Security

Back on January 8, I wrote a posting titled “Cell phone call records available online." In that post, I wrote about sites on the Internet where you can pay a fee and get the calling records for cell phones and long distance call records for land lines. The companies providing these services are typically private investigators who use “pretexting”–pretending to be the legitimate owner of the phone–in order to con phone companies into turning over the data. Some also used social engineering or exploited server security flaws to gain access to phone provider online web portals. Subsequent to the publicity around that story, there was a brief attempt to pass a law making “pretexting” illegal for telephone records as it already is for financial records. Frankly, I think unauthorized use of someone’s phone provider web portal account should already be illegal under most state computer crime statutes, and obtaining phone records through misrepresentation should constitute theft by deception or violation of identity theft statutes, but I am not a lawyer. Now, we are learning who some of the major users of these services are: various offices of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, including the FBI; police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Utah, and most likely hundreds of other police departments. These agencies are bypassing legal processes to obtain private phone records without warrants from private companies engaged in highly unethical if not illegal activity. Hat tip: Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

While thinking about Jonathan Adler’s presentation at the Skeptics Society conference, it occurred to me that the problem of botnets is, in effect, a tragedy of the commons. The private personal computers of consumers which are connected full-time to the Internet and are not kept up-to-date on patches have, in effect, become a commons to be exploited by the botherders. The owners of the computers are generally not aware of what’s going on, as the bots generally try to minimize obtrusiveness in order to continue to operate. The actual damages to each individual are typically quite small (with some notable exceptions–botherders can steal and make use of any data on the machine, including personal identity information and confidential documents), and the individual consumer doesn’t have sufficient incentive to prevent the problem (say, by spending additional money on security software or taking the time to maintain the system). Similarly, the typical entry-level casual blogger may not have incentives to keep their blogs free of spam comments. Neither, for that matter, does commons-advocate Larry Lessig, whose blog’s comments are full of spam, making them less useful than they otherwise would be–I think this is an amusing irony about Lessig’s position in his book Code. He argues that we need to have some subsidized public space on the Internet, but it seems to me private companies have already created it largely without public subsidy, and I think Declan McCullagh has the better case in his exchange with Lessig. (By contrast, Blogger does have incentive to prevent spam blogs, which consume large amounts of its resources and make its service less useful–and so it takes sometimes heavy-handed automated actions to try to shut it down.) Bruce Schneier has argued that the right way to resolve this particular problem is by setting liability rules to shift incentives to players who can address the issue–e.g., software companies, ISPs, and banks (for phishing, but see this rebuttal). I agree with Schneier on this general point and with the broader point that economics has a lot to teach information security.

Ben Edelman continues his valuable research with an exposure of Hula Direct’s “banner farms” which are being used to display banner ads through popups, driven by spyware installations: Hula cannot write off its spyware-sourced traffic as a mere anomaly or glitch. I have received Hula popups from multiple spyware programs over many months. Throughout that period, I have never arrived at any Hula site in any way other than from spyware – never as a popup or popunder served on any bona fide web site, in my personal casual web surfing or in my professional examination of web sites and advertising practices. From these facts, I can only conclude that spyware popups are a substantial source of traffic to Hula’s sites.Edelman also notes that most of Hula’s ads include JavaScript code or HTML refresh meta tags to automatically reload the ads fairly quickly. The effect is to display more ads, and to show the ads for a shorter time than the advertisers are expecting. Hula doesn’t have a direct relationship with its advertisers (Edelman notes the relationships of cash and traffic flow), but they are being complacent and allowing it to happen. Some of the advertisers: Vonage, Verizon, Circuit City. Finally, Edelman notes that some of the ad networks being used by Hula have taken notice and started to take action. One ad network, Red McCombs Media, refused to pay a $200,000+ bill from Hula and has been sued by them for breach of contract. ...

