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What Naughty Things Do The Feds Suspect Amazon Has Done?

Written by Evan Schuman
February 4th, 2009
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Amazon.com is quite familiar with federal investigations, but the world’s largest E-tailer is not used to being the target. In a January 30 SEC 10-K filing, Amazon’s government filing casually mentioned: “In January 2009, we learned that the United States Postal Service, including the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, is investigating our compliance with Postal Service rules, and we are cooperating.”

Not quite sure who Amazon is cooperating with, but it’s certainly not us, as both Amazon and Postal Service officials refused to comment on the probe. Although there are quite a few specific mail no-nos that might spark such a probe—such as distribution of child pornography or narcotics or other illegal items—postal inspectors are a great catch-all federal law enforcement tool. Can’t prove that a thief stole something? Charge him with mail fraud for shipping it to someone else. Or, the investigation could even be enforcement of a very old still-on-the-books law that—believe it or not—makes it a federal violation to use someone other than the U.S. Post Office when there is no business need for something to move through an alternative carrier, such as FedEx or DHL.


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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...