July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: PeerPoint (building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet@googlegroups.com)
by Poor Richard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi Isaac. I've just subscribed to the p2p-hackers list and I'm reaching out to all the other groups and projects that have been mentioned. I've also been invited to post the PeerPoint proposal on the P2P Foundation Blog. The idea is to invite a wider community to crowdsource further evolution of the specs. I added an intro to the specs that I and others can easily email with the link to the full doc: Greets, p2p peeps! > > PeerPoint is an evolving crowdsourced design specification for a suite of > integrated peer-to-peer applications to include (but not limited to) social > networking, real-time project collaboration, content management, database > management, voting, trust/reputation metrics, complementary currency, crowd > funding, etc. This specification overlaps with many existing p2p > infrastructure and social networking projects but also goes substantially > beyond anything yet existing. Members of other projects are encouraged to > participate in further developing the open PeerPoint specs and to adopt any > part of the specs that they can use. > > To participate in developing this specification, please join the Next Net > Google Group<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/building-a-distributed-decentrali…>and read the PeerPoint > topic.<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/building-a-distributed-decentralized-intern…><https://groups.google.com/d/msg/building-a-distributed-decentralized-intern…> > I am not actually trying to start another development project. PeerPoint is an open, high-level functional specification for where I think all the open p2p projects are eventually heading as a group. I want to get as many of those current projects as I can to participate in evolving the PeerPoint spec further and adding increasing levels of detail that are beyond my competence. Any suggestions? PR On Sunday, June 17, 2012 8:00:54 PM UTC-5, Isaac Wilder wrote: > > Zooko Wilcox O'Hearn runs a mailing list called p2p-hackers, but it's > more for protocol/network design. > There's SecuShare, GNUnet, Tonika, and Sneer. All of which are existing > projects in the space that could certainly use your help. I still do not > understand the need for another separate project. Why not work with what's > out there? > > imw > > > On 06/17/2012 07:45 PM, Poor Richard wrote: > > Thanks for the suggestions, Mark. I'll try to hook up with theglobalsquare > folks. As for the P2P Foundation, they seem more interested in the movement > and culture than the technology at the moment. I'm on their mail list and > I'm curating a facebook group<https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/>for the p2p peeps there. > > PR > > On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 7:45:55 PM UTC-5, Mark Janssen-Rosenbluth > wrote: >> >> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Poor Richard wrote: >>> >>> BTW as far as I can tell, there is no online forum dedicated to the >>> general topic of p2p application software architecture for free/open source >>> software designers, developers, engineers, etc. Discussions of p2p >>> architecture tend to be found mostly in the discussions of specific >>> p2p networking projects like freenet and FreedomBox and they tend to apply >>> to the lower-level network routing and file-sharing issues instead of >>> the higher application software level for real-time, interactive >>> collaboration. If anyone knows of a general p2p *application*architecture group or forum, please let me know. >>> >>> (In case you don't know,) you might want to check out the >> P2P-Foundation (which has a long-standing discussion on these topics) and >> theglobalsquare which is trying to implement same. >> >> mark >> > > ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: Status of opportunistic encryption
by auto37159＠hushmail.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I am also interested in Opportunistic Encryption. Even if it is not as secure as a manually configured VPN, I am willing to trade that for what it does provide. I have looked at setting up OpenSWAN in OE mode, but frankly it is daunting even for the reasonably geeky and far beyond any kind of mass implementation. Also the DNS requirements make it not a viable solution for the majority of (dynamic DNS home) users. It is fairly simple to turn on optional IPsec under windows, but then everyone needs to use a common CA (say a thawate freemail cert). This option is far easier to use than setting up openswan in OE on your router. I am interested in how Zimmermann's ZRTP accomplishes things, because he seems to have dropped the explicit need for PSKs or CAs. If this is really the case, could techniques like this be used for other types of communication? For OE to be sucessful it needs to have a critical mass on the same (or autoselectable) OE system, useable across OSs, needs to be painless to install and use, and needs to be included in standard distros configured by default as ON (say every machine which left dell had optional ipsec on (and UDP encapsulation) with a common CA :). The necessary critical mass of people won't run OE if it requires extra effort assuming they even know of it's existance or what it does. Skype has achieved something in the encrypted world because it is on by default. In my unscientific WAG, more communication going over skype than SRTP, because SRTP is generally not shipped in a working state and there isn't a one stop CA. Anytime I have recommended using STARTTLS to my sysadmin friends, they have always worried about breaking stuff and complained about needed expensive certs. I would be willing to take the step of using a non authenticated mode (initially), if it would remove some of these impediments and create widespread use. There is a wikipedia entry on OE, but it is quite sparse, so update it if you have something to add. rearden On Fri, 26 May 2006 03:18:59 -0400 Sandy Harris <sandyinchina(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Some years back I worked on the FreeS/WAN project (freeswan.org) >IPsec for Linux. > >One of our goals was to implement "opportunistic encryption", to >allow any two >appropriately set up machines to communicate securely, without pre- >arrangement >between the two system administrators. Put authentication keys in >DNS; they >look those up and can then use IKE to do authenticated Diffie- >Hellman to create >the keys for secure links. > >Recent news stories seem to me to make it obvious that anyone with >privacy >concerns (i.e. more-or-less everyone) should be encrypting as much >of their >communication as possible. Implementing opportunistic encryption >is the >best way I know of to do that for the Internet. > >I'm somewhat out of touch, though, so I do not know to what extent >people >are using it now. That is my question here. > >I do note that there are some relevant RFCs. > >RFC 4322 Opportunistic Encryption using the Internet Key Exchange >(IKE) >RFC 4025 A Method for Storing IPsec Keying Material in DNS > >and that both of FreeS/WAN's successor projects (openswan.org and >strongswan.org) mention it in their docs. However, I don't know if >it >actually being used. > >-- >Sandy Harris >Zhuhai, Guangdong, China > >------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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Re: Status of opportunistic encryption
by auto37159＠hushmail.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I am also interested in Opportunistic Encryption. Even if it is not as secure as a manually configured VPN, I am willing to trade that for what it does provide. I have looked at setting up OpenSWAN in OE mode, but frankly it is daunting even for the reasonably geeky and far beyond any kind of mass implementation. Also the DNS requirements make it not a viable solution for the majority of (dynamic DNS home) users. It is fairly simple to turn on optional IPsec under windows, but then everyone needs to use a common CA (say a thawate freemail cert). This option is far easier to use than setting up openswan in OE on your router. I am interested in how Zimmermann's ZRTP accomplishes things, because he seems to have dropped the explicit need for PSKs or CAs. If this is really the case, could techniques like this be used for other types of communication? For OE to be sucessful it needs to have a critical mass on the same (or autoselectable) OE system, useable across OSs, needs to be painless to install and use, and needs to be included in standard distros configured by default as ON (say every machine which left dell had optional ipsec on (and UDP encapsulation) with a common CA :). The necessary critical mass of people won't run OE if it requires extra effort assuming they even know of it's existance or what it does. Skype has achieved something in the encrypted world because it is on by default. In my unscientific WAG, more communication going over skype than SRTP, because SRTP is generally not shipped in a working state and there isn't a one stop CA. Anytime I have recommended using STARTTLS to my sysadmin friends, they have always worried about breaking stuff and complained about needed expensive certs. I would be willing to take the step of using a non authenticated mode (initially), if it would remove some of these impediments and create widespread use. There is a wikipedia entry on OE, but it is quite sparse, so update it if you have something to add. rearden On Fri, 26 May 2006 03:18:59 -0400 Sandy Harris <sandyinchina(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Some years back I worked on the FreeS/WAN project (freeswan.org) >IPsec for Linux. > >One of our goals was to implement "opportunistic encryption", to >allow any two >appropriately set up machines to communicate securely, without pre- >arrangement >between the two system administrators. Put authentication keys in >DNS; they >look those up and can then use IKE to do authenticated Diffie- >Hellman to create >the keys for secure links. > >Recent news stories seem to me to make it obvious that anyone with >privacy >concerns (i.e. more-or-less everyone) should be encrypting as much >of their >communication as possible. Implementing opportunistic encryption >is the >best way I know of to do that for the Internet. > >I'm somewhat out of touch, though, so I do not know to what extent >people >are using it now. That is my question here. > >I do note that there are some relevant RFCs. > >RFC 4322 Opportunistic Encryption using the Internet Key Exchange >(IKE) >RFC 4025 A Method for Storing IPsec Keying Material in DNS > >and that both of FreeS/WAN's successor projects (openswan.org and >strongswan.org) mention it in their docs. However, I don't know if >it >actually being used. > >-- >Sandy Harris >Zhuhai, Guangdong, China > >------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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Re: [silk] Introduction
by Alaric Snell-Pym 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 04/01/2013 05:30 PM, Yosem Companys wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm one of the coordinators of the Program on Liberation Technologies > at Stanford University, where we study and design technologies that > can be used to promote the public good, including democracy, human > rights, freedom, and development, among others. Good! Perhaps you will have something to say about a matter I've been turning over in my head lately! I'm interested in Bitcoin. Why? Because I think there's a lot of inefficiency and injustice in the way traditional financial systems (banks, currencies, and markets) are built: they're heavily centralised and monopolised and entangled with politics and other vested interests. But I'm far from certain that Bitcoin will be a panacea here. Precisely because it is decentralised and purely under the control of dispassionate algorithms, it is open to different kinds of abuse. The initial distribution is hardly "fair" (no matter how you define fair), although I don't think a better distribution mechanism could have been defined; but will it even out with time? Or will we find new centralisation, in the form of important market functions (eg, the kinds of roles that banks fill) being monopolised by the few who have the capital to run them? There's a centralisation risk in the mining power being monopolised; somebody who controls more than half of the computational power in the mining network, for instance, could just write their own rules (creating bitcoins out of nothing or stealing bitcoins from other people, for a start). There's also a danger of governments stepping in and regulating Bitcoin in ways that make it a slave to the incumbent financial system. But there's also the chance for truly independent economic institutions to form, fighting each other for trust and market share by actually competing, with reputation being the most important capital, meaning that anyone with a good idea can implement it and earn from it; and reduced transaction fees and censorship making it easier to do business from developing economies (look at how PayPal blacklists entire countries); and stuff like that. So what can nerds like me do to try and make sure the world gets the benefits of a decentralised currency, and that good outweighing the costs of it being used for tax evasion, trading in unethical things, or ending up ensnared by central control in one way or another? > > Yosem > ABS - -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAlFa03EACgkQRgz/WHNxCGon4wCfU14B1J2oN7HSFCMsfT4tpfh4 66YAoIyIzuO7QufwKnlgtDuKPpyxG8vw =U0ZW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] Is What Aaron Did, Right?
