WatchGuard Wire
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How weak is WEP? To the Maxx!
An old story that has been in the news a lot has finally produced a new wrinkle:
skilled and methodical attackers compromised TJX Cos.' wireless network because
it was protected by nothing stronger than WEP --
and the remediation price tag could hit one
billion dollars. Though this story is real, it reads as if it were custom-tailored
to incent your senior management to upgrade your wireless gear.
TJX Cos. is the parent company of several retail chains, most notably Marshalls
and T.J. Maxx. Attackers hacked their way into the central database where customer
information, including credit card numbers, was stored. The intrusion remained
undetected for 18 months. No one knows how many credit and debit card numbers
they copied, but the estimates range from 45 million to 200 million. Illegal
buying sprees based on those credit card numbers have occurred in at least
seven states and eight countries.
Trying to put this incredibly lax security right, TJX has a lot of costs to
cover -- from compensating other retail chains victimized from the fraud (such
as Wal-Mart), to revamping its network, to settling lawsuits, to bringing in
(and this is a real number) 50 data security experts to advise, to paying for
credit card monitoring services for the millions of customers whose information
was compromised. All in all, the price tag could hit a billion dollars, according
to the Wall Street Journal article.
Kinda makes the purchase of a few WPA-capable routers, access points, and
firewalls seem insignificant, doesn't it? -- D.
Scott Pinzon, CISSP
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