Comment by rkalla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkalla | Hacker News Reader

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At this point I'm curious if this is the result of any large company becoming the whipping boy of multiple hacking groups, or if this is just unique to Sony.

For example, if Microsoft were focused on next... or Ford or GE or IBM, would the same endless embarrassment ensue?

When Sony originally got hacked, I commented like everyone else: Sony is incompetent, their security team is subpar, etc, but after the 12th hack... is this just how shoddy most systems are and they just have the spotlight on them at the moment?

I believe back on the announcement thread of the latest hack here on HN, there was an entire sub-thread about "Is this the norm at big companies?" and the consensus was "yes". Someone mentioned security was between "horribly broken" and "totally laughable". Of course that's always juicy to read, but I wonder how true it is.

If this endless list of penetration is any sort of barometer, it looks to be true.

I'll be curious what the global fallout of this is. I would hate to be the next company that does something socially unacceptable that gets the baton passed to them from Sony.

I have personal experience shipping a web app to a bunch of large companies and educational institutions, and it's a mixed bag.

Most businesses seem to get by with as little as possible in the way of security resources. Often they don't have anyone dedicated on security (warning signal #1), and they'll let you remote into their network without many restrictions (warning signal #2). The other businesses are usually to the other extreme on security. They want documentation that you have a secure development policy, they'll do an independent security audit, they won't allow remote access under any circumstances, and some won't even allow any direct access at all (you have to prepare documentation that their people can follow for any modification that must be made to the system). So, basically, there's a minority that really gets it, and a majority that doesn't know and doesn't care.

The fallout of this is simple: there won't be any. It hasn't gotten worse enough yet. Sony's case is seen as an isolated incident of a company that got unlucky. Most business leaders won't even see it as having bad policy, just bad luck. Programmers will know better, but wisdom from the tech crowd generally doesn't percolate to the C-levels. However, hackers everywhere are realizing that all these big businesses are information goldmines, and the coming years we're going to see an onslaught of hacks that will eventually force a standardization of security policies.

> but after the 12th hack... is this just how shoddy most systems are and they just have the spotlight on them at the moment?

I think both. It's fairly common practice to hire your design/advertising agency to develop your web properties. Those companies have little or no in-house software development expertise and rarely employ good software development practices. I made efforts to introduce such practices, with relative success (we reduced cost and delivery times by implementing simple things like version control, code reviews and a knowledge base) but, without education and enforcement, developer turnaround and poor expectation management eventually erased all traces of good practices in a couple years.

There is one defining characteristic of a company whose products are secure: the existence of a security methodology that is followed religiously. Generally that means that for everything that gets rolled out, it goes through a security department that handles security lifecycle management and brings in external security consultants to do both SARs (security architecture reviews) and AVTs (application vulnerability tests). Every single thing that touches your company's network, whether it's a third-party product or internal, should have an AVT performed before it touches a production server, and every internal product should have a SAR performed both by dedicated internal teams and external teams (this is generally a joint test, as domain knowledge that consultants may not have can be very important).

If that process isn't in place, then it's simply a matter of time (and pissing off the wrong people) before it all ends up crumbling. I don't know anything about Sony's internal processes whatsoever, but everything I've seen and heard points to this process being completely nonexistent. Most of these vulnerabilities would've been caught by anyone familiar with security -- if they're easy to find from the outside, they're downright trivial to find from the inside.

(Full disclosure: I work as a security consultant)

"if this is just unique to Sony"..."Sony is incompetent"

More likely, Sony simply outsorces their web properties to some outside teams, which do not have proper expertise in building secure websites. This theory is especially make sense if you look at what properties were hacked - they're mostly local-market websites. So, I'd say, the only one hacked property Sony must really be embarrased for is PSN, hands down.

I worked with a guy about 7-8 years ago who went onto to manage an Indian outsourced team for the SonyStyle web store. He was terribly frustrated with the situation and the quality of the engineering staff. Stopped having lunch with him as every time it seemed to devolve into a rant session. Note that he was Indian born/educated himself. It was sad as we collaborated closely on a project for over a year and he was one of the sharpest, happiest, most positive engineers I ever worked with.

They definatly don't take security seriously at Sony, if you get hacked with a sql injection - you suck. When I was creating PHP websites as a 12 year old kid, they where even protected against sql-injections -- and it's not that i was a super smart or paranoid kid

I don't think that if anonymous would target Microsoft (or a normal company) that it would be the same.

Indeed. The smart folks were protecting against SQL injection and similar exploits 10 and 15 years ago. Today, there's absolutely zero excuse.

What I wonder about is to what extent this is going on with other companies without anyone hearing about it.

The thing is, Sony seems to have made itself the target of people who are hacking "for a cause (or whatever you might call it)" which is why they advertise the fact that the hack took place.

Surely, there are plenty of other black hats without a cause, who will not deface the website or put out a PR release and so you are only going to hear about it if A) the company notices and B) the company tells you about it.

To what extent do they have to tell? Is there any way for them to get caught if they don't? What (if any) are the consequences if they don't?

I'm curious. How many intrusions get swept under the carpet?

Sony Music, Computer Entertainment (PlayStation), Electronics, Pictures, Online Entertainment, Network Entertainment -- all separate companies.

I think you are right that this is a hugely widespread problem. Does anyone know what security solutions are out there now?

Big companies better start seeking out people like tptacek and quick. More than just consulting, I think a Heroku-like product with a heavy emphasis on security (in addition to ease) could be a great product/SaaS.

Security products are a hard sell. And, there's a lot of snake oil and voodoo that gets passed off as useful. One of our competitors had (maybe still has) a slew of security issues, existing for years, and yet people kept buying and deploying the product at an alarming rate (it was extremely cheap, and had a tremendously long feature list)...it took a disaster at the company to change things to where we no longer view that product as a real threat in the marketplace. But, I never could figure out how people could overlook the abysmal security record.

Security is sort of an amorphous concept that most people just can't really wrap their head around. What does secure software look like? How do you know it's secure? Non-technical users have no way of knowing; expensive software is just as likely (if not more likely) to have security issues as Open Source software. Software that claims to be secure can be just as insecure as software that makes no such claims.

Security is a process not a product. You can't buy security. Things like proxies, mod_security, firewalls, IDS, etc. are all bandaids that you put over problems, and they're usually "preventing" ancient exploits that have already been fixed in the underlying software (assuming you're running the latest version). They might prevent some attacks, but if you're running insecure versions of your software underneath, a determined attacker will find a way in.

In short: Security is hard. The new hotness is easy and is an easier sell.

I think there will be increased demand for such a thing, but the security features a secure PaaS could provide (network and application firewalls) are never going to be a 100% solution. There is no substitute for building your product securely and no PaaS will do that for you.

i think there are 2 factors here, one being the unanimity of hacker community in regards to sony's treatment of geohotz, other hackers, and it's early adopter fan base.

secondly, there seems to be systemic incompetence all over the shoppe, so many entry points for attack, it's just a matter of time before attackers find them.

i don't generally form strong opinions on topics like these, but in this case, i will definitely be using the rays from their victory candescence to stay warm this winter.

You only need one junior dev to touch software before the whole site is at risk.

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