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Best Western Loses Details On 8 Million Customers
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Aug 24, 2008 06:42 AM
from the another-reason-to-hostel dept.
from the another-reason-to-hostel dept.
Albanach writes "Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper has an exclusive report that the Best Western hotel chain has lost the personal details of each and every guest who has stayed at any of its 1300 hotels in the past 12 months. This amounts to details on 8 million customers and includes information such as name, address, credit card details and employment details. The data even includes future booking details, causing speculation that homes could be targeted for burglary when it's anticipated they will be unoccupied. A Best Western spokesperson is quoted as saying 'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question. We are currently in the process of working with our credit card partners to ensure that all relevant procedural standards are met, and that the interests of our guests are protected.'"
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Ask Slashdot: Should Companies Share Criminal Blame In ID Theft? 328 comments
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia criticizes the lack of criminal charges for corporate negligence in data breaches in the wake of last week's Best Western breach, which exposed the personal data of 8 million customers. 'The responsibilities attached to retaining sensitive personal identity information should include criminal charges against the company responsible for a leak, in addition to the party that receives the information,' Venezia writes. 'Until the penalties for giving away sensitive information in this manner include heavy fines and possibly even jail time for those responsible for securing that information, we'll see this problem occur again and again.' As data security lawyer Thomas J. Smedinghoff writes, data security law is already shifting the blame for data breaches onto IT, thanks to an emerging framework of complex regulations that could result in grave legal consequences should your organization suffer a breach. To date, however, IT's duty to provide security and its duty to disclose data breaches does not include criminal prosecution. Yet, with much of the data security framework being shaped by 'IT negligence' court cases over 'reasonable' security, that could very well be put to the test some day in court." It's a slippery slope to be sure, but where should the buck stop?
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What is a continental hotel? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Sunday Herald article is amazingly unclear about the scope of this breach. Which hotels are affected? The article says all "continental hotels". Does that, from a British Newspaper, mean european continental hotels only?
I stayed at Best Western in the US late last year. Luckily, I have since then changed to a different credit card than the one I used at the time.
The last time when a company I did business with lost my credit card details, I decided I wouldn't do anything about it until I really saw an unauthorized withdrawal from my account. Because in the past, when there was an unauthorized withdrawal (only happened to me once), a single phone call to the credit card company had been enough to get my money back (some 300 Euro). They said they would start to investigate it, but because it could take a long time, "here's your money back as a first measure."
With the recently stolen card info, I got a notice from my bank a few months later that they had to disable my card because there was an attempt to commit fraud with it. I got a new card with no further action required on my part.
Either way, this could turn out to be a big hassle for Best Western. If only they could let me know if my personal data was affected.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is a continental hotel? (Score:5, Informative)
Well for brits, Continental means European except British.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No, jrothwell97 is right. The British do not consider themselves to be European. My British SO's family get indignant when you say they are Europeans. Thus, for the British, Continental is European.
The Swedes, on the other hand, do consider themselves European, but not continental (despite the Scandinavian peninsula being attached through Finland to Russia).
Re:What is a continental hotel? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> Either way, this could turn out to be a big hassle for Best Western. If only they could let me know
> if my personal data was affected.
They will : they've just decided to put the list of names, addresses, and credit card information of the compromised client records freely available online for you to check. For convenience, they've put these datas available for download as an Excel spreadsheet as well.
Re:What is a continental hotel? (Score:5, Informative)
Replying to myself, I just checked Wikipedia. Best Western [wikipedia.org] has 4,000 hotels world-wide, 2,000 of which in North America. This means that the 1,312 hotels affected are probably all in continental Europe.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
From TFA:
"... enough data there to spark a major European crime wave."
"... harvesting every record on Best Western's European reservation system."
Sounds like the article did disambiguate...
Greatest cyber-heist in world history (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA:
This sounds a bit exaggerated to me. Greatest Cyber-Heist? WHat's the odds they just hadn't bothered to encrypted the details or had done something silly with the encryption keys?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By definition, the "Greatest" cyber-heist is one that we don't know about, since its greatness inheres in the fact that it's undetectable.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're saying greatest as in "Most awesome", which would infer not a single person noticing anything was wrong.
Not such a bad thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is misleading:
The details wern't "Lost", the server was comprimised and they were stolen.