This post is an index to posts at The Lippard Blog on the subject of information security. This is probably not a complete list; I’ve tended to exclude posts labeled “security” that don’t specifically touch on information security and may have over-excluded. “Richard Bejtlich reviews Extreme Exploits” (August 16, 2005) Link to Richard Bejtlich review of Extreme Exploits, a book I was the technical editor on. “Sony’s DRM–not much different from criminal hacking” (November 2, 2005) Summary and link to Mark Russinovich’s exposure of the Sony rootkit DRM. “Defending Against Botnets” (November 3, 2005) Link to my presentation on this subject at Arizona State University. “Sony DRM class action lawsuits” (November 10, 2005) Comment on the Sony rootkit class action lawsuits. “Another Botnet Talk” (December 11, 2005) Comment on my December botnet talk for Phoenix InfraGard, with links to past botnet presentations. “Major flaw in Diebold voting machines” (December 23, 2005) A flaw that allows preloading votes on a memory card for Diebold voting machines in an undetectible way. “The Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit” (January 3, 2006) Description of an at-the-time unresolved Windows vulnerability. “New Internet consumer protection tool–SiteAdvisor.com” (January 25, 2006) Report on SiteAdvisor.com tool (now a McAfee product). “Pushing Spyware through Search” (January 28, 2006) Ben Edelman’s work on how Google is connected to spyware by accepting paid advertising from companies that distribute it. “Database error causes unbalanced budget” (February 17, 2006) How a house in Indiana was incorrectly valued at $400 million due to a single-keystroke error, leading to wrongly increased budgets and distribution of funds on the expectation of property tax revenue. “The Security Catalyst podcast” (February 18, 2006) Announcement of Michael Santarcangelo’s security podcast. “Controversial hacker publishes cover story in Skeptical Inquirer” (February 19, 2006) Critique of Carolyn Meinel’s article about information warfare. “Even more serious Diebold voting machine flaws” (May 14, 2006) Hurst report on new major flaws found in Diebold voting machines. “Botnet interview on the Security Catalyst podcast” (May 23, 2006) Link to part I of my interview on botnets with Michael Santarcangelo. “Part II of Botnets Interview” (June 4, 2006) Link to part II of my botnets interview. "‘Banner farms’ and spyware" (June 12, 2006) Ben Edelman’s exposure of Hula Direct’s “banner farms” used to deliver ads via spyware. “When private property becomes the commons” (June 12, 2006) Consumer PCs as Internet “commons,” economics and information security. “Network security panel in Boston area” (June 12, 2006) Announcement of a public speaking gig. “Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood” (July 6, 2006) Quotation from Tim Lee review of book by Jim Harper with this title. “9th Circuit approves random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops” (July 28, 2006) Bad decision granting border police the right to perform full forensic examination of the hard drives of laptops carried by people wanting to cross the U.S. border. “Is it worth shutting down botnet controllers?" (August 18, 2006) A response to remarks by Gadi Evron and Paul Vixie that it is no longer worth shutting down botnet controllers. “The ineffectiveness of TRUSTe” (September 29, 2006) A larger proportion of sites with TRUSTe certification are marked as untrustworthy in SiteAdvisor’s database than of those that don’t have TRUSTe certification. “The U.S. no-fly list is a joke” (October 5, 2006) The no-fly list has major flaws, listing people who aren’t a threat and not listing people who are–and presuming that terrorists will be identifiable by their names. “How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights” (October 20, 2006) How an unusual hobby allowed for traffic analysis to uncover CIA torture flights. “Point out the obvious, get raided by the FBI” (October 29, 2006) Chris Soghoian gets raided by the FBI after putting up a web page that allows generation of Northwest Airlines boarding passes. “Electronic voting machines in Florida having problems in early voting” (October 31, 2006) A report on voting machines registering votes for the wrong candidate due to touch screen calibration issues. “The Two Faces of Diebold” (November 5, 2006) The difference between the public and private versions of SAIC’s report on Diebold voting