by Vijay Anand 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

So, did someone say that we dont use this forum to have debates on what goes on in the world anymore? I know there are some authors here and some folks from the Academic world. What is your take on Aaron? It looks like with Julian, and now Aaron (liberating data is the new form of activism) - and not the long route of creating an organization and lobbying for years and opening it up, but bruteforce opening (and facing the brutality of it when it backfires) is what the masses are backing after. It somehow brings me mental images of public execution of the old powers during the French Revolution - a bit hasty and bloody for my taste. What are your thoughts? PS: No intents to smear the living or the dead. But it looks like that we are on the crossroads of information, access to it and ethics here. And this issue is only going to grow, not go away. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[liberationtech] Iran shuts down secure web access
by John Graham-Cumming 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

This was mentioned on Hacker News today from someone inside Iran: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575029 John. _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[liberationtech] Iran shuts down secure web access
by John Graham-Cumming 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

This was mentioned on Hacker News today from someone inside Iran: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575029 John. _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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CRYPTO-GRAM, July 15, 2008
by Bruce Schneier 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

CRYPTO-GRAM July 15, 2008 by Bruce Schneier Chief Security Technology Officer, BT schneier(a)schneier.com http://www.schneier.com A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise. For back issues, or to subscribe, visit <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. You can read this issue on the web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0807.html>. These same essays appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog: <http://www.schneier.com/blog>. An RSS feed is available. ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* In this issue: CCTV Cameras News Kill Switches and Remote Control LifeLock and Identity Theft Schneier/BT News The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior The Truth About Chinese Hackers Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Comments from Readers ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* CCTV Cameras Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. There are exceptions, of course, and that's what gets the press. Most famously, CCTV cameras helped catch James Bulger's murderers in 1993. And earlier this year, they helped convict Steve Wright of murdering five women in the Ipswich area. But these are the well-publicized exceptions. Overall, CCTV cameras aren't very effective. This fact has been demonstrated again and again: by a comprehensive study for the Home Office in 2005, by several studies in the US, and again with new data announced last month by New Scotland Yard. They actually solve very few crimes, and their deterrent effect is minimal. Conventional wisdom predicts the opposite. But if that were true, then camera-happy London, with something like 500,000, would be the safest city on the planet. It isn't, of course, because of technological limitations of cameras, organizational limitations of police and the adaptive abilities of criminals. To some, it's comforting to imagine vigilant police monitoring every camera, but the truth is very different. Most CCTV footage is never looked at until well after a crime is committed. When it is examined, it's very common for the viewers not to identify suspects. Lighting is bad and images are grainy, and criminals tend not to stare helpfully at the lens. Cameras break far too often. The best camera systems can still be thwarted by sunglasses or hats. Even when they afford quick identification -- think of the 2005 London transport bombers and the 9/11 terrorists -- police are often able to identify suspects without the cameras. Cameras afford a false sense of security, encouraging laziness when we need police to be vigilant. The solution isn't for police to watch the cameras. Unlike an officer walking the street, cameras only look in particular directions at particular locations. Criminals know this, and can easily adapt by moving their crimes to someplace not watched by a camera -- and there will always be such places. Additionally, while a police officer on the street can respond to a crime in progress, the same officer in front of a CCTV screen can only dispatch another officer to arrive much later. By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources. Cameras aren't completely ineffective, of course. In certain circumstances, they're effective in reducing crime in enclosed areas with minimal foot traffic. Combined with adequate lighting, they substantially reduce both personal attacks and auto-related crime in car parks. And from some perspectives, simply moving crime around is good enough. If a local Tesco installs cameras in its store, and a robber targets the store next door as a result, that's money well spent by Tesco. But it doesn't reduce the overall crime rate, so is a waste of money to the township. But the question really isn't whether cameras reduce crime; the question is whether they're worth it. And given their cost (500 million pounds in the past 10 years), their limited effectiveness, the potential for abuse (spying on naked women in their own homes, sharing nude images, selling best-of videos, and even spying on national politicians) and their Orwellian effects on privacy and civil liberties, most of the time they're not. The funds spent on CCTV cameras would be far better spent on hiring experienced police officers. We live in a unique time in our society: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. And in 10 years, they'll be so small you won't even notice them. Already, companies like L-1 Security Solutions are developing police-state CCTV surveillance technologies like facial recognition for China, technology that will find their way into countries like the UK. The time to address appropriate limits on this technology is before the cameras fade from notice. CCTV research: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/police-camera-crime1.htm http://www.scotcrim.u-net.com/researchc2.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2192911.stm http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors292.pdf http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/14/MNIPRHRPE.DTL or http://tinyurl.com/688f76 http://www.temple.edu/cj/misc/PhilaCCTV.pdf http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/10/21/ctv.cameras/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 London's cameras: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+camer… or http://tinyurl.com/65vwq8 http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_ap… or http://tinyurl.com/ya76db CCTV abuses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4609746.stm http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article743391.ece http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4849806.stm Orwellian cameras: http://wuntvor.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/44/44cb4b91287cfcd8111d4718675… or http://tinyurl.com/3l8jtk http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2280044,00.html Privacy concerns: http://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/ http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/14863res20020225.html Surveillance in China: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye or http://tinyurl.com/5zwc5w A rebuttal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/03/ukcrime.civilliberties or http://tinyurl.com/66ryhp Commentary: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/07/schneier-nows-time-to-limit-c… or http://tinyurl.com/6jsexf More good survey articles: http://ipvideomarket.info/review/show/145 http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/07/cctv-proponents-should-abando… or http://tinyurl.com/5erp65 This essay was previously published in The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/26/politics.ukcrime ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* News The Storm worm is being used to sell pharmaceuticals such as Viagra. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156139&WT.svl=news1_1 http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/the_storm_worm.html I've never figured out the fuss over ransomware. Yes, it encrypts your data and charges you money for the key. But how is this any worse than the old hacker viruses that put a funny message on your screen and erased your hard drive? The single most important thing any company or individual can do to improve security is have a good backup strategy. It's been true for decades, and it's still true today. http://blogs.computerworld.com/ransomware_malware_armageddon_approaches or http://tinyurl.com/6bf7lm Magnetic ring attack on electronic locks: impressive. http://www.toool.nl/blackbag/?p=204 A great "security through obscurity" story, about a collection of coins and currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars being moved without a whole lot of security: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/security_throug_1.html It's possible to eavesdrop on encrypted compressed voice, at least a little bit, through traffic analysis: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14124-compressed-web-phon… or http://tinyurl.com/3u7j6b A Jura F90 Coffee Machine can be hacked remotely over the Internet. http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/493387 A runner-up in last year's Underhanded C Contest was a flawed implementation of RC4 that, after some use, just passed plaintext through unencrypted. Plausibly deniable, and very clever. http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=9 Dilbert on workplace surveillance: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-06-20/ New technology to detect chemical, biological, and explosive agents. https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2007/NR-07-03-07.html or http://tinyurl.com/54rmk4 Swimming pools around Shanghai are examining liquids by smelling them. This liquid ban has gotten weirder. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSPEK18633820080620 A new study claims that insiders aren't the main threat to network security. The whole insiders vs. outsiders debate has always been one of semantics more than anything else. If you count by attacks, there are a lot more outsider attacks, simply because there are orders of magnitude more outsider attackers. If you count incidents, the numbers tend to get closer: 75% vs. 18% in this case. And if you count damages, insiders generally come out on top -- mostly because they have a lot more detailed information and can target their attacks better. Both insiders and outsiders are security risks, and you have to defend against them both. Trying to rank them isn't all that useful. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147098/insider_threat_exagger… or http://tinyurl.com/5dmfde Confused security reasoning by Toronto Mayor David Miller: "'In a day when you can't bring a large tube of toothpaste on a plane how can you allow guns to wander through Union Station, the biggest transit hub in Canada?' he asked his colleagues on city council." By that logic, I think we can ban anything from anywhere. http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080623/gun_violence_080623… or http://tinyurl.com/6dqbco UK teens are using Google Earth to find swimming pools they can crash. How long before someone finds a more serious crime that can be aided by Google Earth? http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/18/tech_aids_pool_crashing/ I've seen the IR screening guns at several airports, primarily in Asia. The idea is to keep out people with bird flu, or whatever the current fever scare is. This essay explains why it won't work: http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/06/why_fever_screening_at_airpor… or http://tinyurl.com/69tht2 Carrier pigeons bringing contraband into prisons in Brazil: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7472537.stm I think this is the first security vulnerability found in RFC 1149: "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers." Deep packet inspection seems to be the only way to prevent this attack, although adequate fencing will prevent the protocol from running in the first place. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html Top ten anti-terrorism patents -- not a joke. My favorite is the airplane trap door. http://www.neatorama.com/2008/06/27/top-10-strangest-anti-terrorism-patents/ or http://tinyurl.com/5sct5d The Pentagon is consulting social scientists on security. The article talks a lot about potential conflicts of interest and such, and less on what sorts of insights the social scientists can offer. I think there is a lot of potential value here. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/arts/18minerva.html One, possibly the only, writer of the Nugache worm was arrested in Wyoming. The 19-year-old will plead guilty. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/hacker-launches.html http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2008/06/30/news/wyoming/doc4865… or http://tinyurl.com/4obdmo It's been a while since I've written about electronic voting machines, but Dan Wallach has an excellent blog post about the current line of argument from the voting machine companies and why it's wrong. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1304 This paper measures insecurity in the global population of browsers, using Google's web server logs. Why is this important? Because browsers are an increasingly popular attack vector. The results aren't good. http://www.techzoom.net/publications/insecurity-iceberg/index.en http://www.ofcourseimright.com/?p=29 Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part one: An air traveler in Canada is first told by an airline employee that it is "illegal" to say certain words, and then that if she raised a fuss she would be falsely accused. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080627.blatch28/BNStor… or http://tinyurl.com/6b927p Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part two: A British man is forced to give up his hobby of photographing buses because he's being harassed too often. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/bus_spotter_clampdown/ Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part three: Israelis label a random homicidal Palestinian nut a terrorist: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/02/israel.bulldozer/ Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part four: New Jersey public school locked down after someone saw a ninja. Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword. http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2008/06/25/school_locked_down_after… or http://tinyurl.com/6h84n2 A fine newspaper headline: "Giraffe helps camels, zebras escape from circus." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h1AqbvSMYPxJrla6-Fgym8WIzEsgD91KNJD00 or http://tinyurl.com/5egkud The U.K. is learning that encrypting disks means that you don't have to worry if they're lost. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/encrypting_disk.html Time bomb neckties. Not to be worn at airports. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12792904 Automatic profiling is useless: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/home_office_passenger_profiling/ or http://tinyurl.com/5p9e6n The U.S. wants to do it anyway: "The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial or ethnic groups." http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-07-02-terror-profiling_N.htm or http://tinyurl.com/5nvlt5 I've written about profiling before: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.html These are sunglasses that hide your face from cameras. It's either real or a hoax, I can't tell which. http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/27/anti-paparazzi-sunglasses/ http://www.abrutis.com/video-lunettes+anti+paparazzi-11937.html In a continued cheapening of the word "terrorism," the Premier of New South Wales called a potential rail-worker strike "industrial terror tactics." Terrorism is a heinous crime, and a serious international problem. It's not a catchall word to describe anything you don't like or don't agree with, or even anything that adversely affects a large number of people. By using the word more broadly than its actual meaning, we muddy the already complicated popular conceptions of the issue. The word "terrorism" has a specific meaning, and we shouldn't debase it. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23981698-421,00.html George Carlin on airport security, filmed before 9/11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxzvSbGJ2w Petty thieves are exploiting the "war on photography" to steal memory cards: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/exploiting_the.html Great essay on TSA stupidity: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/good_essay_on_t_1.html Security cartoon on password guessing: http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=QCH1RR81LSM79KXHUFAC… or http://tinyurl.com/59p9mc Daniel Solove on the new FISA law: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/07/the_new_foreign.html Using a file erasure tool is considered suspicious: http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-consumer6-2008jul06,0,325447.story Unbreakable fighting umbrellas. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/unbreakable-fig.html Be sure to watch the video. ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Kill Switches and Remote Control It used to be that just the entertainment industries wanted to control your computers -- and televisions and iPods and everything else -- to ensure that you didn't violate any copyright rules. But now everyone else wants to get their hooks into your gear. OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment. Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting their capabilities. Cell phones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class. The possibilities are endless, and very dangerous. Making this work involves building a nearly flawless hierarchical system of authority. That's a difficult security problem even in its simplest form. Distributing that system among a variety of different devices -- computers, phones, PDAs, cameras, recorders -- with different firmware and manufacturers, is even more difficult. Not to mention delegating different levels of authority to various agencies, enterprises, industries and individuals, and then enforcing the necessary safeguards. Once we go down this path -- giving one device authority over other devices -- the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority? What prevents them from abusing that power? Do I get the ability to override their limitations? In what circumstances, and how? Can they override my override? How do we prevent this from being abused? Can a burglar, for example, enforce a "no photography" rule and prevent security cameras from working? Can the police enforce the same rule to avoid another Rodney King incident? Do the police get "superuser" devices that cannot be limited, and do they get "supercontroller" devices that can limit anything? How do we ensure that only they get them, and what do we do when the devices inevitably fall into the wrong hands? It's comparatively easy to make this work in closed specialized systems -- OnStar, airplane avionics, military hardware -- but much more difficult in open-ended systems. If you think Microsoft's vision could possibly be securely designed, all you have to do is look at the dismal effectiveness of the various copy-protection and digital-rights-management systems we've seen over the years. That's a similar capabilities-enforcement mechanism, albeit simpler than these more general systems. And that's the key to understanding this system. Don't be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cell phones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good "manners" on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce *their* legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible. "Digital Manners Policies" is a marketing term. Let's call this what it really is: Selective Device Jamming. It's not polite, it's dangerous. It won't make anyone more secure -- or more polite. Kill switches: http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=20… or http://tinyurl.com/6jy2ac http://www.nypost.com/seven/06082008/news/regionalnews/busting_terror_11456… or http://tinyurl.com/5p5kaj http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/the-pentagons-n.html http://spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6171 Digital Manners Policies: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080611-microsoft-patent-brings-miss-… or http://tinyurl.com/449bcc http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p… or http://tinyurl.com/68thpf This essay originally appeared in Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/s… or http://tinyurl.com/4htrb4 ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* LifeLock and Identity Theft LifeLock, one of the companies that offers identity-theft protection in the United States, has been taking quite a beating recently. They're being sued by credit bureaus, competitors and lawyers in several states that are launching class action lawsuits. And the stories in the media ... it's like a piranha feeding frenzy. There are also a lot of errors and misconceptions. With its aggressive advertising campaign and a CEO who publishes his Social Security number and dares people to steal his identity -- Todd Davis, 457-55-5462 -- LifeLock is a company that's easy to hate. But the company's story has some interesting security lessons, and it's worth understanding in some detail. In December 2003, as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA, credit bureaus were forced to allow you to put a fraud alert on their credit reports, requiring lenders to verify your identity before issuing a credit card in your name. This alert is temporary, and expires after 90 days. Several companies have sprung up -- LifeLock, Debix, LoudSiren, TrustedID -- that automatically renew these alerts and effectively make them permanent. This service pisses off the credit bureaus and their financial customers. The reason lenders don't routinely verify your identity before issuing you credit is that it takes time, costs money and is one more hurdle between you and another credit card. (Buy, buy, buy -- it's the American way.) So in the eyes of credit bureaus, LifeLock's customers are inferior goods; selling their data isn't as valuable. LifeLock also opts its customers out of pre-approved credit card offers, further making them less valuable in the eyes of credit bureaus. And, so began a smear campaign on the part of the credit bureaus. You can read their points of view in New York Times article, written by a reporter who didn't do much more than regurgitate their talking points. And the class action lawsuits have piled on, accusing LifeLock of deceptive business practices, fraudulent advertising and so on. The biggest smear is that LifeLock didn't even protect Todd Davis, and that his identity was allegedly stolen. It wasn't. Someone in Texas used Davis's SSN to get a $500 advance against his paycheck. It worked because the loan operation didn't check with any of the credit bureaus before approving the loan -- perfectly reasonable for an amount this small. The payday-loan operation called Davis to collect, and LifeLock cleared up the problem. His credit report remains spotless. The Experian credit bureau's lawsuit basically claims that fraud alerts are only for people who have been victims of identity theft. This seems spurious; the text of the law states that anyone "who asserts a good faith suspicion that the consumer has been or is about to become a victim of fraud or related crime" can request a fraud alert. It seems to me that includes anybody who has ever received one of those notices about their financial details being lost or stolen, which is everybody. As to deceptive business practices and fraudulent advertising -- those just seem like class action lawyers piling on. LifeLock's aggressive fear-based marketing doesn't seem any worse than a lot of other similar advertising campaigns. My guess is that the class action lawsuits won't go anywhere. In reality, forcing lenders to verify identity before issuing credit is exactly the sort of thing we need to do to fight identity theft. Basically, there are two ways to deal with identity theft: Make personal information harder to steal, and make stolen personal information harder to use. We all know the former doesn't work, so that leaves the latter. If Congress wanted to solve the problem for real, one of the things it would do is make fraud alerts permanent for everybody. But the credit industry's lobbyists would never allow that. LifeLock does a bunch of other clever things. They monitor the national address database, and alert you if your address changes. They look for your credit and debit card numbers on hacker and criminal websites and such, and assist you in getting a new number if they see it. They have a million-dollar service guarantee -- for complicated legal reasons, they can't call it insurance -- to help you recover if your identity is ever stolen. But even with all of this, I am not a LifeLock customer. At $120 a year, it's just not worth it. You wouldn't know it from the press attention, but dealing with identity theft has become easier and more routine. Sure, it's a pervasive problem. The Federal Trade Commission reported that 8.3 million Americans were identity-theft victims in 2005. But that includes things like someone stealing your credit card and using it, something that rarely costs you any money and that LifeLock doesn't protect against. New account fraud is much less common, affecting 1.8 million Americans per year, or 0.8 percent of the adult population. The FTC hasn't published detailed numbers for 2006 or 2007, but the rate seems to be declining. New card fraud is also not very damaging. The median amount of fraud the thief commits is $1,350, but you're not liable for that. Some spectacularly horrible identity-theft stories notwithstanding, the financial industry is pretty good at quickly cleaning up the mess. The victim's median out-of-pocket cost for new account fraud is only $40, plus ten hours of grief to clean up the problem. Even assuming your time is worth $100 an hour, LifeLock isn't worth more than $8 a year. And it's hard to get any data on how effective LifeLock really is. They've been in business three years and have about a million customers, but most of them have joined up in the last year. They've paid out on their service guarantee 113 times, but a lot of those were for things that happened before their customers became customers. (It was easier to pay than argue, I assume.) But they don't know how often the fraud alerts actually catch an identity thief in the act. My guess is that it's less than the 0.8 percent fraud rate above. LifeLock's business model is based more on the fear of identity theft than the actual risk. It's pretty ironic of the credit bureaus to attack LifeLock on its marketing practices, since they know all about profiting from the fear of identity theft. FACTA also forced the credit bureaus to give Americans a free credit report once a year upon request. Through deceptive marketing techniques, they've turned this requirement into a multimillion-dollar business. Get LifeLock if you want, or one of its competitors if you prefer. But remember that you can do most of what these companies do yourself. You can put a fraud alert on your own account, but you have to remember to renew it every three months. You can also put a credit freeze on your account, which is more work for the average consumer but more effective if you're a privacy wonk -- and the rules differ by state. And maybe someday Congress will do the right thing and put LifeLock out of business by forcing lenders to verify identity every time they issue credit in someone's name. LifeLock: http://www.lifelock.com FACTA: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/factaidt.shtm http://www.treasury.gov/offices/domestic-finance/financial-institution/cip/… or http://tinyurl.com/yqh9vh Fraud alerts: http://www.consumersunion.org/creditmatters/creditmattersfactsheets/001626.