[HN Gopher] Delta Dental says data breach exposed info of 7M people
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       Delta Dental says data breach exposed info of 7M people
        
       Author : mikece
       Score  : 224 points
       Date   : 2023-12-15 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
        
       | mikece wrote:
       | At this point I'm willing to bet that every single American --
       | including the Amish -- have been part of at least one major data
       | breach. And for everyone on HN... probably at least ten.
        
         | fatnoah wrote:
         | I've been part of four or five breaches. My favorite part is
         | the complete lack of value in the mitigations for me. I was
         | part of the OPM data breach, and the data included was
         | literally everything, since it was everything collected as part
         | of my application for a security clearance. A result of that
         | was 10 years of credit monitoring, so every new breach's offer
         | of 12 or 24 months of monitoring is useless.
         | 
         | Until there are statutory damages for data breaches, and even
         | steeper ones for failure to report breaches, companies aren't
         | going to properly safeguard data.
        
         | bonton89 wrote:
         | My understanding is about everyone in America (and bizarrely a
         | lot of people in Europe) got f'ed by the Equifax breech
         | already.
        
           | flutas wrote:
           | TBH, I know of at least one other breach that everyone got
           | hit by too...afaik it was never made public though.
           | 
           | It's been a while since I was told the story, so bear with
           | me. It was Experian. They shipped tape backups of essentially
           | their entire consumer credit DB, unencrypted, via UPS.
           | 
           | UPS truck got robbed at gunpoint, only one package stolen...
           | 
           | EDIT: Transunion -> Experian
        
             | michaelcampbell wrote:
             | Back when people got physical checks for payroll, I worked
             | at a company that did this, and gave physical stubs to
             | those of use who did direct deposit which was still kind of
             | new.
             | 
             | Biweekly, the person handing them out would take them home
             | to sort by floor/area/whatever to ease their work the next
             | day.
             | 
             | You guessed it, one day their car was stolen, with ALL of
             | our checks/stubs in them. And our SSN's were printed on
             | them too.
             | 
             | We were given a year of credit monitoring at the credit
             | unions, paid for by the company. And they stopped printing
             | the SSN's on them.
        
             | shnock wrote:
             | Could you please share some online references or sources
             | for this?
             | 
             | "It was never made public" - do you mean to imply that this
             | is otherwise unverifiable
        
               | ffpip wrote:
               | Might be this -
               | https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/business/personal-
               | data-fo...
               | 
               | First result for "experian ups truck stolen"
        
       | eli wrote:
       | Wow that MoveIT hack sure was bad. How did they manage to keep
       | from becoming a punching bag like SolarWinds?
       | 
       | Also the title should probably clarify this is Delta Dental of
       | California.
        
         | __derek__ wrote:
         | The title is borderline click-bait: I have had Delta Dental
         | insurance at every employer, so I clicked through to read more,
         | but I've never lived in California or been employed by a
         | California company.
        
           | gowld wrote:
           | Did the title say your info was leaked?
        
             | eli wrote:
             | "Delta Dental" is actually 39 different affiliated
             | companies sharing a brand. Of those 38 seem to be
             | unaffected.
        
             | __derek__ wrote:
             | My info was not leaked because I've never done business
             | with Delta Dental of California. The title omits the
             | essential "of California" context.
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | > who had their names, financial account numbers, and
       | credit/debit card numbers, including security codes, exposed.
       | 
       | Delta Dental should be rightly and truly f'd for that one.
       | Storing security codes at all is totally forbidden by PCI rules.
       | Delta Dental should have their ability to process credit cards
       | completely revoked for this egregious breach.
        
         | vaxman wrote:
         | Yep, that vendor is a major HMO for Defense workers with Top
         | Secret clearances.
         | 
         | Does SiteLink have issues too? I think they do.
        
         | robertlagrant wrote:
         | Why they are doing their own payments processing is beyond me.
         | Is it just too expensive to use someone like Stripe?
        
           | packetlost wrote:
           | Stripe? Oh yeah. At their scale, they'd likely be talking to
           | Fidelity or some other big player directly.
        
           | mrweasel wrote:
           | I was going to ask something similar. Especially US companies
           | seems rather fond of storing credit card information, but I
           | never seem it done in Denmark, regardless of the size of the
           | company. The most common solution is to let your payment
           | processor deal with those sorts of things, you just have a
           | token, which can only be used to deposit money into your
           | account. So even if it's stolen or leaked, you can transfer
           | the money back, they can't be transferred to a third party.
           | 
           | Why on earth you'd want to deal with credit card information
           | and the attacks it attracts is beyond me. It's not like
           | you're locked to the your provider, the tokens can be
           | transferred... Not easily, but it can be done.
           | 
           | And no, companies would never pay Stripes asking price. You
           | can negotiate much much lower rates with companies like
           | Valitor/Rapyd or certain banks.
        
             | Kalium wrote:
             | For a long time, payment processors in the US would charge
             | more to offer tokenization services. Cost-conscious
             | companies with an eye on their unit economics reacted in
             | predictable ways.
        
               | mrweasel wrote:
               | > Cost-conscious companies with an eye on their unit
               | economics reacted in predictable ways.
               | 
               | That seems like the likely explanation. I don't know what
               | the additional cost would be, but with 7 million
               | customers, it could be a million dollars a year in
               | saving. That would require you to be able to be PCI
               | compliant for less than that amount and the risk is still
               | considerable, you could lose your VISA or MasterCard
               | contract pretty quickly and then you're out of business.
               | 
               | We had a situation where scammers would use our site to
               | check stolen credit cards, we got at most 7 days to
               | handle the problem or VISA would close our account. I'd
               | imagine that failing out of compliance would hit equally
               | hard.
        
