A PDF Chart of all legal actions taken by enforcement agencies since CASL came into effect. The PDF has live links to the case files.
Frequently Asked Questions
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21 November 2013
'Dun & Bradstreet' Malware Email
I just received this email ostensibly from business reputation firm Dub & Bradstreet. The fact that I don’t actually have a business at present time didn’t escape me, but the verbiage of the email is compelling, and I can see why someone might inadvisedly click on the attachement
I carefully saved the attachement and went over to VirusTotal and uploaded it there. No suprise, it is malware. See for yourself
Looking at the headers we see that this was sent from an IP in Mexico, presumably not a sending platform used by D&B
Received: from fixed-189-17-231.iusacell.net (fixed-189-17-231.iusacell.net [187.189.17.231] (may be forged))
inetnum: 187.188/15
status: allocated
aut-num: N/A
owner: Iusacell PCS de Mexico, S.A. de C.V.
ownerid: MX-IPMS2-LACNIC
responsible: Rafel Rodriguez Sanchez
address: Montes Urales, 460, Col. Lomas de Chapultepec
address: 11000 - Mxico - DF
country: MX
phone: +52 55 51095068
owner-c: CHD
tech-c: CHD
abuse-c: CHD
inetrev: 187.188/15
nserver: GWIUSACELL.IUSACELL.COM.MX
nsstat: 20131119 AA
nslastaa: 20131119
created: 20111208
changed: 20120604
The From: is [email protected] and D&B has SPF records, but does not publish firm -all assertions which would allow a receiving system to reject such mail with 100% confidence and so we see this result:
Authentication-Results: iecc.com; spf=softfail
dig://dnb.com;debug=0;querytype=TXT
; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> dnb.com TXT
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 25745
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;dnb.com. IN TXT
;; ANSWER SECTION:
dnb.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 mx ip4:68.233.77.18 ip4:72.19.252.170 ip4:202.129.242.64/31 ip4:204.14.232.64/28 ip4:204.14.234.64/28 ip4:96.43.144.64/31 ip4:96.43.148.64/31 ip4:182.50.78.64/28 ip4:220.130.152.173 ip4:204.92.22.200/30 " "ip4:12.129.29.143 ip4:158.151.208.120/31 ip4:158.151.214.66/31 include:alerts.wallst.com ~all"
;; Query time: 100 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.1.1#53(10.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Thu Nov 21 09:07:43 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 342
15 March 2012
11 April 2011
Facts & Tips for Consumers about the Epsilon Breach
Epsilon Interactive, who sends commercial email on behalf of hundreds of companies, admitted to a security breach that they detected some time in March. Epsilon and its parent company, Alliance Data, have posted two press releases about the breach.
- Epsilon Notifies Clients of Unauthorized Entry into Email System – April 01, 2011
- Alliance Data Provides Statement Surrounding Unauthorized Entry Incident at Epsilon Subsidiary - April 06, 2011
How many companies’ customers' email addresses were lost?
Epsilon has not revealed any statistics beyond ‘2% of our clients’, of which they reportedly have 2,500.
Journalists covering the story have collected notifications sent by about 70 companies, including many financial institutions. The names of these companies have been published at:
What information was lost?
Epsilon has stated that the names and email addresses of their clients' customers were taken. Presumably the attackers were also able to access the names of each client.
What does this mean for consumers?
If you received a notification from one of Epsilon's clients, the thieves know your name and email address. Depending on which company had your information, the thieves may also be know the hotels you may stay at, which credit cards you may use, or where you buy stuff online. If your email address shows up on several of these lists, the criminals can draw together a pretty accurate profile of who you are, and what you typically do, and can guess your income level. Ironically, that is what companies like Epsilon do with the data, too.
Do the criminals have any more information about me?
While it's common for the contents of an email message to include more personal information than your name and email address, as far as we know, this information was not stolen. Often times, different data is stored in different places, and the thieves may have not been able to access the contents of previously sent messages. There is a pretty good explanation of the way these marketing databases generally work here
My address was lost in the Epsilon breach; CAUCE says the only way protect myself against phishing is to change my address. Isn't that is a rather extreme approach?
Sadly, it may not be extreme enough. The Anti-Phishing Work Group reports that there are about 360,000 unique phishing sites, annually [2010].
