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Okta: “We made a mistake” delaying the Lapsus$ hack disclosure
- sylware 5y agoBTW, nvidia is going open source driver or Lapsus did release the code of the hardware and software?
- kaladin-jasnah 5y agoI'm not sure what this means: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/03/23/how-to-write-vulkan-driver-in-2022/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/03/23/how-... > We're not actually writing one here but it'll make the examples easier if we pretend we are. Just for the sake of example, I'm going to pick on NVIDIA because... Why not? Such a driver is clearly missing and really should happen soon. (Hint! Hint!) We're going to call this hypothetical new Vulkan driver NVK. It's short and obvious.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y agoThat's not how copyright works. It would be illegal to distribute anything proprietary that Lapsus$ released, and it would never make it's way into any mainstream distributions let alone code hosting providers.
- kadoban 5y agoLapsus threatened to release all of their Nvidia data if Nvidia didn't open source their drivers. Gp is asking if either outcome happened (though I don't think they did).
- Decabytes 5y agoI’d be much more understanding if 1. They didn’t try to downplay the leak 2. Didn’t double down on the leak not being a big deal later 3. Didn’t specialize in authentication and security
- Msw242 5y agoExactly. Okta has given absolutely zero indication that they will notify us next time they have a security event, either.
- anotherhue 5y agoWe pay them exorbitant costs so that they don't make these mistakes. How dare they outsource my security when I'm paying them a premium not to. I am a very unhappy customer who is very interested in Keycloak.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- twexler 5y agoI'm not sure Keycloak is a viable alternative for most businesses. Security software as a whole tends to be _extremely_ difficult to run securely and at scale. Honestly, most of these companies would be better off using Google, Azure or AWS' SSO-as-a-Service product (if that's what you're hoping to get out of Keycloak). That's not to say that I don't appreciate that there's an open-source alternative out there, however.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI have a feeling Cloudflare is going to be a new entrant into this space in the next 6-12 months.
- twexler 5y agoOne can only hope.
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30769099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30769099
- mooreds 5y agoFor those too lazy to click through, this comment is the CTO of cloudflare asking what features people would like in response to a comment: "Matthew Prince has a lot of tweets today about how he might have to begrudgingly enter the IAM space given how disappointed he is, how serious are you guys about this? "
- sofixa 5y agoThat "mistake" will cost them under GDPR and from lost customer trust.
- dylan604 5y agoBut if they are still a customer, they won't give a damn about their losing trust. As long as the company doesn't lose the $$ coming from them being a customer then that's all that matters
- dvtrn 5y agoIndeed. As I said in another comment thread about this event, I’ve been watching my leadership team’s response to this as we have deep Okta integration, therefore so do several of our customers using our platform. Said response has been pretty interesting and amounted to: “it’s working isn’t it?” when shown this event and the disclosures. Both executive and functional Security leadership teams practically shrugged. Very glad I’m not the one making that call.
- quantified 5y agoMarket forces at the most basic.
- lemoncookiechip 5y ago> "We made a mistake" You could even say, they had a lapse of judgment. Sorry for the pun.
- TechBro8615 5y agoIs it really fair to call it a “delayed disclosure” if the people who disclosed it were the sixteen year old chavs who popped your billion dollar security business? Are we supposed to believe that Okta would have disclosed this in due time anyway, regardless of whether the teenagers who broke into their system posted screenshots of it on Twitter?
- GordonS 5y agoThey blatantly lied. A third-party auth provider, where trust is absolutely crucial, and they lied about being breached. Repeatedly. And even now, they are not coming out and being honest like "we lied because we were scared about liability, but the person behethis decision has been fired". It's not good enough. Sorry, but they have some serious work to do if they want to regain that trust. I for one, will not be using their services again.
- ivan_gammel 5y agoLooks like it is worse than that they lied. If they genuinely believed that it’s just a password reset attempt and relied on their subcontractor to investigate the incident, their security is shit.
- Overtonwindow 5y agoI would posit that it is more likely than not that ALL companies lie about security and intrusions. This one will pass on into the night and is unlikely to affect the company, because security is not something most people want to think about. Passwords will not be changed, protocols will not be updated, and it will happen again.
- squiffsquiff 5y agoI think this take is a little bit naive given that a lot of the customers using Okta are themselves regulated by things like healthcare records legislation, financial services regulations, GDPR, and similar. It isn't an option to not use effective security or to claim that it's somebody else's responsibility when you were holding data that has been exfiltrated illegitimately
- matwood 5y agoOnce again, the attempted cover up is almost always worst than the original issue. Okta could have come out and leaned into the process issues they found, how they are improving, etc... and probably walked away with increased trust. Instead, they have strung out a bad situation and look worse every day.
- politelemon 5y agoIt's been frustrating dealing with their constant double speak and contradictions in their blog posts. The worst example was them saying that it's not a breach and then showing how they've been breached by the very definition of the term. The only rational reason I can come up with for this duplicitous talk is for the shareholders; with this double speak they can reduce just how much their shares fall. I'm not on a high horse, I'm positive that most of our orgs was do the same thing. And I'm not surprised that they're just like all other large companies that choose money/PR over accuracy. What is maddening is that they made it so hard to zero in on required information to help us assess risk; they're at the center of a lot of security workflows, and accurate information is more critical from them than it is from others. I fear for Auth0 and what it ~~may~~ will become under Okta's 'culture'.
- SpodGaju 5y ago"And I'm not surprised that they're just like all other large companies that choose money/PR over accuracy." Whenever you hear "Public Relations" just replace it with "Propaganda" since that is what is always was. https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/07/06/recently-published-book-spotlight-how-propaganda-became-public-relations/ https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/07/06/recently-published-boo... "How Propaganda Became Public Relations: Foucault and the Corporate Government of the Public is a philosophical investigation into the transformative effect propaganda has on us as individuals, on us as publics, and on society more broadly. I argue that propaganda does far worse than just lie to us: modern propaganda aims to transform us into the kind of subjects who carry out a particular line of conduct freely and as a key part of our identity. " Every company engages in propaganda. The fact that you believe Okta from the start was because of their propaganda.
- brightball 5y agoAlso worried about Auth0. I was about to use it for a project when the acquisition happened and I’ve held off specifically because all of the negatives I’ve heard about Okta.
- pevey 5y agoIt's hard to justify Auth0 when you can use cognito or AFDS often for free as an addon to things you already need. Or something like firebase (or supabase or appwrite etc). I would trust any of those solutions more than Okta, which is pretty old school.
- notreallyserio 5y agoIt's crazy to me that David Bradbury is still shoving Sitel under that bus instead of claiming responsibility for his failure. Is he hoping for a golden parachute here or is the organization so rotten that they cannot admit fault?
- Overtonwindow 5y agoSitel deserves to be shoved under a bus. I worked at Sitel, and it’s a complete shit show. Believe everything you hear.
- notreallyserio 5y agoIf Sitel is so bad, I wonder why Bradbury approved their use? Maybe he just feels responsible but is not willing to admit it.
- Overtonwindow 5y agoIn my humble opinion, cost. Sitel is a “lowest bidder” churn machine. It opens big call centers in low employment areas, and just churns and burns. Cubicle farms, unprofessional managers constrained by ops managers who play favorites, and fiefdoms. Why? There are only two positions at Sitel: On the phone, or off, and no one who has ever gotten off the phone wants to ever go back, so their relations between Ops and Team Managers are always strained. In a word, at Sitel crap rolls down hill and collects there until it drowns you.
- aspenmayer 5y agoHopefully the union drive at Amazon has spillover effects across the IT sector. Worker protections are badly needed.
- Msw242 5y agoNo more unions. Co-ops > unions. Unions (at least American ones) are adversarial in an unproductive way. E.g. fighting automated subway trains.
- draw_down 5y ago
- the_duke 5y agoThere are so many red flags here, it's not even funny anymore. * a third party has barely restricted, deep access to all customer data * the "SuperUser" app can apparently have logged in users idling around in a VM, waiting for someone to come along and use it without any automatic logout and re-authentication * a single account accessing 300+ customers in a few days doesn't trigger any alerts * they detect a compromise, and do absolutely nothing about it for months, except letting the third party order a security audit; they patiently wait for a report; they don't even audit the access logs * only a screenshot posted online triggers an audit of access logs and a public response * they still try to blame the third party and the security firm for their own (basically outrageous) inactivity All of this by a company entrusted with the most critical gatekeeping functionality of systems, used by many large enterprises and expected to have top notch security.
- nycdatasci 5y agoDefinitely some flags and horrible communication, but will any customers actually leave? Changing an IdM provider can easily run into 7-figures for large organizations.
- nunez 5y agoI could definitely see some bigger companies moving away after this. Lots of them hauled ass after the log4j chaos, for example.
- imglorp 5y agoAnd lot will stay, because one tenet of corporate security is to outsource whatever possible and make it someone else's problem, shifting the liability out of the house. Check box ticked.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoNot always. It is difficult to hire people with a deep knowledge of complex systems such as the Windows suite and it makes sense, security wise to protect this insured of having chaos in your configurations. An MS environment is today extraordinary complex and it is very easy to make a mistake setting it up, maintaining and integrating other stuff with it.
- anonymoushn 5y agoAt this company, a VP eng/CTO type person asked me how I would handle a situation where my teammate was underperforming. I am pretty sure that I failed this interview section and the whole interview loop because the company value of transparency meant that I should have said I would publicly humiliate the person instead of beginning by speaking to them privately.
- beeboop 5y agoAt least they're true to their value of transparency in showing to candidates that they're an awful place to work
- bogomipz 5y agoNot surprised. This "VP eng/CTO" is somewhat notorious I guess. I had an interview with them and everyone kept warning me about his part of the interview loop which I thought was odd. He apparently prides himself in being the most difficult part of their interview loop. He gave me some impromptu coding exercise that he appeared to be making up as he went along. I thought it was very bizarre that the VP of Engineering/CTO was giving coding tests and improvised ones at that. I had already completed 4 rounds of coding tests at that point and he was the last stop on the loop.
- duped 5y agoWhat of the rumors about AWS keys being leaked through slack channels that the support account had access to? That was plastered all over the HN and reddit threads a few days ago, no mention of it from Okta yet. Did that turn out to be bogus?
- bogomipz 5y agoI missed that, might you or someone else have a link? I'm not seeing it.
- chockchocschoir 5y agoIt was claimed in the $lapsus Telegram chat by $lapsus themselves: https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/1506345542837628932/photo/1 https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/1506345542837628932/photo/1 From the screenshot: > I don't think storing AWS keys within Slack would comply to any of these standards?
- bogomipz 5y agoIs there a reason a Okta needs to contract with a third party provider for support? I mean their entire business is security. Is this just penny-pinching or is there a legitimate reason that a publicly traded company can't provide their own support staff? This whole thing is like an exercise in plausible deniability, corporate double-speak, blame shifting and arrogance.
- timcavel 5y ago
- thedougd 5y agoI wonder if their radius agent still includes all the dev and test time libraries. It use to, or may still include jars related to Maven and JUnit. Not confidence inspiring.