Technology

I got a call from the fraud department of my bank this morning, asking me whether I had used my debit card this morning at The Sports Basement in San Francisco for a $71.00 charge. I said that I hadn’t, and they said there was a debit prenotification, which they’ve seen as a prelude to withdrawals from around the globe using cloned cards or electronic access to accounts. They had already blocked further use of my card information, and under my banking agreement I would not be liable for any loss in any case. When I asked how my information got out, they indicated that they believe the miscreants are just using brute force–changing numbers based on a known card to find new valid card numbers. The only alternative I could see based on my card habits would be if I inadvertently used an ATM with a skimmer attached to the front of it somewhere or fell victim to an ATM with a tapped phone line connection. I rarely use ATMs these days; this may provide me with some incentive to do so even less frequently.

This was allegedly an internal Kodak video that was so popular with employees it has been “released for external viewing.” I’m sure I have some Rochester, NY readers who can confirm. It definitely shows a company willing to acknowledge and poke fun at its past mistakes. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

For the second time this year, Microsoft has issued a notice of a remote code execution vulnerability in Word for which there is no patch. Their suggested workaround is “Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources. This vulnerability could be exploited when a user opens a specially crafted Word file.” If you rely on exchanging Word documents for your business, this means shut down your business or risk infection with zero-day malware that can compromise your systems. Secunia has rated this as “extremely critical," their most serious vulnerability rating. The last time this happened was in May, and it took Microsoft 26 days to come up with a patch, during which time there were attacks on various enterprises from systems in China. This problem affects Word 2000, 2002, and 2003 for Windows, Microsoft Works 2004, 2005, and 2006, Word Viewer 2003, and Word 2004 for Macintosh. I recommend switching to OpenOffice and Macintosh. If you must use Windows in a business environment, this presents a strong argument for not giving users administrative rights on their own machines (or at least not on the user they login as to use Word) in order to limit what damage can occur from the exploitation of a vulnerability like this. UPDATE (December 15, 2006): There have now been three such Word vulnerabilities discovered in the last two weeks! ...

Declan McCullagh reports on the FBI using remote activation of cell phone microphones to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. He comments on a few models that are particularly vulnerable to exploitation: Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. “They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,” he said. “You can do that without having physical access to the phone."Nextel says that they didn’t participate in the eavesdropping on a couple of mobsters who were allegedly listened in on using this technique–both using Nextel cell phones. The same story reports that a 2003 lawsuit revealed similar monitoring of conversations occurring in cars featuring OnStar. UPDATE (December 5, 2006): Bruce Schneier has commented on this story, and his readers have some interesting comments.

News.com has a nice article about how Global Crossing (my employer) has criticized the extension of CALEA wiretapping rules to VoIP and broadband: Paul Kouroupas, vice president of regulatory affairs for Global Crossing, strongly criticized the Federal Communications Commission’s broadening of a 1994 law–originally intended to cover telephone providers–as disproportionately costly, complex, and riddled with privacy concerns. His company is one of the world’s largest Internet backbone providers. “Our customers are large Fortune 500 companies–not too many of those companies are conducting drug deals or terrorist activities out of Merrill Lynch’s offices or using their phones in that way,” Kouroupas said at an event here sponsored by the DC Bar Association. “By and large we don’t get wiretap requests, yet we’re faced with the costs to come into compliance,” which he estimated at $1 million. ...

Ann Coulter’s column last week was titled “Historic victory for Diebold!" She claims that “For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated." Just because the election wasn’t clearly rigged doesn’t mean that Diebold has been remotely vindicated, and the 2006 election continued to produce evidence that Diebold e-voting machines should not be used. As Brad Friedman points out at the Huffington Post, there were major problems with electronic voting machines in Denver, as well as problems opening the polls on time in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio. Problems with early voting using electronic voting machines occurred in Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and California. The Electronic Frontier Foundation received about 17,000 complaints by 8 p.m. on election day; Common Cause received 14,000 by 4 p.m. John Gideon of VotersUnite.org put together a searchable database of reported election problems. Bruce Schneier also gives a recap of electronic voting machine problems at his blog, with Florida’s 13th District presenting the biggest issues, where 18,000 votes apparently disappeared in a race where a difference of 386 votes decided the outcome (described in a separate post). The outcome of the election doesn’t change any of the existing data about the problems with Diebold voting machines. As usual, Coulter gets it all wrong. When it comes to voting, she should worry more about her own problems than comment on a controversy where she’s clearly completely ignorant.

The Center for Public Integrity has set up a “Media Tracker” based on FCC data by zip code which allows you to see how well-connected your zip code is. For each zip code, it will list the number of broadband providers and the number of owners of various media resources in your area (newspapers, radio and television stations. My zip code comes up as “well connected” with 18 broadband providers (a few more than the ones I identified in my survey of Phoenix-area broadband providers).

You can watch it at Google Video. Everyone should be aware of the issues raised in this documentary.

