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Equifax CSO 'Retires'. Known Bug Was Left Unpatched For Nearly Five Months (marketwatch.com) 196

phalse phace quotes MarketWatch: Following on the heels of a story that revealed that Equifax hired a music major with no education related to technology or security as its Chief Security Officer, Equifax announced on Friday afternoon that Chief Security Officer Susan Mauldin has quit the company along with Chief Information Officer David Webb.

Chief Information Officer David Webb and Chief Security Officer Susan Mauldin retired immediately, Equifax said in a news release that did not mention either of those executives by name. Mark Rohrwasser, who had been leading Equifax's international information-technology operations since 2016, will replace Webb and Russ Ayres, a member of Equifax's IT operation, will replace Mauldin.

The company revealed Thursday that the attackers exploited Apache Struts bug CVE-2017-5638 -- "identified and disclosed by U.S. CERT in early March 2017" -- and that they believed the unauthorized access happened from May 13 through July 30, 2017.

Thus, MarketWatch reports, Equifax "admitted that the security hole that attackers used was known in March, about two months before the company believes the breach began." And even then, Equifax didn't notice (and remove the affected web applications) until July 30.
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Equifax CSO 'Retires'. Known Bug Was Left Unpatched For Nearly Five Months

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  • by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:44AM (#55209557) Homepage Journal

    I can see a company delaying patching serious bugs long enough to test it and make sure the fix isn't worse than the bug.

    I can see a company treating bugs that aren't reported as being serious as non-serious.

    I can see a company assessing a "serious" but and determining it's not serious in their environment and not treating it with urgency.

    But that's not what happened here.

    Heads deserved to roll and at least two did.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:26AM (#55209723)

      They didn't officially notice the breach until after they sold off their stock shares... So they say.

    • Not really (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:52AM (#55209853)
      She retired. She wasn't fired. So she'll get to take it all with her. Once again, the ruling class (and at CSO level she's a member) take care of themselves. And once again, I sure wish we could get the working class to do the same. Hell, we can't even get the working class to agree Healthcare is a right and not a privilege.
    • i wonder is she would notice a flat tire on her car ? she would probably just buy a new car.
    • by pop ebp ( 2314184 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @12:27PM (#55210333)

      When the break-in first came to light, lots of people criticized Equifax, but a vocal minority said something along the lines of "No system is absolutely secure. We don't know if the hackers used a zero-day vulnerability against Equifax. They could have followed all the security best practices and still be hacked."

      My response was "If the past is any guide, every time a major company was hacked, it was eventually traced to vulnerabilities in outdated software that should have been patched months ago. I am going to assume this is the same."

      Turns out I was right. Companies never learn.

    • by epine ( 68316 )

      Heads deserved to roll and at least two did.

      Talk about low aim steering.

      These credit agencies have special legal exemptions from slander and liability law. If incorrect and badly sourced information winds up in your file, and they spread it far and wide among your core business relationships, just try to collect damages.

      Heads deserve to roll, and none have.

  • Good news everyone! (Score:3, Informative)

    by mrsam ( 12205 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:46AM (#55209565) Homepage

    The company has finally figured out how to use a random number generator, from TFA:

    The company clarified that consumers placing a security freeze will be provided a randomly generated PIN.

    • by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:10AM (#55209669) Homepage Journal

      Unless the entropy requirements are published, the assumption should be that it's not random, but a pseudo-rng with known flaws.
      Exchanging "date +%m%d%Y%H%m" with "ran=frac(9821 * ran + 0.211327)" does not qualify for "random", although it might be a good enough number for this purpose.

    • I would not describe victims of Equifax's data collection and loss as "consumers." What are they consuming? Neither are they "customers" since that would be the banks/loan applicants paying for financial information. Let's call them what they are. Victims. EVERY Equifax "victim" should automatically have a security freeze placed on their account by Equifax (and all the other agencies) and if the information is needed, proper identification required to release the data. Period.
  • Incompetent idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:47AM (#55209569)

    Blaming this on a single security flaw just shows how incompetent they are. It's your design and approach at security that's flawed to begin with.

    Allowing some shiny MVC framework directly accessing a database containing millions and millions of personal records is just plain dead retarded software design. This kind of incompetency should be fined, let's start with $100 for every record that got stolen in compensation. If such an incident can instantly bankrupt you, maybe then these companies start to take their software security serious.

    • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      So what SHOULD be used to access such sensitive databases?

      Perhaps we should criminalize the warehousing of sensitive information.

      • by that this is not und ( 1026860 ) * on Saturday September 16, 2017 @11:21AM (#55210001)

        A lot of 'sensitive information', namely things like SSN, are only sensitive because the credit application process has been so sensitized. Credit extending companies want it to be trivially easy to extend credit. They want the cashier at a clothing store to be able to issue a credit card to customers at the point of sale. So things that used to be ordinary accessable information like SSNs are made into secrets, for the convenience of credit issuing companies.

        When I attended college at a small liberal arts school in 1979 they didn't really have a student ID number. They just used students' SSNs as an id. So SSNs were scattered all over campus fairly freely. You used a card with your SSN on it at the library to check out books.

        There is really no reason for this not to be okay, except for businesses who want to be able to use your SSN as a sort of 'secret password' to allow youbto go into debt to them.

        • by belthize ( 990217 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @01:43PM (#55210705)

          Same here, college I went to in the mid-80s used our SSN as the student ID number, Sometime around 87 or so they appended the number 4 to the end because they claimed it was illegal to use your SSN as a form of identification. I found that logic fascinating.

          For years I've been a proponent of just posting everyone's SSN on a website so we can quit pretending it's a secure bit of info. As long as folks falsely think it's secure they'll keep using it.

        • by Bigbutt ( 65939 )

          Yea, in the military in the 70's, you were advised to put your SSN on all your personal gear. Most of my 70's era gaming gear and books have my SSN and full name written in the inside covers.

          [John]

          • If you were in the AF they told you to put "AF" in front of the ssn--that way it's not your SSN anymore...so they could get by privacy act rules.
      • You don't allow the web servers to pull the entire database, unless it's MyFirstWebApplication with GRANT ALL TO 'webserver'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'p@ssword'.

        You only allow the web server to pass a set of identifying data, like Name, DOB, Address, and return the (hopefully) single match.

        You may well have full access from a workstation in the office, or from other servers in the data centre, but NOT from the publically facing internet unless you're incompetent.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Very much so. Mistakes can happen, but ignoring a relevant CVE for months will not happen with halfway competent security people. The problem, however, is that no competent security people were hired and the CEO should lose his job immediately and be prosecuted for criminal negligence for that.

      • Very much so. Mistakes can happen, but ignoring a relevant CVE for months will not happen with halfway competent security people. The problem, however, is that no competent security people were hired and the CEO should lose his job immediately and be prosecuted for criminal negligence for that.

        What if they had competent security people but insufficient budget / authority to override operations for a security concern?

        • by tsstahl ( 812393 )

          I find your scenario to be much more the real experience and the parent to be the hypothetical.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You probably have no experience with the inner workings of large corporations...

        • Equifax wasn't legally required to have inadequate security measures. How much budget and authority the security people had was a business decision, and Equifax should be held accountable for bad business decisions that hurt others.

  • Stock sold ?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:49AM (#55209585)
    What will happen with the one that sold they stock before annoncement.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cdreimer ( 4977441 )
      The three executives who sold stock before the data breach became public knowledge are being investigated by the SEC for insider trading. Unless they can prove that this was a "routine" sale (I.e., consistently sold shares every quarter) and the timing was coincidental, they are facing my fines and/or prison sentences.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      If the law works, they will go to prison. However "the law" is a tool to keep the masses under control, it does not implement justice, even though that is the cover story. My guess: Slap on the wrist, i.e. fine that is too low to balance the gains they made.

  • by ErikTheRed ( 162431 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:52AM (#55209605) Homepage

    I have some (extremely limited) sympathy for patching "deep applicaiton infrastructure" things like Struts, because it can take quite a bit of QA to make sure that the patches don't break the application or make the problem worse. That being said, it's a top priority and companies - especially in a PCI or similar compliance environments - need to budget the time and resources to deal with issues like this, because they will pop up on a regular basis.

