TJX Fires Employee For Disclosing Vulnerability

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A TJX employee was fired for an online post mentioning that TJX hasn't beefed up security after the recent, massive data breach that saw 94 million credit card numbers copied by criminals and money from their accounts stolen. The employee mentioned that, at first, their usernames were the same as their passwords. After they required stronger passwords, some managers complained, so they 'compromised' by allowing blank passwords. The whistleblower said he discussed his concerns with management, but that it was like talking to a brick wall. In spite of the weak internal security, TJX now has a firm that scours the internet to find bad things posted about them, which is how they found the message and fired him for it. Too bad they don't appear to have hired anyone to beef up operational security or to convince people to use strong passwords."

I was about to say...

Who is TJX and how can I avoid doing business with them, but then I realized they were TJ Maxx and Marshall's and I don't do business with them anyways.

Re:I was about to say...

It doesnt matter if you do not do buisness directly with TJX or whomever you do not like.... if you use a check or a CC when making a purchase odds are it goes through one of a few companies for processing. I used to work for a financial institution that leaked 20+million personal info to the world.... so, did you make any purchases at bestbuy or compusa last year? if so, your name was probably in the lot.

Re:I was about to say...

My wife once had her credit card stolen (physically stolen). We got the CC bill a week later.

"Honey, look! The bill's $700 cheaper than last month!"

Now I go out with her when she decides to buy something.

Same happened to me :(

I used the same password as this account, and obviously some people found out about it and have been posting under my username for ages! :(

Re:Same happened to me :(

I used the same password as this account, and obviously some people found out about it and have been posting under my username for ages! :(

That's what you get for using "12345" as your password, Mr. President!

Weak American Dollar

This data is implicitly safe now by the weak American Dollar, it would be like stealing Pesos.

Dear TJX

Dear TJX,

We're the Slashdot community, and would like you to meet Ms Barbara Streisand, who can help you with your media relations problem.

Yours Truly,

Slashdot Community.

RTFA

"So last August, Benson took to Sla.ckers.org, a website dedicated to web application security, and began anonymously reporting the shoddy practices in this user forum."

Re:RTFA

began anonymously reporting the shoddy practices in this user forum."

He was the squeaky wheel at the store, then went online and squeaked some more.
http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20080522/tjx-whistle-blower/ [ckers.org]

They tracked him down by IP (we're still not completely sure how they did this, but we think it may have to do with a DynDNS account he uses), contacted his ISP to find out who he was, brought him into the office, questioned him about what he found, asked for him to write down his thoughts on how to fix the issues and then promptly fired him.

Long story short: You aren't anonymous unless you're going through an anonymous overseas proxy or three.
At least it'll be harder to get your IP from a foreign company.

Re:RTFA

However they found out who he was it can't have been legal.

He should fixate on this and sue them.

Re:RTFA

If there's anybody he can sue, it would only be his ISP for divulging his information without his permission and also without a warrant. While the company was certainly out of line in the lengths they went through to accomplish this, there's nothing ILLEGAL about discovering an internet persona's true identity. They were perfectly free to ask all the questions they did. Whether the ISP had any right to divulge that information is another matter I don't really care to guess on.

Re:RTFA

Asking somebody to break the law can be illegal too, depending on the exact details.
Trouble is, due to their own well-documented incompetence in security, they'd have a pretty good chance to claim they simply didn't know it was illegal.

Re:RTFA

AFAIK, there is no federal law that would apply in this situation and the only Kansas statute that I could find on whistleblowing applies only to government employees. However, there appear to be a couple of Kansas cases holding that firing someone for whistleblowing is against public policy.

Re:um duh

Have they not learned from the others that have gone on before them. It is not the original error that will get you, but how you cover up your error that does.

Anyone remember Nixon... and a few others.

-- sig.com not found post halted

I think there are laws. . .

To protect whistleblowers, aren't there? Although, that might only be in the government, and maybe government contractors. Not sure if it extends to the private sector.

The thing I'm puzzled about is, I thought that the electronic payment networks (MasterCard, Visa, Discover, Amex, etc) had very specific requirements for data security, including audits, which filter down to merchants (I realize that merchants don't generally do business directly with the networks [unless, maybe, they're Walmart or Sears], and instead go through intermediate companies that 'resell' the network services, but I thought the security requirements, and audit regimen, bubble down through the whole hierarchy?)

Re:I think there are laws. . .

