Capital One and Surprising Consequences
August 4, 2019
DarkCyber noted the ZDNet article “GitHub Sued for Aiding Hacking in Capital One Breach.” According to the “real news” outfit:
While Capital One is named in the lawsuit because it was its data that the hacker stole, GitHub was also included because the hacker posted some of the stolen information on the code-sharing site.
Github (now owned by Microsoft) allegedly failed to detect the stolen data. Github did not block the posting of Social Security numbers. These follow a specific pattern. Many text parsing methods identify and index the pattern and link the number to other data objects.
What law did Github violate? Management lapses are not usually the stuff that makes for a good legal drama, at least on “Law and Order” reruns. The write up reports:
The lawsuit alleges that by allowing the hacker to store information on its servers, GitHub violated the federal Wiretap Act.
DarkCyber thanks ZDNet for including a link to the complaint.
Lawyers, gotta love ‘em because we have a former Amazon employee, a financial institution with a remarkable track record of security issues, and a company owned by Microsoft. What about the people affected? Oh, them. What if Github is “guilty”? Perhaps a new chapter in open source and public posting sites begins?
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2019
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