Telstra BigPond Passwords Leaked 97
Lord Cyric writes: "Telstra, DownUnder's biggest and baddest telco, has had a major security breach yesterday when a sample of its BigPond Internet password list was posted on various newsboards. The Australian Broadband Users Group (ABUG) has confirmed that this is not a hoax. This hack exposes the passwords for most of Telstra's Internet services (dialup, cable & ADSL). With all the bad press Telstra has been receiving lately over it's shoddy ADSL rollout and download caps, they certainly didn't need this ..." This site is not exactly the Telstra P.R. department.
List of all sub7 scans to Telstra's ADSL service (Score:1)
their security is a joke... (Score:3)
When someone has a problem they get person who looks good from 2 cubicles down to fix it and he/she just screwes up half the settings and services on the machine which compromise the security.
Leave your housedoor open and intruders come in.
What the hell are you talking about? (Score:2)
How the fuck can it not be Telstra's fault?
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BRAVO!! (Score:2)
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Re:This is +3, funny? (Score:1)
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Re:this is crazy (Score:3)
Calm down people (Score:4)
With out more info there is no way of knowing if this is a crack or PEBCAK. It's entirely possible that this was done with social engineering or trojan(s), not a 1337 4ax0r. So far all that's known that 70 accounts were comprimised by some method.
To put it in perspective, recently somebody sent an email to a large number Bigpond users pretending to be from Telstra asking them for their password and credit card number just so they could check their records. A depressing number of people replyed. We're not talking about the most security literate people in the world here.
Telstra uses pretty much standard PPPoE for ADSL although they do use the ADSL modems that had the security problem a while back.
We've also heard that Telstra has already caught the person responsible.
BTW the "Australian Broadband Users Group" are widely regarded among Australian broadband users to be a bunch of self-important tools who are pretty much out to make themselves look big. The only guy who's worth listening to is they guy that runs www.whirlpool.net.au The rest are just dead weight.
Re:Telstra: Australian for ISP (Score:1)
I wonder how you order one of those in a bar?
"A schooner of 4X please"
Re:Not a hoax? (Score:1)
Re:Good Engineering Practices (Score:2)
More often the problem lies with management that won't allow the engineers to carry out best practices. This is because the best practices involve things that take extra time. Since the sales people usually commit product delivery often even before the development department ever heard of it, management gets really cranky about delivery times. Quality just goes out the window because that isn't what sales committed the company to.
Let's rake some managers and marketers over the coals first.
Re:If it was a decent system.. (Score:2)
If it was a decent system the hashes of the passwords would be stored, not the passwords themselves (encrypted or not)
Re:liable? (Score:1)
Computer security is not a luxury to quickly become an afterthought.
Security is the foundation that everything else should rest upon...
...which, most will agree, is not that difficult to do, if planned correctly, by the proper individuals...
Re:If it was a decent system.. (Score:2)
I keep seeing this sort of stuff - presumably refering to hashed passwords rather than encrypted. However there is a problem... if you use APOP or CHAP or similar the server end needs to have plaintext equivalent passwords on its end. Typically this means that the RADIUS servers have the plaintext passwords available. This is problematic - you would prefer to keep passwords hashed, but frankly its normally easier to nail down your RADIUS server than it is to nail down all the networking and other stuff to prevent sniffing of authentication sessions (and CHAP etc prevents those sniffs being useful).
So don't assume plaintext passwords on authentication servers is necessarily a bad thing.
Spoke to a Telstra Support guy... (Score:1)
He said that the account details were obtained by a trojan that claimed to remove the new 3GB/month cap on downloads. This would explain why it is only a few broadband accounts with the problem.
Of course the problem is that they still haven't sent out a message to all the ADSL users warning them about this.
Re:Who wants the pass anyway.... (Score:1)
Lucky you, living in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane. For those of us in other cities, it's Telstra or it's nothing -- and I'd rather burn my money than hand it over to those leprous scabs.