This doesn't affect all Best Western hotels, just some European ones.
The details stolen are from 2007-2008 (up to 20 months)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah. Personally, I'd like it if more companies *actually lost* my personal information more often. As in, "oops, that personal information was irretrievably deleted."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or even as in they don't store personal information beyond the point when it is actually needed.
All sorts of companies appear to treat infrequent, even "once only" customers as though they are frequent repeat customers. It simply dosn't make much sense for a hotel chain to do this. With the possible exception of big corporate customers, the typic
Re: Lost Vs. Stolen Round 2, Fight! (Score:3, Interesting)
Best Western wasn't deprived of their backups, were they? So by famous Slashdot Meme-Think, the info "wasn't stolen", it was "infringed"!
Since people don't make money by selling their personal details anymore, you can always go to their houses for live performances!
Since the "making available" theory is in trouble these days, we look for actual proof of data download... which we have, right? Then can we get the FBI to go after these guys for statutory damages of 3*$1*8M = $24 Million? (Because many songs ha
Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole thing is very confusing to make sense of, starting with British writers that write like the National Enquirer.
Starting at the beginning, from TFA, someone from India "planted a trojan virus on one of the [continental] Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations" collecting the username and login of a staff person's login.
So what does that give them? A log in to the Best Western reservations system. Gee, wonder how many people know that top secret info? Like every freakin Best Western counter clerk, for starters.
And then what does one do when logged in to a reservations system? They make reservations!!! Holy cow, that's top secret too.
So here's where it gets confusing. How does someone knowing the login to a reservations system, which is like everyone using it, allow anyone who's logged in to acquire the entire reservations history table?
If anyone can do it by selecting history on all or something, then any Best Western clerk could have retrieved all this info at any time just by logging in.
With the trojan virus hocus pocus talk, there is an implied possibility that the virus spread to the server which provided a back door to retrieve the info, but that isn't stated. What's stated is the that the trojan merely recorded a login and the Indian got it. We know that is what is happening in bot networks all over the world. It's just a matter of which logins get snapped up from an unsuspecting user.
So either any Best Western clerk could retrieve all reservation history including credt card info at any time, in which case the Indian might just as well worked for one, or there's an unspecified and unexplained access to the server that provided a backdoor FTP from the server.
One or the other, but if the first then it wouldn't be the greatest cyber-crime ever, it would be the worst reservation system server software in history.
If the second, again, a clerk could have copied a trojan virus file from a floppy to the reservations PC and logged in, doesn't require a "hacker" at all.
My guess from the frenzied journalism is that a reservations clerk login is all it took rather than hoping the trojan virus could both capture the login and then also migrate successfully to the server, which trojans generally aren't multi-OS aware and assuming the server was the same OS, migrated with standard trojan attack vectors for the OS. I find that hard to believe though.
I also wonder whether there were any confirmed sightings of the info being offered in criminal forums by any of these quoted security experts or just how it came to be known that the entire reservations history table has been downloaded by anyone who acquired the reservations system login from the Indian.
Gee, having a Best Western reservations system login being the cyber-crime of the century is the goofiest thing I've seen since the last /. debacle thread, and we don't have to go too far back to find one.
rd
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of good points here. I have work with the same type of reservations system. A front desk clerks credentials could indeed be used to extract the data -- calling up one record at a time. (On versions released in the past five years all but the last 4 numbers of the CCN are masked so they still would not have everything they might want.)
A front desk clerk with way too many permissions, working knowledge of Oracle, and a DB password might be more efficient at stealing information.
Have not been able to f
PARDON? (Score:4, Insightful)
'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...
WHAT? In that case, they haven't lost the data due to carelessness (which I can just about forgive)- they've failed to secure their systems, which is criminally negligent.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
they've failed to secure their systems
Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...
Don't rush to judgements without the facts being in. Its entirelly possible from what was posted there that a single employee did something bad, not that the whole organization was negligent. In most computer systems you utimately have to have someone or a small group of people that are "root". Some account has to have the authority to do just about anything to the system in case it needs to be fixed, in a hurry.
Maybe a priniciple DBA decided to join the mob in this case who knows?
