I believe in the case of Target that cloning was thought to be what the attackers wanted to do or at least that was what appeared to be the target of their intrusion. I believe the one of the articles I read indicated that all the information to clone was what was taken. Chipping has been a long standing argument both pro and con by those in the financial industry here in the states for a couple of years I believe. As Micheal has said (at one point) many companies here in the states do the minimum they have to until they have their ass bit by an attacker. Unlike from my very short reading of news articles they don't face the same penalties that many companies do outside the country for lax security. Personally in an ideal world hackers once identified would be tried and executed by a very painful method by a third party (one with no axe to grind something similar to what the Hague is supposed to do but only for criminals). Jon From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: 40 Million CC breach at Target.... Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 08:40:16 +0000
All credit cards have magnetic strips for backwards compatibility reasons (all of my CCs have chips – I have a dozen issued across three countries, and they all have both), but don’t chips merely prevent cloning? It doesn’t stop someone using them at a “card not present” sale (e.g. an online store). Is it going to be adequate security; or is it going to be financially feasible security? All security is risk management. You can avoid, accept, transfer or mitigate a risk – and which you choose comes down to a set of factors, including cost. What’s the difference between “adequate security” and “financially feasible security”? I’ve never heard this distinction between drawn before. Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Micheal Espinola Jr Sent: Tuesday, 24 December 2013 2:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: 40 Million CC breach at Target.... Re-read the information about the Target breach, and reconsider what I have said. This would not effect people outside of the US that do not use credit cards with magnetic strips. Its not just a matter of reading the strip directly, but as well as the technology involved in how that information is further processed. Ken, please pick a point are you going to choose to argue against/for: Is it going to be adequate security; or is it going to be financially feasible security? -- Espi On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote: How do you know “they should not have happened”? Perfect security is, pretty much, impossible. So, statistically, there will always be some level of breaches occurring, including some level of severe breaches. How do you know we aren’t at a level that makes monetary sense? Would you be prepared to, say, halve your income (because prices are double), simply to have 5% or 10% fewer security breaches? I don’t see how any recent serious breach is related to the use of magnetic stripe media or re-use of stolen phones, so I don’t really understand what you’re saying there. Cheers ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Micheal Espinola Jr Sent: Tuesday, 24 December 2013 2:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: 40 Million CC breach at Target.... I can only assume they dont, since historically (generally speaking) there have had serious breaches that should not have happened. I've been involved with POS systems, banking systems, as well as various wifi-devices - and for years, there's been a lot of foolishness. Business rarely does what it should - and instead only does what it has to, or can financially bet against. Banking: We (the US) still allow a system that relies heavily on magnetic strip media. Telco: We (the US) still allow a system were cell phones can be stolen and reused. -- Espi On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote: Your rant presupposes that there isn’t “decent security” already in place. What evidence do you have that there isn’t? Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of J- P Sent: Tuesday, 24 December 2013 12:43 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: 40 Million CC breach at Target.... /rant on I have one question that rings in the back of my mind, they (banks creditors merchants etc..) charge all sorts of fee's, sometimes i'have heard of fees larger than a bill thats due- Why cant they take a piece of that to get some decent security into place? /rant off Happy holidays and a prosperous new year to all Jean-Paul Natola From: [email protected] Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2013 08:10:19 -0500 Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: 40 Million CC breach at Target.... To: [email protected] >>That's a pretty fair analogy - and both statements are true. On the other hand, banking is much better understood - experience with banking goes back hundreds of years, with concomitant expertise in many fields in dealing with the risks in banking. The experience around computing is much more shallow, and the risks are not as well known, nor has nearly as much thought and practice gone into mitigating them. Okay, so how about when banking relies upon computing? Which risk profile comes into play, then -- the hundreds of years, or the shallow years/decades? Whether or not YOU use online banking, it is almost assured that your bank provides it and that others are aware of its existence. Do you think that your bank is providing such a service without any reliance upon 3rd parties? Do you think that because you aren't using the online services from your bank that your data would be unimpacted? (Hint: I'm sure that some of the people impacted in the Target breach, as in the TJX breach before it, were *not* online users) ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Providing Virtual CIO Services (IT Operations & Information Security) for the SMB market… On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Kurt Buff <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Andrew S. Baker <[email protected]> wrote: >>>Amazon's cloud is external to its customers - Amazon's staff, > procedures and infrastructure are a risk to its customers. > > That's as illogical a statement as the following: > XYZ Bank's technology infrastructure is external to its customers - XYZ > Bank's staff, procedures and infrastructure are a risk to its customers... That's a pretty fair analogy - and both statements are true. On the other hand, banking is much better understood - experience with banking goes back hundreds of years, with concomitant expertise in many fields in dealing with the risks in banking. The experience around computing is much more shallow, and the risks are not as well known, nor has nearly as much thought and practice gone into mitigating them. >>>Except when suborned or perverted by money, patriotism or blackmail: > http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220 > > And how does you maintaining your infrastructure on-premises, but having to > rely on 3rd party telecommunications mitigate the above risk in any way? It's not just that specific incident - that's but one example, and in this specific instance, there was no remedy - trusted parties were subverted, and the same can happen in other fields. I'm not arguing for perfection here - just a recognition that complexity brings risk, and that keeping things simple and under more control is usually wise. Indeed, for some businesses, especially small ones with no IT staff, or very limited IT staff, going with a public cloud might make sense. But if a business has good IT staff, I'd venture that migrating most or all of their infrastructure to a public cloud isn't their best bet. Kurt
