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Oregon license plate seen on the I-5 near Eugene, OR today:
RD PILL

Plate was on a Toyota Matrix.  I wonder how many people get the joke.

(For those who don’t know, Oregon only allows you six characters plus a half-space or half-hyphen on your vanity plates, hence the abbreviation of “RED”.)

Humor license plate, matrix

Just finally had time to sit down and read the latest (August 2007) edition of Sys Admin Magazine, and according to a blurb in the front (and some chatter on the internets, it looks like it will be the last issue of the publication.

This saddens me quite a bit, as it was truly a great resource for this specialized target group.

I remember reading it back in high school before I actually started my IT career – when I was just a nerd with too much free time and couple of boxes with Linux and FreeBSD installed simply for keeping myself entertained.  The shell script snippets, ideas, and real-life stories were what really made the magazine.

RIP, Sys Admin Magazine.

Systems Admin

We received a letter today regarding Alta Resources, Inc – a credit card processor who handles services for the Disney Movie Club regarding a security breach of our credit card information:

Dear Disney Movie Club Member,

We have been informed of an incident at Alta Resources, Inc., a company that processes and fulfills orders for the Disney Movie Club. This incident involved credit card information received by Alta Resources from a number of Disney Movie Club members.

*snip*

One of Alta Resources’ employees sold certain credit card information to federal law enforcement agents, as part of an undercover sting operation, in May 2007. This information included your name, address, credit card number and expiration date, and credit card type (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover), and may have included your telephone number and email address if you had provided that contact information to us. We have been assured that the card security code (e.g., the CVV or CVC code) for your credit card was not included in this information.

*snip*

The individual involved in this incident is now longer employed by Alta Resources and no longer has access rights to Alta Resources’ premises or computer systems. You also should know that Alta Resources now has taken additional corrective and precautionary measures, and has been independently certified under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and industry standard for safeguarding of consumer credit card information.

At least they’re letting their customers know. Glad they weren’t being total dimwits and storing CVV codes in a database. Also glad that the genius trying to do this had his first “successful” sale to a government agent.

So, I’m curious – does the last paragraph I posted from the letter mean they weren’t following PCI standards (were not PCI compliant) before?

Full scan of the letter:

Security crack, credit card