machine vulnerabilities. “FBI eavesdropping via cell phones and OnStar” (December 4, 2006) Reports of vulnerabilities in newer cell phones that allow them to be used as listening devices even when powered off. “Time to Stop Using Microsoft Word” (December 7, 2006) New unpatched malicious code execution vulnerability in most versions of Word. “Staffer for Congressman tries to hire hacker to change grades” (December 22, 2006) Todd Shriber’s failed attempt to retroactively improve his college career. “My bank is on the ball” (January 6, 2007) My bank prevents theft of my money. “Skeptical information and security information links” (January 23, 2007) Promotion of my security links and skeptical links sites. “Schoolteacher convicted on bogus charges due to malware” (February 4, 2007) Connecticut teacher Julie Amero successfully prosecuted for showing porn to kids, when in fact it was the result of malware on a machine the school district refused to pay for antivirus software on. “McCain proposes an unfunded mandate for ISPs” (February 7, 2007) McCain sponsors a bill to force ISPs to scan all traffic for and report child porn images they find. “Warner Music: We’d rather go out of business than give customers what they want” (February 9, 2007) Warner Music says no way to DRM-free music. “The economics of information security” (February 13, 2007) Ross Anderson and Tyler Moore paper on the economics of infosec. “How IPv6 is already creating security problems” (February 19, 2007) Apple AirPort allows bypass of firewall rules via IPv6. “Windows, Mac, and BSD Security” (March 8, 2007) Amusing video parody comparing the OSes. “Bob Hagen on botnet evolution” (March 9, 2007) My former colleague on trends in botnets. “The rsync.net warrant canary” (March 25, 2007) How rsync.net will communicate whether it receives a National Security Letter without breaking the law. “FBI focus on counterterrorism leads to increase in unprosecuted fraud and identity theft” (April 11, 2007) The law of unintended consequences strikes again. “Banning the distribution of AACS keys is futile” (May 3, 2007) You can’t stop the communication of a 128-bit number as though it’s proprietary. “CALEA compliance day” (May 14, 2007) Commemoration of the day that VoIP providers have to be CALEA-compliant. “Spying on the homefront” (May 14, 2007) PBS Frontline on FBI misuse of National Security Letters and NSA eavesdropping. “The bots of summer” (June 6, 2007) Report on some media coverage of my botnet interview with the Security Catalyst from 2006. “Microsoft’s new Turing Test” (June 12, 2007) It’s not often I get to combine animal rescue and information security topics, but this is one–using animal pictures to authenticate. “Operation Bot Roast” (June 14, 2007) FBI prosecution of some botnet people. “Google thinks I’m malware” (July 13, 2007) Google stops returning results to me in some cases because my behavior looks like malware activity. “Asking printer manufacturers to stop spying results in Secret Service visit?" (July 14, 2007) MIT Media Lab project to get people to complain to printer manufacturers about their secret coding of serial numbers, which got one person a visit from the USSS. “A marketplace for software vulnerabilities” (July 29, 2007) WabiSabiLabi’s abortive attempt to create a market for the sale and purchase of vulnerability information. “Another Sony rootkit” (September 5, 2007) F-Secure finds another Sony product that installs a rootkit–the Sony MicroVault USM-F memory stick (now off the market). “Anti-P2P company suffers major security breach” (September 16, 2007) Media Defender gets hacked. “Microsoft updates Windows XP and Vista without user permission or notification” (September 17, 2007) Nine executables get pushed to everybody even if Windows update is turned off–except for corporate SMS users. “Lessons for information security from Multics” (September 19, 2007) Paul Karger and Roger Schell’s paper on Multics gets attention from Bruce Schneier. “Hacker finds vulnerability in Adobe Reader” (September 24, 2007) The era of attacks on applications rather than OS’s gets a boost. “Break-in at CI Host colo facility” (November 4, 2007) The role of physical security for websites. “Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul” (November 6, 2007) Botnets used to send spam promoting Ron Paul. “Macintosh security lags behind Windows and BSD” (November 8, 2007) Rundown on new Mac security features, some of which are negative in