Anti-virus software catches new malware about 20% of the time, leaving computer end-users exposed to a tremendous amount of viruses, keyloggers, and spyware, and other bad things. Anti-spam software does a pretty good job, getting well upwards of 90% of all spam, but some trickles through. We know that phishing attempts were successful at companies, ESPs, who were on high alert for the attempts.
While some phishing attempts are obvious, almost silly, others can be extremely difficult for end-users to recognize. Our friends at Word to the Wise took apart a legitimate email from an Epsilon client-company, and even email experts had a hard time determining if the email was real. See their article ‘Real. Or. Phish?’.
If your email was lost by a client company of Epsilon, we stand by our suggestion that changing your address is the best way to avoid receiving and having to deal with the phishing emails and other spam that will inevitably come from this data theft. Even if you don't want to abandon your current address entirely, this would be a good time to set up a new address and move your important communications there.
I unsubscribed from a customer list at Epsilon, and still received a notification from them. Isn’t this illegal?
It is arguably illegal under some laws, but it makes good sense that they did mail you. It doesn’t mean you weren’t unsubscribed. Here’s how it works: When you unsubscribe from an emailer’s list, they put your address into what they call a ‘suppression list’. The criminals presumably stole these too. The companies did the right thing by alerting you to the fact that your address was stolen.
How can I unsubscribe from everything at Epsilon?
Epsilon maintains a list of places where you can unsubscribe from a variety of their clients' newsletters.
We do not know if this will ensure that another of their clients will not upload your address to Epsilon in the future, and of course there are many other ESPs out there.
Are the authorities involved? Can I sue someone?
Epsilon is reportedly working with the Secret Service, presumably because information related to bank and credit card clients was lost. Previously, some of the companies who were targets or victims of the previous series of breaches (which, again, may not be connected to the Epsilon incident) have been working with law enforcement.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority and Australian Privacy Commissioner are aware of the attack, having been alerted to it by Dell Australia, whose data was stolen. The breach may prompt an investigation by the UK Information Commissioner's Office, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and Consumer Protection Commissioner William Rubenstein are investigating, and have written a letter to Attorney General of the United States asking him to investigate. Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce panel in the United States have written to the CEO of Alliance Data, Epsilon’s parent company, asking for more details on how many customers were affected and how the breach occurred.
You could try to sue someone: the company holding your data, or Epsilon, or both. There may be class action lawsuits coming out of this, as well as lawsuits by Epsilon’s client companies. If you do file with a class-action, you should not expect a large financial settlement, as these are generally quite small.
CAUCE suggests that if you live in a relevant jurisdiction, you can file a complaint with the local authorities about the breach:
- Australia (Australian Communications and Media Authority)
- Australia (Privacy Commissioner)
- Canada (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
- United States (Federal Trade Commission)
- United Kingdom (Information Commissioner's Office)
If you have incurred a financial loss as a result of any phishing attack, or see suspicious activity on your bank account, contact your financial institution to alert them and report your credit card stolen immediately. Then, call your local and federal police forces to file a complaint (the bank will not do this for you).
BACKGROUNDER
How was the hack accomplished?
Epsilon has not released details about the mechanics of the breach. If it is similar to the hacking attempts targeted at ESPs last year, the hackers may have used social engineering and spear-phishing techniques, leading to an employee mistakenly typing their username and password into a web page controlled by the hacker. However, at this time, we do not know what happened or whether there's any connection to the previous attacks.
Has Epsilon been hacked before?
Maybe. Epsilon has not publicly admitted to any previous attack, but their customer Walgreens has indicated that this is the second time they have lost data by way of Epsilon.
“After the incident last year, Walgreens requested that Epsilon put a number additional security measures in place. Apparently, that expectation was not fully met.” – Walgreen spokesperson, via databreaches.net
Is the Epsilon breach part of the previous series of attacks on the ESP industry?
These attacks appear to have begun as early as November 2009, the first victim being a company called aWeber.
Typically, the criminals would hack into an ESP by sending an employee an email that infected them with keylogger spyware, take over one of their client accounts, and send spam for fake Adobe or Skype software. More than a dozen different ESPs, including Epsilon, were targets or victims of these attacks in 2010.
It is impossible to say if this is the same as what happened to Epsilon more recently. Adobe or Skype spam was seen during previous breaches. This did not happen with the current breach with Walgreen or any other Epsilon customer.
