Research

Despite living in Boulder Colorado for 16 years I’m neither a hippie nor a conspiracy theorist. I don’t use patchouli oil, wear a beanie, or ingest any mood-altering substances you can’t buy in a grocery store. I don’t think the Masons control our destiny, black helicopters molest cattle, or the NSA monitors all our communications. Oh, really? Okay, but the cattle thing definitely isn’t real. Except maybe in Nebraska, but that’s not the CIA, not that there’s anything wrong with it… Anyway, what I’m saying is that I’m fairly skeptical, if a tad on the D side of the political game. But after seeing Fox (and the AP) on this Foley Congressional page thing, I’m really starting to wonder. Wikipedia defines information warfare as: Information warfare is the use and management of information in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. Information warfare may involve collection of tactical information, assurance that one’s own information is valid, spreading of propaganda or disinformation among the enemy, undermining the quality of opposing force information and denial of information collection opportunities to opposing forces. Information warfare consists of three broad goals. Controlling the opponent’s access to information, securing your own lines of information (and communication), and using disinformation to create confusion, control opponent actions, and, basically, control the brains of the conflict (including civilians). I’ve never been a fan of Fox news. Actually, I’m not the biggest fan of any news station these days, and refuse to watch local news (unless I’m on it, of course). But I always figured even Fox has a shred of objectivity. And they can’t really be in some big conspiracy with the GOP and Diebold, can they? It’s just about ratings, isn’t it? If you’re only a tad paranoid, their latest actions just might sound like information warfare. As the scandal around Representative Mark Foley hit the news cycle Fox repeatedly identified him as a Democrat. Huh? Yep- as reported on BoingBoing Fox news identified, on screen, Mark Foley as a Democrat, not a Republican. Since probably very few Americans can tell you how many representatives are in Congress, never mind who they are and their party affiliations, it might, just might, lead some to believe that it’s the Dems running around hitting on underage boys. (from BoingBoing.net) That, my friends, is a classic use of information warfare. At least if it’s on purpose, but since there have been three reports, no corrections, and one instance was on a show recorded hours before air, it’s reasonable to assume that if it’s not on purpose, there’s a distinct lack of contrition over such a major mistake. So let’s look into the security implications, since this is a security site. The mass media has more power to sway public opinion than any other single source of information. Disinformation is a core principle of information warfare. Spammers use it to pump stock prices. Hackers use it to access your systems. Competitors set up false blogs to ruin your corporate reputation. Heck, some vendors try and leverage us industry analysts in their information warfare strategies. All of this is a form of information warfare, we’re just not always willing to admit it. Information warriors know that compromising mass media is one of the single most effective techniques, as long as you don’t get caught. All it takes is a few seeds of doubt to sway public opinion. If those seeds are true, it’s just good public relations; if they’re false, it’s information warfare. The best information warfare takes a kernel of believable truth, like some Congressman hitting on an underage employee, and salts it with just the slightest disinformation, like mistakingly listing him as a member of the wrong party in on-air graphics. Outright lies are rarely as effective as the slight lemon twist because without a foundation of credibility they are immediately dismissed by the mass majority. Disinformation is most effective when most of it is just information. Which brings us back to Fox. One mistake I could accept; these things happen. I could even understand that same mistake multiple times in the same broadcast. But different times, in different broadcasts, including prepared material? That stretches credibility. Bias in media is pretty bad, but hard to eliminate. Outright disinformation? Now that’s classic information warfare. Besides, we all know Democrats stick with inte s. At least they’re over 18… Share:

For those that don’t know, VeriChips are implantable RFID tags “for people”. That way you can be tagged and tracked like cattle or Gillette razors. Convenient, I guess. Anyway, here’s a great article on the Make blog on cloning VeriChips. So much for using these to separate identical twins. I see this as one of those “good news/bad news” kind of things. The good news is the bad guys don’t have to chop your arm off to steal your identity. The bad news is VeriChips totally blow. Or is that the good news? I’m easily confused. Share:

