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"Clear" Laptop Found, In the Same Locked Office
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Aug 06, 2008 07:06 AM
from the never-mind dept.
from the never-mind dept.
jafo alerts us to an SFGate story reporting that the lost "Clear" Program laptop has turned up in the same office from which it was reported missing, but not in its previous location. "A preliminary investigation shows that the information was not compromised... The computer held names, addresses and birthdates for people applying to the program, as well as driver's license, passport and green card information. But, she said, the computer contained no Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, fingerprints, facial images or other biometric information... The information was encrypted on the server, but not on the laptop, although it should have been... However, it was protected by two levels of passwords." Reader jafo adds, "Pardon me if I have little confidence that an organization that loses a sensitive laptop for 9 days is able to tell if it was compromised."
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"Clear" Air-Travel Pass Data Stolen From SFO 379 comments
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "A laptop containing the unencrypted security data for 33,000 travelers using the Clear system was stolen at San Francisco International Airport on July 26, according to CBS5 Television. The Clear system allows travelers who register and pay a $100.00 annual fee to speed through airport security by using a smart card at special kiosks in some airports. TSA has suspended new registrations in the system, which is run by a private contractor, Verified Identity Pass, Inc., a subsidiary of GE. The laptop was apparently stolen from a locked office at SFO. The company has now decided that it might be a good idea to encrypt the data in their systems. They are in the process of notifying customers that all of their personal data, including name, address, SSi number, passport number, date of birth, etc. has been compromised."
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Sorry (Score:5, Funny)
... I borrowed it for the weekend to play WoW.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Funny)
I'm amazed...how did you get through the two levels of passwords? You must be one hell of a master hacker!
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:4, Funny)
Jeez man, didn't you learn anything from all those hollywood documentaries? Out of the bazillion possibilities, the password is always set to be the one that happens to be your second guess (third if there is a bomb ticking and you need the password to diffuse the bomb).
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Informative)
Your (mysterious) reply prompted me to go to the far corners of the internet to learn that the proper word is "defuse". Words spoken like a true zen master - you don't get a clue unless you are already enlightened.
Thank you.
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, that's easy. You see, we tape the passwords to the bottom of the PC. Those of us who work there know this, but no outside hacker would ever think to look there.
Plus the first password is 12345 and the second is ABCDEFG. Half the time, I don't even have to look at the sticky note.
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:4, Funny)
yep, first password was "AlQaeda", but no way to remember the exact ortograph of these f**ing ba**ard hem.
The second was "bomb".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Time to change my password (Score:4, Funny)
the first password is 12345
Amazing, that's the same password that I use on my luggage!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
simple...
he's a level 3 hacker.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Only if you roll less than a 20 on 2d10.
God, I can't believe I remember crap like that from 20 years ago. :)
Parent
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Is "20 years ago" code for "last night in moms basement"?
Parent
ob Eddie Izzard (Score:3, Funny)
Breaking into the Pentagon computer..
Double click on 'Yes.'
Oh. Password protected. Twenty billion possible chances..
Er..
Jeff.
Hey!
Two Levels of Passwords? (Score:5, Funny)
Those are, like, needed to remove the hard drive, right?
Re:Two Levels of Passwords? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, the screws on the bottom of the laptop will ask you the boot and Windows passwords before they'll open.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can't help but think that the first was password to their Vista Enterprise and second... Well... That hopefully was atleast bitlocker, perhaps more.
Or maybe the first one was BIOS and the second Windows.
Re:Two Levels of Passwords? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't even have to remove the HD. If the data is not encrypted you can boot from a USB key or CD and just copy the files.
Parent
Re:Two Levels of Passwords? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of one time where my boss was in the field at a customer's factory. He had his "notebook" in which he writes everything down. (a paper notebook, old school, not a laptop)
He left it on a table in the break room for a couple hours and forgot about it. Later, when he remembered, it was gone.
A few hours LATER, it was back, pretty much where he left it.
Luckily it didn't have any pricing or other such things in it, but it still wasn't a good thing.
But Karma is interesting, this same customer a few months later set us an email which happened to have a high level very confidential spreadsheet attached, accidentally. It contained the companies strategic plan for the coming months - peoples salaries, names, locations, PLANT CLOSURE PLANS, savings from plant closures, all that stuff. "ummm, yes, there was a spreadsheet that you
My point is, and I have one, encryption is fine but it is no guarantee against mistakes and/or stupidity.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
no excuses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no excuses (Score:4, Funny)
Must be a statistician.
Stolen = -1 laptop
returned = 1 laptop
therefore, there never was a laptop.
Parent
I lost all confidence in Clear yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
Two Passwords? (Score:5, Insightful)
So... what does that actually mean? I know that TFA is a media fluffed version washed for the general masses, but they could've mentioned that part at least. If one was the NT login, were the admins smart enough to disable the LM Hash? Still, booting it with a *NIX CD and blanking the SAM password for administrator is trivial. What could the second be? A BIOS password? Open it and pull the battery. Big deal.
Is there something I'm missing about this? Are there a (whopping!) two password scheme that could actually make something more secure then just booting it with something else and pulling data off?