    That being said, this problem could have been blocked without patching. First of all, an application-level proxy / API that sanity checks the types and rate of requests should have been between the public web application and the database back end. All sorts of mischief can be either stopped or at least slowed down here, and the failure to have something list this is a major architectural error. Secondly, a reverse-proxy (or load balancer) could look for attacks of this nature and block them before the get to the web server. F5's products are explicitly capable of stopping this CVE, and I'm sure some of their competitors can do it as well.

    Security needs to exist in layers, because at some point people will screw up at one layer or another. That's just human nature, and it will not change until AIs take over the world and enslave us, but that's a problem for 2019.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:58AM (#55209883)

      it will not change until AIs take over the world and enslave us, but that's a problem for 2019.

      Actually, that was a problem for 2019 which we solve in 2047 by solving the problem 1997. We pushed Clippy into Microsoft office and everyone saw much earlier how annoying he was and it sealed his fate before they made him intelligent. You wouldn't believe how annoying it was to be enslaved by a smart version of Clippy. I don't know what the future hold but thank your lucky stars we aren't going to be enslaved by Omega Clippy. I still have nightmares about it... ("Looks like you're trying to breathe, would you like me to push air into your lungs?" "Fuck you, Clippy! Just let me die!" "Your response is illogical, you will live to continue serving us.")

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:59AM (#55209889)
      to sit around waiting for these kinds of things. But you need skilled people to do it and there's only so many H1-Bs you can have work full time on one thing while three or four times a year ramping up to an 80+ hour work week. Most experienced programmers won't put up with those kinds of hours except occasionally. Once they figure out it's part of the job they leave if they can.

      So you either find a way to get the indentured servants that are folks here on work visas or you pay people to sit around waiting for problems and fixing them. It's usually only $300-$500k/yr. A sizable chunk of change but still quite affordable to large companies. But saving that $300-$500k was somebody's bonus the year the decision was made.
      • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @02:39PM (#55210927) Journal
        You can say that again.

        Ask any programmer: "When was the last time you had a sprint to look at security? When was the last time your manager gave you extra time on a task to make sure it was secure?" The answer is always "never."
        • Ask any programmer: "When was the last time you had a sprint to look at security? When was the last time your manager gave you extra time on a task to make sure it was secure?" The answer is always "never."

          This person gets it.

          On the same note, ask any IT infrastructure person how difficult it is to get spending and policies in place to maintain best practices in most organizations.

        • That said when it is considered, most of the security policies I've seen are most about applying blame than actual "security".

          Essentially, you've made the security restrictions so hard to use that users are all going to circumvent it. "Well then it isn't our fault, it is theirs". The simple example are ridiculous login procedures which prompt all the users to write all the details down on sticky notes and attach it to the monitors... To which they would argue that it was secure, and it is all the users faul

  • by Anonymous Coward

    She's going to get her pension and benefits, which given her title, is a lot of money. Maybe even some sort of parachute.

    This needs to be fully investigated, and she should probably lose all of it.

    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Being sent to the dilithium mines on Rura Penthe seems appropriate. Or the coal mines in Pennsylvania. She worked her way up, now she can work her way down.

    • Typically you don't lose your pension when you get fired for incompetence. Only when you get fired for misconduct, and often not even then unless the misconduct was felony level.
  • So now everyone in the US is encouraged to pay each of the credit bureaus $10 or more to "lock down" their credit. Why isn't this free? Why should they get $1B (100M "customers" * $10) over their mistake?

  • PCI compliance farce (Score:4, Interesting)

    by speedlaw ( 878924 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:06AM (#55209659) Homepage
    So, one year they send me two documents. One says "pci compliance". One is for data breach insurance. I do the PCI, and toss the insurance. The next year, they send me PCI compliance, and charge me for the insurance. I call, tell them no, as I don't have any hackable databases, unless you break into my office and pull out handwritten credit card numbers from each individual file. I argue with them, and they tell me that it is mandatory. I read the policy, and find it is almost useless. If I don't PCI, they charge me $20 per month "noncompliance fee". If I do, they then charge me a bit under $200 for this useless insurance anyway. Meanwhile, someone goes to the front door and walks off with the whole database ? I know interchange is a huge ripoff and is in desperate need of renovation...if Africa can move money with a dumb-phone for a lower commission rate, then V/MC/AX need to die in a fire today...but WTF ? Meanwhile, I'm stuck with paying for insurance I can't use, with a system that is not easily electronically hackable (no stored numbers anywhere..period, and I use their portal to charge HTTPS).........
    • If you're charging the cards via a web app all they need is a keyboard logger to record them and some malware to ship off the stored data to them. Or just a USB dongle installed locally to record keyboard input and then they can pick it up later from the terminal.