This could have been the same group, using the same point of attack. It could have been a copycat using the same tactics, or an entirely different approach. We do not know, and there are too many variables for anyone to say they know definitively — though if Epsilon were to share what they know with the security community, it's likely that we could understand quite a bit more.
Did Epsilon have lax security?
We do not know what changes they made after their first breach, so it is impossible to say.
Were there things they could have done to improve security?
Obviously — they were hacked, after all. Epsilon will presumably address whatever let the hackers get into their systems this time, but any security professional will tell you that security is never perfect. What appears secure today may be exploited tomorrow.
There are many steps ESPs can take to much improve their security related to client lists and outbound email – we have listed them here
I heard that someone warned ESPs about breaches in November.
They did. Return Path provides services to ESPs, blogged about their own breach, and those at ESPs in November 2010. In fact, the ESP industry was becoming aware of this series of breaches all the way through 2010, as they were happening.
Security isn’t 100%? Why?
Software, and the way it interacts with various web applications is very complicated. Many sites do not, or cannot update all components that go into a web application, because to do so may break functionality on the site, or they are negligent. Home computers are pretty much the same. Microsoft, for example, issued 67 updates this past ‘Patch Tuesday’. Have you updated your computer?
Who is the real victim here?
You are. Epsilon suffered the initial attack. Their clients suffer as well, losing consumer trust. There may also be marketing or advertising agencies involved. But as far as CAUCE is concerned, the people who stand to suffer the most are the regular Internet users who trusted that the major brands whose products they enjoy would keep their email addresses and other personal information safe and secure. If these companies do not take immediate, public actions to prove that they deserve our trust, then they do not deserve our business.
04 April 2011
Epsilon Interactive breach the Fukushima of the Email Industry
Marketing as Usual? Not a chance. – Epsilon corporate catch phrase
A series of attacks on the Email Service Provider (ESP) community began in late 2009. The criminals spear-phish their way into these companies that provide out-sourced mailing infrastructure to their clients, who are companies of all types and sizes.
Upon gaining access to an ESP, the criminals then steal subscriber data (PII such as names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses, and in one case, Vehicle Identification Numbers). They then use ESPs’ mailing facility to send spam; to monetize their illicit acquisition, the criminals have spammed ads for fake Adobe Acrobat and Skype software.
On March 30, the Epsilon Interactive division of Alliance Data Marketing (ADS on NASDAQ) suffered a massive breach that upped the ante, substantially. Email lists of at least eight financial institutions were stolen.
Thus far, puzzlingly, Epsilon has refused to release the names of compromised clients. CAUCE has drawn the a list of from news reports (below)
The obvious issue at hand is the ability of the thieves to now undertake targeted spear-phishing problem as critically serious as it could possibly be.
What to do?
CAUCE is calling on the ESP industry and ISP and Email Receivers to implement these measures across the board, to protect the PII of end-users everywhere. What follows are best common practices that have existed for many years. It is time to take a stand against the data-thieves, and begin to properly protect end-users, without fail.
ESP & Senders
- Security must be the top corporate priority. Both Silverpop and Epsilon Interactive were either breached repeatedly, or failed to fully mitigate their initial security lapse in December. I was told by one ESP security staffer that he hadn’t been given sufficient resources to affect all the appropriate changes. That is at best lamentable.
- Two-factor authentication must be implemented for ESP system access for both staff and clients.
- Senders and ESPs must sign all email with DKIM, and authenticate all mailing IPs with SPF.
- ESPs must check all outbound content against domain blacklists such as SURBL and the Spamhaus DBL before deployment.
- ESPs must deploy extended-validation certificates on web properties.
- ESPs and senders must rigourously adhere to the MAAWG Senders’ BCP
- ESPs and brand owners should use the services of email authentication services such as Authentication Metrics, eCert, Return Path, and Truedomain, as well as anti-phishing services like BrandProtect, Internet Identity and tools such as Lashback’s BrandAlert
- ESPs must adopt and embrace a culture of transparency and commit to cooperative full disclosure
“Epsilon has refused to provide additional details on what other brands may have been affected.” – Security Week
“SilverPop did not respond to requests for comment” – Krebs on Security
While it is the instinctive corporate reaction to be secretive, such a strategy exacerbates the frustration of the other set of victims of data-theft, namely the end-users. A complete list of breached clients is fundamental to protecting end-users, and allowing them to protect themselves.
