Security News for the Week Ending January 3, 2020
Starbucks Leaves Their API Key in a Public Github Repository
Vulnerability hunter Vinoth Kumar found a Starbucks API key in a public Github repo.
The flaw was set to CRITICAL after they verified that the key gave anyone access to their Jumpcloud (An AD alternative) directory.
The problem was reported on October 17th and it took Starbucks several weeks to understand how bad the damage was. The key was revoked within 4 days, but still, best practice would like that to be more like 60 minutes. That, to me, is a failure on Starbucks’ (and probably most company’s) part. After all, the key, as demonstrated in a proof of concept, would have allowed a hacker to take over Starbucks AWS account. They paid Kumar a bug bounty of $4,000. They definitely got away cheap. Source: Bleeping Computer
Location Data Can Put Employee Safety At Risk
On the heels of a story that reporters were able to identify Secret Service agents who were travelling with the President, including figuring out where they lived, using available location data (see story from earlier this week about colleges collecting thousands of location data points per day on each student), comes another story regarding the hazards of location data.
As companies isolate teams to mask R&D, M&A and other sensitive activities, location data that is being sent by apps allows anyone with access to that data to de-compartmentalize those activities and understand exactly what companies are doing, who they are talking to, who their vendors are, possibly what technology areas they are interested in, etc. Executives are often the worst behaved users and often generate the biggest digital exhaust because of lack of understanding of how the apps work and the consequences.
Since companies have moved to BYOD devices and can no longer control what apps a user installs or what data those apps exhaust, they have very little control over the problem. Some apps have been found to send out over a thousand data points per app, per person, per day. To servers in China. What could possibly go wrong.
The only way to counteract this is via employee education. Source: ZDNet
Travelex Knocked Offline by Cyber Attack
Travelex, the currency exchange company, was knocked offline by some sort of cyber attack. As seems to be the case much of the time, the company decided that staying silent and not telling anyone what is going on will make things better. In one way they are right since they are not giving the lawyers who will be suing them any information now. That will wait until the lawsuits are filed.
One of the services that Travelex offers is stored value credit card called the Money Card. They sell it to travelers as the safest to travel with money. Only for current Travelex Money Card customers, it is super safe, because they cannot get their money. Which could be a problem if you are traveling and need access to your cash.
In addition, banks that use Travelex as their currency exchange service are also offline. Travelex is a huge player in this space, so their being down is a big problem.
The attack hit them on New Year’s eve and as of the night of January 3rd, they are still offline. This could have a long term impact on their business and some commercial customers might choose to leave them.
The silence only makes it worse. They likely did not have a disaster recovery/business continuity plan – at least not one that works. And, I am sure that regulators in many, many countries will be asking questions. Source: Threatpost
Guess How Long It Takes For Hackers to Test Your Stolen Credit Card Once it is on the Dark Web?
A researcher decided to test how long it takes for your credit card to be tested after it is posted for sale on the dark web. It turns out the test was a little harder to conduct than the researchers thought since everyone buying and selling on the dark web is, how shall I say this, A TAD BIT SUSPICIOUS OF EVERYONE ELSE.
Once he got past that problem, it turns out the answer is about two hours. That is not very comforting. Hackers buying the stolen cards want to know if they are any good, so they make very small purchases, thinking most people won’t bother to trace down a $0.50 transaction that they don’t recognize.
Two Hours is not very long and a bit of a surprise to me. Source: Bleeping Computer
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