The whistleblower protection laws in the USA protect an employee from termination for reporting the employer acting illegally. Shoddy security may be stupid but I don't know if it's illegal or not. Also, the employee needs to be reporting to the proper authority, not a random Internet forum.

Re:I think there are laws. . .

And who would the "proper authority" be in this case? His management doesn't care.

Apparently PCI Compliance doesn't allow for input from the "little people" -- or would someone care to post a link that allows for submitting information to them?

Another older guy loses his capacity for outrage

Hey, yeah, what was this guy thinking, doing the right thing in spite of the risks? He deserved to get screwed over, right? Everyone just play along, don't rock the boat, do what you're told, and shut the hell up. Thanks so much for sharing your sage wisdom and mature outlook.

Maybe he expected exactly what happened and blew the whistle anyway. So, wise elder, what would you have done?

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

Being a whistleblower means sacrifice. No one gives you a medal for doing the right thing, nor should you expect anything but scorn.

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

Yes, things currently work that way. Things shouldn't work that way.

Re:Another older guy loses his capacity for outrag

Assuming this is how things actually are, what makes you think this kid expected anything different? Where do you see him begging for a medal?

But it really sounds like you are going further, saying that not only is this how things are, but how they ought to be. It really sounds like you are coming down on the guy for doing the right thing.

Or maybe you are trying to say that everyone should be as cynical as you are? Maybe you believe that we should all expect to get fucked over for doing the right thing, and anyone who doesn't expect that is an idiot who deserves what they got.

Please clarify, do you think this guy got the treatment he deserves? Should we not be outraged here? I'm confused as to your motives for posting what you originally did.

Re:Another 23 year old realizes that McJobs suck

Seriously, what did he expect, that a lazy corporation was going to reform its security policies because a 23-year-old hourly employee complained anonymously on a blog?

If they had any integrity - Yes, that sounds like the best possible outcome of this.

Think about it - The CIO didn't say "okay, after a major data breach, go ahead and keep using pathetic passwords". The order came down from On High to use secure passwords. This proved inconvenient to hundreds of piddling middle-managers, who ordered "their" IT guys to find a way around all that nasty security. The local IT guys complied, by allowing blank passwords (Corporate probably never expected anything that stupid, and so didn't have a policy stating otherwise).

So, sometime later, Corporate discovers what has happened, and it enrages them. They meet, discuss, take aim, and fire...

...At their own foot.


And what did he think they were going to do when they caught him, give him a raise and a promise to change their cheap lazy ways?

They could have addressed the problem and rewarded the child who dared to laugh at the naked emperor. By chosing not to, they have very effectively told me they care more about appearances than the security of my credit card data. As a result, I will no longer shop there.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

What security people don't understand is that good security can be very, very, VERY expensive. Far more expensive than some simple PR. I'm not just talking about the up-front cost of doing security right in the first place, but the less noticeable costs of user training, user re-training, tech support, lost productivity (senior manager forgot his admin password), and the cost of letting people go who are very valuable and good at their jobs but too stupid to follow the proper security protocols.

Good managers understand this and realize that spending that much money on protecting something that's really not very important to the company (customer identities) is just not good business. Until people start hearing on the nightly news that "TJMaxx gave your credit information to terrorists who used it to buy nuclear weapons and assassinate Jesus," the negative publicity they'll suffer is negligible.

Re:Sad State of Affairs

Very expensive? Compared to what? Going out of business?

What if your bank decided that those pesky safe deposit boxes would be a whole lot cheaper if only they could use unlocked filing cabinets instead. Would you still want to do business with them?

The sad state of affairs here is that the problem doesn't become apparent until someone gets hacked.

I think a firm that has a security breech ought to be forced to make restitution to the customers. Managers may not understand security, but they will understand lawsuits and damages.

Only once you've rubbed a manager's nose in the problem can you expect a solution. We don't HAVE to address everything, but managers should at least be aware of the risks they're taking.

It's a telling point that they've chosen to persecute instead of promote the person who exposed the flaws. These idiots would rather hide in the corner than address the risks up front.

Re:One store

"This was a server at one store, not the TJX headquarters where the data is kept"

The original loss of data was caused by weak passwords on wireless routers. War dialers parked outside a store (or stores) captured data that was then used to collect millions of credit card numbers from the HQ servers. One of the problems was that TJX kept CC numbers on file long after they had any use for the information. This is a case where bad security at one store compromised the whole corporation. Sounds like nothing has changed