… or http://tinyurl.com/564hrn New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/yourmoney/24money.html?8dpc Lawsuits: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022108-credit-reporting-firm-sues-lif… or http://tinyurl.com/6dqoa3 http://www.insidetech.com/news/2148-id-protection-ads-come-back-to-bite-lif… or http://tinyurl.com/5vzdkr Identity theft: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0504.html#2 http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/11/idtheft.shtm http://www.consumer.gov/sentinel/pubs/top10fraud2007.pdf http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/idtheftsurveys.htm#Jav2007 Free credit reports: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/09/beware_free_credit_repor… or http://tinyurl.com/66vjwk http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7803368/ http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Free-Credit-Report-Scam&id=321877 Defending yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/yourmoney/24moneyside.html http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2008/06/04/102143_never-pay-someone-to-pro… or http://tinyurl.com/66ddv7 This essay originally appeared in Wired: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/s… or http://tinyurl.com/3kkskp ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Schneier/BT News Schneier interview in The Edge: http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_… or http://tinyurl.com/5fw4su Video of a panel Schneier was on at Supernova; the topic was security and privacy. http://conversationhub.com/2008/07/10/session-video-privacy-and-security-in… ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior (SHB 08) was held at MIT earlier this month. From the website: "Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they're different. There are several different research communities: technologists who study security systems, and psychologists who study people, not to mention economists, anthropologists and others. Increasingly these worlds are colliding. "* Security design is by nature psychological, yet many systems ignore this, and cognitive biases lead people to misjudge risk. For example, a key in the corner of a web browser makes people feel more secure than they actually are, while people feel far less secure flying than they actually are. These biases are exploited by various attackers. "* Security problems relate to risk and uncertainty, and the way we react to them. Cognitive and perception biases affect the way we deal with risk, and therefore the way we understand security -- whether that is the security of a nation, of an information system, or of one's personal information. "* Many real attacks on information systems exploit psychology more than technology. Phishing attacks trick people into logging on to websites that appear genuine but actually steal passwords. Technical measures can stop some phishing tactics, but stopping users from making bad decisions is much harder. Deception-based attacks are now the greatest threat to online security. "* In order to be effective, security must be usable -- not just by geeks, but by ordinary people. Research into usable security invariably has a psychological component. "* Terrorism is perceived to be a major threat to society. Yet the actual damage done by terrorist attacks is dwarfed by the secondary effects as target societies overreact. There are many topics here, from the manipulation of risk perception to the anthropology of religion. "* There are basic research questions; for example, about the extent to which the use and detection of deception in social contexts may have helped drive human evolution. "The dialogue between researchers in security and in psychology is rapidly widening, bringing in more and more disciplines -- from security usability engineering, protocol design, privacy, and policy on the one hand, and from social psychology, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics on the other." About a year ago, Ross Anderson and I conceived this conference as a way to bring together computer security researchers, psychologists, behavioral economists, sociologists, philosophers, and others -- all of whom are studying the human side of security. I've read a lot -- and written some -- on psychology and security over the past few years, and have been continually amazed by some of the research that people outside my field have been doing on topics very relevant to my field. Ross and I both thought that bringing these diverse communities together would be fascinating to everyone. So we convinced behavioral economists Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein to help us organize the workshop, invited the people we all have been reading, and also asked them who else to invite. The response was overwhelming. Almost everyone we wanted was able to attend, and the result was a 42-person conference with 35 speakers, including Nicholas Humphrey, Frank Furedi, and James Randi. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08.html Agenda: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08/agenda.html Invitees and their work: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08/index.html Summaries and notes on the talks: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/06/30/security-psychology/ http://www.ljean.com/files/SHBnotes.html Audio from the workshop: http://www.crypto.com/blog/shb08/ Photos: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/shb-2008/ http://www.lukechurchphotography.com/gallery/5341110_NYVVd#326538830_N3ELV or http://tinyurl.com/5t7r2c News articles: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/07/cambridge-mass.html ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* The Truth About Chinese Hackers The popular media conception is that there is a coordinated attempt by the Chinese government to hack into U.S. computers -- military, government corporate -- and steal secrets. The truth is a lot more complicated. There certainly is a lot of hacking coming out of China. Any company that does security monitoring sees it all the time. These hacker groups seem not to be working for the Chinese government. They don't seem to be coordinated by the Chinese military. They're basically young, male, patriotic Chinese citizens, trying to demonstrate that they're just as good as everyone else. As well as the American networks the media likes to talk about, their targets also include pro-Tibet, pro-Taiwan, Falun Gong and pro-Uyghur sites. The hackers are in this for two reasons: fame and glory, and an attempt to make a living. The fame and glory comes from their nationalistic goals. Some of these hackers are heroes in China. They're upholding the country's honor against both anti-Chinese forces like the pro-Tibet movement and larger forces like the United States. And the money comes from several sources. The groups sell owned computers, malware services, and data they steal on the black market. They sell hacker tools and videos to others wanting to play. They even sell T-shirts, hats and other merchandise on their Web sites. This is not to say that the Chinese military ignores the hacker groups within their country. Certainly the Chinese government knows the leaders of the hacker movement and chooses to look the other way. They probably buy stolen intelligence from these hackers. They probably recruit for their own organizations from this self-selecting pool of experienced hacking experts. They certainly learn from the hackers. And some of the hackers are good. Over the years, they have become more sophisticated in both tools and techniques. They're stealthy. They do good network reconnaissance. My guess is what the Pentagon thinks is the problem is only a small percentage of the actual problem. And they discover their own vulnerabilities. Earlier this year, one security company noticed a unique attack against a pro-Tibet organization. That same attack was also used two weeks earlier against a large multinational defense contractor. They also hoard vulnerabilities. During the 1999 conflict over the two-states theory conflict, in a heated exchange with a group of Taiwanese hackers, one Chinese group threatened to unleash multiple stockpiled worms at once. There was no reason to disbelieve this threat. If anything, the fact that these groups aren't being run by the Chinese government makes the problem worse. Without central political coordination, they're likely to take more risks, do more stupid things and generally ignore the political fallout of their actions. In this regard, they're more like a non-state actor. So while I'm perfectly happy that the U.S. government is using the threat of Chinese hacking as an impetus to get their own cybersecurity in order, and I hope they succeed, I also hope that the U.S. government recognizes that these groups are not acting under the direction of the Chinese military and doesn't treat their actions as officially approved by the Chinese government. This essay originally appeared on the Discovery Channel website: http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/my-take/computer-hackers-china.html or http://tinyurl.com/5lv3ac ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Last week's dramatic rescue of 15 hostages held by the guerrilla organization FARC was the result of months of intricate deception on the part of the Colombian government. At the center was a classic man-in-the-middle attack. In a man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker inserts himself between two communicating parties. Both believe they're talking to each other, and the attacker can delete or modify the communications at will. The Wall Street Journal reported how this gambit played out in Colombia: "The plan had a chance of working because, for months, in an operation one army officer likened to a "broken telephone," military intelligence had been able to convince Ms. Betancourt's captor, Gerardo Aguilar, a guerrilla known as "Cesar," that he was communicating with his top bosses in the guerrillas' seven-man secretariat. Army intelligence convinced top guerrilla leaders that they were talking to Cesar. In reality, both were talking to army intelligence." This ploy worked because Cesar and his guerrilla bosses didn't know one another well. They didn't recognize one another's voices, and didn't have a friendship or shared history that could have tipped them off about the ruse. Man-in-the-middle is defeated by context, and the FARC guerrillas didn't have any. And that's why man-in-the-middle, abbreviated MITM in the computer-security community, is such a problem online: Internet communication is often stripped of any context. There's no way to recognize someone's face. There's no way to recognize someone's voice. When you receive an e-mail purporting to come from a person or organization, you have no idea who actually sent it. When you visit a website, you have no idea if you're really visiting that website. We all like to pretend that we know who we're communicating with -- and for the most part, of course, there isn't any attacker inserting himself into our communications -- but in reality, we don't. And there are lots of hacker tools that exploit this unjustified trust, and implement MITM attacks. Even with context, it's still possible for MITM to fool both sides -- because electronic communications are often intermittent. Imagine that one of the FARC guerrillas became suspicious about who he was talking to. So he asks a question about their shared history as a test: "What did we have for dinner that time last year?" or something like that. On the telephone, the attacker