           | wayfinder wrote:
           | I used to work at a medium-sized non-tech company (<200
           | employees) that had a fair amount of IT staff. Stripe is
           | expensive asf and we always talked with banks and payment
           | processors directly.
           | 
           | We never stored CVVs or any of that insane nonsense though.
           | Our systems only ever saw CC info in transit but they were
           | never stored on-site.
           | 
           | God I miss that company. Working with smart people is great.
        
         | fatnoah wrote:
         | It's totally forbidden by PCI rules as well as common sense.
         | Wayyyy back in 2002, I worked at a startup making a billing
         | product. A customer asked for a screen to be able to see CC
         | numbers for their own customers, and our response was a flat
         | no. Any sensitive data was encrypted and sequestered, and
         | security codes were absolutely not stored.
         | 
         | In my current role at a startup, when a conflict between
         | schedule/time or convenience conflicts with proper data
         | security, I ask people to envision how our processes would look
         | as a news headline or would fare in a legal discovery.
        
           | ngneer wrote:
           | Out of curiosity, and without naming names, what is people's
           | typical response and what is the dynamic? Data security is
           | hardly ever convenient, and most often vies for resources
           | with other features or quality improvements, especially in a
           | startup seeking to make its fortune. Can people even imagine
           | breach ramifications without having been previously burnt, or
           | is the main incentive to be able to tout compliance?
        
             | fatnoah wrote:
             | > or is the main incentive to be able to tout compliance?
             | 
             | At the time I joined, the existing goals were around
             | compliance and checking boxes on security questionnaires,
             | which is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve.
             | Specifically, compliance was driven by the IT/Infra teams
             | and mostly around access to access to cloud infra. That's
             | obviously useless if a db server is locked down and change
             | managed, but the software access the data isn't.
             | 
             | So, the bulk of my efforts in this area have been around
             | bridging the gap from checking boxes to actual compliance
             | with various standards. Fortunately, we rely heavily on
             | data, so it's not a hard sell to properly protect things.
             | 
             | In general, people receive the questions well, as it makes
             | the strong point that there's a big gap between checking a
             | box that people in sales & marketing care about, vs. how
             | any issues arising from not having "real" compliance would
             | be catastrophic and business ending for a company of our
             | size.
        
             | neilv wrote:
             | > _what is people 's typical response and what is the
             | dynamic?_
             | 
             | Not the OP. One place, a few times when I was doing an
             | integration with a large company, I discovered a grave
             | security flaw in the customer's systems.
             | 
             | One time, had I done the integration despite the flaw, it
             | would've required me to knowingly code some obviously 100%
             | wrong use of cryptographic protocol.
             | 
             | When I started to tell the director to whom I reported, I
             | felt an initial "oh no..." mixed with skepticism, from
             | hints in their voice. So I explained, and answered their
             | questions.
             | 
             | Then they seemed to switch from dread, to solving it.
             | Instead of quietly taking the client's money, they halted
             | integration, and put together a presentation for the
             | customer, telling them how part of their security had a
             | grave problem. (Possibly awkward, because it might've been
             | a team internal to the customer who had made such a mistake
             | on something so sensitive.)
             | 
             | I'd say that the dynamic in that case was what you'd like
             | to imagine from engineers who'd risen in influence:
             | acknowledging the problem, understanding and doing the
             | right thing, when it had to be done, even when they wish it
             | didn't.
        
               | neilv wrote:
               | I've also seen other dynamics, in which pointing out what
               | should be showstopper problems didn't go as well.
               | 
               | I assume that the most common in business as a whole is a
               | variation on: someone doesn't want to hear about it,
               | because (put broadly) acknowledging it would conflict
               | with business goals or their individual goals. Example
               | conflicts: don't get a sale, slip the schedule, fail to
               | meet some individual OKR/KPI, or expose an earlier
               | mistake of the individual.
               | 
               | Also, the dynamic doesn't have to come down to conflicts
               | between plausibly rational motivations (for business or
               | self). Egos and irrational cognition are also parts of
               | our collective human situation, and an individual's
               | particular traits (or a personal challenge they're going
               | through) can sometimes lead to that taking over
               | decisions. It happens, and we should try to realize when
               | that's the cause (rather than just an attempt at cover
               | for some rational motive they don't want to state), so
               | that we can try to get to rational decision-making.
               | 
               | A different thing, or a complication: There are also be
               | dynamics in which an 'ambitious' person in an org, not
               | naturally involved in the situation, uses the situation
               | to grandstand or hit a rival. And obviously this can
               | affect the dynamics for people who are involved (e.g.,
               | person A would normally do the aligned thing for the
               | company, but it's more complicated now that B will twist
               | that to gun for their job). Fortunately, I don't
               | immediately recall seeing an egregious example first-
               | hand, but have heard of it.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | > A customer asked for a screen to be able to see CC numbers
           | for their own customers
           | 
           | I'd be curious what reason they had.
        
             | bee_rider wrote:
             | In 2002? Probably something now-crazy like "how else will I
             | process returns?"
             | 
             | It is not directly related, but as a hopefully funny semi-
             | related anecdote, the federal government stopped states
             | from putting social security numbers on drivers licenses in
             | 2004. Renewals frequency depends on the state, but it is
             | typically in the 4-8 year range, so plausibly until 2012
             | people were going around showing their SSN to anybody that
             | needed to see ID.
             | 
             | I specifically remember this caused stressful situations as
             | a teenager working retail, people justifiably didn't want
             | to show an ID when doing returns because it had their SSN.
             | A credit card number is hardly anything comparably!
             | 
             | This all seems absurd nowadays, but the past is not really
             | that long ago.
        