Re:BRAVO!! (Score:1)
Re:Why are stolen ADSL passwords useful (Score:1)
Re:Why bother with mind games? (Score:1)
Re:man. (Score:2)
Its also a real mess to change since theres broken software there too!
Its just how things are done on the Information Super Outback!
Re:man. (Score:1)
Telstra Bigpond has been unequivocally the WORST internet service I've ever used, of 4 ISP's tried.
Re:Thanks Telstra! (Score:1)
But I'm guessing you don't live in Perth?
Thanks Telstra! (Score:4)
But most of all, thanks for leaking the account passwords through poor security and having the foresight to keep the server down right now so I can't change mine.
Which is why as a sysadmin (Score:3)
Re:possible new cable in Canberra... (Score:1)
Unfortunately, they don't plan to roll out to newer suburbs like mine at this stage, due to the underground powerlines..
Might also point out that TransACT themselves do not provide internet service, and those that do provide it to TransACT customers (a whole 1 suburb at this stage, I think), provide it at a premium. There are links to ISP pricing on the TransACT site.
Re:possible new cable in Canberra... (Score:1)
or even some older subburbs....which sucks...their planned coverage map shows Dunlop, Fraser, Latham and Flynn....but leaves a bloody great hole where Charnwood is....
so it's Telstra ADSL for me....
fortunately I'm not with them YET...not till friday...so i Know my username is safe....for now....heh..
Re:It's Just Privatisation In Action (Score:1)
Re:Not a hoax? (Score:1)
Re:Telstra in denial (Score:4)
From NineMSN [ninemsn.com.au];
Telstra is evil, but this looks more like the work of idiot users.
Keep the pitchfork and flaming torches handy though, they'll fuck up sooner or later.
they don't use SSL either (Score:2)
city: Adelaide, South Australia
Who wants the pass anyway.... (Score:4)
Telstra (Score:1)
What they've been saying (Score:3)
Telstra's claiming that the 96 passwords published represented the entire list, not a sample. They've cancelled all the accounts concerned and re-provisioned (translation: re-generated random passwords) and contacted everyone concerned. They're saying it was the result of a trojan, which they've found installed on every one of the users' devices.
On some of the Australian mailing lists, we've had individuals claiming that whatever it is, it must be Telstra's fault. Come on, they're not particularly nice guys as far as responsible corporations go, but poor security must be the fault of the software vendors and lack of vigilance on the users' parts.
Just trying to install some sanity before all of this stuff gets repeated here once again....
Re:Why the hell in this dayand age... (BECAUSE...) (Score:1)
Yeah, they decided to send the plaintext password over the wire instead. Yeah, that'll work. Not.
Bob, the reason is that the CHAP authentication protocol requires that the server know the plaintext password.
Just keeping a hash isn't good enough.
The requirement for plaintext passwords is a drawback for many challenge-response protocols. You trade-off the value of never sending the password over the net (instead using challenge-response) with having to store the actual password on the server (instead of the result of a one-way hash).
Encrypting the passwords doesn't help. If the authentication program needs the plaintext value it must be able to decrypt the password, so the attacker simply steals the encrypted passwords and a memory-dump of the executing decryptor program.
this is crazy (Score:1)
Re:this is crazy (Score:1)
<coughs>
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Telstra Bashing (Score:2)
Re:they don't use SSL either (Score:1)
Telstra Contradictions (Score:1)
Definitely not a hoax (Score:1)
My BigPond Cable-connected system regularly gets portscanned by other cable/DSL users. This seems to be just a lot of FUD caused by the deceptions of script kiddie. Telstra don't do anything to protect their users systems from attack, but then how many other ISPs do?
Not a hoax? (Score:5)
What? The site which originally broke the story [core.org.au] (CORE [core.org.au]) have now posted another article saying Telstra's servers were probably not cracked [core.org.au]. Specifically:
Sub7 or some other "netbus" program has been used to leech the accounts of the users machines. This is at the moment the scenario I favour...
