Use the Zappos Breach to Renew Your Password Strategy

Corey Nachreiner

12 years ago

Last Sunday, Zappos (a popular, Amazon-owned, online shoe reseller) warned its employees and customers that an attacker had gained access to their internal network, and made off with a bunch of sensitive customer information. The good news? The attacker did not gain access to any customer credit card info. The bad news? He or she did steal over 24 million users’ names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and encrypted or hashed passwords.

Zappos hasn’t released any technical details about the attack, and I don’t expect them to. If forced to guess, I’d assume it probably originated from some web application flaw, which is a pretty common vector these days. That’s why I often suggest that IT and web administrators focus their security resources on their web applications; both by encouraging secure web coding practices, and by leveraging security controls with application-layer inspection capabilities (such as the HTTP and HTTPS proxies that WatchGuard’s XTM appliances offer). However, that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. Today, I want to talk about passwords.

I’ve talked about passwords many times before, but as a core principle of security (technically part of Authentication), the advice bears repeating. Here are some password-related tips; both general and related to password security breaches:

Change your password(s) after a security breach – If a site you use ever has a security breach where attackers gain access to passwords (hashed or not), change your password immediately. In Zappos case, they are forcing this advice by terminating old passwords. If you use Zappos, be sure to change your password now, before a bad guy does it for you.
Use strong passwords – I believe passwords should be greater than 10 characters. One easy way you can create long passwords, with enough entropy, is by using passphrases, or more specifically something I call pass-sentences. WatchGuard’s Bud Logs In video talks about these concepts in more detail (and is good for basic endusers).
Use different passphrases on different web sites – This is crucial aspect of password security, especially when considering these types of web breaches. If you, like most people, use the same password for many different web sites, the attacker that has Zappos’ password archive now may have your password for all web sites. If you have been using the same password everywhere, not only should you change your Zappos password, but you should change your password on every site (and make it different this time). This breach situation is exactly why experts recommend you use different passwords everywhere. That said, many people find this advice hard to implement in practice; which brings me to the next tip…
Leverage password vault software – Password vaults make it easier for you to manage multiple passwords securely. They are not perfect. If you use multiple machines and OSs, you may have trouble finding password management software that meets all your needs. Plus, password vaults become a single point of potential failure, as they almost literally store all the keys to your kingdom. It’s extremely important to use secure password vaults, and protect them. That said, they offer the only practical solution to managing multiple passwords today. This article suggests a few good ones to use (I have used 1password myself).

None of this advice is ground -breaking. I’ve mentioned it many times before, including during the HBGary hacking incident. However, some aspects of password security — particular the part about not reusing passwords — are admittedly hard for normal people to follow in the real world, because they can slow things down. I hope you use this Zappos breach to remind you of the benefits of following certain security best practices, even if they put small speed bumps in front of your typical business processes. Sometimes we need these speed bumps to prevent ourselves from crashing headlong into a brick wall. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)