               | wombatpm wrote:
               | At one time it was routine to have your SSN and Drivers
               | License # printed on your checks. And in 1988 my student
               | ID number as university was my SSN.
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | But 1988 is officially The Past, ask any millennial, my
               | self image can't deal with the fact that our anecdotes
               | objectively belong side-by-side.
        
               | pavel_lishin wrote:
               | At the risk of instantly drying into dust by suggesting
               | that 2002 is also The Past, but my SSN was also my
               | student ID then.
        
               | QuercusMax wrote:
               | In 2002 my school (Kent State) was in the process of
               | phasing out SSNs as student numbers. I was working as a
               | student IT employee in one of the departments and spent
               | quite a bit of time updating systems to remove the use of
               | SSNs.
        
               | zeven7 wrote:
               | SSNs shouldn't have to be kept any more secret than your
               | name. The fact that somehow they started being used as
               | passwords is the insane thing.
        
               | ahi wrote:
               | Well into the 2000s it was routine to find unredacted
               | SSNs in public Federal bankruptcy filings. Likewise, the
               | old Congressional Records contain thousands of SSNs of
               | newly promoted military officers. Librarians have spent a
               | lot of time tracking these down in their archives to
               | redact them.
        
             | jstarfish wrote:
             | A fly-by-night IT training/certification/voucher reseller I
             | worked for around that time saved customer billing
             | information as a convenience.
             | 
             | No joke-- credit card numbers, billing addresses, CVV
             | codes, all stored in plaintext in an Access database. Tiny
             | shop though; I don't know if they were big enough for PCI
             | to even apply.
        
         | silveira wrote:
         | That's a good point. The best way to not leak a secret is to
         | not have the secret in the first place. I don't know anything
         | of PCI rules but I would imagine there is a way to implement
         | the feature "store this credit card information for future
         | purchases" without storing the raw credit card information.
        
           | csunbird wrote:
           | Yes, you ask for an authorization token for recurring
           | payments from your payment provider if you intend to make
           | subsequent charges from that card. Then you store that token
           | only (and maybe last 4 digits of the card for the customer's
           | convenience) and use the token without any other card
           | information to make charges.
        
         | coldcode wrote:
         | I assume they kept these in a database, which was sent or
         | exported in some way to use Move-IT to transfer somewhere else.
         | The hack was at Move-IT's servers I think, which allowed people
         | to read the contents. The question I have is was this
         | information encrypted by DD or did they just assume Move-IT was
         | safe? If the latter, it's pretty stupid.
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | I've done a lot of research into HIPAA (I work in a dental-
           | adjacent field) and my guess is that it's almost certainly
           | the latter - an assumption, maybe based on something they
           | were told. But it's still on them regardless of whether they
           | were deceived or simply didn't ask.
           | 
           | There have been very few dental practices who have paid fines
           | for HIPAA violations and one that stands out is one who hired
           | a document shredding firm to destroy old paper patient
           | records. The shredders pick up a bunch of files and just
           | drove around the corner and hucked them into an open dumpster
           | where they were found. The dentist was fined as the result of
           | their assumption that a document shredding firm would, you
           | know, shred documents.
        
             | Scoundreller wrote:
             | Not USA, but we had a case where the discarded unshredded
             | health files somehow ended up being used in a movie shoot
             | for "special effects" and strewn all over a street
             | somewhere.
             | 
             | https://decisions.ipc.on.ca/ipc-
             | cipvp/phipa/en/item/135056/i...
             | 
             | Another where a manager lit a big bonfire at home but put
             | in too much at a time and they asteroided around in burnt
             | and unburnt manner.
             | 
             | Pre-tech breaches :)
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | > Storing security codes at all is totally forbidden by PCI
         | rules.
         | 
         | It's kind of silly though. They are no more "secret" than your
         | credit card number itself or expiration date. Once you give it
         | out once or hand your credit card to literally anyone, it's
         | out. Now instead of acquiring N numbers, the hacker needs to
         | acquire N+3 (or N+4) numbers.
         | 
         | Our payment system needs something like:
         | struct {             string credit_card_number;
         | string expiration_date;             string insecurity_code;
         | };
         | 
         | ...to complete a credit card transaction. At some point that
         | record is in a computer or in your restaurant waiter's brain,
         | so it's vulnerable to exfiltration, regardless of what part of
         | that record gets redacted for long term storage.
         | 
         | We are living in a world with bozos in charge who can't seem to
         | develop a secure payment system, so we as users need to simply
         | assume that all information required to make a purchase on our
         | behalf is public knowledge, and instead diligently check our
         | records for inaccuracies. I don't sweat these "breaches"
         | because I freeze my credit and review all my bank and credit
         | card transactions daily now.
        
           | gosub100 wrote:
           | its not silly just because it can't solve all problems. It
           | goes a long way to gas station type skimmers less valuable
           | because you can't print a phony card from them, or the phony
           | card you can print is limited to a subset of possible
           | purchases. perfect-enemy-of-good yadayda.
        
             | gunapologist99 wrote:
             | You're not wrong, but GP is saying that 3 digits is a
             | pretty weak 'security' code and gas station skimmers are on
             | the tail end of the threat model compared to exfil of data
             | at any point in the processing chain.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | I tried to better clarify what I'm saying in [1]. I'm not
               | saying the small number of digits makes it insecure, it's
               | that "moar numbers" is not really adding anything in
               | terms of multi-factor or secrecy. Instead of knowing N
               | digits, you merely need to know N+M digits. It is not
               | changing the nature of the secret.
               | 
               | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38655609
        
               | cbsmith wrote:
               | It's a different sent of protocols, reducing the surface
               | area of successful breach strategies. If you simply added
               | three digits to credit card numbers but maintained the
               | same protocols on the credit card numbers, it wouldn't
               | improve security nearly as much. There's fewer tactics
               | that will successfully get you N+M digits those that
               | would get you the N digits. Most 2FA works the same way.
               | It's not like the six digits of Google Auth add security,
               | but the protocols around them.
               | 
               | To put it another way: the value of those extra three
               | digits is that they are indeed "more secret". They exist
               | on far fewer hard drives.
        
