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T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

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101–110 of 138 posts

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#101
I blame HR. I used to work in that industry; it was openly communicated that key roles were not appropriately staffed. The comment was: "we could hire the right people, but we are not allowed to pay them the money they are worth".

Again, it is HR.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> finding devs (or any other role) that understand security is very, very difficult. At what level? Are we talking like knowing the different ways to mitigate XSS and other basic OWASP top-10 style things, or having the ability to find the next Spectre or Meltdown?

We recruit primarily for mid-to-senior level roles (5-15 yrs experience), and it's the former. I get a lot of candidates that can recite what XSS is at a high level, but for example struggle to explain the things to watch out for that would indicate a possible XSS vulnerability. One of the other issues I see is that we should be able to take the above-described candidate, which is maybe not exactly what we need but s…

> I get a lot of candidates that can recite what XSS is at a high level, but for example struggle to explain the things to watch out for that would indicate a possible XSS vulnerability.

To be fair, from a devs perspective you need to flip it around in your brain, in order to go from e.g. "you need to sanitize user input to make it safe for a javascript context" to "seeing unsanitized user input that could be getting injected into a script." Even if you know all the right answers, it's still probably not going to come out super eloquently. (And I realize there are other and better answers also, but just to choose one that's easy to explain.)

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#103

Been a T-Mobile customer for ages. Sim swaps are too easy. 2 factor is a joke. This is like the 3rd time my data has been lifted. But I stay with them, why? Because I have 3 free lines, unlimited everything, for $32 a month. They have crazy phone trade in deals from time to time, T-Mobile tuesday usually nets me 15c off per gallon at shell. Am I happy that they keep getting hacked? Absolutely not, but I'm happy prett…

So what you are saying is that the overcall cost of doing business with tmobile (both monetary and your personal data being public) justifies the convenience?

Convenience is a significant reason why people use Facebook, Zoom, Gmail, etc., despite possible issues from nonfree software.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#104
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's both. Other departments don't necessarily focus on security (and leetcode is certainly an idiotic way of hiring, IMO). But even in my department (where we explicitly don't use leetcode and do prioritize based on security expertise and offer a huge premium for it), we are significantly under our target headcount because finding devs (or any other role) that understand security is very, very difficult.

Could this be because so many companies don't focus enough on security? So there isn't enough collective experience out there, making it hard to find those that do have the knowledge and experience.

I believe this is the case. Engineers level up primarily based on experience, learning from their team, etc. Because security is:

a) Often not prioritized

b) Handled in the shadows by some other team

the engineers don't get exposed to it. Security hasn't gone through an 'operations' evolution where it melds with engineering so these problems aren't getting better.

Context: Am security professional

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense at all---you're implying that the bad guys somehow have a monopoly on innovation and effectiveness, when in reality, there is just more upside for them to steal sensitive info than there is downside for companies to protect it. If T-Mobile's latest data breach led to them getting fined, say, $5 billion, I promise you it would be the last.

It would be the last for T-Mobile because it would end T-Mobile. But it wouldn't be the last breach ever. I could give $5 billion to my FAANG right now and I bet we'd still be breached (hell, I'm pretty sure we already have that budget in my FAANG's security department). The US DoD already has a cyber security budget of $10 billion, and they still get breached. You underestimate the amount that these companies care a…

Just to add to that, consider the hacker (technically cracker) only has to be right once, the security team has to be right 100% of the time and with 100% of the attack surface. There could be a new attack surface that wasn't even a thing at any given moment. Also consider a lot of the attack surfaces are software not even written by the company being attacked (Windows/Routers/etc).

It's like the 2000 era adage, the terrorists only have to be right once.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's both. As in, much of what they did spend likely went to snake oil salesmen. I've met lots of security consultants who did not have backgrounds in math or compsci.

One of the biggest problems in the security industry is a misconception that security and computer science are the same. They aren't at all. If you're doing low level design of crypto algorithms, you need to know math. If you're doing appsec reviews or pentests, then a background in software development might help (but is not required). But there is an entire world of security roles out there that are essential to im…

I don't really agree with "they aren't at all". If anything, engineering skills are extremely undervalued in infosec.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#107

Been a T-Mobile customer for ages. Sim swaps are too easy. 2 factor is a joke. This is like the 3rd time my data has been lifted. But I stay with them, why? Because I have 3 free lines, unlimited everything, for $32 a month. They have crazy phone trade in deals from time to time, T-Mobile tuesday usually nets me 15c off per gallon at shell. Am I happy that they keep getting hacked? Absolutely not, but I'm happy prett…

To clarify this is the fifth data breach in 4 years for T-Mobile.

1 in 2018, 1 in 2019, 2 in 2020.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that T-Mobile could have done more, but it's also frustrating to see this trope that spending more money on security is some type of silver bullet. It's not. I've been in security for over a decade. I currently work at a FAANG with nearly unlimited security budget. Previously I worked at another major tech company with nearly unlimited security budget. Before that I was a consultant and consulted at com…

This makes no sense at all---you're implying that the bad guys somehow have a monopoly on innovation and effectiveness, when in reality, there is just more upside for them to steal sensitive info than there is downside for companies to protect it. If T-Mobile's latest data breach led to them getting fined, say, $5 billion, I promise you it would be the last.

US govt spent a $trillion to win the war in Afghanistan.

Destruction is easier than protection.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#109

What I don't understand is why the hacker (whose full name is used in the article - alias?) is being public about this? Shit security or not, they made a clear cut black hat move purely for money. Or I suppose the other factor is fame/infamy. Pretty sure there are at least a few pissed off hackers among those 50M people who would want to track this person down digitally and pull something as retaliation.

yeah I had read that too and concluded he is an idiot and also shame on the reporter for enabling this idiocy.

but also props to the reporter for getting likely winning the FBI's bounty.

Re: T-Mobile Hacker Who Stole Data on 50M Customers: ‘Their Security Is Awful’

#110
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that T-Mobile could have done more, but it's also frustrating to see this trope that spending more money on security is some type of silver bullet. It's not. I've been in security for over a decade. I currently work at a FAANG with nearly unlimited security budget. Previously I worked at another major tech company with nearly unlimited security budget. Before that I was a consultant and consulted at com…

I don’t do anything security related — I’m a lowly bare metal programmer — but I’m still mystified as to how user passwords are securely kept on disk? The only thing I could think of was to encrypt a user’s password with their password…

>I don’t do anything security related — I’m a lowly bare metal programmer

Sorry to make an example of you but this kind of attitude is the problem. Everyone does something security related. If something is giving input to the machine (that could be typing on a keyboard, collecting data from a sensor, or anything else), you have to care about security. Even if security means in your context sanitizing inputs to make sure you don't overflow and crash, or write something to the screen you're not supposed to, etc.

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