Even if you have separat
Re:PARDON? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can break one account and download millions of records before anyone notices and you allow all that anonymously over the Internet, then I'd say there are some systemic problems. That is by far the easiest way to do it, but also the least secure. If any single user account gets hacked, the entire database is open for quick and easy download. But, if you had people go through a front-end that only fed one record at a time, logged all records presented to which accounts, froze the account at more than 10 records per minute or 100 in a day (or whatever number works) then you could make a system that would still allow for a user that gives away his username and password and not make millions of records available for immeditate download. And even if it did happen, you'd have an exact record of every record touched, to limit exposure and damages (no one claiming they were affected when they weren't).
Compartmentalization is important for security, but never done because it is often inconvenient for the users. The trick is to fine for just the loss of records, something like $10 per record exposed, so that they will treat them like real money, not just a PR issue if things go wrong. The current method of them paying only with proof of damages to a person, or buying a credity watch for a year (probably at some obscenely discounted rate and gets you on the credit report company's mailing list) is a joke. Make it cost real money and you'll see more lying about when they do happen and more security to prevent them from happening.
Even if you have separation of powers you are still vulnerable. Suppose the DBA and the System Admin are different people. Maybe the DBA keeps things locked up tight and the database itself is encrypted. The system admin can still just sit and read memory all day and collect the info that way. I used to do this in school. Some of us had shell accounts in the comp sci dept. I never had to "break" or get elevated privilages past any security but I could collect lots of interesting information by running a little C program I wrote which allocated a big character array, did not initialize it and then wrote the contents to disk every few moments, lather rinse repeat.
Or, they give full read access to everyone so that some accountant somewhere has an easier time setting up Crystal Reports to run a monthly report. You don't need high level access to compromise the data. Even the lowest read-only access will expose every record in it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fine, but if the company did its due dilligence, like say priviliged IT works were promoted from with in after long periods of honest work, or new people were given careful background checks, then its sort of unfair to blame the company
Its clear whoever did this was found and disabled quickly so they do keep logs and somebody must be auditing those logs.
That is all that can reasonably be dones about your top level IT admin staff. Beyond that you create policy that says hey you have to ask someone from exec
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
None of these address the real issue of storing data for considerably longer than it was necessary. Including data which should only have been in the system for a matter of seconds and never written to any non volatile storage.
Re:PARDON? (Score:4, Insightful)
I highly doubt that the Best Western meets the standards for criminal negligence in this case. In fact, the article mentions that they deactivated the compromised security credentials of the employee in question immediately. That alone suggests that levels of security were present in their information systems. You would seem to suggest that the fact they did means the security did not exist, which is contradictory. The security existed, it was just bypassed or failed in some way. Failure does not automatically equal negligence.
Remember, that criminal negligence is prosecuted by an attorney representing the state or the "people" which can result in jail time. There are several levels of criminal negligence. ALL of them involve the intent of the person(s) accused. In order to be criminally negligent a person would have to have knowledge that their actions (or lack of actions) would contribute to the harm of another. Furthermore, the reasonable person standards are also used. This reasonable person is appropriately informed, capable, aware of the law, and fair-minded. A reasonable person would have to conclude that the Best Western knew their security policies were inadequate and that there was a high probability that the sensitive information of their customers would be compromised in some way.
I highly doubt that a reasonable person, which would most likely be a network administrator or somebody possessing the requisite skill sets, would conclude that the security measures were that inadequate and that the Best Western had knowledge of that fact. Logon credentials by itself suggest that.
You should also know that to even consider criminal negligence, a crime must take place as a result of the negligence. Any culpability, or liability is related to those crimes only. The theft of the data is not a crime that could be considered either. It has to be a crime resulting from that criminal act. If I took my handgun and deliberately left it in the street and somebody picked it up and shot another person, that would be the situation I am referring too. So until it is proven that a suitably large number of customers were financially damaged to a large degree, criminal negligence would never even be discussed by any prosecutors in the first place. Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.
Now if the Best Western made a habit out of keeping all the information in plain text files on shared network drives, on computers directly attached to the Internet, with no firewalls with full access permissions for anonymous people, then you would absolutely have a point.
The reality of the situation suggests that they may have been negligent (doubtful), but to suggest jail time for those involved is a bit drastic, premature, and certainly not supported by the information we possess from this summary, let alone the whole article.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the protections afforded to most credit card customers, the vast majority of all damage is going to be against the credit card companies anyways, so it would be up to them. It is far more likely that a civil suit will result from this, and only if the credit card companies believe they can construct a case that will convince a jury that negligence exists.