               | gosub100 wrote:
               | I think this topic came up a week or 2 ago, and I made an
               | almost identical comment as you, which was why the
               | content of my reply was fresh in my memory. Anyway, in
               | the recent convo, a kind hn poster provided this
               | explanation of CVV
               | 
               | https://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/cvv1-cvv2-c
               | vv3...
               | 
               | I totally see why it just seems like "moar numbers"
               | though, and I find them unnecessarily annoying. I wish
               | they could reduce the complexity (maybe letters, colors
               | or shapes, something more human-compatible), but there's
               | just too much legacy code with too little benefit.
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | It's not silly. The point is that security codes are only
           | ever supposed to be sent in transit, and the only place they
           | are ever stored is by the issuing processor.
           | 
           | It's not supposed to solve every potential vulnerability, but
           | there is a whole class of exploits, exactly like the one in
           | the article, that result from stolen _storage_ , that this
           | rule is designed to protect against.
        
           | chefandy wrote:
           | > Now instead of acquiring N numbers, the hacker needs to
           | acquire N+3 (or N+4) numbers
           | 
           | This seems _almost_ as reductive as suggesting my mechanic
           | should keep her customers ' key(k) in their cars(c) in her
           | parking lot because instead of just acquiring c, now the
           | thieves just need to acquiring c+k.
           | 
           | If we were talking about 3 extra digits on the card number,
           | that would be one thing. But we're talking about a separate
           | authentication factor, which seems pretty worthwhile to me.
           | Getting that info isn't exactly a snap if you don't just find
           | it laying around-- it's not like you can brute force it. I'd
           | be pretty astonished if a credit card company didn't cancel
           | someone's credit card if someone was tried a handful of
           | transactions with random security codes, let alone enough to
           | guess one number in a thousand.
           | 
           | Sure, there are undoubtedly better ways to handle these
           | transactions, but lacking magic wands to change a giant
           | dinosaur of an industry that should have wanted to change on
           | its own, this is a prudent policy-based strategy to mitigate
           | harm. Whether or not _you_ sweat these breaches is a good way
           | to gauge _your own_ processes, but it 's not a useful way to
           | gauge industry-wide processes.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | > If we were talking about 3 extra digits on the card
             | number, that would be one thing. But we're talking about a
             | separate authentication factor, which seems pretty
             | worthwhile to me.
             | 
             | It's not really another factor in the sense of the three
             | types of factors: Something you know, something you have,
             | something you are. It's just more digits of "something you
             | know" so it's the same factor. It's why 2-factor auth isn't
             | just 2 separate passwords.
        
               | chefandy wrote:
               | Seems to me that when you turn it into data, it pretty
               | much all becomes "something you know." If a credit card
               | required biometric authentication to make credit card
               | transactions and a vendor stored my biometric signature
               | in a database along with my credit card number, it would
               | be no more or less secure than a 3 digit number.
               | 
               | There are better ways to handle it. Policy is a good
               | interim step to mitigate damage before they're
               | implemented.
        
             | 13of40 wrote:
             | > I'd be pretty astonished if a credit card company didn't
             | cancel someone's credit card if someone was tried a handful
             | of transactions with random security codes, let alone
             | enough to guess one number in a thousand.
             | 
             | If you have a whole database of them, the trick is to try
             | one code with a thousand cards. Even so, that was a major
             | improvement over the status quo before, which was to use
             | the expiration date, meaning you only had to try about 24
             | or 36 cards with one month/year.
        
               | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
               | I think visa or MasterCard would catch on in that
               | situation too, no? There's only a few processors, they
               | should notice the pattern.
        
               | spunker540 wrote:
               | They process so many transactions per second. It doesn't
               | seem too hard to try wrong ccv at a pace slow enough to
               | avoid detection.
        
               | chefandy wrote:
               | I would need to hear that from someone who actually works
               | in a CC company fraud department because I don't think
               | it's that straightforward. I've had MC transactions
               | declined on a card I use for everyday purchases at two
               | stores in my neighborhood. I don't think reasoning about
               | their transaction monitoring like someone might monitor
               | network traffic is a good analog-- they're specifically
               | looking for patterns in small-scale, localized events
               | without many data points. They don't have to connect the
               | events to stymie the fraudster's efforts.
        
               | skibbityboop wrote:
               | > If you have a whole database of them, the trick is to
               | try one code with a thousand cards
               | 
               | That still sounds like a crapshoot... Of those 1,000
               | cards, there might be 14 that have 982 as CSV, 9 that
               | have 307, and none with 118. In other words, there's no
               | guarantee whatsoever that any given CSV will be used in a
               | batch of 1,000 or even 10,000 cards.
        
               | jjav wrote:
               | Of course there is no _guarantee_ , but statistically if
               | you have 1/1000 probability of success and you try a 1000
               | times, that's not bad.
        
               | chefandy wrote:
               | Their fraud detection algorithms are specifically looking
               | for small, localized, per-transaction events with few
               | data points as well as overall patterns-- I doubt it
               | would be that straightforward. It might not mean you'd be
               | targeted, but on a per-transaction basis, I there's a
               | good chance you'd get blocked for any individual attempt
               | even if you got a match.
        
           | gregw2 wrote:
           | Kind of silly? Can't/don't the three digits get rotated
           | independently of rotating your credit card or account number
           | though?
           | 
           | Also some clearer rules/expectations in place that nobody
           | should ever persist the data on disk?
        
             | jldugger wrote:
             | They usually (always?) get rotated at the same time as the
             | expiration date.
        