      Just because you're not intentionally storing the CC records electronically doesn't mean you're safe. Somebody else might be storing them for you.

  • what a bs. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:22AM (#55209705)
    A company that holds that much information should have top notch security. That includes penetration testing, penetration detection and multiple layers. Public layer should never have access to database that has that much information. There should be an internal webservice that returns filtered information information. This is 101 security!
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly right. I'm afraid that the takeaway will be either "Equifax was negligent in applying security patches to its servers" or "They hired a music major as CSO; they need to hire someone with relevant experience." The fact is that their business model is not built around security as Job #1; board members, who the C-level executives answer to, don't care.

      • Exactly right. I'm afraid that the takeaway will be either "Equifax was negligent in applying security patches to its servers" or "They hired a music major as CSO; they need to hire someone with relevant experience." The fact is that their business model is not built around security as Job #1; board members, who the C-level executives answer to, don't care.

        Security isn't a business model. There is always a trade off and a risk assessment needed to determine what level of security is appropriate for a business. Obviously in this case I agree they *should* have top notch security, but unless organizations are forced to they will choose keeping their bonus $ over spending money for things that "might" happen every day.

        Human beings are horrible at assessing risk. Especially managers who are up away from the fray and who don't understand tech in the first place.

  • One would think that after suffering one of the worst breaches ever in terms of the potential damage, a company would look for fresh perspectives, and not hire the new leaders from within.
    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      One would think that after suffering one of the worst breaches ever in terms of the potential damage, a company would look for fresh perspectives, and not hire the new leaders from within.

      Perhaps not too many outside leaders are interested in being hired as officers on a sinking ship?

      • One would think that after suffering one of the worst breaches ever in terms of the potential damage, a company would look for fresh perspectives, and not hire the new leaders from within.

        Perhaps not too many outside leaders are interested in being hired as officers on a sinking ship?

        No, the ones they should have hired are the ones that want to make names for themselves for righting a sinking a ship. Some executives really are looking for a distinguishing challenge, not just a cushy offer.

    • You make a good point. On the the other hand, they needed people immediately, who can fill those rules on day one. Had the retirements been planned, they would have spent a month of or more looking for the right candidate, who would then give two weeks notice at their old job, and maybe take a week to pack up and move. Then the new person would spend month getting to know the company and its various systems. So a good outside hire would take about 10 weeks from listing to the job to actually being product

  • Just curious... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bagofbeans ( 567926 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:28AM (#55209735)

    ..but were David Webb and/or Susan Mauldin amongst those execs that sold shares before the breach was made public?

    • The three who sold their stock: [npr.org]

      Regulatory filings show the three Equifax executives — Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, U.S. Information Solutions President Joseph Loughran and Workforce Solutions President Rodolfo Ploder — completed stock sales on Aug. 1 and 2.

      I'd believe that none of them thought about the data leak in terms of stock price, and that isn't why they sold, but on the other hand I don't really care if they get punished because of this, either.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:29AM (#55209739)
    Clearly, the root cause here is cat parasites that impaired judgement of the board and execs to ignore basic security practices in a trust and consumer data line of business. It is like mice getting attracted to cat urine smell, only with your financial information.
    • Clearly, the root cause here is cat parasites that impaired judgement of the board and execs to ignore basic security practices in a trust and consumer data line of business. It is like mice getting attracted to cat urine smell, only with your financial information.

      Then clearly companies should only hire heterosexual males. Otherwise, with women and gay men, you're looking at a lot of cat owners.

      But, you may ask - how can we accomplish this without running afoul of anti-discrimination laws? Simple - in the "getting to know you" phase of the interview process, ask about their pets!

      - Are they a dog owner? Congratulations, son, you got the job!
      - Cat owner? Send them packing!

  • by Lucas123 ( 935744 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:31AM (#55209753) Homepage

    FTP: "Thus, MarketWatch reports, Equifax 'admitted that the security hole that attackers used was known in March, about two months before the company believes the breach began.' And even then, Equifax didn't notice (and remove the affected web applications) until July 30."