effect. “Multics source code released” (November 13, 2007) Multics becomes open source. “Untraceable looks unwatchable” (December 18, 2007) A post that generated a huge amount of response, about the Diane Lane movie that flopped at the box office, before it came out. “Notorious major spammer indicted” (January 3, 2008) Alan Ralsky may actually get what he deserves. “Boeing 787 potentially vulnerable to passenger software-based hijacking” (January 8, 2008) Passenger Internet access for the Boeing 787 is physically connected to the network for communication and navigation. "‘Anonymous’ launches ‘war’ against Scientology” (January 22, 2008) Denial of service attacks and other pranks against Scientology. “Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard” (February 8, 2008) Response to Matt Rothschild’s article in The Progressive claiming that InfraGard members have the right to “shoot to kill” when martial law is declared. “FBI responds to ‘shoot to kill’ claims about InfraGard” (February 15, 2008) Commentary and link to the FBI’s response to Rothschild. “Malware in digital photo frames” (February 17, 2008) Viruses in unusual digital storage locations. “Canada busts 17 in botnet ring” (February 21, 2008) News about law enforcement action against criminals in Canada. “More InfraGard FUD and misinformation” (February 23, 2008) Response to Gary Barnett’s InfraGard article at the Future of Freedom Foundation website. “New Mexico InfraGard conference” (February 24, 2008) Summary of the New Mexico InfraGard’s “Dollar-Gard 2008” conference. “Pakistan takes out YouTube, gets taken out in return” (February 25, 2008) Yesterday’s events of political and/or religious censorship gone awry in Pakistan. “Jeremy Jaynes loses appeal on spamming case” (March 1, 2008) The Virginia Supreme Court upholds Virginia’s anti-spam law. “Software awards scam” (March 25, 2008) Many software download sites give out bogus awards. “Scammers scamming scammers” (April 7, 2008) Marco Cova looks at what some phishing kits really do. “Bad military botnet proposal” (May 13, 2008) A response to Col. Charles Williamson’s proposal to build a military botnet. “MediaDefender launches denial of service attack against Revision3” (May 29, 2008) Anti-P2P piracy firm crosses the line and attacks a legitimate company. “San Francisco’s city network held hostage” (July 19, 2008) Some actual facts behind the hyped charges against the city’s network administrator. “Did Diebold tamper with Georgia’s 2002 elections?" (July 20, 2008) Some troubling information about Diebold’s last-minute patching on Georgia election machines. “Expert tells China visitors to encrypt data as U.S. announces policy of laptop seizure” (August 1, 2008) Concerns about privacy in both China and the U.S. “Military botnets article” (August 28, 2008) Peter Buxbaum’s article on “Battling Botnets” in Military Information Technology magazine. “Virginia Supreme Court strikes down anti-spam law” (September 12, 2008) Julian Jaynes goes free as Virginia’s anti-spam law goes away. “Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account hacked” (September 17, 2008) Palin’s Yahoo account is hacked, and the contents published. “TSA airport security is a waste of time and money” (October 18, 2008) Link to Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic. “Behind the scenes during the election process” (November 6, 2008) Both major party presidential nominees suffered computer compromises. “White House may be forced to recover ’lost’ emails” (November 14, 2008) Lawsuit may require recovery from backups. “Criminal activity by air marshals” (November 14, 2008) Multiple cases. “PATRIOT Act NSL gag order unconstitutional” (December 19, 2008) Recipients of National Security Letters now can’t be gagged without court order. “The U.S. Nazi dirty bomb plot” (March 15, 2009) A little-covered story about a real terrorist plot. “The Cybersecurity Act of 2009” (April 4, 2009) It’s not as bad as it appears. “Tracking cyberspies through the web wilderness” (May 12, 2009) How University of Toronto researchers have tracked online spying activity. “Bad military botnet proposal still being pushed” (June 26, 2009) Col. Williamson’s proposal to build an offensive U.S. military botnet is still being promoted by him. “DHS still a mess, five years on” (July 16, 2009) Center for Public Integrity review of DHS. “How Twitter got compromised” (July 23, 2009) TechCrunch gives the anatomy of the attack on Twitter.