The credit card companies trying to build a case of negilence???
The whole idea of using number that you have to show to untrusted individuals to make a payment and which can be reused any number of times is negilent in itself.
The sooner we get rid of credit card numbers the better.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Criminally negligent is a very serious allegation you are making . I can not understate that.
it's easy. Europe, and member states have strict data protection laws, Best Western have broken more than one. Certainly, in the UK directors of a company are responsible for data protection and could be criminally responsible - although this has not been tested in court.
Also, I think Best Western will certainly be having uncomfortable discussions with their merchant acquirers because Best Western have not met the terms in the acquirer contract to appli PCI DSS [pcisecuritystandards.org] (Credit card security standards)
Certainl
This incident brought to you by Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
bypassing the system's security software and placing a Trojan virus on one of the Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations
We all know that's a very difficult attack when Windows is involved! Amazing cleverness here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We don't know for certain yet, and I'm no über-hacker myself, but it's a very safe bet that "machines used for reservations" are whitebox junk running WinXP. That provides a nice, easy, warm, slippery orifice of entry for deeper penetration. All the clerk has to do is open the wrong email, download the wrong ringtone, blah blah...
Bottom line, it's negligent to run Windows in a business setting and pretty soon the courts will agree. A.C. below is right: We only need to wait for an eventual class action
Just a nitpick (Score:4, Interesting)
From here [wikipedia.org]:
Unlike other chains, which are often a mix of company-owned and franchised units, each Best Western hotel is an independently owned and operated franchise. Best Western does not offer franchises in the traditional sense (where both franchisee and franchisor are operating for-profit), however. Rather, Best Western operates as a nonprofit membership association, with each franchisee acting and voting as a member of the association.
How much has to happen 'til we see consequences? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're getting "anti-terror" laws that cut away our civil liberties piece by piece, despite little to no terrorist activity anywhere. Yet we have "data loss" on an almost weekly base and nothing happens. Could anyone tell me why those companies are still in business? When did criminal neglect become less than a misdemeanor? Because, well, did you see anything happening out of it? I didn't.
These companies cause problems to their customers by their careless handling of personal and financial data. At the very least, they subject their customers to the threat that their credit card data is in the hands of a criminal, ready to use it whenever they please. When are we going to see some laws that mean consequences if you can't handle your customers' data?
Every company is very keen to collect everything about you, from your favorite dish to your shoe size, but they can't be bothered with the task to keep this information secure? If you can't keep info secure, don't collect it, dammit!
Re:How much has to happen 'til we see consequences (Score:2)
Yet we have "data loss" on an almost weekly base and nothing happens. Could anyone tell me why those companies are still in business? When did criminal neglect become less than a misdemeanor?
Criminal neglect?
Unless you have proof that their server getting hacked = criminal neglect, maybe you need to switch to decaf.
These companies cause problems to their customers by their careless handling of personal and financial data.
What article did you read where Best Western was portrayed as careless? /. tradition, but /.ers usually ground it in some type of fact.
Did you RTFA?
I realize hyperbole is a
Re: (Score:2)
And isn't that a prime example for what we have a government at all? Here's something that is of general interest (i.e. keeping data secure from people who could abuse it), but not in the interest of the person holding it (because no company really "cares" about its customers, they care about your business, if that). What else do we have governments for if not to make sure that the general, public interest is upheld?
specious speculation .. (Score:2)
more likely someone got local access to plant the torjan, one of the night staff hired at minimum wage, for instance, a high turnover in staff, people hired off the street, with no security clearance.
The 'security' system at a tourist hostel I was familiar wi
The problem here is more than data "loss". (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, when did we start using the term "lose" as a polite synonym for "fuck up in fine style"?
occam's razor .. (Score:2)
Someone got hold of an admin acount, someone wrote a script to automate the downloading of the entire database. No-one noticed until the details popped up for sale on the web ..
I wonder if (Score:2)
The closing of the account AFTER the information was stolen is priceless. The chickens have already flown the coop and you close the door anyhow. Lovely.
