ChoicePoint Data Theft Worse Than Initially Reported

As I originally suspected the ChoicePoint fraud case has expanded to a national scope. The Associated Press is reporting that half a million people across the United States may have had their information stolen. Attorneys general from 38 states have demanded that ChoicePoint warn any victims in their states, beyond those in California. So far a 41-year-old Nigerian, Olatunji Oluwatosin, has been sentenced to 16 months in jail. According to AP, Oluatosin "was arrested on Oct. 27 when ChoicePoint faxed him some paperwork at a Kinko's store in a sting operation. He pleaded no contest and did not agree to help authorities in the probe."

Politicians are getting angry, according to AP: "On Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called for hearings on her proposed national version of the California law, while Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., asked federal regulators Friday to oversee data-brokering companies the same way they do other companies that handle financial and medical records. New York state legislator James Brennan asked his state to suspend an $800,000 ChoicePoint contract until the company agreed to warn any New York residents whose data might have been exposed."

Suspend until ChoicePoint sends a letter? How about cancelling the contract instead?

Update: Check out this great quote by Adam Shostack:

I hope Richard, at TaoSecurity, takes Choicepoint to IDS kindergarden.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thank you for blogging this. Illinois' Gov. Rod Blagojevich has done nothing. Illinois' AG. Lisa Madigan sent a letter to ChoicePoint. The citizens don't know anybody that have been harmed by this, so the politicians focus on video games, casinos, and :s/illegal aliens/immigrants/g.
12:05 PM
Anonymous said…
What makes such things even more "interesting" is the fact that any minor problem being revealed, triggers even deeper scrutiny, both from the white hat community, as well as - probably - from the black hat one. So brace for much more, in the days to come :(
5:52 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more