I agree. I do the same thing. If I was an Amazon or apple or dell it would
be different but for a small to mid size business it makes sense not to
store.
-- 
Dan Stein
Digital Software Solutions
799 Evergreen Circle
Telford PA 18969
Land: 215-799-0192
Mobile: 610-256-2843
Fax 413-410-9682
FMP, WiTango, EDI,SQL 2000
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.dss-db.com


> From: Web Dude <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 07:39:52 -0500
> To: Multiple recipients of list witango-talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Witango-Talk:  Encrypting Credit Card Info within the Database
> 
> I don't store credit card numbers at all. If the client is a repeat
> customer, I request that they key in their credit card again. I
> thought at first I would get a lot of flack for this, but as it turns
> out, the client is actually more comfortable knowing that the number
> is not stored anywhere on our servers. I even tout this fact as a
> selling point. What better way to attract criminal activity and
> hackers then to have a database filled with good credit card numbers.
> 
> Just my $0.02
> 
>> Why not just install PGP and use the command line to encrypt and decrpyt
>> the data? I've done this from within Witango for transmitting sensative
>> data through the internet.
>> 
>> Robert Shubert
>> www.witangostore.com
>> 
>> "Fogelson, Steve" wrote:
>>> 
>>>  Thanks for the responses.
>>> 
>>>  Eric,
>>> 
>>>  I looked a little more at the Shopzone's code. They store the key as a file
>>>  within the web site. Probably not good. If the db's are available to the
>>>  hacker, so would the key. The contents of a sample key seem pretty simple:
>>> 
>>>  
>>> BT_GK1=RHDDzwEAAAACQAAAANpYPBbZhSKJ0OSvdW9MypLdS+UzuAT7D+2U75yKRAPtV0ZQ02mZ2
>>>  
>>> ynXdidrotPUEuIY9N0eCEz22AA+fEd06DNAAAAAlu1KX7S2vKW0PNpdagJS/WQ0sXFVvgPw2tfZq
>>>  OZIeO9xzkjL1zaALW6NWVPsKP7Hf53nTNjRAHj0V9ixa2qWcgAA
>>>  
>>> BT_GK2=RHDp9wEAAAACQAAAANpYPBbZhSKJ0OSvdW9MypLdS+UzuAT7D+2U75yKRAPtV0ZQ02mZ2
>>>  
>>> ynXdidrotPUEuIY9N0eCEz22AA+fEd06DNAAAAAUX6yYYqMIIKCVTJ71ZoYMoJVMnvVmhgyglUye
>>>  9WaGDKy7lDyX0u9HT1znlxNyL/O3hUkNXwWpGRYJpj/QCHGKQAA
>>> 
>>>  I don't know anything about encryption, but the code kind of indicates a
>>>  password protected public and a private key.
>>> 
>>>  I'm not trying to disseminate any proprietary info for ShopZone. If I am
>>>  crossing the line, someone let me know right away. I am simply intrigued by
>>>  their "site owner" key generation and was wondering if anyone has any
>>>  suggestions for something outside of Witango that would work within
>>> Witango.
>>> 
>>>  Maybe this would be a consideration for future enhancement to Witango. It
>>>  would be a nice feature to be able to securely store info in fields of
>>> db's.
>>> 
>>>  Thanks
>>>  Steve
>>> 
>>>  -----Original Message-----
>>>  From: Eric Weidl [mailto:ejw@;intersites.com]
>>>  Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 3:54 PM
>>>  To: Multiple recipients of list witango-talk
>>>  Subject: Re: Witango-Talk: Encrypting Credit Card Info within the
>>>  Database
>>> 
>>>  Hi,
>>> 
>>>> Has anyone done this in the shipping cart software an databases?
>>> 
>>>  Yes.
>>> 
>>>> In their software, you create your own "key" by moving the cursor all over
>>>> the screen. I suppose some sort of random character generation. This unique
>>>> "key" is used to encrypt and decrypt the cc info.
>>> 
>>>  Sounds cool.
>>> 
>>>> As I have mentioned before, I am writing my own Witango Store. For
>>>> additional security, I would like to encrypt the cc info fields within the
>>>> database. I don't expect that someone would hack my sites, but you never
>>>> know.
>>>> I looked at the Witango <@CIPHER> metatag. it states BitRoll, Caesar, and
>>>> Rot13 are not secure at all, and OneTimePad is only as secure as the keys
>>>> are managed and generated.
>>> 
>>>  BitRoll, Caesar, and Rot13 are trivial and should be avoided for this
>>>  purpose. It would take a hacker only minutes to break them
>>> 
>>>  OneTimePad is, in theory, the only 100% secure classic encryption method.
>>>  Unfortunately, practical issues prevent it from being truly secure.
>>> 
>>>  The name "OneTimePad" refers to the theoretical design of using an
>>>  encryption key once and only once. The theory is that each party to the
>>>  encryption would have a book or "pad" of papers. Each paper would have a
>>>  different, unique encryption key written on it. Each time you want to
>>>  encrypt a message (e.g. a credit card number), you would take the top sheet
>>>  from the pad, use it to encrypt the message, then throw the page away. The
>>>  person receiving the message would take the top sheet from the book (which
>>>  should match the sheet you used), and would use it to decrypt the message.
>>> 
>>>  To demonstrate the issues (and flaws) with the OneTimePad cipher in the
>>> real world, let's apply it to your situation.
>>> 
>>>  Think of your "submit order" and "review orders" Tango applications as the
>>>  two players in the encryption game. To start, your application gets a CC
>>>  number from a user. Your "submit order" application should encrypt that
>>>  message with a unique key and then store it in the database, where the
>>>  "review order" application can later retrieve it.
>>> 
>>>  Okay, so the submit order TAF has to encrypt the number and to do that it
>>>  needs a key. Where does it get the key? It could make one up, but then it
>>>  would have to pass that key to the review orders TAF so it would know the
>>>  key. How is it going to do that? You could store your keys in the database,
>>>  but that's not very secure, is it? You could store the keys in a file on
>>>  the server, but if a hacker can get to your database, they can probably get
>>>  to anything on the computer.
>>> 
>>>  Even if you found a secure place to store the keys, you would have the
>>>  additional problem of having to remember which key was used to encrypt
>>>  which credit card. Every scenario I've seen for solving that problem is
>>>  unsecure. Keep in mind that to meet its theoretical limit, each key in a
>>>  OneTimePad solution should be used only one time! That means your review
>>>  order TAF could display the un-encrypted CC number once, but then, in
>>>  theory, it should throw the key away. Not exactly user friendly.
>>> 
>>>  This summary is a long winded way of saying there is no very good, complete
>>>  way of encrypting data in a reversible fashion using Tango's CIPHER meta
>>>  tag. It could be part of another solution, but I don't think it could stand
>>>  by itself.
>>> 
>>>  Like anything, security is a continuum, and only you know where your
>>>  threshold is on that spectrum.
>>> 
>>>  Another option you might look at are digital certificates.
>>> 
>>>  Finally, I'd be very curious to see an explanation of how Shopzone stores
>>>  the key you say they generate. I understand that they are probably
>>>  generating a random key based upon the movements of your mouse over an area
>>>  of the screen, but they still have to store that key somewhere.
>>> 
>>>  Hope this helps.
>>> 
>>>  Eric
>>> 
>>>  ________________________________________________________________________
>>>  TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>                  with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
>>>  ________________________________________________________________________
>>>  TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>                  with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
>> ________________________________________________________________________
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>                 with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
> 
> 
> -- 
> ________________________________________________________________________
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>               with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
> 

________________________________________________________________________
TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
                with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body

Reply via email to