Part II of my interview on Michael Santarcangelo’s Security Catalyst podcast is now available. (Part I is here.)

I did an interview over the weekend with Michael Santarcangelo of the Security Catalyst about botnets. Part I of that interview is available now as a podcast (you can subscribe via Yahoo or iTunes). UPDATE: Part two is here.

Harri Hursti of Black Box Voting has released a report (PDF) on yet more flaws (on top of others reported back in December) in Diebold TSx and TS6 Direct-Recording Electronic (or DRE) voting machines. Having a few minutes of physical access to a machine makes it possible to install software, using simple, easily available tools, which will completely compromise the machine in such a way that it will be impossible to tell whether future software updates are successful or not. Ed Felten and Avi Rubin give more detail at Felten’s blog, Freedom to Tinker, and question whether it makes sense to build voting machines based on commodity hardware and operating systems due to these risks. This certainly seems like an application where you’d want hardware-enforced verification of a stripped-down trusted computing platform. Hursti’s report says that there are three layers of software in the Diebold machines: a boot loader, an operating system (customized Windows CE), and an application program (the voting software). Each of the three layers has backdoors which allow bypassing security controls. The report states that “Different files on the system carry various subsets of the following features: Signature check, mode check, and integrity check. None of these can be considered security features against tampering. For example, the integrity check is [redacted]. This check can be equated to a very crude spell-checker. It is effective against accidental typing errors but not deliberate attacks." The redacted portion, based on the description, is apparently a weak checksum such as CRC (cyclic redundancy check), rather than a cryptographically stronger checksum like MD5 or SHA1 (both of which have weaknesses of their own). The Hursti report describes how an attacker could exploit the weaknesses at multiple levels to prevent the removal of malicious code. One such flaw (the details of which are redacted from the report) is that inserting a standard PCMCIA memory card into the machine containing a file with the appropriate name will cause the boot loader to reflash itself, installing the code in that file as the new boot loader on the system. As Hursti points out, “Due to the fact that the boot loader is the primary mechanism for its own reprogramming, if the boot loader is compromised with a deep attack, using the boot loader itself to install a known clean version of a boot loader is no longer a viable option as a recovery path to clean the system." The report goes on to show similar flaws in replacing the operating system image, and points out a voter-accessible hidden button (labeled “battery test”) that could be exploited by malicious code as a trigger for an attack. The recommended defense against attacks is to physically protect the machines–as a machine can be compromised with less than five minutes of physical access, chain of custody evidence must be maintained from the machines’ origin to final use, with no unsupervised access.

Two New Jersey attorneys, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, have filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York City against Verizon regarding its sharing of call-detail records with the NSA without a subpoena. The lawsuit charges that Verizon has violated a number of federal laws, including the 1986 Stored Communications Act (28 USC 2701), which provides for $1,000 in statutory damages for each violation. Some reports have quoted a $50 billion figure based the potential of one violation regarding the information of each of 50 million people, but the suit as filed asks for $1,000 per violation, or $5 billion if certified as a class action. The Stored Communications Act is a confusingly-written piece of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that covers both content records (such as email) as well as non-content records (such as log information and subscriber information). One of the exceptions in the law for when a provider can supply non-content information to a governmental entity without a subpoena is if (quoting from a commentary by law professor Orin Kerr) “the provider reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person justifies disclosure of the information.” This seems like a defense that Verizon will be likely to use to justify a program that’s supposed to be used to identify and stop terrorists. Verizon claims that it “does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition." RCN, a telecom and Internet provider (its assets include the former Erols Internet) based in Herndon, VA, has issued a press release stating that it, like Qwest, has not disclosed customer information except when required by legal process.

Investigators for the General Accountability Office conducted tests at 21 airports to test screeners’ ability to detect bomb components powerful enough to blow up the trunk of a car. They successfully got the parts past security screening at all 21 airports. The TSA responded by saying that the tests “failed to consider the full array of air travel security measures.” That response doesn’t seem to be to the point–the parts were successfully smuggled past security checkpoints, meaning that there was no effective countermeasure in place.

Ed Felten writes about a new paper that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus. The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed. By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags. If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags. BTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and developed Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux. Rieback gave a talk at last year’s “What the Hack” hacker conference in Amsterdam on “Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification.”