wouldn't be able to answer quickly, so his ruse would be discovered. But e-mail conversation isn't synchronous. The attacker could simply pass that question through to the other end of the communications, and when he got the answer back, he would be able to reply. This is the way MITM attacks work against web-based financial systems. A bank demands authentication from the user: a password, a one-time code from a token or whatever. The attacker sitting in the middle receives the request from the bank and passes it to the user. The user responds to the attacker, who passes that response to the bank. Now the bank assumes it is talking to the legitimate user, and the attacker is free to send transactions directly to the bank. This kind of attack completely bypasses any two-factor authentication mechanisms, and is becoming a more popular identity-theft tactic. There are cryptographic solutions to MITM attacks, and there are secure web protocols that implement them. Many of them require shared secrets, though, making them useful only in situations where people already know and trust one another. The NSA-designed STU-III and STE secure telephones solve the MITM problem by embedding the identity of each phone together with its key. (The NSA creates all keys and is trusted by everyone, so this works.) When two phones talk to each other securely, they exchange keys and display the other phone's identity on a screen. Because the phone is in a secure location, the user now knows who he is talking to, and if the phone displays another organization -- as it would if there were a MITM attack in progress -- he should hang up. Zfone, a secure VoIP system, protects against MITM attacks with a short authentication string. After two Zfone terminals exchange keys, both computers display a four-character string. The users are supposed to manually verify that both strings are the same -- "my screen says 5C19; what does yours say?" -- to ensure that the phones are communicating directly with each other and not with an MITM. The AT&T TSD-3600 worked similarly. This sort of protection is embedded in SSL, although no one uses it. As it is normally used, SSL provides an encrypted communications link to whoever is at the other end: bank and phishing site alike. And the better phishing sites create valid SSL connections, so as to more effectively fool users. But if the user wanted to, he could manually check the SSL certificate to see if it was issued to "National Bank of Trustworthiness" or "Two Guys With a Computer in Nigeria." No one does, though, because you have to both remember and be willing to do the work. (The browsers could make this easier if they wanted to, but they don't seem to want to.) In the real world, you can easily tell a branch of your bank from a money changer on a street corner. But on the internet, a phishing site can be easily made to look like your bank's legitimate website. Any method of telling the two apart takes work. And that's the first step to fooling you with a MITM attack. Man-in-the-middle isn't new, and it doesn't have to be technological. But the internet makes the attacks easier and more powerful, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Wall Street Journal article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121518490923829025.html MITM hacker tools: http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/ http://www.oxid.it/ http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/airjack/ http://www.wsniff.com/ http://www.theta44.org/karma/ Problems with two-factor authentication: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0503.html#2 NSA secure phones: http://www.fas.org/irp/program/security/_work/stu3.html Zfone: http://zfoneproject.com/faq.html#mitm AT&T TSD 3600: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21746901@N08/2275723713/ Checking SSL certificates: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/spoof.mspx The essay originally appeared on Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/07/s… ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Comments from Readers There are hundreds of comments -- many of them interesting -- on these topics on my blog. Search for the story you want to comment on, and join in. http://www.schneier.com/blog ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* CRYPTO-GRAM is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address on the Web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. Back issues are also available at that URL. Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to colleagues and friends who will find it valuable. Permission is also granted to reprint CRYPTO-GRAM, as long as it is reprinted in its entirety. CRYPTO-GRAM is written by Bruce Schneier. Schneier is the author of the best sellers "Beyond Fear," "Secrets and Lies," and "Applied Cryptography," and an inventor of the Blowfish and Twofish algorithms. He is the Chief Security Technology Officer of BT (BT acquired Counterpane in 2006), and is on the Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He is a frequent writer and lecturer on security topics. See <http://www.schneier.com>. Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of BT. Copyright (c) 2008 by Bruce Schneier. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: brute force physics Was: cleversafe...
by Jerry Leichter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Aug 10, 2009, at 4:42 AM, Alexander Klimov wrote: >On Sun, 9 Aug 2009, Jerry Leichter wrote: >>Since people do keep bringing up Moore's Law in an attempt to justify >>larger keys our systems "stronger than cryptography," it's worth >>keeping in mind that we are approaching fairly deep physical limits. >>I wrote about this on this list quite a while back. If current >>physical theories are even approximately correct, there are limits to >>how many "bit flips" (which would encompass all possible binary >>operations) can occur in a fixed volume of space-time. > >A problem with this reasoning is that the physical world and the usual >digital computers have exponential simulation gap (it is known at >least in one direction: to simulate N entangled particles on a digital >computer one needs computations exponential in N). This can be >considered as a reason to suspect that physical world is >non-polynomially faster than the usual computers (probably even to an >extent that all NP computations can be simulated). When the first results about exponential speedup of factoring came out, people assumed that this was true in general. But it isn't. In particular, simple search, where you have only an equality test so you can't build a hash table or some kind of ordered structure - is O(N) on a traditional computer - and O(sqrt(N)) on a quantum computer. I'm not sure what the current knowledge about what a quantum machine can do for NP computations, but there's no "probably" here. >While it is possible to use physical world to simulate usual computers >in the straightforward way (namely by using voltage levels of a >circuit to represent separate bits), it is not clear that doing >computations in this way is the best way to do computations, for >example, if the meaning of our computations are simulation of the >physical world, then it can be better to use direct >physical-to-physical mapping instead of physical-to-usual followed by >usual-to-physical: analog computers, such as wind tunnels, are still >in use. > >I am not aware of any plausible argument why a brute force search in >general (a quintessence of NP class, by the way) or a key search >against any particular algorithm cannot be implemented in a direct way >significantly faster than in the indirect way, that is NP-to-physical >instead of NP-to-usual followed by usual-to-physical. All the fuss >about quantum computing is exactly because people believe that a >different mapping (not thru usual computers) can be more efficient (if >I understand correctly, right now neither the class of algorithms that >can be sped up this way is understood, nor the quantum computers of >practical capacity exist). The physical arguments to which I was referring say *nothing* about how the computation is done. It can be a QM computation as well. In any case, the simple search result above applies directly to brute force: For that problem, you only get a polynomial speedup anyway. >>All the protocols and standards out there calling for AES-256 - it's >>obviously "better" than AES-128 because after all 256 is *twice as >>large* as 128! - were just a bunch of nonsense. And, perhaps, >>dangerous nonsense. > >I see the situation in the positive way: the recent AES attacks >stress the fact that the key management should be done >correctly, in particular, keys should be derived thru KDF (not >a simple xor) and must be authenticated. With this attack in >hand it is much easier for us now to say why one should not use >K to encrypt messages of one type and K+1 for another type, or >why it is a bad idea to encrypt a key in CTR mode and store the >result without a MAC. I doubt it is possible to find any >professionally designed protocol or standard that becomes weak >due to the recent discovery. That's a ... bizarre point of view. :-) Should freedom from related- key attacks be part of the definition of a "secure" encryption algorithm? We should decide that on some rational basis, not on whether, with care, we can avoid such attacks. Clearly, a system that *is* secure against such attacks is more robust. Do we know how to build such a thing? What's the cost of doing so? But to say it's an *advantage* to have a weakness seems like some kind of odd moral argument: If you're hurt by this it's because you *deserve* to be. -- Jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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CRYPTO-GRAM, July 15, 2008
by Bruce Schneier 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

CRYPTO-GRAM July 15, 2008 by Bruce Schneier Chief Security Technology Officer, BT schneier(a)schneier.com http://www.schneier.com A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise. For back issues, or to subscribe, visit <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. You can read this issue on the web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0807.html>. These same essays appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog: <http://www.schneier.com/blog>. An RSS feed is available. ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* In this issue: CCTV Cameras News Kill Switches and Remote Control LifeLock and Identity Theft Schneier/BT News The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior The Truth About Chinese Hackers Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Comments from Readers ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* CCTV Cameras Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. There are exceptions, of course, and that's what gets the press. Most famously, CCTV cameras helped catch James Bulger's murderers in 1993. And earlier this year, they helped convict Steve Wright of murdering five women in the Ipswich area. But these are the well-publicized exceptions. Overall, CCTV cameras aren't very effective. This fact has been demonstrated again and again: by a comprehensive study for the Home Office in 2005, by several studies in the US, and again with new data announced last month by New Scotland Yard. They actually solve very few crimes, and their deterrent effect is minimal. Conventional wisdom predicts the opposite. But if that were true, then camera-happy London, with something like 500,000, would be the safest city on the planet. It isn't, of course, because of technological limitations of cameras, organizational limitations of police and the adaptive abilities of criminals. To some, it's comforting to imagine vigilant police monitoring every camera, but the truth is very different. Most CCTV footage is never looked at until well after a crime is committed. When it is examined, it's very common for the viewers not to identify suspects. Lighting is bad and images are grainy, and criminals tend not to stare helpfully at the lens. Cameras break far too often. The best camera systems can still be thwarted by sunglasses or hats. Even when they afford quick identification -- think of the 2005 London transport bombers and the 9/11 terrorists -- police are often able to identify suspects without the cameras. Cameras afford a false sense of security, encouraging laziness when we need police to be vigilant. The solution isn't for police to watch the cameras. Unlike an officer walking the street, cameras only look in particular directions at particular locations. Criminals know this, and can easily adapt by moving their crimes to someplace not watched by a camera -- and there will always be such places. Additionally, while a police officer on the street can respond to a crime in progress, the same officer in front of a CCTV screen can only dispatch another officer to arrive much later. By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources. Cameras aren't completely ineffective, of course. In certain circumstances, they're effective in reducing crime in enclosed areas with minimal foot traffic. Combined with adequate lighting, they substantially reduce both personal attacks and auto-related crime in car parks. And from some perspectives, simply moving crime around is good enough. If a local Tesco installs cameras in its store, and a robber targets the store next door as a result, that's money well spent by Tesco. But it doesn't reduce the overall crime rate, so is a waste of money to the township. But the question really isn't whether cameras reduce crime; the question is whether they're worth it. And given their cost (500 million pounds in the past 10 years), their limited effectiveness, the potential for abuse (spying on naked women in their own homes, sharing nude images, selling best-of videos, and even spying on national politicians) and their Orwellian effects on privacy and civil liberties, most of the time they're not. The funds spent on CCTV cameras would be far better spent on hiring experienced police officers. We live in a unique time in our society: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. And in 10 years, they'll be so small you won't even notice them. Already, companies like L-1 Security Solutions are developing police-state CCTV surveillance technologies like facial recognition for China, technology that will find their way into countries like the UK. The time to address appropriate limits on this technology is before the cameras fade from notice. CCTV research: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/police-camera-crime1.htm http://www.scotcrim.u-net.com/researchc2.