           | glimshe wrote:
           | It is a poor person's version of a password for using the
           | credit card, only available to people that has the credit
           | card in their hands. Not silly at all.
        
           | mikestew wrote:
           | _It 's kind of silly though. They are no more "secret" than
           | your credit card number itself or expiration date._
           | 
           | Apple Card rotates the CCV (fixed time interval, AFAICT, not
           | per transaction), so it _is_ a secret, even if only
           | temporarily.
           | 
           |  _Once you give it out once or hand your credit card to
           | literally anyone, it 's out._
           | 
           | Sure, the cashier now has it, but they're not supposed to be
           | entering it into a database so that _everyone_ has it, hence
           | the  "PCI" part.
        
           | skybrian wrote:
           | For physical transactions, change is happening, but it's a
           | slow migration. Looks like MasterCard has plans to remove the
           | magnetic stripe [1].
           | 
           | Online, perhaps credit cards will disappear into password
           | managers and mobile payments (Google and Apple Pay, etc.)
           | with ordinary businesses storing very little.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/17/22628455/mastercard-
           | magne...
        
           | PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
           | if no one is storing it, they don't have it. If someone is
           | storing it, it increases the likelihood that they can acquire
           | it.
           | 
           | perfect is the enemy of good.
        
           | wintogreen74 wrote:
           | it's not supposed to be a secret in the "something you know"
           | way, but rather "something you have" - i.e. the physical
           | card. If they store it you no longer need the physical card
           | for an entire family of attacks & frauds.
        
           | spunker540 wrote:
           | I agree with you. When the secret is always collected side-
           | by-side with the number it seems little comfort that only one
           | part is "supposed to be stored".
        
           | jjav wrote:
           | > bozos in charge who can't seem to develop a secure payment
           | system
           | 
           | Actually, the credit card system is very secure to you the
           | consumer.
           | 
           | By regulation, you're not liable for anything if your card
           | number is abused in a card not present transaction (typically
           | the case here for numbers stolen over the internet).
           | 
           | I don't have any other form of payment that is as secure, so
           | good job credit cards.
           | 
           | (As a cryptography and security nerd, it took me a long time
           | to learn that while mathematically guaranteed security is
           | very cool, sometimes you can achieve an equal result just by
           | passing a law.)
        
         | lovecg wrote:
         | They won't and it won't be.
        
           | 93po wrote:
           | Hey come on, when Target had their data breach in 2015 due to
           | massive negligence and incompetence, the largest data breach
           | ever to date, they had to pay about 1.6% of their average net
           | income at the time in penalties. I imagine Delta will pay
           | less than that since, you know, it isn't as bad.
        
         | wrs wrote:
         | Storing the CVV would be very bad, but the form they're linking
         | to is ambiguous:
         | 
         | "Information Acquired - Name or other personal identifier in
         | combination with: Financial Account Number or Credit/Debit Card
         | Number (in combination with security code, access code,
         | password or PIN for the account)"
        
         | AndrewKemendo wrote:
         | I find this especially ironic given the fact that most tech
         | companies I've been at used Delta dental of California
         | 
         | I feel like we all deserve this somehow for allowing bad
         | practices like this to proliferate in the favor of business
         | objectives
        
           | koolba wrote:
           | Delta is like the Blue Cross of dental plans.
        
         | andrei_says_ wrote:
         | I use delta dental. What does this mean? Why would they store
         | my CC info when I'm paying directly to my dentist and delta
         | dental is also paying the dentist?
         | 
         | How does my CC info get transferred to the insurer? There's no
         | such transaction afaik.
        
           | calfuris wrote:
           | How are you paying your premium? For individual plans, I
           | suspect that a lot of people use a card.
        
             | accrual wrote:
             | At least at my $dayjob, premiums are deducted before I get
             | my check, along with taxes, retirement, etc.
             | 
             | Like you mentioned, it's probably different for those who
             | purchase their own insurance.
        
           | CWuestefeld wrote:
           | the OP says "Delta Dental of California", for one thing. I
           | imagine that means that I'm safe.
           | 
           | California is not the entire world, believe it or not.
        
         | trimethylpurine wrote:
         | That would just force the company to form back up with the same
         | people under a new name. Unless individuals can be held
         | responsible, there's nothing we can do about it.
        
       | highwaylights wrote:
       | Surely the data breaches we hear about are the tip of the
       | iceberg?
       | 
       | Just think of what needs to happen after a hack for you to hear
       | about it:
       | 
       | - someone at the company needs to be aware it has happened.
       | 
       | - they need to accurately identify what was accessed.
       | 
       | - they need to disclose that this has happened.
       | 
       | - it needs to be visible enough that it gets picked up and talked
       | about.
       | 
       | Each step of that funnel must have some drop-off that is non-
       | zero. Do we hear about 80% of breaches? 5%?
       | 
       | Honestly I've no idea.
        
         | sofixa wrote:
         | Well thankfully point #3 is mandatory in places with laws such
         | as the GDPR or California or Brazil's equivalents which mandate
         | disclosure to impacted users and publicly.
        
           | willcipriano wrote:
           | Murder is similarly forbidden. Still happens.
        
         | kossTKR wrote:
         | Yes, i'm pretty sure no more than 5% of breches and leaks gets
         | public press.
         | 
         | There's so many internal company filters a breach has to go
         | through to become public all the way from some engineer messing
         | up and "just closing the terminal" with a beating heart hoping
         | no one will notice - to a long chain of managers who has to
         | send the message upwards, then the leadership approving public
         | disclosure, all with negative pressure to not disclose because
         | of career, stress, extra work, penalties, all the way to
         | stakeholder value.
        