There's only one thing to it.. (Score:3, Interesting)
.. get new credit cards every half year or so. You're not charged for the change, it secures any leakage you may have left behind and it ensures that data theft isn't a problem. If you think 6 months is too long (you could be travelling a lot), do it more often. And it means costs for the credit card company so maybe they start to come up with a better approach (or pass teh costs to the failing merchants, also a good incentive IMHO).
Personally, I'm waiting until one of the token manufacturers gets a deal with VISA and Mastercard. After all, a credit card is but a reference number to the contract you have with a credit card provider, and a token can do that just as well. But it could change the static challenge-response PIN with something smarter, and some tokens I've seen are even capable of working securely over a standard web browser.
Let me translate that last one for you: no more "secure" terminals needed (which is where some hacks now happen), using a token could be as simple as integrating an iframe right into the POS display. Also means safer shopping at home, btw.
And the technology exists already - it's just a matter of reaching the point where fraud is more costly than fixing the problem. Not needing secure terminals could mean that point is reached a lot earlier that originally thought. We're talking months here IMHO, followed by a few years while the terminals are phased out.
"identity theft" a misnomer (Score:2)
Credit card numbers and other personal information is easily stolen, as this article makes clear. The credit card companies and others, like Best Western, who store their customer's personal data call this "identity theft" to make us consumers think that we are the victims, and must pay the price for the theft. A better name for what is happening is "information theft". Private information has been stolen from the company, and it is the company who should suffer the consequences.
I watch my credit card ch
Why (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the time, when I read a story along these lines (lost data, stolen data, client personal details incl. credit info), I have to ask myself "do they really need to archive all this data on their customers?"
I always wondered... (Score:3, Insightful)
...why the spokesdrones for so many major companies are allowed to spew the most outrageous bullshit ("We care about our staff"; "The privacy of our guests is our number one concern", etc.), and nobody in the mainstream press ever calls them on it.
Even politicians, for whom lying is as easy and natural as breathing, are rarely so brazenly, in-your-face dishonest.
Why give your home address ? (Score:3, Informative)
I always give the hotel a business address - like that some criminal does not know where to go while I am at the hotel. I do the same with labels attached to luggage when flying. I have done this for years.
When will people learn to give the minimum of personal information that is absolutely necessary ?
Re: (Score:2)
Given that it says 13,000 hotels it most likely means every one, anywhere on the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
The article says 1,312, not 13,000.
Checking with Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Best Western seems to have 4,000 hotels world-wide, 2,000 of which in North America. So it appears that yes, it's only the european continental hotels.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: risk from using Microsoft's Produc~1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, what imdemnification does the software provider give to the end user in such an eventuality. I mean, after all, they do imdemnify you against getting sued (by who), as long as you use a 'covered' product
Not a troll, (Score:4, Insightful)
- The article states thats the passwords were leaked via a Microsoft desktop OS compromised by a password sniffing Trojan spread via a virus.
- Microsoft's OS and applications are disproportional at a far greater risk of being compromised than any other platform. That is a fact!
- Class action lawsuits are a valid method for the public to change the behavior of both large business and governmental agencies. For example, the EFF have been involved with many Class action lawsuits, to change the behavior of both business and governmental agencies.
Microsoft has been hinting that organizations deploying Linux are at risk from Microsoft's so called patents, however those same Microsoft customers face a much greater risk and loss from compromised Microsoft desktop systems.
And You Sir, are just another gutless Nym-shifing Microsoft Astroturd who is not even worth rating.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing intrinsic to Linux which would prevent an application running as an unprivileged task in userland hooking into the desktop environment and passing keystrokes to an unknown outside attacker.
I grant you, this hasn't happened yet. But there's little could prevent it.
You could significantly reduce the risk, however, by reducing how much access each user has to various systems, firewalling between departments and blocking not just incoming traffic but also outgoing traffic at the border, only al
Fact, Fact and more Facts (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft's OS and applications also have the highest percentage of market share, hence if anyone seeking to compromise operating systems, it would be far more lucrative for them to do so with MS operating systems. Do you really believe that if Linux or OS X had 90% market share, they wouldn't be compromised?
That all depends on how well trained the employees of companies who use or administrate computers happen to be.
No matter the OS, someone opened a bad e-mail. Any employee working from home could have done that.
In this case, its probably more productive to put the application storing the information under a microscope rather than the underlying OS, at least to a degree.