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SSN and credit card numbers should not be considered secret. Anything that must be shared with a third party in order to make some kind of transaction cannot be
by lambda 11y ago
SSN and credit card numbers should not be considered secret. Anything that must be shared with a third party in order to make some kind of transaction cannot be considered secret; compromises happen, and once compromised, there is no way to make them secret again.
Brian Krebs, as a high-profile author on security who actively antagonizes black-market groups on the internet, is a common target. He has had all of his basic personal information posted on the internet publicly for some time. The credit cards that were used for this attack were all old, disabled ones, since he disabled them after the numbers were leaked; but apparently PayPal still has them listed on the account and so you can use knowledge of them to "prove" your identity to PayPal.
- andrewmcwatters 11y ago> actively antagonizes black-market groups on the internet Sounds to me like they're both at fault then. It's really nice and idealistic to have this mentality that you're doing it in the name of infosec, but it's a position held from an ivory tower. If he's in software, what did he expect? This isn't a wise approach. This is the advanced stupid I'm talking about. Someone who thinks it's wise to antagonize, but then cries and writes an article over it when they're attacked. It's a joke. Conventional wisdom here is nonexistent.
- wstrange 11y agoHow is Kreb's at fault? Talk about blaming the victim!
- andrewmcwatters 11y agoLets reduce this first to understand it. First, why would you antagonize black-market groups on the Internet? Why would you actively make yourself a possible target? Does that seem wise? To me, that's a far less complicated question than anything security related at a technical level. You can literally ask a child this question and they'll tell you it's not smart. This is advanced stupid.
- Zikes 11y agoBrian Krebs is a security researcher partially responsible for uncovering some of the biggest credit card leaks in recent history. It's his job to "antagonize" the credit card black markets. He's not just some internet troll, he's doing real good that you very well may have personally benefited from as a result.
- ryanlol 11y agoThat's not at all true, releasing=/=uncovering.