Pete Lindstrom just posted a missive in support of the TSA. Pete makes some good points about the limitations of policy- while you always need hard rules, you also always need exceptions and judgement. In the information security world, we talk about the difference between “policy decision points” and “policy enforcement points” to express the different functions. In most computing environments, the PDP and PEP start off combined in a small set of instances but then get separated as networks grow while some central authority still wants to coordinate security efforts. The good news for security folks is that systems allow us to have the best of both worlds. PDPs can (basically) handle as many conditionals as you want — systems will scale and always make the same decision based on the same set of assumptions. I guess what I am saying is ridiculing airline security without understanding the monumental challenges they have is getting old. They’re PEPs, for crying out loud. Sure, I hate it as much as everyone else when they take my toothpaste, but it is only toothpaste. Get over it. Pete identifies one of the most difficult problems in security of any type, from IT security, to physical security, to law enforcement. No blanket policy can effectively deal with every circumstance, yet exceptions are difficult to evaluate and can lead to failure. When I managed a physical security organization this challenged us daily. Our conclusion was to start with strict policies and supervision, but as employees gained experience give them more freedom for individual decision making. Supervisors played the role of mentors, helping decide who was ready for more freedom and who needed strict monitoring. In the end I had an incredible team (some who read this blog, feel free to comment) capable of handling very dynamic situations with minimal direct supervision. Cops, firefighters, paramedics, doctors, lawyers, electricians, and so on all work in pretty much the same way. It took me years to develop the judgement to make accurate, split-second decisions where there were policy gaps. Ask any of my physical security friends- early on I tended to fail in favor of always following policy. It created as many problems as it solved, requiring greater supervision. The world isn’t black and white, even when it is. How is this relevant to Pete’s points? Two ways. First, bad policy is bad policy. I don’t ridicule TSA employees, but it’s our job as security experts to identify policies that don’t improve security but increase costs. Pete doesn’t discuss the policy creation point, or the need for feedback from enforcement points to creation points to maintain effective policies. The second is that over-reliance on policy enforcement points results in security failures. Policies can’t account for all situations, can’t manage appropriate exceptions, and don’t adapt for new threats. My suggestions is the government develop more effective policies and stop treating airport security as a single enforcement point. I’ve written about it here and here. Create a hierarchy of TSA employees, beyond screeners, and embed security deeper into the aviation system in a less intrusive way. I applaud the employees who are willing to deal with all the a$$holes running through airports. Screening is hard, thankless labor. But we need to look a little higher, and thus improve security while decreasing inconvenience and reducing costs. Share:

Statement from SecureWorks: SecureWorks and Apple are working together in conjunction with the CERT Coordination Center on any reported security issues. We will not make any additional public statements regarding work underway until both companies agree, along with CERT/CC , that it is appropriate. I’ve been told Maynor is no longer speaking at ToorCon. I’m disappointed, but it’s obvious there’s now something going on with CERT. I stand by my statements that Maynor and Ellch are responsible security researchers that helped advance Mac security. At this point, I don’t have any other comments, this has dragged on far longer than it deserves. My Mac is more secure today thanks to Dave and John. That’s the most important result of this entire debacle. I expect we’ll all eventually learn more, but as of now this is officially buried. Update: Ou is still headed to ToorCon and has some other points. I really doubt there will be any legal action, everyone wants this dog dead, but it will be interesting to see what happens at ToorCon. Share:

This is just too good. A friend who recently moved from the business side to the IT side just reported this. They work at a large hospital. A significant portion of the clinical staff never changed their default passwords, which just happened to be the same as their login. Convenient, eh? Nice to see HIPAA at work. But this is the best part. Someone in IT “made a configuration mistake” and everyone was forced to update their passwords. The help desk has been taking calls all week. Seems most of the users remember their new password, but still can’t get in. You ask why dear readers? Because they are now entering their new passwords as their user names, and their password. Yes, they all assumed that their user names and passwords are always the same, and changing one automatically changes the other. Huh. Think about that one for a minute. I suppose it makes sense in some kind of warped way. If it makes you feel better, this is in the surgical unit. Share:

I read an interesting article by Brian Krebs over at the Washington Post on ID theft. Brian did a little hunting on some underground IRC channels and witnessed a large amount of stolen personal data being exchanged, then went out and talked with around two dozen victims. One of his more interesting tidbits was that a bunch of the credit card numbers were being used to purchase background checks from Internet sites like USSearch.com. These sites purport themselves as “people finders” for such seemingly innocent needs as collections, finding that old college friend, making sure your nanny doesn’t have a criminal record, or tracking down all the places where your ex-wife might be hiding. Yeah, not everyone uses these things to find former roommates who stiffed you $50 in long distance. I decided to pony up and run a check on myself to see how bad these are. My conclusion? We need regulation. Badly. It’s yet another case where seemingly innocent pieces of public information have tremendous consequences when aggregated and correlated on the scale of the Information Age. I set just one basic rule- what could I find on one site using nothing more than my name. Some sites let you search on SSN, but since that’s supposedly secret (probably not hard to find) I restricted myself to name only. I ended up at PublicBackgroundChecks.com since it was slightly cheaper. All the services range from about $9.99 for a simple address lookup, to $60 for a background check including criminal records. I decided on the $40 ‘background check without criminal records check’ since I’ve had my record cleared enough to know I’m clean. It wasn’t worth the $20 to me just to see if my speeding tickets were on there. It wasn’t all accurate, but it’s close enough to get my attention. Here are some highlights: Probably 85% of the addresses I’ve ever lived at. It missed 3 from my first two years of college, but caught everything else. Age and DOB Parent’s names and addresses. My sister wasn’t listed as a relative for some reason. Possible associates with their address history- based on concurrent address information. It caught my stepfather (deceased), 3 long-time roommates, and the entire family of one of my landlords. Schools, mail drops, banks, and storage lockers near known addresses. Property ownership and appraised value for my last two residences. I’m only on the mortgage for one of them, and there was another listing of the previous owner on that one, with no date range. Historical phone numbers for current, last previous, childhood, and one random residence. I think the system struggles with date ranges and it didn’t find any of my real phone numbers except… Internet domain registrations- including registrar info which included an old address. It nailed some old domains, but didn’t include Securosis. Owners, about a dozen neighbors (with phone/address), and other residents (with phone numbers) for those addresses it provided details on. I still don’t know why it didn’t do this for every address. A bunch of other (accurate) empty searches: Overall it was fairly accurate, and probably 70% complete. It only identified two of my phone numbers, neither current, one about 17 years old. It’s more than enough information to track me down, and everything you’d need to start some identity fraud other than my SSN. In times of old all this information was available, but scattered across the written files or proprietary databases of potentially hundreds of agencies and sources. Neighbors, associates, historical phone numbers, local banks and storage facilities weren’t the most available pieces of information without some legwork. And then I think of all the other sources out there on me that I didn’t check- everything from Google, to credit checks (easy to obtain illegally), to the large data aggregators like ChoicePoint. One of these vendors once showed me their law enforcement tool for tracking individuals- imagine all the information I listed above, of higher accuracy, visually accessed in a real-time three dimensional browser. Within seconds you could track the personal relationships, based on public records, of anyone in the US with just a name and date of birth (also easy to find). Some data aggregators can correlate across financial, public, and criminal records. Scott McNealy once infamously stated, “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it”. He’s half right. Nearly every shred of our privacy is gone to anyone with a web browser and less than $100, but that doesn’t mean we should accept it. Aside from the social implications the fraud implications alone demand some sort of action. While these records are public, and on their own fairly innocuous, once aggregated and correlated the value increases exponentially. Don’t believe me- go pay your $40 and see for yourself. Next step in my research- start tracking these companies down and see how many are just public fronts for a few of the big names. I don’t know the answer, but have my suspicions. Share:

I now know that $40 and a quick web search will let any doofus figure out most of my former addresses, neighbors, home values, roommates, birthday, etc. But what’s really out there on me? Like any egotistical analyst I run the occasional masturbatory Google search on myself, but I suspect there’s far more out there than I realize. I also think there’s value in seeing what a total stranger can find on me. Thus we officially open the Securosis “Invade My Privacy Challenge”. Here are the rules: Use any legal Internet tool at your disposal to dig up whatever dirt you can find. No pretexting or other illegal activities! If it’s sensitive (including anything someone could use for identity theft), email me at rmogull@securosis.com. If it’s interesting or embarrassing, feel free to post it as a comment. For sensitive entries, you can also post a comment telling what you found, but not the details. You must cite all sources- this is full disclosure, you know. Entries without the source will be eliminated. For-pay sources are allowed if you’re willing to cover the cost yourself. Close friends and others with inside knowledge are ineligible. Will and Scott are especially ineligible. The contest ends in two weeks (October 13), or when all my details are compromised. The top prize, based on the value of the information found, is a hardcover copy of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, the most mind-blowing book I’ve read lately. If you find my SSN there will be a bonus prize that’s worth your effort (I’ll post it once I figure it out). < p style=”text-align:right;”> Yes, I know what I’m inviting here. But better to know what’s out there than live with my head in the sand. I promise you there’s plenty to embarrass me with, and a few interesting tidbits like my employee number. I’ll probably regret this… Share:

Last week the guys over at Matasano did some seriously great work on ATM hacking. So many blogs were running with it at the time, and I was on the road dealing with a family emergency, that I didn’t cover it here, but I think this is such an excellent example of disclosure working that it deserves a mention. It’s also just a cool story. It all started with a small article in a local newspaper about a strange gas station ATM with a propensity for doling out a bit more cash than perhaps the account holders were expecting. No mere case of spontaneous mechanical altruism, a little investigation of the video surveillance footage showed some strange behavior on the part of a particular customer who entered a tad more digits than necessary on the keypad to make a withdrawal. From then on every $20 withdrawn was marked on the account as $5. The best part of the story, one that affirms my somewhat cynical views on human behavior, was it took nine days before someone finally reported the charitable ATM! I realize it’s possible that an ATM in a small town gas station might go nine days without use, but I kind of doubt it. When the article first made the rounds most of us were pretty skeptical- small town papers aren’t always known for the most accurate of reporting, especially where technology is concerned. Personally I wrote it off. But Dave Goldsmith at Matasano decided it deserved a little more digging, and struck the mother lode. A little more investigation at the ATM manufacturers website showed these things have master passwords. A mere 15 minutes later Dave acquired a manual for the ATM model in question, including default security codes and instructions for configuring the denominations for the cash trays!!! Yep- all the attacker had to do was tell the ATM the $20 tray held $5 (like any ATM carries fivers anymore) and everyone”s withdrawals, as far as the bank is concerned, they got 3x free money. Dave posted a summary on the Matasano blog and this rapidly made the rounds, including coverage over at Wired. It’s an example of some great security research. Here’s why it’s also an example of good full disclosure. (Almost, Dave held the location of the manuals secret, but they aren’t hard to find). This problem wasn’t unknown; some ATM manufacturers published advisories to their clients, but I suspect most of them assumed the risk was so low it wasn’t worth the effort to change the password. Thus a small group of criminals could keep up their nefarious activities, whose costs are eventually passed onto us consumers. By disclosing enough details of the hack that any bad guy with a modicum of technical skills and the ability to run a Google search could take advantage of it, Dave’s actions should eventually force both ATM manufacturers and their clients to increase security. No ostriches allowed here; I suspect within a few months those default master passwords will be on quite a few less ATMs. In the short term the risk and cost to the financial institutions supporting those ATMs increases, but after the initial shock the overall security of the system will increase. This isn’t a 0day- the vulnerability was known and patching no harder than having the tech change the password on his next trip to fill the trays. By exposing this flaw to the public, combined with accurate reports of real exploits, Dave helped make us all a little more secure, but cost a few lucky individuals their free money. (Wait- doesn’t Diebold make ATMs? What a surprise!) Share:

In a brief analysis/link to my privacy post Mike Rothman states we have a right to privacy in the Constitution, but the problem is enforcement. Thing is, I’m not sure the Constitution explicitly provides for any right to privacy. I’m not a Constitutional lawyer, but I’m going to toss this one to the comments. Anyone know for sure? And if we don’t have that right, what are the implications for society in a digital age? Without explicit constitutional protection lawmakers have incredible amounts of wiggle room to legislate away our privacy on any whim, perhaps to pay for their extended golf vacations in Scotland. As much as we seem to assume we have a right to privacy, I don’t think we do, and if we really don’t, it’s our responsibility to aggressively defend and demand those rights. Share:

I hate to admit it, but someone will probably hack this site at some point. And they may even use it to hack your computer. And there’s not a darn thing I can do about it. Security, and hacking, are kind of trendy. Both the good guys and the bad guys have a habit of focusing on certain attacks and defenses based on what’s “hot”. We’re kind of the fashion whores of the IT world. I mean I just can’t believe Johnny calls himself a 1337 hax0r for finding a buffer overflow in RPC. I mean that’s just so 2002. Everyone knows that all the cool hackers are working on XSS and browser attacks. The trend of the month seems to be cross-site scripting and embedding attacks into trusted websites. Cross site scripting (XSS) is a form of attack where the attacker takes advantage of poorly-programmed or poorly-configured web pages, and can embed his or her own code in the page to go after your browser (a seriously simple explanation, check out Wiki for more). MITRE (they speak CVE!) called cross-site scripting the number 1 vulnerability of all time (in terms of volume). Dark Reading reports a number of major sites hacked recently this way. Possibly hundreds of sites hosted on HostGator were hacked (not with cross site scripting) and code inserted (using an iframe for you geeks) to infect anyone with the temerity to visit the sites using Internet Explorer (we DID warn you). None of this is new. We’ve had attackers embedding attacks into trusted sites for years. It may be trendy, but it isn’t new by any means. Some are pretty devious- like hacking advertising servers that then distribute their ads on sites all over the net. It’s a great form of social engineering- compromising a trusted authority and using that to distribute your attack. Not that I’m assuming my paranoid readers actually trust this site, but I won’t be surprised if it’s hacked, and hopefully most of you are following security precautions and won’t be compromised yourself. Why? Because this site is hosted. I manage my little part of the server, but I don’t control it myself. I use all sorts of tools like WordPress and cPanel, all of which have their own security flaws. Sure, I’ve managed secure servers and coded secure pages in the past, but I kind of have a day job now. I rely on my hosting provider, and while I tried to choose one with a good reputation, my ego can’t write checks their bodies can’t cash. We, as users, need to take some responsibility ourselves. Just staying away from “those” sites isn’t enough, we also need to understand trusted sites may be compromised at some point, too. So far I’m safe on a Mac, and you Windows users can stay off IE (maybe until 7 comes out) and use anti-spyware and antivirus tools with maybe a little host intrusion prevention. Not that I don’t want you to trust me, but heck, I don’t even really trust myself. I’m just some dude with a blog waiting for the fall security colors… Share: