Sorry. I waited to weigh in on the “dumpster fire” (credit to Brian Krebs) that is the Equifax breach because I wanted to see if those impacted expand beyond the US. They do. If it was Apache Struts. It was. And if things got worse. Don’t cry for me Argentina but they just did.
How do you say I’m sorry for losing the confidential data of 143 million people who are your customers? You don’t. Certainly not if you are Equifax, one of the three largest bureaus for credit reports on consumers globally. You make them wait. And then, you sell them a half-baked service to fix the problem you made. The site known as equifaxsecurity2017.com (sorry – not linking it here) is, in the words of Brian Krebs, “completely broken at best, and little more than a stalling tactic or sham at worst”. It was flagged as a phishing site, and provided inconsistent responses.
And help comes with big strings. The offer for a year of free credit monitoring by the same firm that f*cked up in the first place has some dual-edged fine print to absolve Equifax of their responsibilities, originally stating that those who consent forfeit their rights to participate or launch a class action suit, or receive any benefits from a suit. They have since amended the injurious clause (see – I can speak legal too!) to say it “does not apply to this cybersecurity incident.” Insult to injury is that victims would have to pay for all the subsequent years of credit monitoring. Freezing your credit is far cheaper, and effective.
We should be worried. Over 200K Visa and Mastercard holders are at risk of fraudulent purchases at the least because attackers have their account numbers, expiration dates and cardholder names.
Now, let’s talk about “Apache Struts”. Which has been flagged three times this year. Struts is hard to patch because it requires more migration and a lot more testing, which is impact and cost to business, but it happens to be used in over 60% of corporations on their major web server applications. There was a massive critical patch alert issued back around March for a zero day being actively exploited. Zero day means you’re not ready to fix it but attackers are ready to move. Guess what? The Struts flaw was unpatched back in May, when the attackers hit.
Jeff Williams is the co-founder and CTO of Contrast Security and explained the severity of this flaw which allows attackers to take over a Web host with just one HTTP request.
“This vulnerability was scored CVSS 10/10 – the highest rating. Within hours of the disclosure, we started seeing widespread automated attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability. Those attacks are still ongoing…Essentially, an attacker could send a single HTTP request – just like the ones your browser sends – except with a specially crafted header that contains the attack.”
And then there is what happened in Argentina. Earlier this week, it was reported by investigators who were looking into the risk to Argentina that “an online portal designed to let Equifax employees in Argentina manage credit report disputes from consumers in that country was wide open, protected by perhaps the most easy-to-guess password combination ever: “admin/admin.” I can’t even. The good news is that they took the portal down after Krebs gave them a call.
Do I sound bitter? Sorry not sorry. And so far, I am not one of the confirmed compromised. But oh, I am waiting for that shoe to drop. It has taken a ridiculous length of time for anyone in authority in Canada to address this. I get that we are polite to the point of complacency but come on! Thursday our privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, finally stepped in, claiming he had learned via complaints and the press, not from the source. The US has more regulations on credit reporting agencies than we have in Canada, where they are regulated by individual provinces and territories. According to Tamir Israel, who is a staff lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in Ottawa, “because of that mismatch, it falls through the cracks a little”. Per an article by Nestor Arellano in IT Canada Online:
“We have advised Equifax to provide information to affected Canadians as soon as possible and we expect the company to adopt measures to help affected Canadians,” Therrien said. “…Our office is urging Equifax to find a solution to permit Canadians to find out if they are affected as soon as possible.”
Now there is full on call for investigation. Meanwhile, the Canadian Automobile Association has informed 10,000 of its members they are at risk. Per Ian Jack, CAA managing director of communications and government relations, the information of those Canadian members who signed up for the identity protection program was stored with – wait for it – Equifax USA. That would be the sound of the other shoe dropping.
But wait – there is a happy-ish ending. News is just being released that both the CIO, David Webb, and CSO, Susan Mauldin, of Equifax are retiring. Immediately. That’s the first good news we’ve had.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/ayuda-help-equifax-has-my-data/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/equifax-breach-response-turns-dumpster-fire/
https://www.programmableweb.com/news/how-not-to-be-next-equifax/analysis/2017/09/08
http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/caa-says-10-000-consumers-could-be-equifax-hack-victims-1.3589848
https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/equifax-cio-cso-step-down/d/d-id/1329907
CyberWatch 