Receiving Systems
We need desperate measure for desperate times, CAUCE calls upon the receiving community to better their protection of end-users.
- Email receivers must follow Yahoo! Mail’s lead and deploy multi-layer phishing protection.
- Email receivers must deploy DKIM and SPF checking, and treat messaging failing such checks accordingly by labeling the subject line, placing it in a spam folder, or blocking it entirely.
- Email receivers must deploy checks using URI blacklists like SURBL and Spamhaus on message headers and content domains.
- Email receivers must take extreme measures, even if there are false positives. Better safe that sorry, and given the potential damage these breaches can cause to a recipient, far better that there are false positives (legitimate email refused or sidetracked to the bulk folder) than false negatives (illicit email delivered to the inbox).
The list of breached companies
24 January 2011
I don't really want to stay in touch on LinkedIn
Imagine my surprise (I imagine yours to be similar), when whilst sitting around watching t.v. on a cold Sunday afternoon I was fiddling with my new iPad, and decided during a commercial to cross-check my gmail contacts to my LinkedIn contacts.
I was shown a short list of contacts, with no scroll-bar, (deselected a few, actually) and hit 'ok'. I saw no results, iPad did its thing where pages disappear then relaunch. Then, I tried my other gmail account.
Sigh.
The rest, as they say, is history. I'm not certain if it is because I've been on LinkedIn for a long time, have a business account, have a lot of existing contacts or some combination of these factors, but somehow LinkedIn determined I was a suitable candidate to upload two address books (yes, I overtly OK'ed this step), and invite them all to 'get in touch', or to join LinkedIn.
Included in this wonderful offer were anti-spam mailing lists, people I'd decidedly not prefer to stay in touch with, for example, spammers about whom I've complained. LI also wrote to abuse desks to whom I've complained about said spammers, and at least one (literally) dead friend, a dead email list I used to run (or, at least, I thought it was decommissioned), the billing alias for my telephone company, a whole Smörgåsbord stuffed into a cornucopia of ill-placed messaging.
I do have no small number of people who accepted my offer (my dead friend didn't). As, well, I received no small number of complaints, a total that will undoubtedly mount as people will probably complaint to [email protected], linkedin.com and elsewhere, justifiably so.
I'm uncertain if this was due to poor UI, generally or UI that only displays on the iPad, and lousy policy regarding address book uploads at LinkedIn and the way that Google aggregates contacts; I will reiterate here what has always been my recommendation regarding such things: Limit inviatation sends to a maximum of 100 at any time, and should an uploaded list have role accounts, the send be held until the validity can be humanly verified. Neither of those things happened.
My two gmail accounts date back to 2006 and 2004 respectively, and I didn't overtly add many of these addresses to my contact list.
There you have it, a case in point and an object lesson in how powerful the tools we use actually are, and the laxity in privacy that is pervasive these days.
Of course, I apologize profusely for the intrusion.
Atypically, I've kept the comment section open for this post, feel free to stay in touch here! ;-)
--
Neil Schwartzman
Exectuive Director
CAUCE
15 August 2010
How Your Privacy Is Exploited Online and How To Protect Yourself
I spotted a disturbing headline which reminded me to repost a recent series about online privacy in the Wall Street Journal.
Suit alleges Disney, other top sites spied on users - CNET News
A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a group of well-known Web sites, including those owned by Disney, Warner Bros. Records, and Demand Media, broke the law by secretly tracking the Web movements of their users, including children.
...
Among the laws that were allegedly violated by Clearspring and the other defendants are the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, California's Computer Crime law, and that state's Invasion of Privacy Act.
(CNET uses trackers themselves. Using the Firefox plugin Ghostery, we see that they monitor using Twitmeme, Comscore Beacon, Revenue Science, Yahoo Buzz, Facebook Connect, Google Analytics, and Chartbeat to monitor your surfing)
The article above references a multi-part series I highly recommend you read if you care about your online privacy (just for the record, the Wall Street Journal uses the following trackers: Facebook Connect, MSN Ads, Chartbeat, Peer39, Fox Audience Metrics, Google Analytics, Omniture, WoprdPress Stats.
CAUCE uses Google Analytics and Bit.ly, and Typepad, where we are hosted, inserts Quancast tracking into our posts.).
The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online - WSJ.com
How to Outsmart Tracking Cookies on the Web - WSJ.com
What They Know About You - Personal Information Tracked Online - WSJ.com
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