The WiKID Blog

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lexis-nexis-breach

Posted by: admin 16 years, 3 months ago

As Adam had pointed out the Lexis Nexis breach was due to " misappropriation by third parties of IDs and passwords from legitimate customers".

majority-of-lexisnexis-breaches-the-result-of

Posted by: admin 16 years, 3 months ago

As pointed out by Adam at Emergent Chaos:

The company said that the 59 identified incidents -- 57 at Seisint and two in other LexisNexis units -- largely related to the misappropriation by third parties of IDs and passwords of legitimate customers and stressed that neither LexisNexis nor the Seisint technology infrastructure was breached by hackers.

So, essentially, if LexisNexis had been using strong authentication for their customers, none of this would have happened.

maintaining-control-over-your-teleworkers

Posted by: admin 16 years, 3 months ago

Turns out even if you don't have a teleworking offering for your workers, they probably do it anyway by loading their laptop up with private, unencrypted information and taking it home. At least that seems to be the case in the Federal government according to a recent study by the Telework Exchange:

The report found that 63 percent of respondents who worked from home unauthorized -- more half of the non-teleworkers surveyed -- used their home computers in doing that work. "People were saving documents on their home computers that were unprotected," said Josh Wolfe of Utimaco, a data security company that underwrote the study.

I wonder how people get to telework if they are not authorized? I assume telework means that they are connecting via a VPN, right? Are over half of Federal employees technically able to remotely connect to their internal network, but on the honor system to not do it? Registering for the doc gets some answers. Teleworkering means that you are working away from the office. That could mean on your blackerry. However, the point of the study stands: unsanctioned teleworking occurs:

• 54% of non teleworkers carry files home
• 41% of non teleworkers log onto their agency’s network from home

Holy Cow! How do people log in to their agency network if they are not allowed! And unsanctioned teleworkers are less likely to be protected from malware:

When teleworkers and nonteleworkers where asked if they had antivirus protection on their laptop or desktop computers, 94 percent of teleworkers responded yes, while only 75 percent of non-teleworkers said yes.

I think implementing two-factor authentication for remote access in federal government agencies would be a huge win - it would immediately eliminate the 41% of unauthorized users accessing the network.

bounty-hunters-pay-for-performance-economics-and

Posted by: admin 16 years, 3 months ago

There have been some interesting discussions about incenting judges to set bails appropriately and on the impact commercial bail bondsmen have on the 'failure to appear' rates. I first read about it in the Financial Times Undercover Economist column. The original post I found on Marginal Revolution

better-password-strength-just-one-factor

Posted by: admin 16 years, 3 months ago

Pete over at Spire Security points out the obvvious(which alluded me):

As far as I can tell, Bruce Schneier's current Wired column, MySpace Passwords Aren't So Dumb, is intended to be taken seriously. The article is supposed to be about how "good" passwords on MySpace are these days, and there isn't a hint of irony in his statement:

"But seriously, passwords are getting better."

I am at a loss to explain how he can come to this conclusion when every single one of the 34,000 passwords he analyzed were stolen through a phishing attack. What he should have said was: "This shows that a 1-character password (the shortest they harvested) is just as secure as a 32-character password (the longest they harvested)"

He also points out that if you're not going to do two-factor authentication, then don't worry about long passwords. If any data is important enough or vulnerable enough to require a strong and therefore annoying password policy, use two-factor authentication.

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