http://www.darkreading.com/database_security/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219400495 By Kelly Jackson Higgins DarkReading Aug 18, 2009 The attacks that led to the mass theft of over 130 million credit and debit card accounts may hold the record for the biggest overall breach ever charged in the U.S., but the attackers used classic and well-known methods that could have been thwarted, according to experts. In the wake of the big news yesterday that one man is suspected to be behind the biggest breaches ever charged in U.S. history, security experts say the indictment of 28-year-old Albert Gonzalez, aka "segvec," "soupnazi," and "j4guar17," of Miami, Fla., revealed that Gonzalez and his cohorts exploited vulnerabilities that are typically found in many cybercrime cases --SQL injection, packet sniffing, and backdoor malware designed to evade detection. The indictment (PDF) revealed that Gonzalez, who previously had been charged for his alleged role in the breach of TJX, BJ's Wholesale Club, Barnes & Noble, and Dave & Buster's, has now also been indicted for allegedly conspiring to break into computers and stealing credit and debit card data from Heartland Payment Systems; 7-Eleven Inc., Hannaford Brothers Co., and two other major national retailers whose names were withheld in the filing. While the attacks appear to be phased-in and coordinated, the attackers didn't employ any hacks that the victim organizations could not have defended against, experts say. SQL injection, for instance, is the most commonly exploited flaw in Web attacks, according to data from the Web Hacking Incident Database. The attacks outlined in the indictment basically provide a roadmap for how most breaches occur, says Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security. "This is how cybercrime is done," Graham says. "If there is a successful attack against your company, this is roughly what the hackers will have done. Thus, this should serve as a blueprint for your cyber defenses." [...] ________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News http://www.infosecnews.orgReceived on Tue Aug 18 2009 - 22:38:20 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Tue Aug 18 2009 - 22:40:38 PDT