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TJX Intruder Had Their Encryption Key

Written by Evan Schuman
March 29th, 2007
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Posted in IT Strategy/Industry, Payment Systems, Security/Fraud
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Most Recent Comments

"The mobile challenge is less about supporting the devices and more about having the skill and tenacity to integrate the ordering app into the multitude of POS networks/software iterations. " -Dan Stiel

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Visa's new PA-DSS Best Practices guidelines will place vast new burdens on vendors and merchants, with very little gain in card data security, and leaves at least one oceanliner-size loophole that benefits--guess who! Visa themselves. Consider background checking employees, for instance: I doubt Visa can point to even a single incident where any software developer--with or without a criminal record--deliberately introduced a vulnerability that resulted in a compromise of card data. And a "clean" background gives no assurance an employee will not "go bad." If anything, relying on background checks might lend a false sense of security. Read more...
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Leaning to program isn't so easy. One of the payment application problems is precisely this - the programmers do not know how to program. Read more...

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Good article, thanks. One possibility that comes to mind to level the playing field, or make the shopping experience 'handset agnostic,' is that most smartphones are coming equipped with WiFi. Retailers *can* control that experience by offering highly available, reliable and good performing WiFi connectivity to their in-store shoppers. Read more...

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xcergy
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The challenge is less about supporting the devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, et al). That's actually easier than you might first think. The bigger issue for operators (not our client, I might add) not mentioned in your article, is having the skill and tenacity to integrate the ordering app into the multitude of POS networks/software iterations, and vintage systems a multi-unit operator tends to support. Read more...
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True. Its more about customer retention than acquisition. Read more...

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This article does mention, but does not give enough attention to, the fact that the attacks discussed are only feasible when the encrypted password file can be copied and subjected to an offline attack. The trick is to have authentication performed on a separate, much more strongly secured host - such as an Active Directory Domain Controller, or a Kerberos server, or a NIS+ server, or even using something as banal as an LDAP-over-SSL authentication dialog. In these environments, the odds of the "password file" being stolen and subjected to an offline attack go to near zero, and only online attacks may be carried out by the attacker. With sensible exponential backoff between failed password attempts, lockout after a modest number of failed attempts on a single account, and pattern detection, that minimum 7 character password is quite secure enough. Passwords aren't dead yet for security purposes, and they will be with us for a very long while to come for practical purposes. The trick is to employ them correctly. Read more...
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C. F.
I do not see why people take it so personally. I tend to agree with Walt in that the keys should be able to be decrypted relatively easy. Yes sure certain constants have to be met first (such as having the background to do encryption, having access to the data in the first place and other items). Since all algorithms are based on a mathematical equation it stands to reason like the simple problem (y+100=900) what is Y it would be somewhat similar for cryptography in its standard form. Read more...
A Reader
But security has to be 100% perfect, all the time. You can't build 98% of a castle wall and expect to keep out 98% of the barbarians. Settling for a second-rate cryptographic solution is the same thing, but because you don't understand the problem, you can't see that the walls don't actually encircle the entire castle. Read more...