Sure, Telstra fucked up their ADSL network and extremely pissed off many users with their download caps, but there isn't proof yet that they screwed up on this too.
Re:liable? - pseudo-MONOPOLY (Score:1)
Re:It's Just Privatisation In Action (Score:1)
It's Just Privatisation In Action (Score:2)
As a resident of Australia, this doesn't come as a big suprise to me. Ever since the Liberal government decided that selling off Telstra would actually be a *good* idea, the service has just gone completely downhill. Of course, in some ways it was never great to begin with but privatising it just makes it worse.
The point that successive governments (state and federal) don't understand is when you privatise a service, you change whatever the service is responsible to. Public-sector services are responsible to the government, who are in turn responsible (at least, they used to be) to the people. Politicians can be very sensitive to voter dissatisfaction (so the theory goes), especially around election times. But when you privatise the service, it becomes a private-sector entity whose responsibility is to the shareholders, not the people. Profits become the primary focus, and the quality of service declines. Witness such effects with the electricity and natural gas industries in Australia, and the electrical industry in California (the one currently being bailed out with taxpayers' money). What's worse is that as Telstra, being the government body in charge of telecommunications, was the one that set up and maintained all the infrastructure (phone lines etc). This puts them in a wonderful monopoly position as they own practically most of the telecommunications infrastructure in Australia (Optus has some infrastructure of their own as well as leasing from Telstra), and therefore can effectively charge what they like. Not only do the customers pay high prices for inferior service from Telstra, they have to pay high prices to Telstra's competitors because Telstra also charges high prices for them to use their network.
Telstra should have never been privatised to begin with. It was a simple election ploy for little Johnny Howard so that he would have some money to throw around, a way to buy votes. The Liberal government will spend the money on grand election promises and when they are voted out (it's only a matter of time, really) they will leave the successive Labor government with a dilemma. Raise income taxes/GST or sell off Telstra completely (the latter being the most likely). The sad reality of this is that while Telstra is responisble to the shareholders, the "mum-and-dad" shareholders that were meant to be the main beneficiaries of the sale hold precious little stock and can do absolutely nothing to influence the way the company is run.
The same Liberal government that sold Telstra is also unable (more likely they are unwilling) to send in the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the same people who said "no thank you" to DVD regional zoning [slashdot.org]) and put the hard word on Telstra to improve their service. So, to be honest, this whole sorry saga has been an ill-conceived, money-motivated botch from the word go. Unless we either send in the ACCC and try to get some real results, or buy back the 51% of Telstra already sold (and pay for it later through higher national debt), this situation is unlikely to change.
Self Bias Resistor
This is why! (Score:2)
I just can't wait for hailstorm and .net, atleast now it's a two step prosses to hack my life, al la The Net.
It *MIGHT* not have been Telstras fault (Score:1)
I realise that this information may have been posted earlier and, indeed, in a more ledgible and less commaed fashion, but I couldnt be bothered checking...
Have an otherwise normal day,
err!
jak.
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"A man who has to be chained to a bed has issues."
David Eddings.
Re:man. (Score:2)
A dictionary attack would probably use a dictionary 5 or 10 times that size, and wouldn't take all that much time to run. A 500 Mhz system can process a lot of ~12 character strings in an hour.
I strongly suggest you try a different scheme.
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liable? (Score:5)
- had crappy security
- got hacked, hurting their users and customers in a tangable way
- were sued by thier customers
- lost/settled with their customers
As far as I can tell, the hackers are the ones considered culpable, not the incompitant admins who let them in. Is there a legal basis for this, or is it just the way things work? Or am I being paranoid?--
Telstra not at fault (Score:1)
Why the hell in this dayand age... (Score:1)
The people at AT&T figured this one out 32 years ago!
I hope that the company is held responsible for this. It's not completely the fault of the "hacker" who posted the passwords!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:liable? (Score:2)
Re:liable? (Score:2)
Re:liable? (Score:2)
On Telstra's side is a lot of money and for some users the fact that outage didn't "cost" them much.
