Quantcast StorefrontBacktalk » Blog Archive » A Ukranian TJX Connection?
advertisement
advertisement

A Ukranian TJX Connection?

Written by Evan Schuman
August 21st, 2007
Like this story? Share it
To share this story with people in your social network, please click on the network icons below.

U.S. postal inspectors are investigating if there is a Ukranian connection to the TJX data heist, according to this Boston Globe story. The 24-year-old suspect was arrested weeks ago in the Turkish resort city of Kemer, according to this Associated Press story.

It’s not news that authorities have suspected Eastern European cyber thief syndicates as being involved in the TJX incident, given it’s massive scope (info from more than 45 million cards taken), sophisticated methods and long (multi-year) duration. But the investigators have identified a specific Ukranian–Maksym Yastremskiy–as having “sold card numbers through online forums hosted overseas, sometimes in Cyrillic or that were password protected. He is likely the largest seller of stolen TJX numbers.”

Prices ranged from $20 to $100 per stolen card, and the cards were sold in batches of up to 10,000, depending on factors like the credit limits of the consumer accounts being traded, the story said.


advertisement

Leave a Reply

Newsletter

Quickly catch-up on the latest in E-Commerce and Retail Tech with our free weekly newsletter, with urgent bulletins as news merits.
advertisement

Most Recent Comments

Kill All The Passwords

This article does mention, but does not give enough attention to, the fact that the attacks discussed are only feasible when the encrypted password file can be copied and subjected to an offline attack. The trick is to have authentication performed on a separate, much more strongly secured host - such as an Active Directory Domain Controller, or a Kerberos server, or a NIS+ server, or even using something as banal as an LDAP-over-SSL authentication dialog. In these environments, the odds of the "password file" being stolen and subjected to an offline attack go to near zero, and only online attacks may be carried out by the attacker. With sensible exponential backoff between failed password attempts, lockout after a modest number of failed attempts on a single account, and pattern detection, that minimum 7 character password is quite secure enough. Passwords aren't dead yet for security purposes, and they will be with us for a very long while to come for practical purposes. The trick is to employ them correctly. Read more...
The possibilities you describe are years away from being implemented at best, so for the moment passwords are an ugly reality. Luckily, password managers can easily manage hundreds of passwords of any length. The only thing a user needs to remember is the master password. It seems like an easier task to educate users on how to use password managers rather than implement complex security technology on a global basis. Read more...