Deloitte hit by cyber-attack revealing clients’ emails

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/25/deloitte-hit-by-cyber-attack-revealing-clients-secret-emails

by longwave • 9 years ago

145 32 9 years ago

wiz21c3• 9 years ago

From Deloitte web site :

In the face of so many questions, one thing is clear: Current approaches to managing cyber risk, many of which are focused on “securing the perimeter,” aren’t enough.

( https://www2.deloitte.com/me/en/pages/risk/articles/changing... )

frik• 9 years ago

From the Guardian article:

"The account required only a single password and did not have ”two-step“ verification, sources said."

"In 2012, Deloitte, which has offices all over the world, was ranked the best cybersecurity consultant in the world."

stult2• 9 years ago

Quis audiet ipsos auditores?

wavefunction• 9 years ago

I wonder who ranked them as such.

I have to imagine there are far more capable experts out there, especially with this breach.

bitexploder2• 9 years ago

Hopefully, most folks buying "cybersecurity" consulting know to use boutiques for legitimate assessment work. Quality using a big 4 is extremely variable. Many of my customers have told me this over the years. They do have good people, but actually getting one of their few decent folks on your project is hard.

Hits close to home though. Anyone can get owned. Even elite teams and individuals have had their email compromised. (Matasano, Kaminsky).

Everyone make sure your users have and use good 2 factor authentication. Make sure you don't keep much sensitive data on your email servers. Encrypt sensitive documentation in email. Have sane retention policies (1-2 months max on a cloud server). Lock down your admin accounts. Kick out all the old accounts completely. Take the time to talk with each person at your company about email security and suspicious emails. Especially administrative and HR staff. Of the deep penetrations into orgs I know of a high percentage happen thru email. Oh and do some internal phishing, FWIW. It's good to get discussions rolling and get everyone's attention.

NetStrikeForce• 9 years ago

It happens in many big companies that some departments hire external companies to do some work their own company does for customers. Why? Because those external companies are cheaper than hiring those internal departments.

otakucode2• 9 years ago

The 'best cybersecurity consultancy in the world' is destined to be the one which sells itself best to corporate executives. However, the most effective cybersecurity is done by people of technical and intellectual skill - the exact people corporate executives have a very low opinion and level of trust in. So that's pretty certain to be a title that amounts to no more than gilding.

tyingq3• 9 years ago

There will be a pretty high amount of embarrassing material here if this gets dumped.

Senior leaders at large companies tend to use firms like Deloitte for their most controversial and sensitive potential projects, ideas, etc. And they confide with them with a lot of candor.

I would not be surprised to see unabashed discussion of tax evasion, for example. Or leaders within a single company using Deloitte to undermine their peers. Or debates of the merits of layoffs designed to be age discriminatory.

Basically, there would a much higher percentage of "good stuff" in a dump of these emails than say, in the Sony dump.

tresp• 9 years ago

confide in, not with

revjx• 9 years ago

I work for one of those companies, and you're absolutely right. Our company takes confidentiality very seriously indeed, it will be interesting to see the consequences of this.

pc86• 9 years ago

There will be none.

Deloitte is so entrenched politically (both figuratively within large companies' C suite as well as literally with state and federal governments) this will barely register for any of their RFP or RFQ responses. Nobody signing the checks will care about this, if they even hear about it.

servsys• 9 years ago

I knew it. Private sector corruption makes the public sector look like a saint.

drzaiusapelord• 9 years ago

No s/mime, no pgp, so the hackers get everything nice and neat in plaintext. Not sure why we think email encryption is optional nowadays, especially for sensitive communications.

otakucode2• 9 years ago

I continue to be amazed that email continues to be used for anything important at all. It's got fundamental flaws that require herculean effort to overcome. It would seem ripe for replacement.

mercer• 9 years ago

Could you elaborate on that? As in, the degree to which email is unsafe. I try to be security-conscious, but I just now realized that I often opt for email-type login even when presented with alternatives. Would using OAuth, Facebook or Github for login be safer than email? Or are the vectors of attack different, and is it difficult to compare the two? Or does it depend on whether I'm using GMail or something else?

Based on what I know, my impression is that email is significantly worse, and somehow I'd never considered that. But I'm not sure if I'm missing something...

thisisit• 9 years ago

As the companies grow they try to build a fence rather than educate people. Many a times asking people to setup a complex password is problematic. While you can enforce it on a company wide system, people will still revert back to default/easy passwords on internal systems. There are frequently cases of Active Directory passwords being very demanding but the internal DB passwords being abc123.

akhilcacharya• 9 years ago

Hmm, I wonder who it was

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

I have always wondered why hackers don't target some of these major corporations more often. Imagine the emails that could come from a hack of Apple, Monsanto, or Wells Fargo.

Deloitte hit by cyber-attack revealing clients’ emails

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