"Loss" is an interesting question in this case. If some 31337 h4x0r uses up my download quota (which I've paid for), that would count as loss. If I have to do a security audit, or take other corrective measures to counter the risks that sensitive information should now be considered to be in the public domain, then the cost of those measures would count as loss as well. But I imagine their exclusion clauses would exempt them from common law liability (Telstra would be stupid if they didn't do that), so the question is moot.
Re:routine changes (Score:3)
Allright, I'll bite.
What specific circumstances does "changing passwords regularly" protect against?
Assume that my passwords are all "very strong", they are not written down anywhere, and they're never transmitted in the clear over an un-secure network.
The only circumstance I can forsee this "helping" with (besides idiotic ones like people loosing the pices of paper they have their passwords written on), is where it's already in the hands of a "criminal". But AFAIK if someone already has a single user account, further user accounts (existing and specially-created) and the root account isn't far behind.
Can anyone point me to a scholarly analysis of the exact merits of regular password changing?
Why? Because I don't do it. If I were, with 20 different passwords and all of them of the "Strong" type, I'd be forced to write them down, or spend hours and hours figuring out 'mind games' to try and remember them, and even worse it would (and did in past years) result in an ever increasing number of "confused and forgotten" passwords. (Frequently occurs within 1-2 weeks of a change, when you just happened to not use that account, and so now you're mind is groping in among not only all your current passwords but the previous 1-3 rounds of passwords, and suddenly you're screwed. No fun.)
Re:Who wants the pass anyway.... (Score:1)
thank god i just changed to australia's other cable provider, optus
(along with all my phones/mobiles/etc... telstra is losing $100au/month from me now
Re:Not a hoax? (Score:1)
Re:Why the hell in this dayand age... (Score:1)
- Ando
You are the weakest link, goodbye.
possible new cable in Canberra... (Score:2)
anyone heard anything else about it?
Re:they don't use SSL either (Score:1)
Eh? Telstra.com [telstra.com] and BigPond Home [bigpond.com] use SSL when you login to account info. It would be very strange if BigPond Advance didn't.
Oh ... wait. This _is_ Telstra after all ... Who knows with those tossers.
That's why you need the pass! (Score:1)
Re:BRAVO!! (OT) (Score:1)
Re:Not a hoax? (Score:1)
People who don't know that pointing a gun at their head and pulling the trigger is a bad thing are idiots? I've seen several slashdotters say that before, but I can't imagine why anyone would think that. Not everyone knows everything about their guns, and you shouldn't expect them to.
Why bother with mind games? (Score:1)
I know something similar to this gets posted in nearly every discussion of passwords, but here's a simple way to generate fairly strong passwords that you can remember, so you can stop worrying about how hard it is to remember your strong passwords and change them regularly:
- Flip open the Bible, or the complete works of Shakespeare, or similar, to random page, random line. Read the phrase on said page and line.
- Commit that phrase to memory.
- Now 1337ify the phrase. "To be or not to be" becomes fairly-strong password "70b30rN0770b3" (granted it repeats a lot of characters, but you get the idea). Flipped open John 3:16? "ph0r60d$010v3d7h3W0r1d" seems strong to me.
If you stay suitably random in your replacement of letters with symbols and your switching of lower-case for capitals, you'll avoid normal English distribution of characters (which might otherwise be a problem), and you'll have a fairly strong, easy-to-remember password.In addition, this system can be safely posted here and used by anyone who likes it, because the important part of the system is the book used, not the process (think cryptosystems - publish your algorithm, keep the key secret). Just don't use the same book consistently, and it should be secure and easy.
And of course, it uses script-kiddie-speak to hold off script kiddies, so it's poetic justice of a sort, too...
