SPACE ROGUE

Many years ago, (like ten or more) there was a major US bank (BoA, CitiBank I don’t remember) that had a major security breach. I don’t remember all the details, and Google has been less than helpful, but the bank in question was very forth coming, they announced the incident, released a press release, and detailed what happened. They then spent millions to revamp their entire security posture to prevent it from happening again. That bank lost millions of dollars of business afterwards despite the fact that after the breach it was probably the most secure bank in the country at that time.

Looks like banks have learned their lesson and now are keeping as quiet as possible about any and all compromises in their security.

Kevin Poulsen has written an excellent article over at Wired detailing the recent breach of ATM card numbers and their PINS. Seems that someone broke into a server that controlled CitiBank branded ATMs in various 7-11s across the country and then used the card numbers and PINs to create fake cards and drain bank accounts. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this case such as who was actually responsible for this server. Citibank is pointing the finger at a third party transaction processing company and that company seems to be denying any involvement. No one is being very forthcoming with the details, probably afraid of bad publicity and the loss of business that may result from it.

Consumers of course are protected by law from actual monetary losses but the hassle of having to get a new card number can’t be fun. Unfortunately there isn’t much the consumer can do to protect themselves against this sort of attack. You can try to avoid those stand alone ATM kiosks like those found in convenience stores and rely solely on ATMS at actual banks but in many cases that is just not practical. So keep a close eye on those statements, verify every line item and call your bank at the first sign of anything weird.

UPDATE: Thanks to NR for sending me a link to the CitiBank breach from 1995 that I referenced above.
 

About a month or so ago I did an email interview with an online ezine known as The Bug Magazine. They are based in Brazil so most of the magazine is in Portuguese however the editors graciously published my interview in English as well. Scroll about half way down the page to get to the English version. The interview covers some of the old L0pht and @Stake stuff but also touches on new trends and the future.
 

I had been waiting for the folks at Source Boston to update their website with relevant materials before I posted a recap but they are probably waiting until Monday and I know I won’t have time to post anything then. So be sure to check their site for presentation slides, videos, and whatnot, but in the meantime here is what I have.

First of all I don’t think I have been to a better con since HoHoCon ’92 or maybe SummerCon ’97? (Was there a SummerCon that year?). So what made it so great? The excellent talks for one thing. You had to make hard decisions for three days straight about where you wanted to spend your time. All of the talks I listened to were extremely high caliber, better than most talks at Blackhat, Defcon, RSA or elsewhere. Then throw in just enough socializing to make it interesting without going overboard (i.e. Defcon), not to many pushy vendors trying to sell stuff (i.e. RSA), and the small (by Blackhat standards) number of attendees and you had a really intimate setting of knowledge sharing for three days straight.

For a recap of the whole conference check out Jack Daniel’s blog post over at Uncommon Sense Security and check the individual talk write-ups at the Source Boston Blog. So far I have only found slides for Sinan Eren’s talk on Information Operations. Dan Geer’s keynote speach is posted here (If you read nothing else read that!). If you want to relive the con vicariously check out the tweme feed as several people (myself included) were microblogging the whole thing.) Other than that you can check out all the photos posted to Flickr so far.
Oh, and videos of all the talks should be available at Media Archives real soon now. I can personally recommend James Atkinson’s talk about telephone defenses, Andrew Jaquith’s talk about problems with AV software, Matt Moynahan’s talk about software inspections, Carole Fennelly’s talk about Incident response plans, and Frank Reiger’s talk on cell phone security. Oh, and there was a little thing near the end about the L0pht you might want to watch as well.

Anyone got more links? Post in the comments. Thanks.
 

Yesterday I unfortunately missed James Atkinson’s talk at Source Boston but evidently it scared a few people and pissed off a few others. I did manage to catch Carole Fennelly’s talk about Incident Response Plans which was very informative even for me. And of course people are still talking about Dan Geer’s keynote. Still great talks lined up for today, listening to Frank Reiger right now telling me how insecure all my cell phones are, scary. Oh, yeah, I have a little talk scheduled later as well, at least thats what their telling me, after last night’s pub crawl I’m not sure I remember right now.

Videos of the talks are said to be available at Media Archives at some point real soon now. If you missed the con be sure to pick up a couple of these.

P.S. If you ever get to sit down with James Atkinson ask him to empty his pockets onto the table. Trust me you won’t be at a loss for conversation.