. We have had access to all of their emails for a long time as well as most of their infrastructure powering the site. Gawkmedia has possibly the worst security I have ever seen. It is scary how poor it is. Their servers run horribly outdated kernel versions, their site is filled with numerous exploitable code and their database is publicly accessible.

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It’s hard to believe that in 2010 we are still seeing major corporations and media outlets continuously, though unintentionally for the most part, exposing sensitive information. Yes, many blame hackers for disrupting business, stealing personal information and even shutting down websites entirely.

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But one thing these hackers are not credited with is how they force these companies to adopt stricter web security. It would be tough to find a well-known company whose system was hacked and yet they did nothing to prevent such incidents in the future.

There’s a good and a bad to everything.

Supporters of WikiLeaks Launch Attack

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It was just last week that our own Jared Wade wrote a post about how WikiLeaks’ next target may not be military or government affiliated at all; it could be your company.

Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.

The website that relies on truth in everything has gained a massive following of fanatic supporters. So fanatic, it seems, that they have retaliated against those who have recently wronged WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange. Here’s a list of those companies or individuals who have fallen victim to cyberattacks launched by WikiLeaks supporters:

  • Mastercard.com — WikiLeaks relies on donations to keep running and it was Mastercard who processed such donations. Well, with the media firestorm around the website and Assange lately, the card company severed ties with the site.
  • Amazon.com — The giant online retailer decided to revoke server space it had once granted to WikiLeaks.
  • PayPal — The online payment service chose to cut off its commercial cooperation with WikiLeaks.

Other targets include the lawyer representing two women who have accused Assange of sexual abuse and PostFinance, Assange’s bank, which closed his account. The attacks have been organized and launch by a group of hackers called Anonymous. One of the members granted an interview to the New York Times.

That activist, Gregg Housh, said in a telephone interview that 1,500 activists were on online forums and chatrooms including Anonops.net, mounting mass and repeated “denial of service” attacks on sites that have moved against Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks in recent days. The hacker army has rallied around the theory that all the actions against the organization and against Mr. Assange, including the rape accusations, are politically motivated efforts to silence those challenging authority. “To all of us,” Mr. Housh said, “there is no distinction. He is a political prisoner and the two things are completely entwined.”

The group has been successful; the websites for Mastercard, PayPal and PostFinance were all experiencing difficulties. Even more frightening, Anonymous claims to be planning further attacks on company websites. So it is true then, WikiLeaks’ next target, either directly or indirectly, could be your company.

The Impending Wireless Spectrum Shortage

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Back in September, I wrote about how we were running out of internet addresses under the current IP addressing system (update: as of this moment, about 173 million addresses remain). But that’s not the only high-tech shortage on the horizon.

According to the FCC, the proliferation of  broadband data usage is threatening to use up all the available wireless spectrum space. A report released last month outlined the scope of the problem. Today, 42% of consumers own a smartphone, up from 16% three years ago. In that same timeframe, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the iPhone, has seen its mobile network traffic increase by 5,000%. In just the latest six months of reporting, subscription to mobile data services have increased by 40% and between the first quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010, the amount of data used per line has increased by 450%. Obviously this has put a strain on network capacity.

Mobile data demand is expected to outstrip capacity at current levels by 2014. According to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski this shortage could have dire consequences:

“If we don’t act to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century, we’re going to run into a wall — a spectrum crunch — that will stifle American innovation and economic growth and cost us the opportunity to lead the world in mobile communications,” he warned.

In June, President Obama pledged to make an additional 500 megahertz of wireless spectrum available over the next decade as part of the National Broadband Plan. The FCC has recommended that at least 300 megahertz should be made available in the next five years and that such a move would create $100 billion of economic value. The extra space is expected to come from a reallocation of government-controlled bands and from unused spectrum currently owned by television stations (the stations would be reimbursed after the spectrum is sold in auction to wireless companies).

The reallocation process has already begun. This week the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced that it had identified 115 megahertz of spectrum that could be repurposed from weather satellites and Department of Defense radar systems, in effect making one of the first down payments on the 10-year plan.

Ultimately, wireless spectrum is a finite resource so one of the keys to making sure that the demand for wireless services is met now and in the future will have to be a more efficient allocation of space, whether it is through improved technology or just reassigning megahertz where they are needed most. The National Broadband Plan is a step in the right direction.

And thankfully, it looks like it’s still safe to get a smartphone.

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Developing Standards for The Cloud

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Storing data on “The Cloud” is all the rage these days. And like any immature business technology, there is thus far not a ton of guidance for companies trying to educate themselves on the protocols, standards and best practices to follow before they make the transition from their internal servers to the cloud.

To help in this area, we just ran a feature story on the topic, highlighting the benefits (cost, speedy disaster recovery) and the risks (security, uncertain contracts with suppliers) that any risk professional should read. (Yes, I am biased … but it’s a good breakdown. You may also benefit from the advice surrounding security, customer service and integrity in “Putting Cloud Storage Providers to the Test.”)

Fortunately, however, the federal government has launched an initiative to standardize all of the key areas related to cloud computing.

The federal government’s standards organization plans to develop a roadmap for cloud computing standards and guidance, National Institute of Standards and Technology officials said Thursday during the first day of a two-day government cloud computing forum.

“Right now, when government CIOs want to go to the cloud, it’s kind of a free-for-all, and they have to think of everything themselves,” NIST director Patrick Gallagher said in a brief interview. “We want to help provide a structure.”

Developing a roadmap, officials said, will help prioritize standards efforts, looking to remove perceived barriers to cloud adoption around security, interoperability, portability and reliability.

NIST’s Strategic Cloud Computing initiative will not solve all of risk managers’ problems. Each still has to do his or her homework to determine whether or not the concerns outweigh the benefits for the organization.

But this is a good start and should help.