         | lofaszvanitt wrote:
         | Just get into the proper forums and see all the data offered
         | for sale.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | I would honestly guess about 0.1% of bad leaks (e.g. not just
         | email and user name or whatever) are disclosed in the end.
         | 
         | It has to be really hard for the police or card providers to
         | correlate frauds with customer databases.
         | 
         | And like, how do you even notice you are hacked? Unless the
         | hacker sends you extortion messages, which I guess is the main
         | reason for disclosure. Otherwise the hacker can tip off the an
         | attorney and 'pwn' corporate lawyers for real. A risk the
         | lawyers won't take even if the company wanted to.
         | 
         | I sometimes feel lawyers are the only group of workers with
         | real agency ...
        
         | ourmandave wrote:
         | And finding out shouldn't be like pulling teeth.
        
           | iAMkenough wrote:
           | Delta should leave the teeth pulling to the dentists.
        
         | droopyEyelids wrote:
         | You're only looking at it from one end of the funnel.
         | 
         | On the other end you have security researchers who are active
         | in the cybercrime underground markets, and have the same
         | opportunity to buy stolen data as the criminals themselves.
         | 
         | So disclosure can come from the other end when it becomes
         | apparent that a certain company's data is being sold, and I
         | think almost all of it does get sold eventually, even if the
         | initial hacker has a way to exploit it privately: After they've
         | finished, they can make money selling the leftovers.
        
       | jimmygrapes wrote:
       | Cool, Delta Dental is one of the few dental insurance providers
       | the VA recommends and offers plans with. Nothing says "we support
       | veterans" like a good old fashioned sell-off of data.
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | The data was siphoned from Delta Dental, not sold by Delta
         | Dental.
        
       | sokoloff wrote:
       | If I have three simultaneous/overlapping years of free credit
       | monitoring from various breaches, am I triple-protected?
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | When I ask my non-techie friends about stuff like this, they
       | really don't care anymore unless they actually get hacked,
       | scammed, etc. It happens so often that there's now "breach
       | fatigue". Meaning little pressure on companies to do better.
        
         | MattGaiser wrote:
         | Even as a tech person, I am indifferent. I've adapted to a
         | world where cards get stolen, so I never use debit, review my
         | statements, and have spending notifications turned on for my
         | phone. I have the apps so I can instantly lock my card. I have
         | already learned to live in a financial castle.
         | 
         | It is obviously not great, but an additional breach has little
         | marginal impact on my life.
        
           | Dalewyn wrote:
           | >so I never use debit, review my statements,
           | 
           | Even the most Joe of Joe Averages should be doing that,
           | honestly.
           | 
           | The primary reason to use credit cards over debit is for the
           | fraud protection, and reviewing monthly statements is just
           | something everyone should do.
        
           | pants2 wrote:
           | The real question is why online credit card payments still
           | involve using the whole card number, as opposed to some
           | message signed by the card's private key authorizing certain
           | spending limits for a retailer.
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | Online retailers almost surely do better by allowing easy
             | use of credit cards by even the least technical 5% of
             | Americans than they would from a lower fraud system that
             | required a moderate or higher level of technical acumen to
             | operate.
             | 
             | Suppose I'm at a computer ready to buy a PS5 on BestBuy's
             | site. What's the complexity now vs under a proposed
             | private-key system? What's the loss in conversion rate on
             | the latter?
        
               | pants2 wrote:
               | I'm not sure exactly what that might look like, but if
               | you look at crypto wallets for example, you could have a
               | browser extension (or something like Apple Pay) that's
               | able to custody the private key and sign transactions.
               | Once you have it set up, it would be much easier than
               | entering a CC number.
        
               | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
               | Then offer both until the general public learns. The
               | savvy can use the more secure system and the rest can
               | upgrade when they're feeling brave.
        
             | BytesAndGears wrote:
             | That's exactly what we have in the Netherlands -- there is
             | a system where you can go to check out, using iDeal.
             | 
             | It gives you a QR code at checkout, which you can scan with
             | a banking app on your phone. It shows on your phone the
             | amount you're sending, and to whom, with a button to
             | approve or deny.
             | 
             | You can also set it up as a recurring payment in the app
             | and say "authorize this same payment automatically in the
             | future, up to EURxyz amount". Then you can see a list of
             | all of your authorized recurring payments, and cancel or
             | change them any time from the bank app.
             | 
             | It's a great system!
        
               | shnock wrote:
               | Yet another example of NL's actual understanding of the
               | public and common good
               | 
               | I miss thee dearly!
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | Because smart card readers aren't very common on home
             | computers.
        
               | closeparen wrote:
               | It's a weird skeuomorphism that online payments are even
               | related to physical cards. It should just be through your
               | online banking account.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | It's just a legacy pattern. Online credit card payments
               | predate online banking. The whole model for US card
               | payments online was created as an extensions of the way
               | credit cards were used to pay via mail or telephone.
        
             | yieldcrv wrote:
             | Apple Pay is a virtual number all the time, and Amex with
             | Google Chrome is or can do it too
             | 
             | baby steps, significant ones, but an incomplete solution
        
       | sologoub wrote:
       | It's pretty sad that after decades of such breaches, these still
       | do damage. We have had tech, such as security keys, for some
       | time. Even basic Authenticator app helps. These should be
       | standard with anything remotely sensitive.
       | 
       | Another sad point is that there is rarely true accountability.
       | Offering 24 months of some service is a pittance and an expense
       | of doing business that could be factored/priced in, continuing
       | the poor security practices.
        
       | vladgur wrote:
       | Does this only impact people who purchase individual coverage
       | through Delta Dental?
       | 
       | I'm assuming employees with employer-sponsored Delta Dental plans
       | have no reason to provide Delta with their credit cards
        
         | jebarker wrote:
         | I have Delta Dental through employer and I'm pretty sure I've
         | never had to give them any CC info. Any copays go directly to
         | the dentist.
        
