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Video game company Valve notifies its Gamers of data breach

November 15th, 2011
Gabe Newell, Game Developers Conference.

Gabe Newell confirms the data breach

You are an video game addict. You can’t have enough of it. You are entering your private data in there thinking you are in safe hands, thinking your data is secured. Alas! Your private data just got stolen!

We are talking about the latest data breach that occurred at the video game company Valve. Valve’s gaming cloud service Steam was hacked last week causing breach of personal data of game users. This was published on the forums and users have been asked to scrutinize their credit card statements. Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder notified on the forum on Thursday confirming the breach.

How did it happen?

On the night of November 6, the intruders defaced the site’s forums. They accessed the database that contained user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses, and encrypted credit card information.

Post-breach

Steam forums have been taken offline. The sites were shutdown because of the defacement.

What does Gabe Newell, the co-founder, have to say about it?

Gabe said “the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums”. According to Mr Newell there was no evidence that the encrypted credit card information or personal data of gamers had been taken. He said, “we are still investigating”.

He further added that  only a few forum accounts had been compromised and were defaced. That said, all forum users should change their passwords immediately as soon as the website is back on track.

“I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience,” was was Newell said before winding up his speech.

About Steam

Steam is a gaming service that allows gamers to buy, download, play and chat games. Some of these have been made by Valve itself.One can browse through the current 1,500 titles  which include Skyrim, LA Noire and Modern Warfare 3  along with other free games.

Security check

Users should change passwords, monitor credit card statements, remove card numbers from Valve’s servers. Never use the same password for more than one site on which you use your credit card.

At the back of your mind you may be thinking that Valve will give you some freebies in order to make up for this breach. Maybe it will. But will it make you play games again knowing your data might get compromised?

Bad time for Internet companies?

It started with Sony PlayStation network which was hacked compromising 77 million accounts. Hackers are now confident thatn they can hack e-commerce sites. They are getting better at it daily and our recent news reports have confirmed this. Internet crime is increasing at a fast pace, companies need to act now and strengthen their security policies.

Alertsec – Need of the hour

Organizations must have essential security guidelines to combat any internet crime. This news item makes it all the more clear why data protection in applications is a must. Alertsec offers Data encryption software and recovery software at a reasonale price. Alertsec Xpress offers full disk encryption and is therefore superior to other encryption methods when comparing security, performance, robustness and ease-of-use for both administrators and users.

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Craigslist user Ambre Boroughs catches her laptop thief

November 8th, 2011
CHICAGO - APRIL 05: A Southwest Airlines pass...

Laptop Theft at Southwest Airlines

Laptop stolen from Southwest Airlines

Who is the best person to take care of your laptop? Well, you of course!
Here is a bizarre case of laptop theft where the owner had to track the thief who stole her laptop and take credit for it!

Ambre Boroughs tracks her laptop.
When Ambre got off from her Southwest airlines flight in Charleston, South Carolina, she had no clue that the plan she had made for the day was about to change. When she approached the conveyor belt to get her laptop bag, she was in for a shock. The laptop bag was empty! Her brand new HP9000 laptop was missing! Most airlines recommend laptop bags to be carried on i.e. used as a carry-on item and not a check-in one. Apparently Ambre did not know that and she checked in her laptop bag. A big mistake!

As soon as she found out about the theft, she approached the Southwest representative on duty but in vain. The representative put her in a fix by asking why she had checked her computer in the first place when it was supposed to be a carry-on item. In short, Southwest airlines was not of much help.

What did Ambre do?
Ambre knew she could not depend on anyone to find her laptop and decided to put her ‘detective’ cap on. She followed her gut feeling and started browsing craigslist website the next morning. She entered the term ‘HP9000′ in the search box and bingo! She got a hit.

The moment Boroughs saw the picture on the site, she knew it was her laptop. What distingusihed her laptop from others was a small sticker with the logo of the “33’s. The logo matched the one tattooed on Boroughs’ wrist — it from her favorite South Carolina rock band. The next obvious thing that Ambre did was wrote to the seller. What followed were a series of phone calls and through these calls Ambre found out that the seller had a lot of laptops for sale. Ambre got in touch with the Chicago police and explained the details.

