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Quora User Data Compromised

blog.quora.com

31–40 of 525 posts

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#31
post #20

At this point I am operating on the assumption that ALL businesses that have my data are going to inadvertently leak it at some point, and thus I am attemtping to provide individual companies with as little information about me as possible. The toughest ones here are my online banking and my online health portal, but other than that, I have gotten pretty picky about what information I give any company.

I have an email address that I've only ever used as my AWS account email since many years ago. Somehow I started getting spam on it last year. It is not an address anyone could guess or somehow generate based on other data points such as name or otherwise.

Many of us who operate our own mail services use a unique email address for every web service we use. You'd be surprised how many of these unique email addresses I've received spam at (and have subsequently blackholed). I would estimate less than 50% of the associated services ever report a data breach event. I figure either there has been an unreported breach or, possibly more likely, the service sold their userlist either directly to spammers or sold it to another group who was themselves breached. The upside, though, is that blackholing an address used for a single service is super simple and satisfying.

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#32
post #29

> encrypted password I hope they mean hashed, not encrypted.

Did a double take at this too, but they clarified that it means “hashed with a unique salt” later on. Not a good word choice for a summary though!

Who’s password hash would it be? Ie could it be a linked accounts password?

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#33
post #29

> encrypted password I hope they mean hashed, not encrypted.

Did a double take at this too, but they clarified that it means “hashed with a unique salt” later on. Not a good word choice for a summary though!

Thanks, I missed that tidbit in my initial pass through!

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#34
post #13

Wow. If this had happened a couple years ago, before they made all the anonymous entries truly anonymous, this would have been really ugly. It's a valuable lesson in "don't keep data you don't need". EDIT: A little backstory for non-Quorans. Until early 2017, anonymous Quora answers and comments were anonymous to the public but not actually anonymous in the database (they were still "your" entries). In early 2017 the…

No, the lesson is: "don't give companies data they don't need".

> No

Both are valid lessons. One is from the businesses perspective and one is from the user's perspective.

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#35
post #15

Wow. If this had happened a couple years ago, before they made all the anonymous entries truly anonymous, this would have been really ugly. It's a valuable lesson in "don't keep data you don't need". EDIT: A little backstory for non-Quorans. Until early 2017, anonymous Quora answers and comments were anonymous to the public but not actually anonymous in the database (they were still "your" entries). In early 2017 the…

Their doc says: > Is content posted anonymously still secure? > Yes. Anonymous content cannot be connected to user accounts, so content posted anonymously is still secure. https://help.quora.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020212652

[deleted]

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#36
post #29

> encrypted password I hope they mean hashed, not encrypted.

Did a double take at this too, but they clarified that it means “hashed with a unique salt” later on. Not a good word choice for a summary though!

Probably written this way because this is a release for the general public. I would imagine most people expect passwords to be "encrypted" and don't know what "hashed" means, and they correctly assumed technical people will keep reading for more info

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#37
post #16

1. Force everyone to register to get access to content. 2. Leak that data. 3. ... 4. Profit. Not sure how this part works though. I hope lesson should be learned: don't force users to register just because you can

I see no lesson to be learned from the business perspective. If equifax can recover from their data loss, any company can.

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#38

So I'm not a security expert, so I ask this in real earnest to learn: what is it that these companies keep doing wrong, and/or why aren't they adjusting to the climate that these types of attacks are increasing over time? Or are they trying to adjust, and the attacks are getting so sophisticated that the pace of investment in counter-measures is below that of the pace of advancement in the complexity of attacks? Or s…

Sadly, security is still hard in a lot of cases, and most everyone (product / developer / customer) is fixated on features and performance. Security is only important when it fails (very much like availability) - and by then it is really hard to retrofit.

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#39

So I'm not a security expert, so I ask this in real earnest to learn: what is it that these companies keep doing wrong, and/or why aren't they adjusting to the climate that these types of attacks are increasing over time? Or are they trying to adjust, and the attacks are getting so sophisticated that the pace of investment in counter-measures is below that of the pace of advancement in the complexity of attacks? Or s…

As an example, consider an army attacking a defending army. The defending side is as good as the weakest member, because you can presume the attacking side to be looking for the weakest part and attacking that. On the other hand, the attacking side is as good as the strongest member, and having a few weaker members is ok. It is generally harder to make sure you have uniformly good defense, than getting a few really good people to spend dedicated time attacking.

Of course, this model assumes that as soon as you have penetrated the perimeter, the rest becomes easy. This is the more traditional model. People are increasingly adopting a you-are-already-hacked approach, which makes it harder to move laterally once someone gets in. However, the general challenge still applies.

Re: Quora User Data Compromised

#40

At this point I am operating on the assumption that ALL businesses that have my data are going to inadvertently leak it at some point, and thus I am attemtping to provide individual companies with as little information about me as possible. The toughest ones here are my online banking and my online health portal, but other than that, I have gotten pretty picky about what information I give any company.

Data is binary: it has either been already leaked, or not yet.
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