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2192911.stm http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors292.pdf http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/14/MNIPRHRPE.DTL or http://tinyurl.com/688f76 http://www.temple.edu/cj/misc/PhilaCCTV.pdf http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/10/21/ctv.cameras/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 London's cameras: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+camer… or http://tinyurl.com/65vwq8 http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_ap… or http://tinyurl.com/ya76db CCTV abuses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4609746.stm http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article743391.ece http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4849806.stm Orwellian cameras: http://wuntvor.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/44/44cb4b91287cfcd8111d4718675… or http://tinyurl.com/3l8jtk http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2280044,00.html Privacy concerns: http://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/ http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/14863res20020225.html Surveillance in China: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye or http://tinyurl.com/5zwc5w A rebuttal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/03/ukcrime.civilliberties or http://tinyurl.com/66ryhp Commentary: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/07/schneier-nows-time-to-limit-c… or http://tinyurl.com/6jsexf More good survey articles: http://ipvideomarket.info/review/show/145 http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/07/cctv-proponents-should-abando… or http://tinyurl.com/5erp65 This essay was previously published in The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/26/politics.ukcrime ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* News The Storm worm is being used to sell pharmaceuticals such as Viagra. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156139&WT.svl=news1_1 http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/the_storm_worm.html I've never figured out the fuss over ransomware. Yes, it encrypts your data and charges you money for the key. But how is this any worse than the old hacker viruses that put a funny message on your screen and erased your hard drive? The single most important thing any company or individual can do to improve security is have a good backup strategy. It's been true for decades, and it's still true today. http://blogs.computerworld.com/ransomware_malware_armageddon_approaches or http://tinyurl.com/6bf7lm Magnetic ring attack on electronic locks: impressive. http://www.toool.nl/blackbag/?p=204 A great "security through obscurity" story, about a collection of coins and currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars being moved without a whole lot of security: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/security_throug_1.html It's possible to eavesdrop on encrypted compressed voice, at least a little bit, through traffic analysis: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14124-compressed-web-phon… or http://tinyurl.com/3u7j6b A Jura F90 Coffee Machine can be hacked remotely over the Internet. http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/493387 A runner-up in last year's Underhanded C Contest was a flawed implementation of RC4 that, after some use, just passed plaintext through unencrypted. Plausibly deniable, and very clever. http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=9 Dilbert on workplace surveillance: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-06-20/ New technology to detect chemical, biological, and explosive agents. https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2007/NR-07-03-07.html or http://tinyurl.com/54rmk4 Swimming pools around Shanghai are examining liquids by smelling them. This liquid ban has gotten weirder. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSPEK18633820080620 A new study claims that insiders aren't the main threat to network security. The whole insiders vs. outsiders debate has always been one of semantics more than anything else. If you count by attacks, there are a lot more outsider attacks, simply because there are orders of magnitude more outsider attackers. If you count incidents, the numbers tend to get closer: 75% vs. 18% in this case. And if you count damages, insiders generally come out on top -- mostly because they have a lot more detailed information and can target their attacks better. Both insiders and outsiders are security risks, and you have to defend against them both. Trying to rank them isn't all that useful. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147098/insider_threat_exagger… or http://tinyurl.com/5dmfde Confused security reasoning by Toronto Mayor David Miller: "'In a day when you can't bring a large tube of toothpaste on a plane how can you allow guns to wander through Union Station, the biggest transit hub in Canada?' he asked his colleagues on city council." By that logic, I think we can ban anything from anywhere. http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080623/gun_violence_080623… or http://tinyurl.com/6dqbco UK teens are using Google Earth to find swimming pools they can crash. How long before someone finds a more serious crime that can be aided by Google Earth? http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/18/tech_aids_pool_crashing/ I've seen the IR screening guns at several airports, primarily in Asia. The idea is to keep out people with bird flu, or whatever the current fever scare is. This essay explains why it won't work: http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/06/why_fever_screening_at_airpor… or http://tinyurl.com/69tht2 Carrier pigeons bringing contraband into prisons in Brazil: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7472537.stm I think this is the first security vulnerability found in RFC 1149: "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers." Deep packet inspection seems to be the only way to prevent this attack, although adequate fencing will prevent the protocol from running in the first place. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html Top ten anti-terrorism patents -- not a joke. My favorite is the airplane trap door. http://www.neatorama.com/2008/06/27/top-10-strangest-anti-terrorism-patents/ or http://tinyurl.com/5sct5d The Pentagon is consulting social scientists on security. The article talks a lot about potential conflicts of interest and such, and less on what sorts of insights the social scientists can offer. I think there is a lot of potential value here. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/arts/18minerva.html One, possibly the only, writer of the Nugache worm was arrested in Wyoming. The 19-year-old will plead guilty. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/hacker-launches.html http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2008/06/30/news/wyoming/doc4865… or http://tinyurl.com/4obdmo It's been a while since I've written about electronic voting machines, but Dan Wallach has an excellent blog post about the current line of argument from the voting machine companies and why it's wrong. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1304 This paper measures insecurity in the global population of browsers, using Google's web server logs. Why is this important? Because browsers are an increasingly popular attack vector. The results aren't good. http://www.techzoom.net/publications/insecurity-iceberg/index.en http://www.ofcourseimright.com/?p=29 Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part one: An air traveler in Canada is first told by an airline employee that it is "illegal" to say certain words, and then that if she raised a fuss she would be falsely accused. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080627.blatch28/BNStor… or http://tinyurl.com/6b927p Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part two: A British man is forced to give up his hobby of photographing buses because he's being harassed too often. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/bus_spotter_clampdown/ Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part three: Israelis label a random homicidal Palestinian nut a terrorist: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/02/israel.bulldozer/ Random stupidity in the name of terrorism, part four: New Jersey public school locked down after someone saw a ninja. Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword. http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2008/06/25/school_locked_down_after… or http://tinyurl.com/6h84n2 A fine newspaper headline: "Giraffe helps camels, zebras escape from circus." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h1AqbvSMYPxJrla6-Fgym8WIzEsgD91KNJD00 or http://tinyurl.com/5egkud The U.K. is learning that encrypting disks means that you don't have to worry if they're lost. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/encrypting_disk.html Time bomb neckties. Not to be worn at airports. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12792904 Automatic profiling is useless: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/home_office_passenger_profiling/ or http://tinyurl.com/5p9e6n The U.S. wants to do it anyway: "The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial or ethnic groups." http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-07-02-terror-profiling_N.htm or http://tinyurl.com/5nvlt5 I've written about profiling before: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.html These are sunglasses that hide your face from cameras. It's either real or a hoax, I can't tell which. http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/27/anti-paparazzi-sunglasses/ http://www.abrutis.com/video-lunettes+anti+paparazzi-11937.html In a continued cheapening of the word "terrorism," the Premier of New South Wales called a potential rail-worker strike "industrial terror tactics." Terrorism is a heinous crime, and a serious international problem. It's not a catchall word to describe anything you don't like or don't agree with, or even anything that adversely affects a large number of people. By using the word more broadly than its actual meaning, we muddy the already complicated popular conceptions of the issue. The word "terrorism" has a specific meaning, and we shouldn't debase it. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23981698-421,00.html George Carlin on airport security, filmed before 9/11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxzvSbGJ2w Petty thieves are exploiting the "war on photography" to steal memory cards: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/exploiting_the.html Great essay on TSA stupidity: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/good_essay_on_t_1.html Security cartoon on password guessing: http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=QCH1RR81LSM79KXHUFAC… or http://tinyurl.com/59p9mc Daniel Solove on the new FISA law: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/07/the_new_foreign.html Using a file erasure tool is considered suspicious: http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-consumer6-2008jul06,0,325447.story Unbreakable fighting umbrellas. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/unbreakable-fig.html Be sure to watch the video. ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Kill Switches and Remote Control It used to be that just the entertainment industries wanted to control your computers -- and televisions and iPods and everything else -- to ensure that you didn't violate any copyright rules. But now everyone else wants to get their hooks into your gear. OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment. Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting their capabilities. Cell phones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class. The possibilities are endless, and very dangerous. Making this work involves building a nearly flawless hierarchical system of authority. That's a difficult security problem even in its simplest form. Distributing that system among a variety of different devices -- computers, phones, PDAs, cameras, recorders -- with different firmware and manufacturers, is even more difficult. Not to mention delegating different levels of authority to various agencies, enterprises, industries and individuals, and then enforcing the necessary safeguards. Once we go down this path -- giving one device authority over other devices -- the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority? What prevents them from abusing that power? Do I get the ability to override their limitations? In what circumstances, and how? Can they override my override? How do we prevent this from being abused? Can a burglar, for example, enforce a "no photography" rule and prevent security cameras from working? Can the police enforce the same rule to avoid another Rodney King incident? Do the police get "superuser" devices that cannot be limited, and do they get "supercontroller" devices that can limit anything? How do we ensure that only they get them, and what do we do when the devices inevitably fall into the wrong hands? It's comparatively easy to make this work in closed specialized systems -- OnStar, airplane avionics, military hardware -- but much more difficult in open-ended systems. If you think Microsoft's vision could possibly be securely designed, all you have to do is look at the dismal effectiveness of the various copy-protection and digital-rights-management systems we've seen over the years. That's a similar capabilities-enforcement mechanism, albeit simpler than these more general systems. And that's the key to understanding this system. Don't be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cell phones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good "manners" on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce *their* legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible. "Digital Manners Policies" is a marketing term. Let's call this what it really is: Selective Device Jamming. It's not polite, it's dangerous. It won't make anyone more secure -- or more polite. Kill switches: http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=20… or http://tinyurl.com/6jy2ac http://www.nypost.com/seven/06082008/news/regionalnews/busting_terror_11456… or http://tinyurl.com/5p5kaj http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/the-pentagons-n.html http://spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6171 Digital Manners Policies: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080611-microsoft-patent-brings-miss-… or http://tinyurl.com/449bcc http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p… or http://tinyurl.com/68thpf This essay originally appeared in Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/s… or http://tinyurl.com/4htrb4 ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* LifeLock and Identity Theft LifeLock, one of the companies that offers identity-theft protection in the United States, has been taking quite a beating recently. They're being sued by credit bureaus, competitors and lawyers in several states that are launching class action lawsuits. And the stories in the media ... it's like a piranha feeding frenzy. There are also a lot of errors and misconceptions. With its aggressive advertising campaign and a CEO who publishes his Social Security number and dares people to steal his identity -- Todd Davis, 457-55-5462 -- LifeLock is a company that's easy to hate. But the company's story has some interesting security lessons, and it's worth understanding in some detail. In December 2003, as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA, credit bureaus were forced to allow you to put a fraud alert on their credit reports, requiring lenders to verify your identity before issuing a credit card in your name. This alert is temporary, and expires after 90 days. Several companies have sprung up -- LifeLock, Debix, LoudSiren, TrustedID -- that automatically renew these alerts and effectively make them permanent. This service pisses off the credit bureaus and their financial customers. The reason lenders don't routinely verify your identity before issuing you credit is that it takes time, costs money and is one more hurdle between you and another credit card. (Buy, buy, buy -- it's the American way.) So in the eyes of credit bureaus, LifeLock's customers are inferior goods; selling their data isn't as valuable. LifeLock also opts its customers out of pre-approved credit card offers, further making them less valuable in the eyes of credit bureaus. And, so began a smear campaign on the part of the credit bureaus. You can read their points of view in New York Times article, written by a reporter who didn't do much more than regurgitate their talking points. And the class action lawsuits have piled on, accusing LifeLock of deceptive business practices, fraudulent advertising and so on. The biggest smear is that LifeLock didn't even protect Todd Davis, and that his identity was allegedly stolen. It wasn't. Someone in Texas used Davis's SSN to get a $500 advance against his paycheck. It worked because the loan operation didn't check with any of the credit bureaus before approving the loan -- perfectly reasonable for an amount this small. The payday-loan operation called Davis to collect, and LifeLock cleared up the problem. His credit report remains spotless. The Experian credit bureau's lawsuit basically claims that fraud alerts are only for people who have been victims of identity theft. This seems spurious; the text of the law states that anyone "who asserts a good faith suspicion that the consumer has been or is about to become a victim of fraud or related crime" can request a fraud alert. It seems to me that includes anybody who has ever received one of those notices about their financial details being lost or stolen, which is everybody. As to deceptive business practices and fraudulent advertising -- those just seem like class action lawyers piling on. LifeLock's aggressive fear-based marketing doesn't seem any worse than a lot of other similar advertising campaigns. My guess is that the class action lawsuits won't go anywhere. In reality, forcing lenders to verify identity before issuing credit is exactly the sort of thing we need to do to fight identity theft. Basically, there are two ways to deal with identity theft: Make personal information harder to steal, and make stolen personal information harder to use. We all know the former doesn't work, so that leaves the latter. If Congress wanted to solve the problem for real, one of the things it would do is make fraud alerts permanent for everybody. But the credit industry's lobbyists would never allow that. LifeLock does a bunch of other clever things. They monitor the national address database, and alert you if your address changes. They look for your credit and debit card numbers on hacker and criminal websites and such, and assist you in getting a new number if they see it. They have a million-dollar service guarantee -- for complicated legal reasons, they can't call it insurance -- to help you recover if your identity is ever stolen. But even with all of this, I am not a LifeLock customer. At $120 a year, it's just not worth it. You wouldn't know it from the press attention, but dealing with identity theft has become easier and more routine. Sure, it's a pervasive problem. The Federal Trade Commission reported that 8.3 million Americans were identity-theft victims in 2005. But that includes things like someone stealing your credit card and using it, something that rarely costs you any money and that LifeLock doesn't protect against. New account fraud is much less common, affecting 1.8 million Americans per year, or 0.8 percent of the adult population. The FTC hasn't published detailed numbers for 2006 or 2007, but the rate seems to be declining. New card fraud is also not very damaging. The median amount of fraud the thief commits is $1,350, but you're not liable for that. Some spectacularly horrible identity-theft stories notwithstanding, the financial industry is pretty good at quickly cleaning up the mess. The victim's median out-of-pocket cost for new account fraud is only $40, plus ten hours of grief to clean up the problem. Even assuming your time is worth $100 an hour, LifeLock isn't worth more than $8 a year. And it's hard to get any data on how effective LifeLock really is. They've been in business three years and have about a million customers, but most of them have joined up in the last year. They've paid out on their service guarantee 113 times, but a lot of those were for things that happened before their customers became customers. (It was easier to pay than argue, I assume.) But they don't know how often the fraud alerts actually catch an identity thief in the act. My guess is that it's less than the 0.8 percent fraud rate above. LifeLock's business model is based more on the fear of identity theft than the actual risk. It's pretty ironic of the credit bureaus to attack LifeLock on its marketing practices, since they know all about profiting from the fear of identity theft. FACTA also forced the credit bureaus to give Americans a free credit report once a year upon request. Through deceptive marketing techniques, they've turned this requirement into a multimillion-dollar business. Get LifeLock if you want, or one of its competitors if you prefer. But remember that you can do most of what these companies do yourself. You can put a fraud alert on your own account, but you have to remember to renew it every three months. You can also put a credit freeze on your account, which is more work for the average consumer but more effective if you're a privacy wonk -- and the rules differ by state. And maybe someday Congress will do the right thing and put LifeLock out of business by forcing lenders to verify identity every time they issue credit in someone's name. LifeLock: http://www.lifelock.com FACTA: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/factaidt.shtm http://www.treasury.gov/offices/domestic-finance/financial-institution/cip/… or http://tinyurl.com/yqh9vh Fraud alerts: http://www.consumersunion.org/creditmatters/creditmattersfactsheets/001626.… or http://tinyurl.com/564hrn New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/yourmoney/24money.html?8dpc Lawsuits: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022108-credit-reporting-firm-sues-lif… or http://tinyurl.com/6dqoa3 http://www.insidetech.com/news/2148-id-protection-ads-come-back-to-bite-lif… or http://tinyurl.com/5vzdkr Identity theft: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0504.html#2 http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/11/idtheft.shtm http://www.consumer.gov/sentinel/pubs/top10fraud2007.pdf http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/idtheftsurveys.htm#Jav2007 Free credit reports: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/09/beware_free_credit_repor… or http://tinyurl.com/66vjwk http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7803368/ http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Free-Credit-Report-Scam&id=321877 Defending yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/yourmoney/24moneyside.html http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2008/06/04/102143_never-pay-someone-to-pro… or http://tinyurl.com/66ddv7 This essay originally appeared in Wired: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/s… or http://tinyurl.com/3kkskp ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Schneier/BT News Schneier interview in The Edge: http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_… or http://tinyurl.com/5fw4su Video of a panel Schneier was on at Supernova; the topic was security and privacy. http://conversationhub.com/2008/07/10/session-video-privacy-and-security-in… ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior The First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior (SHB 08) was held at MIT earlier this month. From the website: "Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they're different. There are several different research communities: technologists who study security systems, and psychologists who study people, not to mention economists, anthropologists and others. Increasingly these worlds are colliding. "* Security design is by nature psychological, yet many systems ignore this, and cognitive biases lead people to misjudge risk. For example, a key in the corner of a web browser makes people feel more secure than they actually are, while people feel far less secure flying than they actually are. These biases are exploited by various attackers. "* Security problems relate to risk and uncertainty, and the way we react to them. Cognitive and perception biases affect the way we deal with risk, and therefore the way we understand security -- whether that is the security of a nation, of an information system, or of one's personal information. "* Many real attacks on information systems exploit psychology more than technology. Phishing attacks trick people into logging on to websites that appear genuine but actually steal passwords. Technical measures can stop some phishing tactics, but stopping users from making bad decisions is much harder. Deception-based attacks are now the greatest threat to online security. "* In order to be effective, security must be usable -- not just by geeks, but by ordinary people. Research into usable security invariably has a psychological component. "* Terrorism is perceived to be a major threat to society. Yet the actual damage done by terrorist attacks is dwarfed by the secondary effects as target societies overreact. There are many topics here, from the manipulation of risk perception to the anthropology of religion. "* There are basic research questions; for example, about the extent to which the use and detection of deception in social contexts may have helped drive human evolution. "The dialogue between researchers in security and in psychology is rapidly widening, bringing in more and more disciplines -- from security usability engineering, protocol design, privacy, and policy on the one hand, and from social psychology, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics on the other." About a year ago, Ross Anderson and I conceived this conference as a way to bring together computer security researchers, psychologists, behavioral economists, sociologists, philosophers, and others -- all of whom are studying the human side of security. I've read a lot -- and written some -- on psychology and security over the past few years, and have been continually amazed by some of the research that people outside my field have been doing on topics very relevant to my field. Ross and I both thought that bringing these diverse communities together would be fascinating to everyone. So we convinced behavioral economists Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein to help us organize the workshop, invited the people we all have been reading, and also asked them who else to invite. The response was overwhelming. Almost everyone we wanted was able to attend, and the result was a 42-person conference with 35 speakers, including Nicholas Humphrey, Frank Furedi, and James Randi. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08.html Agenda: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08/agenda.html Invitees and their work: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/shb08/index.html Summaries and notes on the talks: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/06/30/security-psychology/ http://www.ljean.com/files/SHBnotes.html Audio from the workshop: http://www.crypto.com/blog/shb08/ Photos: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/shb-2008/ http://www.lukechurchphotography.com/gallery/5341110_NYVVd#326538830_N3ELV or http://tinyurl.com/5t7r2c News articles: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/07/cambridge-mass.html ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* The Truth About Chinese Hackers The popular media conception is that there is a coordinated attempt by the Chinese government to hack into U.S. computers -- military, government corporate -- and steal secrets. The truth is a lot more complicated. There certainly is a lot of hacking coming out of China. Any company that does security monitoring sees it all the time. These hacker groups seem not to be working for the Chinese government. They don't seem to be coordinated by the Chinese military. They're basically young, male, patriotic Chinese citizens, trying to demonstrate that they're just as good as everyone else. As well as the American networks the media likes to talk about, their targets also include pro-Tibet, pro-Taiwan, Falun Gong and pro-Uyghur sites. The hackers are in this for two reasons: fame and glory, and an attempt to make a living. The fame and glory comes from their nationalistic goals. Some of these hackers are heroes in China. They're upholding the country's honor against both anti-Chinese forces like the pro-Tibet movement and larger forces like the United States. And the money comes from several sources. The groups sell owned computers, malware services, and data they steal on the black market. They sell hacker tools and videos to others wanting to play. They even sell T-shirts, hats and other merchandise on their Web sites. This is not to say that the Chinese military ignores the hacker groups within their country. Certainly the Chinese government knows the leaders of the hacker movement and chooses to look the other way. They probably buy stolen intelligence from these hackers. They probably recruit for their own organizations from this self-selecting pool of experienced hacking experts. They certainly learn from the hackers. And some of the hackers are good. Over the years, they have become more sophisticated in both tools and techniques. They're stealthy. They do good network reconnaissance. My guess is what the Pentagon thinks is the problem is only a small percentage of the actual problem. And they discover their own vulnerabilities. Earlier this year, one security company noticed a unique attack against a pro-Tibet organization. That same attack was also used two weeks earlier against a large multinational defense contractor. They also hoard vulnerabilities. During the 1999 conflict over the two-states theory conflict, in a heated exchange with a group of Taiwanese hackers, one Chinese group threatened to unleash multiple stockpiled worms at once. There was no reason to disbelieve this threat. If anything, the fact that these groups aren't being run by the Chinese government makes the problem worse. Without central political coordination, they're likely to take more risks, do more stupid things and generally ignore the political fallout of their actions. In this regard, they're more like a non-state actor. So while I'm perfectly happy that the U.S. government is using the threat of Chinese hacking as an impetus to get their own cybersecurity in order, and I hope they succeed, I also hope that the U.S. government recognizes that these groups are not acting under the direction of the Chinese military and doesn't treat their actions as officially approved by the Chinese government. This essay originally appeared on the Discovery Channel website: http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/my-take/computer-hackers-china.html or http://tinyurl.com/5lv3ac ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Last week's dramatic rescue of 15 hostages held by the guerrilla organization FARC was the result of months of intricate deception on the part of the Colombian government. At the center was a classic man-in-the-middle attack. In a man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker inserts himself between two communicating parties. Both believe they're talking to each other, and the attacker can delete or modify the communications at will. The Wall Street Journal reported how this gambit played out in Colombia: "The plan had a chance of working because, for months, in an operation one army officer likened to a "broken telephone," military intelligence had been able to convince Ms. Betancourt's captor, Gerardo Aguilar, a guerrilla known as "Cesar," that he was communicating with his top bosses in the guerrillas' seven-man secretariat. Army intelligence convinced top guerrilla leaders that they were talking to Cesar. In reality, both were talking to army intelligence." This ploy worked because Cesar and his guerrilla bosses didn't know one another well. They didn't recognize one another's voices, and didn't have a friendship or shared history that could have tipped them off about the ruse. Man-in-the-middle is defeated by context, and the FARC guerrillas didn't have any. And that's why man-in-the-middle, abbreviated MITM in the computer-security community, is such a problem online: Internet communication is often stripped of any context. There's no way to recognize someone's face. There's no way to recognize someone's voice. When you receive an e-mail purporting to come from a person or organization, you have no idea who actually sent it. When you visit a website, you have no idea if you're really visiting that website. We all like to pretend that we know who we're communicating with -- and for the most part, of course, there isn't any attacker inserting himself into our communications -- but in reality, we don't. And there are lots of hacker tools that exploit this unjustified trust, and implement MITM attacks. Even with context, it's still possible for MITM to fool both sides -- because electronic communications are often intermittent. Imagine that one of the FARC guerrillas became suspicious about who he was talking to. So he asks a question about their shared history as a test: "What did we have for dinner that time last year?" or something like that. On the telephone, the attacker wouldn't be able to answer quickly, so his ruse would be discovered. But e-mail conversation isn't synchronous. The attacker could simply pass that question through to the other end of the communications, and when he got the answer back, he would be able to reply. This is the way MITM attacks work against web-based financial systems. A bank demands authentication from the user: a password, a one-time code from a token or whatever. The attacker sitting in the middle receives the request from the bank and passes it to the user. The user responds to the attacker, who passes that response to the bank. Now the bank assumes it is talking to the legitimate user, and the attacker is free to send transactions directly to the bank. This kind of attack completely bypasses any two-factor authentication mechanisms, and is becoming a more popular identity-theft tactic. There are cryptographic solutions to MITM attacks, and there are secure web protocols that implement them. Many of them require shared secrets, though, making them useful only in situations where people already know and trust one another. The NSA-designed STU-III and STE secure telephones solve the MITM problem by embedding the identity of each phone together with its key. (The NSA creates all keys and is trusted by everyone, so this works.) When two phones talk to each other securely, they exchange keys and display the other phone's identity on a screen. Because the phone is in a secure location, the user now knows who he is talking to, and if the phone displays another organization -- as it would if there were a MITM attack in progress -- he should hang up. Zfone, a secure VoIP system, protects against MITM attacks with a short authentication string. After two Zfone terminals exchange keys, both computers display a four-character string. The users are supposed to manually verify that both strings are the same -- "my screen says 5C19; what does yours say?" -- to ensure that the phones are communicating directly with each other and not with an MITM. The AT&T TSD-3600 worked similarly. This sort of protection is embedded in SSL, although no one uses it. As it is normally used, SSL provides an encrypted communications link to whoever is at the other end: bank and phishing site alike. And the better phishing sites create valid SSL connections, so as to more effectively fool users. But if the user wanted to, he could manually check the SSL certificate to see if it was issued to "National Bank of Trustworthiness" or "Two Guys With a Computer in Nigeria." No one does, though, because you have to both remember and be willing to do the work. (The browsers could make this easier if they wanted to, but they don't seem to want to.) In the real world, you can easily tell a branch of your bank from a money changer on a street corner. But on the internet, a phishing site can be easily made to look like your bank's legitimate website. Any method of telling the two apart takes work. And that's the first step to fooling you with a MITM attack. Man-in-the-middle isn't new, and it doesn't have to be technological. But the internet makes the attacks easier and more powerful, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Wall Street Journal article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121518490923829025.html MITM hacker tools: http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/ http://www.oxid.it/ http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/airjack/ http://www.wsniff.com/ http://www.theta44.org/karma/ Problems with two-factor authentication: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0503.html#2 NSA secure phones: http://www.fas.org/irp/program/security/_work/stu3.html Zfone: http://zfoneproject.com/faq.html#mitm AT&T TSD 3600: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21746901@N08/2275723713/ Checking SSL certificates: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/spoof.mspx The essay originally appeared on Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/07/s… ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* Comments from Readers There are hundreds of comments -- many of them interesting -- on these topics on my blog. Search for the story you want to comment on, and join in. http://www.schneier.com/blog ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* CRYPTO-GRAM is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address on the Web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. Back issues are also available at that URL. Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to colleagues and friends who will find it valuable. Permission is also granted to reprint CRYPTO-GRAM, as long as it is reprinted in its entirety. CRYPTO-GRAM is written by Bruce Schneier. Schneier is the author of the best sellers "Beyond Fear," "Secrets and Lies," and "Applied Cryptography," and an inventor of the Blowfish and Twofish algorithms. He is the Chief Security Technology Officer of BT (BT acquired Counterpane in 2006), and is on the Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He is a frequent writer and lecturer on security topics. See <http://www.schneier.com>. Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of BT. Copyright (c) 2008 by Bruce Schneier. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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