I received an email from the ACLU yesterday, informing me that they’ve jumped in on the net neutrality debate. Unfortunately, they badly misrepresent the facts: FREE THE NET: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY The keys to the Internet have always been safely in public hands - until last year, when the FCC suddenly repealed longstanding Internet principles of “neutrality” and non-discrimination.The ACLU is going to make the erroneous claim that I’ve debunked repeatedly on my blog (see the Net Neutrality Index)–that the common carriage requirements on telcos constitute “net neutrality.” They will ignore the fact that cable companies–the main providers of consumer broadband Internet access in the U.S.–have never been common carriers and have never been bound by these requirements. With the blessing of the Supreme Court, a handful of profit-driven telecoms and cable companies now could effectively shut down the 21st Century marketplace of ideas by screening Internet e-mail traffic, blocking what they deem to be undesirable content, or pricing users out of the marketplace. The ACLU is going to argue that we need to create a new bureaucratic regulatory apparatus, giving sweeping new powers to the FCC to interfere with freedom of Internet providers to enter into voluntary contracts with each other and manage their own networks, and specifically prohibiting differential pricing on tiered levels of service and the ability for providers to enter into arrangements with content providers to subsidize consumer bandwidth. Historically, Net Neutrality protections filled the free speech gap. Since those protections were removed last year, nothing prevents network providers from discriminating against Internet users and application and service providers in terms of content, quality of access, and choice of equipment.This is doubly false–the common carriage requirements applied only to the last-mile consumer network connections, not to the ability of ISPs to filter; and it is false that “nothing prevents” ISPs from taking actions which would cause them to lose customers. If you’re like many people using the Internet, you don’t think about whether your Internet Service Provider is intentionally slowing down or speeding up your access to Yahoo! versus Google. Without Net Neutrality, your ISP could do just that. Imagine if your phone company was allowed to own restaurants and then provided good service and clear signals to customers who called Dominos and static and frequent busy signals for those calling Pizza Hut. It sounds outrageous, but it would be entirely possible if the telephone system wasn’t regulated under the “common carrier” framework. The telecoms and cable companies that provide Internet network services, including AT&T, BellSouth, Comcast, Qwest, Sprint, Time-Warner/AOL, and Verizon, have spent over $100 million lobbying Congress and the FCC to eliminate established Net Neutrality protections.Remember, cable companies have never been common carriers, yet this hasn’t been a problem. Why create new regulations and give more power to a government agency that has a history of not only working on behalf of the big incumbents (rather than promoting competition, which is what is needed) but of engaging in actions designed to cause discrimination against certain forms of content through censorship? It makes no sense. The assault on Internet freedom will only get worse. The FCC imposed Net Neutrality protections in merger agreements for certain network providers such as SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI, but those protections expire in 2007. And in July 2006, the FCC declined to include any Net Neutrality protections in Comcast and Time-Warner’s acquisition of Adelphia Cable. The pattern of the FCC opposing Net Neutrality is expected to continue, as network providers continue to consolidate into an even smaller pool of Internet gatekeepers. Without the vigorous non-discrimination principles in place before 2005, a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet. Net Neutrality is needed, and it is needed now.The above argument is a mish-mash of fear-mongering about things that haven’t been an issue, misrepresentation of what regulations have been in place, wild unsubstantiated claims (“a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet”?), and a failure to look at the actual substantive issues in the network neutrality debate. Their website contains further misinformation: ...

Security researcher Chris Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University’s School for Informatics and an intern at Google, set up a website that functions as a boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines. The site contained a form that allowed you to fill in name, flight number, destination, and all of the other information on a boarding pass, and would display a boarding pass that would be indistinguishable from the real thing at the TSA security checkpoints. He pointed out that the identity check at the TSA checkpoint amounts to nothing more than a comparison between the name on a picture ID and the name on a boarding pass, and that this provides no security whatsoever. I’m not sure what threat this check is even supposed to be trying to mitigate. At best, it is an attempt to piggy-back on the check against the no-fly list (which is itself a complete joke) that is performed by the airlines when you purchase a ticket, but clearly that fails as his boarding pass generator is one of several ways to create a boarding pass in a name other than your own–including modifying the displayed text generated by any airline’s online site or even purchasing a ticket in any name you choose. The latter was displayed vividly by a couple of guys who purchased tickets in the names of “Al Kyder” and “Terry Wrist” (link includes video). In my opinion, the only actual purpose served by checking for a valid boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint is to reduce the number of people passing through the checkpoint in order to most efficiently make use of security resources. It does not otherwise have any effect on security; it provides no deterrent to an attacker. It is not effective in screening out those with malicious intent, and it is not even effective in verifying identity. Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) has called for Chris Soghoian to be arrested. He was visited and interrogated by the FBI, then went to stay at his parents’ house. Friday night, the FBI broke their way into his apartment, seized his computers, and generally trashed his place. Lesson: Point out U.S. security weaknesses, and you will be punished. Those responsible for the weaknesses and idiocy of U.S. “security theater,” however, will not be held accountable. This is one of the rare times when Michelle Malkin actually says something correct. Other coverage: Jim Harper, author of the excellent book Identity Crisis, at the Technology Liberation Front and at Cato@Liberty (this post does a good job of pointing out the problems with the TSA identity check). Bruce Schneier, at his blog. And there’s some rather good coverage in multiple posts at BoingBoing. The problem that Soghoian pointed out was previously described in February 2005 on Slate.com by Andy Bowers, and in 2003 by Bruce Schneier in his Crypt-o-Gram newsletter. So yes, Kip Hawley is still an idiot. UPDATE (November 2, 2006): Bruce Schneier has written a detailed description of the flaw in the security design of the TSA identity check, and makes the same point that even if the flaw is corrected it doesn’t add any real security because it’s just a check of the no-fly list.