Target breach started from email

According to Brian Krebs the compromise of Target’s POS system probably originated with a phishing attack against one of Target’s vendors. This attack compromised credentials of the HVAC vendor and possibly allowed the hackers entrance into Target’s systems.
Interestingly, Brian mentions Ariba, a company I’ve been forced to deal by a large customer of ours. I’m not sure if there really is an attack vector where a vendor can get access through Ariba to the internal systems of the customers. However, my experience with Ariba has been frustrating and problematic, so I’ll be happy to believe their security is as broken as their email.
Email is a great way to interact with people and companies. It’s great for growing communities and businesses. But it is also a way for attackers to get access to your computer and the websites you interact with. Protect yourself, and your company, by running security software. And, please, don’t open attachments or click on links in emails and provide usernames and passwords.

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CNN warns about Target copy-cat phishes

Target did indeed do a blast to customers to offer one year of free credit monitoring. The problem is scammers are also on the prowl and are sending out similar emails.
Target even says it has identified and stopped at least 12 scams preying on consumers via email, Facebook and other outlets.CNN: Did you get an email from Target?

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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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Get a helmet

There’s been a lot of interesting reaction to Steve’s security post yesterday. A lot of people seem upset that we have pointed out one of the ways that ESPs may be getting compromised. Complaints range from the message being overly simplistic, through to complaints that we just don’t understand how much of an issue security is, through to complaints that we’re not pointing out that some ESPs actually are secure. Some people have even provided counter examples of how simple it is to compromise any company, so why are we picking on ESPs.
Security is a problem any company faces. Some industries are bigger targets than others, and ESPs have really jumped up the target list. ESPs are getting lists stolen. ESPs are getting reputations stolen.
There’s one ESP I know for a fact that has lost multiple customer lists 3 times. Three companies I get email from are hosted there. When all three of those tagged addresses started getting spam, the only logical assumption was that the ESP was compromised. Again. Those are companies I want to hear from, though, and I changed addresses on their sites after every breach. What’s distressing, though, is the total lack of response from either the customer or the ESP to my notices about the breaches.  To be fair, the problem seems to have stopped more recently.
Silence and refusal to address an issue is a big problem. An address I gave a company on the Only Influencers list was stolen (I’m not going to say leaked because I actually trust them to not have violated their privacy policy) sometime back in early 2011. I didn’t notice right away because my spam filters were catching the mail, but eventually the spammers managed to get one into my inbox. When I saw it, I started checking and realized that address had been compromised a long time ago. I notified the company, with as much history of the address as I could. I ended my message with:

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