CircleID

The Sunday Herald reported on Sunday that Best Western was struck by a trojan attack that lead to the possible compromise of about 8 million victims. There is some debate as to the extent of the breach and not a small amount of rumor going around. I'm not entirely disposed to trust corporate press releases for the facts, nor am I going to blindly accept claims of security researchers whose first call is to the PR team when discovering a problem.

That said, here is what seems to be the agreed upon facts:

• A trojan was installed on one of the machines in Best Western's booking systems which lead to a compromise of credentials for the hotel's staff. These credentials were attempted to (and probably successfully) sold to organizations with links to the Russian mafia.
• Best Western is and was Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant.

Of course, PCI really only helps one piece of the security equation and compliance is not the same as security. In fact, it is usually (at best) a poor substitute and more often an excuse to stop thinking about security ("We're Compliant!" followed by self-congratulatory back slapping). The same is true with relying on encryption. Encryption can be "defeated" and the ways to do it are well-known. (For instance, here is a paper I wrote almost 4 years ago on how to do it). If you can own the endpoint of a communication, encryption is irrelevant.

As another example, remember the backup tape heists a few years ago? Attackers know it takes an excessive amount of time to crack encryption, so they target ways to avoid it. Someone had the great idea of stealing backup tapes at which point few people would have even thought to have protected those. Now it is due diligence.

That said, here are 5 areas that are likely targets in the near future (or are targets now) that you may be overlooking:

• Centralized patching systems (i.e. WSUS). If you can hijack an update server and have it distribute a malicious patch, you own every desktop in an environment. The RedHat compromise should be a wake-up call in this regard.
• Centralized configuration and management systems (i.e. Configuresoft or the like). Same as above… the machine that controls all your desktops becomes the single point of pwnership.
• Payroll. Your payroll system has salary information and identification information. In short, it has everything you need to commit tax fraud. In the US, in particular, it also has your national identification number (what is falsely called a "Social Security Number") which allows an attacker to basically jack your entire identity as well.
• Web 2.0. There have been some attempts to spread malware or spear phish using Web 2.0 technology. In as far as your organization uses Web 2.0, the more "legitimate" a message looks, the more likely a user is to click it. Web 2.0 provides a great vector to compromise an organization, especially if many of your employees use it. (Think social engineering).
• Malicious insiders. Ok, this last one is not new, but still a solid majority of attacks have at least some component of an insider attack. In some cases, simply installing a keylogger and "selling" the result is simple enough for a disgruntled employee with even a token level of access to an environment.

Will put up more info on Best Western as the situation warrants. Thoughts to the top 5 lists? What would you add or take off?

By John Bambenek, Information Security Practitioner and Journalist. Visit the blog maintained by John Bambenek here.

Related topics: Cyberattack, Cybercrime, Malware, Security