Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests

Re:Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests by slv77 on Friday November 30, 2018 @08:39AM (#18568971)

This was solve by banks a long time ago with hardware security modules (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module). HSMs make it impossible to extract encryption keys from the device and turn a digital security problem into a physical security problem which banks knew how to manage. Are your encryption keys secure? Yes they are right there.

Amazon and Azure offer these in the cloud.

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Re:Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests by closeparen on Friday November 30, 2018 @01:07PM (#18571040)

The application has whatever credentials it needs to make decryption requests to the HSM. Wouldn't an attacker who owns it simply find them?

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Re:Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests by slv77 on Friday November 30, 2018 @08:15PM (#18574327)

Typically the HSM will be part of a tokenization service that is located in a separate security zone also called a data bunker or data vault. The customer facing application will pass in the sensitive data and in its place a token will be returned. When the calling application needs the data it will pass in the token and the data is returned.

An attacker that compromised the customer facing application only has access to tokens and would be forced to access sensitive data via the data bunker. That application is heavily monitored and would hopefully be quickly noticed.

The HSM adds an additional layer of protection against loss of sensitive data via backup tapes or some insider attacks.

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