Re:Why bother with mind games? (Score:1)
I don't use that particular system myself, but as far as producing a so-called "strong" password (i.e., not a dictionary word, contains both cases of letters, contains numbers/symbols, decent length), it does an OK job for non-critical stuff (I used to use it to generate my webmail and college LAN passwords when I needed to change those) - oh, I need a password, grab a book off the shelf, OK, got one. If you want to go off on a simple system because it's not perfect, feel free; pretty much anything can be cracked given time, resources, and ingenuity - when I need real security, I unplug the network cable from the wall. Unless the script kiddie is going to physically break into my room, I figure that'll make it hard for him to r00t my box...
And I admit, the system I outlined isn't perfect; it's decent at best. The replacement of letters and numbers in 1337 is variable enough that it makes it a chore to develop an effective dictionary; I don't doubt it could be done, though. The question is whether it's worth it; vary the methods of replacement of characters and you could quickly make it almost easier to just use brute-force methods. In addition, the "key" is changing for every password generated. If you devote enough time to the effort, you could crack it, but that's true of anything. The guy was complaining about having to remember all those "strong" passwords - well, this generates decent ones that you can remember. If you want to make them stronger, just apply the same principle, but use different methods (and by that I don't mean rot13 the phrase, either). I typically produce passwords by generating a set of transformations to apply to a given input, and they vary in type and number. But the basic idea is about as sound as a password "system" can be. I end up with unrecognizable strings that I'm able to remember fairly easily, but which are also fairly strong.
And the luck 69 users are... (Score:3)
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0x00
l33t cl0wnZ
Telstra in denial (Score:4)
Right ..less confusion please. (Score:1)
Then the story made it to broadband.org.au [broadband.org.au] and then to whirlpool (link in /. article).
Now I have put the latest article [core.org.au] up on my site [core.org.au] to put some facts back into this thread. No-one can prove that a Bigpond Account server was hacked - what we know is that 69 user account passwords from what predominantly appear to be to be the much troubled Telstra ADSL service have been posted on a number of sites. Just how these passwords were gathered is subject to wild speculation.
The case for a Account server failure
Most (if not all) of the accounts seem to be ADSL accounts - a Trojan should not be so selective (but it could be). There have been a LOT of troubles on the ADSL network - it is not inconceivable that something slipped hough the cracks (if just temporarily).
The case against
69 passwords are wayyyy to few to consitute a large hack - all the posted lists where the same. Once posted these accounts would become useless to the cracker(s) - but not if he/she/they had access to the accounts via remote control clients.
The fact remains that unless one of the affected accounts tells us that they were infected with one of those trojans or Telstra comes clean on the whole thing (hahahaha!) we remain guessing. I'll keep my site up-to-date with the info as I get it.
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Re: (Score:1)
Re:liable? (Score:2)
As far as the rest of your post goes, I think it is right on the mark (but IANAL). Negligence involves not taking reasonable precautions against events which could be damaging to others. Whether these events involve a third party breaking the law or not is irrelevant.
Re:Who wants the pass anyway.... (Score:1)
4Gig/month, lots of filters (basic service ports, like 80/tcp, 21/tcp etc), including a filter that block any protocol that is not TCP, UDP or ICMP.
But do you want to know what is even worst ? There are no competitors. This is the only Cable provider in the whole state. So, I have to stick with it.
Guess how much I have to pay for a 128Kbits (thats right, 128K cable) ? Something like US$40/month. Plus the Cable TV signature (which we must have to have the cable access), which is something like US$35/month.
Wonderful
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Re:Mass Murderer (Score:1)
Re:And... (Score:1)
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange I lame joke-maker?
Is that better?
And... (Score:2)
Or, if nothing else, encryption could have delayed the attackers getting the list...
Re:And... (Score:3)
The proper encryption method would be double ROT13. Then they could sue under the DMC... wait, too bad Australia isn't the the United States, eh Telstra?
Re:If it was a decent system.. (Score:1)
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
Good Engineering Practices (Score:1)
Someday the virtues of engineering best practices, and, dare I say it, even formal methods and correctness proofs, will be apparent to all. Ask yourself: why do we require the designers of our septic systems to have engineering licenses, but don't require the same from those who write the software that controls significant parts of our information infrastructure?