       | fn-mote wrote:
       | They knew about the breach June 1, confirmed June 6, but the
       | information is only made public after almost five months,
       | November 27? (After a "second, more lengthy investigation".)
       | 
       | This is better than nothing, but it seems absurd.
        
         | oasisbob wrote:
         | It is absurd, and it violates the mandatory timely notification
         | laws which are in place in many states, including Washington.
         | 
         | Umpqua bank was also affected by MoveIt by way of one of their
         | fintech vendors (FIS), they didn't even bother to notify my
         | state's AG, as required by law, nor did they provide timely or
         | accurate notifications.
         | 
         | Maybe companies feel a diffusion of responsibility when there
         | are so many others affected.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | They feel a diffusion of responsibility because they are
           | never held responsible for it.
        
       | gunapologist99 wrote:
       | According to the article, this applies mostly or only to Delta
       | Dental of California.
       | 
       | Slightly OT: Delta Dental was the company that Costco used to
       | sell Dental Insurance through. (unfortunately, that partnership
       | has ended with no replacement.)
       | 
       | Careington and Thrive both offer overlapping discount plans that
       | (especially combined) can more than offset the much higher
       | monthly (not low annual) prices that Delta Dental is now
       | charging, especially for a family.
        
       | Podgajski wrote:
       | When are they going to be consequences for the companies that let
       | these data breaches happen?
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | It's lamentable that any of this information still has value to
       | fraudsters. Once it became clear that companies cannot safely
       | control this data, it should have been stripped of any value by
       | having some security token under user control provide the actual
       | payment authorization.
        
       | bradgessler wrote:
       | I'll never forget when a Citibank employee that processes
       | mortgage applications asked me for my credit card over email.
       | 
       | They also had a "secure messaging center" that would take your
       | message, put it in a PDF, password protect the PDF, and then send
       | it to the email address along with instructions for them to login
       | to the website to get the PDF password.
       | 
       | The list goes on of bad things banks do with security and is a
       | blatant reminder, "rules for thee but not for me"
        
         | chrbr wrote:
         | The entire home-buying process (in the US, at least) seems to
         | be built on shady-looking ways to nickel and dime people. I
         | remember telling friends when going through it that it'd be
         | easy to scam me because I got so used to urgent requests to pay
         | some fee for inspections or legal stuff or whatever that I'd
         | just shell out the money without asking questions.
        
           | wharvle wrote:
           | It's got nothing on medical billing. Seemingly random bills
           | from entities you may never have heard of showing up _months_
           | later even when you paid a shitload (thousands) up-front.
           | 
           | [EDIT] Oh and they may not put enough info on the bill to
           | figure out WTF it's even for, without calling them. It'll
           | have some uselessly-generic single-line item for what was
           | probably multiple things, but you'll have to spend an hour on
           | hold to find out what you're supposed to be paying for.
        
       | deepsquirrelnet wrote:
       | Sidebar, but does anybody else get incensed by the fact that
       | Delta frequently uses customer's SSN as their account number? My
       | dentist looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I didn't
       | want my account information being stored on their computers for
       | that reason.
       | 
       | But maybe in this moronic system, resistance is futile.
        
       | excerionsforte wrote:
       | Really basic security practices weren't followed. I cancelled my
       | plan now and switching to my new primary health insurance dental
       | plan which I should've looked at. I don't know why these
       | companies wait for a breach before looking at their systems after
       | all these data breaches. I mean storing credit cards is Do Not Do
       | 101.
        
       | vlod wrote:
       | If you've been putting it off, a friendly reminder to freeze your
       | account at the credit card agencies. Make sure you do all 3!
       | 
       | Here's details from NerdWallet:
       | https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre...
        
         | laweijfmvo wrote:
         | Good tip! It's awful what this entails:
         | 
         | 1) Creating accounts with the major credit reporters,
         | presumably subject to hacks or social engineering
         | 
         | 2) Accounts that require answering an easily guessed "secret
         | question"
         | 
         | 3) Password "rules" that restrict both the length and special
         | characters of your password
         | 
         | 4) After all that, creating the account results in a
         | "Congratulation!" NOT FROZEN account. You have to go through an
         | extra step to actually feeze it.
         | 
         | 5) "Sorry, we can't freeze your account right now!"
        
           | vlod wrote:
           | Yeah... it's a complete PITA. I also had the 'we can't freeze
           | right now' and it took a few days of verification and
           | eventually having to call them to get it all sorted.
           | 
           | My reasoning is it's better to do this before a bad person
           | has your account rather than during.
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | Why are you doing so much work to save some third party
             | money when they get defrauded?
        
               | vlod wrote:
               | Because you'll have to deal with the repercussions. I'd
               | rather not.
        
       | wharvle wrote:
       | One wonders, at times, how much modern "efficiency" is just
       | shifting costs to places they're less well-observed.
        
       | callalex wrote:
       | It's super fun and cool that dentistry is controlled by a cartel
       | and we just let it happen out in the open. It is NOT insurance,
       | because there is no risk pooling or coverage for adverse events.
       | It's just a payment plan that sets prices unilaterally.
        
         | shnock wrote:
         | Are acute and not universal dental operations like a root
         | canal, crown, abscess op not adverse events for which there can
         | be risk pooling?
        
           | callalex wrote:
           | They are, and that is not what Delta "insurance" covers.
        
             | quacker wrote:
             | I'm not sure why you say this. Maybe I don't understand
             | what you mean.
             | 
             | I have Delta Dental through my employer's benefits and it
             | covers all the types of operations that I'd expect:
             | preventive, endodontic, periodontic, orthodontic,
             | prosthodontic, etc.
             | 
             | If I need a root canal, it's covered by Delta Dental (up to
             | a point, given the deductible). If I chip a tooth, and get
             | an inlay or onlay, that is covered. Is this not insurance?
             | Why not?
        