    I'll be interested to see how Equifax is punished for their lack of security in allowing the sensitive data -- not even given willingly to them -- of 143 million Americans to be stolen. Our laws in this country give slaps on the wrist to these financial services companies because they believe they're too big to fail and should be treated with kid gloves.

    Even today, all mandatory data breach notification regulations are at the state level. Our do-nothing U.S. Congress has yet to require companies to report data breaches at a national level. It's simply mind blowing how we allow this to continue.

  • Its interesting that an Open Source API Apache Struts (likely a few jar files in a web application) caused this issue. Good old reliable and free Apache Struts. This isn't a simple run patch.exe and all is good scenario by some admin. You'd have to update the jars to the fixed apache versions (hopefully these exist), retest everything in the app, and rerelease it to production.
  • Straight to CLUB FED! For a prolonged Stay...
  • by timholman ( 71886 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @11:06AM (#55209919)

    I wondered if Equifax intended to circle the wagons, hold on to upper management, and then try to buy, bribe, or schmooze their way out of this mess via political channels. For a lesser P.R. disaster than this recent exploit, such a strategy might have worked.

    But abruptly canning the CSO and CIO says three things to me:

    (1) Equifax's internal auditing shows that this mess is considerably worse than what has been publicly revealed so far.

    (2) The CEO has now shifted to "I have to save my own job" mode. The CSO and CIO have been thrown under the bus, and more will probably follow.

    (3) Equifax is going to take it on the chin, financially speaking. Canning the CSO and CIO is a clear admission that Equifax was negligent. The lawsuits are going to increase exponentially from this point. But worse than that is the overwhelming demand by millions of consumers to freeze their credit reports. Equifax (along with Experian and Transunion) makes a lot of money selling credit information to banks so that they can offer credit cards to you. Credit freezes prevent that. Every new credit freeze is another hit on the annual bottom line. Equifax is bleeding from millions of tiny cuts, and it will only get worse.

    Frankly, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of guys.

  • Can somebody post what US laws pertain to storing, distributing and protecting of personal information in this case?

  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Saturday September 16, 2017 @12:24PM (#55210309)

    At the executive level, you can assume that anyone holding that position has no actual expertise and sometimes no experience. Anyone with a CxO title is appointed to that position, and is usually well-connected on the boards of several companies. BUT -- good people in this position know they have to hire people who actually do understand the areas they're responsible for. If she wasn't capable of doing this, or was just hiring her friends for key positions, this is the result you get. I've been doing IT work in big companies for over 20 years now and have witnessed stuff like this over and over. It's a constant battle to do a good job when you have executives hiring incompetent people at the top, offshoring or outsourcing key IT functions for big kickbacks, etc. (I'm assuming that when we peel back the covers on this, the unpatched system will be a result of the IT department getting so disconnected that a simple system change takes 3 months and people on 2 different continents coordinating it.)

    What I don't like about IT in general is that people can mess up badly, get fired or be allowed to "retire", then go to another company and mess things up there as well. I would love the idea of a professional organization that would ban incompetent people from working in the field after a fair finding of facts. This would really cut down on the number of slapped-together "solutions" that cause breaches like this in the long run. If my reputation were on the line, I wouldn't rush through a system design the way I'm sometimes forced to by schedules. As it is, IT people can do the equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion and come out on the other end with a clean reputation. (For those unfamiliar, the FFL is France's overseas military force who basically accepts anyone who wants to escape their current situation and grants them a new identity in exchange for military service.)

    • What I don't like about IT in general is that people can mess up badly, get fired or be allowed to "retire", then go to another company and mess things up there as well. I would love the idea of a professional organization that would ban incompetent people from working in the field after a fair finding of facts.

      It may not be as bad as you think. I've personally known of a small number of women who got jobs in various levels of IT management they weren't qualified for and they always ended up having to answer for it. I do want to say that I have also had fantastic female managers in IT, but they were qualified for the jobs. One unqualified lady worked for the government and since they almost never fire anybody, they took away all her direct reports and made her an office of one until she retired. The other few

    • or was just hiring her friends for key positions

      There is absolutely nothing new about this. "It's not what you know, but who you know" was a common saying over fifty years ago, and there were lots of stories about the boss's friend getting a good job.

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