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At What Point Does Storing Passwords in Plaintext Become Criminally Negligent

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 08 2018, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the easier-to-check-that-way dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2018/04/another-day-another-breach-at-what-point-does-storing-passwords-in-plaintext-become-criminally-negligent/

The third largest breach ever just happened in Finland. Passwords were stored in plaintext. At T-Mobile Austria, they explain that of course they store the password in plaintext, but they have so good security so it's nothing to worry about. At what point does this become criminally negligent?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @02:44PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @02:44PM (#663941)

    > At T-Mobile Austria, they explain that of course they store the password in plaintext, but they have so good security so it's nothing to worry about.

    Wait...

    "All the passwords were stolen. They were in plaintext, but don't worry, our security is good."

    What the hell? Was that explanation made pre-breach, in which case it's just stupid, or after the breach, in which case whoever gave it should be locked up in a sanatorium and not out here with non-crazy people?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday April 08 2018, @03:09PM (2 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Sunday April 08 2018, @03:09PM (#663952) Homepage Journal

    T-Mobile wasn't breached - at least not that they are reporting.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @03:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @03:21PM (#663959)

      Ah, right, the breach was in Finland, and the statement was from T-Mobile Austria. My bad. That means that the "explanation" is just terminally stupid, not clinically insane.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @06:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @06:00PM (#664005)

      Someone found and PoC'd an XSS on their website on Friday night. It was also reported they are running comically old versions of the Linux kernel, PHP, and Apache. I suspect their database is already floating around on at least one invite only "dark" web forum. I'm thinking some time late next week it'll hit the mainstream network news.

      In other news, if you're still sharing passwords between websites, now would be a very good time to rethink that practice while you're changing your passwords again.