Re:Good Engineering Practices (Score:1)
New Policy: Users cannot be trusted (Score:1)
More amusing is when the guy came out to hook us up, the entire 'bigpond' section was missing. He had to make calls to their helpdesk to find out how to change our initial password. Apparently this is normal practice to remove entire sections rather than publish problems...
Important Note for Telstra Shareholders: The all billing links still function
Re:Not a hoax? (Score:1)
Re:fun spin times for the Telstra marketing dept.. (Score:1)
Are you drunk, stoned or just insane? What right do you have to unlimited DSL? I mean you don't even have the 'right' to a roof over your head, daily meals etc, and you are spouting off about 'unlimited DSL'.
Tool.
telstra's problem has been solved (Score:4)
all of their subscribers have been sent an email saying to get a new user name and password by just sending the following simple http request to www.passport.com
GET
Mass Murderer (Score:2)
grin
Reb
mumble security (Score:1)
And I just joined them, due to OneNet falling by the wayside. I only wish I had the choice for Optus, but living in Adelaide provides a rather limited subset of options. Hell, we don't even have the Cable option over here! And word has it from a very reliable source in Optus that they simply arn't willing to roll out in Adelaide due to financial reasons.
I did a google check against my username, and it didn't show up there ... which is a good thing.
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McCarrum!
Re:This is why! (Score:1)
Re:Off-topic but important: UN small-arms "agreeme (Score:1)
Re:liable? (Score:2)
Banks are insured. If they are robbed, customers are not affected, except those who were personally at the scene. Banks assume that there will be problems.
OTOH, if someone gets my account details from the bank, in any manner, and then proceeds to use my account, then I expect the bank to fully protect me from any consequences of their poor security, and failure to do so would be grounds for a lawsuit.
Likewise, if someone gets my bigpond account details, they may able to use them to do damage both to me personally and by masquerading as me. It is the ISP's job to ensure that this does not happen, and I expect to be fully protected from any consequences of someone gaining my details from my ISP. Failure to do so could well be grounds for a lawsuit, even in the relatively non-ligitious Australia.
Storing username/password lists in plaintext anywhere definitely falls under insufficient security. In fact, the password should only be stored as a one-way cypher, so that I *can't* ring up, give my details and be told my password, but instead simply have it reset to a known password which I can then change immediately.
Re:Thanks Telstra! (Score:1)
Bigpond isn't that bad (Score:1)
David
Re:Thanks Telstra! (Score:1)
69 accounts hacked (Score:1)
routine changes (Score:1)
If it was a decent system.. (Score:1)
Throw in caps, a number and a bit of punctuation and you won't be getting anywhere fast. 95^8 = 6634204312890625 possible passwords.
However, having users use all possible chars might not be practical.
Let's say we limit ourselves to [A-Z][a-z][0-9], and a length of at least 6 chars: 62^6 = 56800235584
On your average 1GHz x86 based system you can expect about 60K attempts a second. About 10957 days, 30 years.
It all boils down to humans though. They forget passwords, simple as that. You need something secure, but which won't swap your tech support centre with calls. Though imagine all the work they'll need to do now, contacting all the users and getting them to choose (or assigning) new passwords.
Perhaps you could add something to the agreement to this effect. Pick a simple password, don't blame us if your account is hijacked.
But this is all old news, isn't it?
Re:man. (Score:1)
Not a Hoax (Score:4)
It seems only natural to assume someone has spent some time collecting logins and passwords via another method, and is posting their results with the view of creating FUD over Telstra's service. Just because 69 passwords have been obtained, doesn't mean there exists a vunerability for the tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers of the service.
I don't particularly like Telstra, nor do I use their internet, but I dont believe they are this stupid.
Re:Australia... (Score:1)
Re:fun spin times for the Telstra marketing dept.. (Score:1)