For Years, Yahoo Put Usability Ahead of Cyber Security

Six years ago, Yahoo’s computer systems and customer email accounts were penetrated by Chinese military hackers. Google and a number of other technology companies were also hit.

The Google co-founder Sergey Brin regarded the attack on his company’s systems as a personal affront and responded by making security a top corporate priority. Google hired hundreds of security engineers with six-figure signing bonuses, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in security infrastructure and adopted a new internal motto, “Never again,” to signal that it would never again allow anyone — be they spies or criminals — to hack into Google customers’ accounts.

Yahoo, on the other hand, was slower to invest in the kinds of defenses necessary to thwart sophisticated hackers that are now considered standard in Silicon Valley, according to half a dozen current and former company employees who participated in security discussions but agreed to describe them only on the condition of anonymity.

For Years, Yahoo Put Usability Ahead of Cyber Security

The Times goes on to describe how CEO Marissa Mayer, after having taken over the troubled search engine in 2012, decided to focus Yahoo’s efforts on developing new products and creating better user experiences for existing products such as Yahoo Mail. Even though Mayer was aware of multiple information security issues, those took a back seat. Yahoo’s internal security staff, including former CISO Alex Stamos, warned Mayer about security vulnerabilities but found their efforts stymied due to “concerns that the inconvenience of added protection would make people stop using the company’s products.” Mayer cut the team’s budget and refused to approve the proactive cyber security initiatives Stamos pushed for, including end-to-end encryption, intrusion-detection mechanisms, and automatic resets of passwords on accounts that had been compromised. Even now, Mayer is still declining automatic password resets for the accounts compromised during this most recent breach – again, all in the name of not inconveniencing users.

Cyber Security vs. the User Experience

It’s common for tech companies to worry about how information security measures will affect the user experience. Often, developers must sacrifice speed and ease of use for a more secure product, and, while the majority of Americans claim to be highly concerned about data breaches, fickle customers may resist or become frustrated over security measures. A recent study found that one-third of Americans engage in risky behaviors to remember online passwords, and an ethnographic study of healthcare workers found widespread, flagrant disregard of cyber security practices in hospital settings.

While these are valid concerns, the answer is not to simply release unsecured products and hope for the best, as Yahoo apparently did. The burden of protecting customer data does not lie solely on software developers and data storage companies, and it cannot. The overwhelming majority of data breaches occur not as the result of external hacking but because hackers obtain legitimate login credentials, usually through social engineering schemes such as phishing. Manufacturers must build proactive security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, into their products, and get their customers accustomed to using them, even if the features are inconvenient or frustrating. The cost of a data breach is much higher than the cost of customer frustration, to both the breached company and the compromised customers.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.

In a heated political climate, even the appearance of vote hacking could threaten our nation’s democracy.

The most contentious issue this election season may not be immigration or minimum wage laws but cyber security; specifically, the specter of vote hacking. Shortly after the discovery that the Democratic National Convention’s email server had been hacked came news that voter databases in Illinois and Arizona had been compromised, exposing the personal information of as many as 200,000 voters.

Proactive Cyber Security Can Prevent Vote Hacking

Granted, these were state voter databases, not voting machines. However, between GOP candidate Donald Trump suggesting that the election could be “rigged” and going so far as to encourage his supporters to “monitor the polls” for vote hacking, disturbing results from recent studies on voting machine cyber security, including one by Princeton researchers that found some machines to be less secure than iPhones, and another study showing that nearly all Americans are “unsettled” about data breaches in general, the American public is understandably nervous as they prepare to go to the polls.

Vote hacking isn’t an Area 51-style conspiracy theory; it is a legitimate concern that must be addressed with proactive cyber security.

Could the election be hacked?

In theory, yes. Many states use voting machines that are more than 15 years old, run wildly outdated operating systems such as Windows 2000 and XP, and, in some cases, provide no paper audit trail. Some election officials argue that these machines are generally not connected to the internet, and are therefore secure. However, isolation from the internet does not equate to security against voting hacks; malware could be installed via an infected thumb drive inserted into a machine by an intruder, a malicious insider, or even an unwitting election volunteer who fell victim to a social engineering scheme. While the logistics of manually installing malware may appear insurmountable – after all, there are tens of thousands of voting machines across the U.S. – hackers would not have to access every voting machine in America to alter the election results. They could focus their efforts on swing states, and then zero in even further to target specific voting districts where the results are expected to be very close.

Hackers could also decide not to actually tamper with votes but simply cause enough chaos to discourage some Americans from voting and plant seeds of doubt regarding the election results. For example, hackers could breach voter databases and delete or alter voter registration records, which would prevent some voters from being able to cast ballots; launch Election Night DDoS attacks on polling places that use the internet to verify voter records; or even disable media feeds and prevent news networks from accessing exit poll information and election returns.

What can election officials do to reassure the public about vote hacking?

In an effort to address the public’s concerns, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) recently proposed the Election Integrity Act of 2016 and the Election Infrastructure and Security Promotion Act of 2016. The first bill would impose cyber security measures on voting machines, such as prohibiting the machines from being connected to the internet and requiring that they be subject to regular audits, updated frequently, and have the ability to produce a paper audit trail. The second bill would designate voting machines as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, which would put them under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security and ensure that voting machines are treated with the same level of seriousness as the country’s power grid and water supply.

While these bills are a good starting point to address vote hacking, more needs to be done, and since the election is only a month away, election officials need to act now. In addition to voting machines themselves, voter databases and polling places must be secured. Since election officials are not information security experts, the help of qualified cyber security professionals should be enlisted to secure voter databases and polling places and ensure that Election Night is uneventful from a cyber security perspective.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.