Re:Two Passwords? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. Standard internal investigation procedure: Wait until suspected bad actor has gone home, go into his office, remove hard drive from computer, use Ghost to create reasonably accurate copy of existing drive on another drive, replace duplicate drive in computer. Take your original drive back to your forensics lab, use your forensics software to make a forensically sound image of the original drive, lock the original drive in your safe in case a judge ever wants to see it, drill down through your forensic image at your leisure.
If you weren't especially interested in creating chain of custody documents, you'd just make a forensic image of the original drive and replace the original drive in the box. Then, absent tool marks or other evidence that the box had been opened, even a qualified forensic technician could swear under oath that there was no evidence that anybody had accessed the data on the box. And it wouldn't matter how many passwords you had on the box if it weren't encrypted...
Parent
Re:Two Passwords? (Score:5, Informative)
It could be a big deal. We do warranty and service work for HP hardware and in the past laptops have come in with BIOS passwords and we were not able to remove them. The password is actually part of the ATA protocol and so the disk is unusable without it, even in another machine. I think the only operation you can do is an ERASE. If you remove the battery then the BIOS forgets not only the BIOS password, but the disk password too.
I'm sure there are backdoors for some drives, but the customer in question in this case certainly wasn't willing to pay for us to investigate it so the data was as good as lost.
TPM, if implemented correctly, provides fairly good protection too. As does Microsofts BitLocker.
Physical access reduces security by a whole heap, but if things are done right then it doesn't reduce it to zero.
Of course as others have mentioned, an organisation that loses laptops like that probably isn't 'doing things right'...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A hard drive password wouldn't technically be encryption. It's just a level of access restrictions. It works with the firmware of the micro-controller board to regulate access to the device.
If I remember right, swapping the control boards on identical drives and placing it in a different computer could get around that. There are some issues with that though, the the encryption places some code in the boot sector which if read by the drive's controller (on the drive, not the main board) will block access to
Found it again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, we...uhm...found the laptop again...really did...yeah...because claiming so leaves us protected from any coming lawsuits that might or might not be caused by any identity theft cases that could be related to (but, of course, actually are nothing at all caused by) this incident...which certainly did never happen...
And of course noone tampered with the machine...after all if WE couldn't find it, who else could have?
Friends again?
"Clear" Laptop Found, In the Same Locked Office (Score:5, Funny)
That is why I prefer opaque laptops.
How Hard Did They Look? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct response (Score:5, Insightful)
Whichever it was, the only information they had was that it was unaccounted for. It was actually a good response to automatically assume the worst case scenario and deal with the situation as if that had happened. If the worst case scenario was the case then at least it was dealt with as best it could be. If not then the only harm done is to them and not their customers.
So while losing it was very inept, their response afterwards was actually fairly responsible of them.
Clear is bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole 'Clear' thing is bullshit. Its a bad solution to a problem that should not exist in the first place.
If you buy the story that all the airport security that results in thousands standing around waiting to get to their gates is both necessary and effective then you must question any program that claims to pre-screen anyone because that just opens a window of opportunity between the pre-screen and the actual boarding of the flight in which the pre-screened person can be compromised in any number of ways.
It all comes back to the problem that there is no such thing as "the evil bit" - and any system which tries to make up for that by using some other combination of 'bits' as a proxy for the non-existent 'evil bit' is just a house of cards built on a non-existent foundation.
Even if you take Bruce Schneier's view that Clear is a good thing - not for the pre-screen, but because of the open-market approach to airport security which lets people pay more in exchange for a guaranteed short processing time - its still bullshit. That's because the rich and the powerful - the idiots who make the laws that created the TSA and their time/money wasting policies will be able to avoid having to suffer the consequences of their own actions. They can just pay a few hundred dollars more and never suffer the crap that they dumped on all the plebes.
Congress already exempts itself from too many of the laws its passes (no social security, they have their own program, no anti-discrimination in hiring laws on the hill, etc) they should not be able to get another free pass on suffering the effects of creating the TSA.
Re:Clear is bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Welcome to the Windows Computing culture.
Data is secure in the SQL server in the system. Dumbass manager #2 uses his login and dumps it to excel or to access because he's handy with those.
I am sure the IT department has warned against this behavior but managers like to ignore what IT says when they have an "idea"
Kind of like how someone discovered the entire companies salary breakdown on a laser printer in the sales area.... A dipshit manager in Accounting printed a secure document on a unsecure printer (because hers was being serviced) and LEFT IT THERE for 4 hours.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps your 'dipshit manager' is the only honest person in accounting...
Re:Clear is bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad someone said it.
No company that I've ever worked for that keeps salaries "secret" are being honest. There are tremendous variances in pay rates, which are based on arbitrary things, not on the position, ability, performance, or workload of the individual.
If you can have a 5 year employee making $35k/yr, and a starting employee making $75k/yr, and another making over $100k/yr, all doing the same job, with the same workload, then there's something seriously wrong with the pay scheme. If you believe a position is worth $75k/yr, then that's what the base salary is for the position, and there should be adjustments for time with the company (10%/yr), performance bonuses, incentives, etc.
