Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 167 posts

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#71

Post by EvanAnderson »

IncRnd wrote: post #58
kjkjadksj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the takeaway is that government represents too many people and you cant satisfy everyone, so leaders listen to citizen action groups and lobbyists who are able to aggregate all these different viewpoints into more broadly popular legislation and show with their supporters that these ideas would be popular among a given electorate.

After having interacted with politicians, I am firm in my belief that most of them don't care about their constituents.

At the federal level I think the care is chiefly about re-election. At the state level I see a mix of people who are involved out of a sense of civic duty, and people who have designs on moving up and acquiring more power.

If politicians represented fewer constituents I think they'd be forced to care more about their constituents, if only because each individual voter wields more power. I certainly think that I have more power to influence my local politicians than I do my state representatives (let alone my federal representatives). My local politicians also live more proximate to me, and share more in the physical problems of the region. My US Senators live in my state, and that's about all they have in common with me.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#72

Post by all2 »

barbazoo wrote: post #40
mancerayder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I am afraid that our two party system, which is incentivized to 'politicize' (I dislike that broad term) everything, it would be quite hard. The one party proposes it, the other party will find "reasons" why it's either government overreach, or discriminatory, or something something something depending on the ideology. Purported ideology. Most likely it's another horse that gets debated in debates about…

In Germany the postal service does what GP described by validating someone's identity for various purposes > Deutsche Post offers a secure identity check service – to millions of users every year. > On behalf of your contracting party > To ensure that only identified persons have access to sensitive services > To sensitive services including those from the financial services sector (such as opening an online bank acc…

Why is activating a pre-paid sim card a "sensitive service"?

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#73

Post by codegeek »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #29

As I've said before, it's time to wipe the slate on SSN's. They are de facto public anyway. A date should be announced when the entire database will be published. After that date all liability for fraud perpetrated using an SSN as a shared "secret" will be assigned to the party who accepted the SSN as "authentication". That would solve the problem. As an aside: When it comes to an authentication source to take the pl…

I would say that most Identify Theft issues will be resolved if you are forced to do a 5 min video verification call. I can show my ID (DL, Real ID etc) just like I can do in person. It may add a little bit of hassle but I would trade that for peace of mind that some random person cannot steal my identity that easy just because they know my DOB, SSN etc and can fill out an online form etc. The video call can easily weed out the scammers especially because a lot of ID thefts happen where a young person is stealing an older person's identity or vice versa or it is a different Gender etc.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#74

Post by mistrial9 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #70
barbazoo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany the postal service does what GP described by validating someone's identity for various purposes > Deutsche Post offers a secure identity check service – to millions of users every year. > On behalf of your contracting party > To ensure that only identified persons have access to sensitive services > To sensitive services including those from the financial services sector (such as opening an online bank acc…

Stories about foreign countries and their societal infrastructure, as an American, make me really envious and sad for my country's state of affairs. It's kind of like the feeling I get looking at somebody with a very nice car or house: "Oh, it would be neat to have such a thing but there's no way I'd ever splurge and get that." It's difficult for me to conceive of some things other countries have as just being "norma…

it is selection bias -- the people with miserable and oppressive systems do not report it in detail, in English, on YNews right?

second, many systems of law treat individuals quite differently.. many systems that are not repeated in detail, on YNews, do not give much choice to an individual by design

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#75

Post by gumby »

barbazoo wrote: post #40
mancerayder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I am afraid that our two party system, which is incentivized to 'politicize' (I dislike that broad term) everything, it would be quite hard. The one party proposes it, the other party will find "reasons" why it's either government overreach, or discriminatory, or something something something depending on the ideology. Purported ideology. Most likely it's another horse that gets debated in debates about…

In Germany the postal service does what GP described by validating someone's identity for various purposes > Deutsche Post offers a secure identity check service – to millions of users every year. > On behalf of your contracting party > To ensure that only identified persons have access to sensitive services > To sensitive services including those from the financial services sector (such as opening an online bank acc…

Let me point out that this service should not be necessary: every german ID has a physical key infrastructure necessary for any shop or vendor to do this with a local terminal, yet the enabling legislation deliberately didn’t instruct the government to build out any ecosystem.

Compare this with, say, Estonia where practically everything can be handled through the keys in the ID card.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#76

Post by codegeek »

ve55 wrote: post #8

It would certainly be a nice time to stop using SSNs as keys, SMS as 2FA, and more importantly having next to zero consequences for this kind of stuff. At this point we just expect this to keep happening over and over again with nothing changing, it's a very strange thing to observe...

SMS as 2FA is so stupid. So many banks and financial institutions are doing it in America and it amazes me. I mean what are they spending million of dollars in compliance/security/SOC etc on if they can't get a basic 2FA done correctly ? And don't get me started on stupid password requirements where a more secure password generated in keypass etc won't be valid. Who builds this stuff today ?

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#77

Post by gumby »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #29

As I've said before, it's time to wipe the slate on SSN's. They are de facto public anyway. A date should be announced when the entire database will be published. After that date all liability for fraud perpetrated using an SSN as a shared "secret" will be assigned to the party who accepted the SSN as "authentication". That would solve the problem. As an aside: When it comes to an authentication source to take the pl…

In Sweden the personnumber is public info and there is no value to keeping it secret. Everything works fine there.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#78

Post by codegeek »

afrcnc wrote: post #62

Someone posts eight SSNs on a hacking forum and some wild claims, and reporters run it as a legitimate 70 million hack. And people wonder why the term fake news exists.

Knowing what we know about these companies and their security practices, I would give benefit of doubt to this "someone" who posted on a hacking forum.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#79

Post by EvanAnderson »

mistrial9 wrote: post #74
EvanAnderson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories about foreign countries and their societal infrastructure, as an American, make me really envious and sad for my country's state of affairs. It's kind of like the feeling I get looking at somebody with a very nice car or house: "Oh, it would be neat to have such a thing but there's no way I'd ever splurge and get that." It's difficult for me to conceive of some things other countries have as just being "norma…

it is selection bias -- the people with miserable and oppressive systems do not report it in detail, in English, on YNews right? second, many systems of law treat individuals quite differently.. many systems that are not repeated in detail, on YNews, do not give much choice to an individual by design

I'm not suggesting that the United States is particularly bad. There are definitely many places in the world that are much worse off from so many perspectives (lack of rule of law, system of governance, economy, social safety net, class mobility, corruption, etc).

It could be better in so many ways, though, too. It would be nice if younger people (say, sub-70) would (and could be permitted to) take up the mantles of leadership.

Re: Claimed AT&T hack of 70M customer records including SSN, name, address

#80

Post by IncRnd »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #71
IncRnd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having interacted with politicians, I am firm in my belief that most of them don't care about their constituents.

At the federal level I think the care is chiefly about re-election. At the state level I see a mix of people who are involved out of a sense of civic duty, and people who have designs on moving up and acquiring more power. If politicians represented fewer constituents I think they'd be forced to care more about their constituents, if only because each individual voter wields more power. I certainly think that I have…

This is what we get as a society when we aren't collectively involved. Why should our politicians care when we don't? How many of your neighbors have done the work to change politicians' votes or to raise their own politicians up?

I agree with you, but I also think there are many disparate problems we can point at. Ultimately, it all boil down to - we get the results of our efforts.

Post reply on HN