Security News for the Week Ending July 26, 2019

Equifax Agrees to Pay UP TO $700 Million to Settle Breach Lawsuits

First – the settlement hasn’t been agreed to by the court yet, so this is all speculation.

Of the $700 million pot, at least $300 million is set aside to pay damages to consumers.  Another $100 million plus is to pay for credit monitoring.

There are lots of details.  For the most part, unless you can prove damages and prove that those damages were caused by the Equifax breach and not some other breach, you probably will not get paid much.  You can get paid up to $250 if you file a claim and without proof.  Everything past that requires proof.   With 150 million victims and a $300 million pot, that averages to $2 a person.

BUT there is one thing you should do and that is get the free credit monitoring.    Go to EQUIFAXBREACHSETTLEMENT.COM and wait until it says that the court has approved it.  Note this is not a site owned by Equifax and given what a mess they are, this is good.  Read more details here.

The Next NSA Hacker Gets 9 Years

Harold Martin, the NSA contractor (employed by Booz, like Edward Snowden) was sentenced to 9 years for stealing 50 terabytes of data over the course of his 22 year NSA career.  The leak is something like 5 times the size of the Snowden leak.  He didn’t sell it;  he just liked data.  He had so much he had to store in in sheds in his back yard.  Many of the documents were clearly marked SECRET AND TOP SECRET.

The fact that he was able to steal hundreds of thousands of documentss doesn’t say much for NSA security, which is sad.  Source: Nextgov.

Huawei – Bad – Not Bad – Bad?!

President Trump said that Huawei is a national security threat and needs to be banned and then he said that maybe we can trade that threat for a better deal with China on trade.

Now it is coming out that Huawei helped North Korea build out their current wireless network.  The equipment was shipped into North Korea by Chinese state owned Panda International.  This has been going on since 2006 at least.  Huawei is likely continuing to provide technical support to North Korea.

This seems like a national security threat and not a bargaining chip for the President to toss in to get a trade deal that he wants, but what do I know.  Source: Fox News.

AG  Barr Says He Wants Encryption Back Door And Why do You Need Privacy – Just Suck it Up.

Attorney General William Barr said this week that if tech companies don’t provide a back door into consumer encryption,  they will pass a law forcing it.  And while this will allow hackers and Chinese spies to compromise US systems, it is worthwhile.

He said that they might wait for some terrorist event that kills lots of people and blame it on encryption (whether that is true or not).

He did seem to exclude “custom” encryption used by large business enterprises, whoever that might include.

Barr said that bad guys are using crypto to commit crimes what the police can’t investigate.  If that were true we would expect that crime would be going up.  If it is a really bad problem, it would be going way up.

Only problem is that the statistics say crime is going down.

You may remember that Juniper added such a back door, likely at the request of the NSA and it worked great until word got out about it and hackers had a field day.

This conversation is not over.  Source: The Register.

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