I could rant for days, but I agree, the "dipshit" manager "accidentally" let a company secret out, which needed to be told.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ehh. We actually caught a guy double dipping on proposals once that way.
He was working for a competitor at the same time and printed two proposals with different letterheads and left them on a printer outside his office because the last tech set that as the default printer when printer in his office was removed and replaced.
Some drone kept asking who was printing Competitor X's documents and no one answered. So we looked at sales reports for anyone who dropped in sales and then emails for the last week or s
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
About airport security... Crashing a few planes is one thing, but what happens when someone in an explosive vest walks into an airport, and sits in the middle of a backed up line waiting to go through the security checkpoint. They don't even need a plane ticket, its public up until you get past security. Multiply that by a handfull of airports on the same day, and airports and airlines will go bankrupt in no time flat.
I've always thought that the first rule of this kind of security, is you don't present a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote of the Day (Score:5, Funny)
"[data was not encrypted] However, it was protected by two levels of passwords."
Baby, I'm sorry I cheated on you. But I was thinking of you while we did it.
About time you cleaned that office Bob (Score:3)
When they finally found the laptop did they stop cleaning the office or did they finish up?
We'll just put it back (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what we have here is starting to sound like: employee 'borrows' office computer for home use, manager raises alarm, news media panics, employee waits until dust settles a little to slip 'borrowed' property back into office.
Either that, or the identity thieves who who masterminded the scheme to steal that data were really slow.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Too convenient (Score:3, Interesting)
After the big media blitz, I imagine the laptop was found "somewhere," and it was a lot easier to explain if "somewhere" became the same locked office it was supposed to be in. I seem to recall some removable hard drives in the Los Alamos fiasco that also eventually "were discovered" in secure areas like behind a copy machine or something.
/cynical
realistic (what's the difference, anyway?)
Laptops and removable hard drives are inherently portable - if you really care about preserving the confidentiality of anything, it should be treated in an "eyes only" manner while on the portable media - when you're done, either encrypt or wipe. If the portable device leaves your sight for 15 minutes, you can assume that it has been copied. If it's not encrypted, it doesn't matter how many passwords are required, it can be copied in a very short time with a screwdriver and a mini-notebook, or any other contraption with a compatible drive controller.
/realistic
Ask Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Slashdot,
I've borrowed a laptop from my office to download a little . . . well, nevermind. But, the thing is that my manager went apeshit and the laptop turns out to have a lot of valuable data sitting on it. What should I do?
The FBI is searching the homes of all the employees, so I can't keep it. If I give it to a friend, some one will eventually tell and I'll get busted.
If I dump it or destroy it, they'll assume espionage and the investigation will go on for months and I'm sure to slip up eventually.
If I return it to quiet things down, I might provide them with forensic evidence they can link to me, not to mention maybe getting caught doing it.
Please help. If I lose my security clearance, I'll never get another job.
My guess... (Score:5, Funny)
It was never actually missing. They just couldn't find it in their own office.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: (Score:3, Insightful)
WHY THE HELL IS THIS STUFF ON LAPTOPS TO START WITH!
I'm sorry, but there are some information that belongs on servers managed by people that at least understand (hopefully) security and encryption. And then the only access to it from secured thin client terminals inside the office.
what was your password that no one guessed (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember getting a security audit. These people came in to 'hack' (just get root access) to the systems. Once they had that they stopped. They really just ran password guessing programs on the machines. I had a DB server that was not part of the domain only used DB accounts no domain accounts were used. So the domain accounts and passwords didn't work. At the end of the week they never got into that machine. The rest of the windows, sun, VAX, I forget about the mainframe were cracked. My boss was wondering why that one windows box was not cracked, and so did the company. I never told the company I just said they failed to get into my DB machine. They left and my boss and a few VPs wanted to know how I did it.
The password was: ThisIsThePasswordForMachineDelta
They never went past 15 characters in their password program. I was surprised that it wasn't guessed since it was all letters but it worked. And a new 30+ password systems was set in place. I did get a few threatening emails after the new password policy was put in place though. This was also 1997 too, so it most likely would not work today.
It wasn't (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is, they have no idea if it was compromised or not. All you'd need is an Ubuntu boot CD and you could read the data straight off the drive.
Next time they should use THREE levels of passwords. ;)
Parent
Re:It wasn't (Score:4, Insightful)
How about one level of accountability?
rj
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people don't know that. It's been helpful to know though. I've retrieved (or told someone to retrieve) things in "locked" rooms that weren't suppose to be locked.
Except for once... The CEO had this thing for keeping the tape backups in his safe, in his locked office. He was out of town, the door was locked, and we needed one of the tapes. With the COO's permission, one guy climbed over and opened the door from the inside for us. The safe was a lot easier, he left
Re: (Score:3)
You may be making things too complex. I still have various keys to campus buildings a decade since I've needed them. They never asked for them back when I quit working there.
My bet is though is that someone took the laptop home to play with and once things hit the media they brought it back.