               | calfuris wrote:
               | Where I live, Delta offers a plan that essentially
               | provides a set price list for various procedures as long
               | as you are in network. Perhaps the person you're replying
               | to has run into that plan and didn't realize that they
               | also have more conventional plans.
        
         | daft_pink wrote:
         | As someone that used Dental Insurance heavily after I didn't
         | take good care of my teeth in my 20's and previously negotiated
         | many different Dental policies as an agent for a large employer
         | this really isn't true.
         | 
         | 1. I found that different Dental Insurance companies have
         | wildly different negotiated rates and there is no real
         | standard. Delta Dental tends to have better negotiated rates in
         | my experience and United Healthcare's dental plans seem like
         | they don't negotiate at all and using a specialized Dental
         | company results in the lowest rates overall as the large health
         | insurers are simply profiting off the insurance and don't seem
         | to care how much they pay, which sucks when you pay a
         | percentage for a procedure.
         | 
         | 2. The totally covered population for dental insurance is not
         | big enough to control the market. Generally, I found that when
         | I wasn't covered by dental insurance, dental costs were a lot
         | higher and you do generally receive a savings from dental
         | insurance and they really don't have enough market share to
         | control the market.
         | 
         | 3. The coverage for adverse events is mostly just limited,
         | because if you go to the dentist regularly, you generally don't
         | have tons of adverse events within one year. I think most
         | people will find a decent dental insurance plan will mostly
         | cover them. Even if you exceed the negotiated rate,
         | 
         | I just find that in general having dental insurance is
         | beneficial to me as a person and not a scam like vision
         | insurance where you are generally better off finding a coupon
         | or deal, or ridiculous like health insurance where they have
         | manipulated the networks and deductibles so that the average
         | person has no idea what they are buying or how to evaluate it.
         | 
         | My criticism of dental insurance would simply be that I think
         | that policy holders should benefit from company negotiated
         | rates under a policy even when a particular item isn't covered
         | under their policy. I find that is the one area where dental
         | insurance in general is lacking, because dental insurance takes
         | the negotiation out of pricing and gives you the benefit of the
         | companies negotiated rates.
        
       | daft_pink wrote:
       | Scary thing about this is that Delta Dental is multi-state
       | entity, but Delta Dental of California is the entity that handles
       | federal employee benefits, so it likely leaked sensitive details
       | about many federal employees if it contained their entire
       | subscriber base.
        
       | thrillgore wrote:
       | You know what will make this stop? Actual consequences for not
       | preventing data breaches, like jail time.
        
       | yieldcrv wrote:
       | web2isgoinggreat
        
       | pests wrote:
       | Yall know not every lives in CA?
        
       | markhahn wrote:
       | we need to flip the conversation on this.
       | 
       | journalists don't seem to grok the fact that breaches are totally
       | the fault of the breached site. sure, the attackers are bad
       | people, but that's a different crime.
       | 
       | we need something close to a death sentence for sites that allow
       | themselves to be breached. mandatory $10k per exposed SSN, $10
       | per exposed email, that sort of thing.
       | 
       | what would be the result? only good: sites should not be storing
       | this data themselves. the real conversation-flip is that we need
       | to put people in charge of their own data, and make it
       | radioactive for data-users (like Delta Dental) to store it. this
       | kind of data should only live in facilities that are solely run
       | for the purpose, and which provide the data-subject with full
       | control. who pays? not really that hard - some combination of the
       | data-subject, data-users (transaction fees), perhaps just a
       | governmental single payer (since we're talking tiny cost).
       | 
       | imagine if you could look at your data (you can't today!) and
       | could explicitly share out bits to particular data-users. all
       | your records (dental, tax, CC, banking).
        
       | toywinder wrote:
       | MOVEit has been a vector for several high profile bank and
       | government breaches in the last few months. I really have to
       | wonder why anyone is still using their services after yet another
       | security incident.
        
       | ramesh31 wrote:
       | Great example of why you should never ever ever give out a debit
       | card number for anything. Just about every credit card company
       | has virtual numbers now. And even still, there's a massive
       | difference between disputing a credit charge and replacing lost
       | funds in a checking account.
        
       | purpleblue wrote:
       | Delta Dental is one of the worst dental insurance companies out
       | there. I hope it goes bankrupt. They have cut benefits so much
       | that most dentists I know have dropped them completely and refuse
       | to take them. It has caused a bunch of headaches for us and for
       | most families I know.
        
         | anonuser123456 wrote:
         | My wife's dentist dropped them this year. My dentist is
         | considering it in the near future.
        
       | snakeyjake wrote:
       | Yay.
       | 
       | I can expect yet another $7.35 settlement check sent to my Venmo
       | in 18 months...
        
       | hedora wrote:
       | People say that delta shouldn't have been storing CVC numbers
       | (fair point), but note that the breach was upstream of them at
       | MoveIT, which supplies an on-prem file transfer program and cloud
       | offerings specifically for managing PCI environments.
       | 
       | The real WTF is that the PCI compliance vendor's solution led to
       | them storing that data.
       | 
       | "It's your only job," and all that...
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | CL0P (Russia) is known to target MOVEit but I can't find any
       | confirmation of which threat actor is believed to be implicated.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clop_(cyber_gang)
       | 
       | https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/cisa-and-fbi-release-a...
        
       | keep_reading wrote:
       | Ahh ok I'll change my privacy.com card for Delta Dental then
        
       | marcod wrote:
       | If I say "this AC is on its last legs" I'm likely talking about
       | acceptance criteria ;)
        
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