Chicago police wasted no time in visiting the seller’s place. They introduced themselves as Ambre Boroughs and pretended to be interested in buying the laptops. Three people were arrested at the seller’s home. Police recovered laptops and electronics from checked luggage of ticketed passengers on Southwest Airlines at Midway.

What did Southwest airlines have to say about it?

According to a Southwest spokesperson the airline admits a theft report only if a passenger files one. It further stated that its policies are in line with all major airlines and that it is at no obligation to warn passengers who are checking items that are not covered in its Contract of Carriage rules.

The above is a perfect example of lax of security at the airport terminals. The best thing is keep your valuables with yourself and not cut them in the check-in luggage.

Alertsec offers encryption service
To protect information on laptops with encryption is of paramount importance if you want to comply to today’s legislation, not to mention the peace of mind for people managing security for a mobile workforce. We have found Alertsec Xpress to be secure, yet easy to use and implement. Over 4 million users worldwide use Alertsec Xpress’s Check Point Full Disk Encryption.

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Vacationland Vendors admit to serious data breach

September 15th, 2011
Vendstar 3000 Vending Machine at Approved Cash...

Vending machine exposes visitors' personal data

Should you be staying away from vending machines? Many folks keep themselves away from vending machines for health sake.

There is one more reason to stay away now. Your personal information is at risk here ! Folks swipe credit cards whilst buying from the vending machines thereby storing personal data.

The following incident makes one think twice before putting that chip from the vending machine into your mouth.

A hacker gained entry into certain parts of Vacationland Vendors point-of-sale systems used to process payment-card transactions at Wilderness Resorts located in Tennessee and in the city of Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. The breach has affected around 40,000 people. Company’s spokesperson said “a computer hacker improperly acquired credit card and debit information.”

It is still not known how the breach was discovered or when. Whether those affected by the breach have been notified or not is also not known. The breach affected only arcade systems. Fortunately the resort operations and systems — reservations, restaurants, and shops — were not breached.

According to Vacationland, internal security has nothing to do with the breach at either of the two Wilderness Resorts. The statement further adds “Vacationland Vendors has learned that other businesses just like its own have been affected by this computer hacker,”.

Vacationland Vendors is working with an outside consultant and has beefed up its security of point of sale systems to protect from future breaches.

Customers who have used their credit card or debit card at the Wilderness Resort locations from December 12, 2008 through May 25, 2011have been asked to take the following immediate steps in order to prevent the unauthorized and unlawful use of their personal information.

According to Bill Bray, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Dells-based Vacationland Vendors, the same intruder had hacked other businesses as well.

a. Keep a close watch on bank statements and credit card bills and if you notice something strange immediately get in touch with authorities

•b. Place a fraud alert on your consumer credit file. This can be done by contacting one of the three national credit reporting agencies – Equifax (800-525-6285), Experian (888-397-3742) or TransUnion (800-680-7289).
c. Inform the local law enforcement or the state attorney general of any incident related to identity theft

How can Alertsec help?

Thus in the absence of full disk encryption, privacy of consumers is compromised. It is vital to use Data encryption software in order to keep our data safe from breaches. Data security and recovery software is the need of the hour. $13/month is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software-licensing model

Why is Alertsec the number 1 laptop encryption service?

3 easy steps to encrypt your data

a. Register for your subscription or 30-day free trial of our encryption software

b. Download and activate Alertsec Xpress online

c. Your laptop is now powered by Check Point Full Disk Encryption


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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Identity and Information loss, Uncategorized, data breach, data encryption, identity theft

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The Oregon Department of Transportation admits to data breach

September 12th, 2011
Oregon Department of Transportation

Data breach at ODOT exposes participants social security numbers

2011 has probably seen the most and the worst set of data breaches. In April 2011, Sony reported a data breach within their Playstation Network. Expedia’s Trip Advisor, email marketing provider Epsilon and professional engineering society Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers followed suit.

In the latest incident of data breach, data of 62 current and former employees remained exposed to the public online for nine long years. The breach was reported on Friday.

Details of the breach

Oregon Department of Transportation immediately removed the data from the site and apologized to its users who had participated in the environmental program. Fortunately, no one has had any problems with the exposed data.

Aug. 26 email gave details of this breach to all its users.

According to Theresa Masse, the state’s chief information security officer with the Department of Administrative Services ”Some were electronic — misdirected email, lost laptop, or a file exposed on a website,”. She further added “Others involved misdirected letters or a lost folder. The largest affected 500 people; the smallest, one individual.”

ODOT found out about the breach two weeks ago when it got a call from a citizen who brought to notice that a file in the agency’s file transfer protocol site contained encoded Social Security numbers. A file-transfer protocol site is used to transfer large files to internal and external users. The file contained names and encoded Social Security numbers of 62 people working with ODOT’s environmental programs. This information could have been online since 2002.

This is what ODOT spokesman Dave Thompson had to say when users found out about the breach ” “None of them were necessarily happy with us, or with the news this happened,” Thompson said. “But none of them has indicated they have noticed any sort of issue. It does not mean it hasn’t happened — and that’s why we spoke to them first before we announced it.”

Comparison with two private sector firm breaches

Health histories of 120,000 Oregon customers covered by Health Net were breached in March. Computer disks and backup tapes with details of 365,000 Oregon patients of Providence Health & Services went missing in Dec 2005

Another incident in early 2010

This incident was far more serious than the recent breach. A pen drive with payroll information of 550 Department of Corrections employees was found in Madras. The drive contained Social Security numbers of 300 employees at the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution near Madras and the Shutter Creek Correctional Institution in North Bend, and information of employees at the Warner Creek Correctional Facility in Lakeview.

How can Alertsec help protect data?

Organisations are now made aware about their data security and are implementing data encryption techniques. Alertsec uses encryption software to protect data from breaches and theft.

Alertsec Xpress is backed up by Check Point Full Disk Encryption and is used by over 4 million users worldwide, with single deployments exceeding 150,000 laptops and PCs. This is the most deployed software of its kind and is seen as today’s market leader.

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Nokia Developer Network hacked

September 1st, 2011
Image representing Nokia as depicted in CrunchBase

NDN hacked exposing developer data

Hackers are firing rounds after rounds of data breaches. They are getting better at it and taking advantage of the fact that security systems are not that robust.

Nokia’s developer forum was recently hacked and a database table containing e-mail addresses of developer forum members was accessed. This was done by exploiting vulnerability in the bulletin board software that allowed an SQL injection attack.

As per statement given by Nokia “Initially we believed that only a small number of these forum member records had been accessed, but further investigation has identified that the number is significantly larger,” the statement said.

Apparently the bug was quickly fixed but the developer community website was taken off. The discussion boards are not yet accessible. As per Nokia’s advisory the service should be up and running soon.

Those who visited the site before it was closed were redirected to a website that showed an image of Homer Simpson smacking his head and exclaiming “D’Oh.” Just below his picture were the words “Worlds number 1 mobile company but not spending a dime for server security! FFS patch you security holes otherwise you will be just another antisec victim. No Dumping, No Leaking!”

The site is under further investigation and security assessment. Initially it was assumed that only a small number of email addresses were accessed but later it was found out that a large amount of data was compromised.

The company further adds “We are not aware of any misuses of the accessed data, but we are communicating with affected forum members, though we believe the only potential impact to them may be unsolicited e-mail.” Nokia added that it “apologizes for this incident.”

The attack was claimed by a hacker known as “pr0tect0r AKA mrNRG”, believed to be based in India.

This happened at a bad time for the Finnish company as it is quickly losing market share to Apple’s iPhone and to companies that manufacture smartphones that use Google’s Android OS. Nokia is looking to increase its share of the U.S. market through a partnership with Microsoft. Nokia plans to start a new line of Windows Phone 7-powered phones by end of 2011 or early in 2012.

Security guaranteed with Alertsec Xpress

This incident highlights the need of a data security and data encryption software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

Alertsec has offices in the US, UK, Sweden and operates in many other countries around the world through partners.

It’s mission is to continuously improve its products and services in order to deliver the easiest and most cost-effective managed encryption service on the market.


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