Sound The Trumpet : RESEARCHERS SAY THEY CAN GUESS YOUR SSN

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“RESEARCHERS SAY THEY CAN GUESS YOUR SSN”
by Msnbc
July 7th, 2009

Another possible reason for the mark of the beast?

There’s a new reason to worry about the security of your Social Security number. Turns out, they can be guessed with relative ease.

A group of researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University say they’ve discovered patterns in the issuance of numbers that make it relatively easy to deduce the personal information using publicly available information and some basic statistical analysis.

The research could have far-ranging implications for financial institutions and other firms that rely on Social Security numbers to ward off identity theft. It could also unleash a wave of criminal imitators who will try to duplicate the research.

Details of the research were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal and will be explained at the annual Black Hat computer hacker convention in Las Vegas later this month.

The report means companies and other agencies should once and for all stop using Social Security numbers as passwords or unique identifiers, said Professor Alessandro Acquisti, who authored the report.

"We keep living as if they are secure, a secret," he said. "They're not a secret."

The Social Security Administration says SSNs are issued using a complex process that is effectively random, making them impossible to guess in practical terms. But Acquisti and fellow researcher Ralph Gross used public lists of Social Security numbers to look for patterns. They found several. The two say they can guess the first 5 digits of the Social Security number of anyone born after 1988 within two guesses, knowing only birth date and location. The last four digits, while harder to guess, can be had within a few hundred guesses in many situations -- a trivial hurdle for criminals using automated tools.

"Someone filling out credit card applications using a Web site and a botnet could easily succeed (in getting someone's number)," he said.

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