[info] CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2007
Eugen Leitl
<eugen at leitl.org> on
Thu Nov 15 11:55:44 UTC 2007
----- Forwarded message from Bruce Schneier <schneier at SCHNEIER.COM> -----
From: Bruce Schneier <schneier at SCHNEIER.COM>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:17:09 -0600
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Subject: CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2007
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Reply-To: Bruce Schneier <schneier at SCHNEIER.COM>
CRYPTO-GRAM
November 15, 2007
by Bruce Schneier
Founder and CTO
BT Counterpane
schneier at schneier.com
http://www.schneier.com
http://www.counterpane.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-0711.html>. These same essays
appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog:
<http://www.schneier.com/blog>. An RSS feed is available.
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
In this issue:
The War on the Unexpected
Security Risks of Online Political Contributing
Chemical Plant Security and Externalities
News
Switzerland Protects its Vote with Quantum Cryptography
Security by Letterhead
Schneier/BT Counterpane News
Cyberwar: Myth or Reality?
Understanding the Black Market in Internet Crime
The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG
Comments from Readers
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
The War on the Unexpected
We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the
unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you
act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and
even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of
doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants
and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation
of reported threats.
This isn't the way counterterrorism is supposed to work, but it's
happening everywhere. It's a result of our relentless campaign to
convince ordinary citizens that they're the front line of terrorism
defense. "If you see something, say something" is how the ads read in
the New York City subways. "If you suspect something, report it" urges
another ad campaign in Manchester, UK. The Michigan State Police have a
seven-minute video. Administration officials from then-attorney general
John Ashcroft to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to President Bush have
asked us all to report any suspicious activity.
The problem is that ordinary citizens don't know what a real terrorist
threat looks like. They can't tell the difference between a bomb and a
tape dispenser, electronic name badge, CD player, bat detector, or trash
sculpture; or the difference between terrorist plotters and imams,
musicians, or architects. All they know is that something makes them
uneasy, usually based on fear, media hype, or just something being
different.
Even worse: after someone reports a "terrorist threat," the whole system
is biased towards escalation and CYA instead of a more realistic threat
assessment.
Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The
person he says it to -- a policeman, a security guard, a flight
attendant -- now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may
believe that it's a false alarm, it's not in his best interests to
dismiss the threat. If he's wrong, it'll cost him his career. But if he
escalates, he'll be praised for "doing his job" and the cost will be
borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also
escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we're done, innocent
people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of
police hours have been wasted.
This story has been repeated endlessly, both in the U.S. and in other
countries. Someone -- these are all real -- notices a funny smell, or
some white powder, or two people passing an envelope, or a dark-skinned
man leaving boxes at the curb, or a cell phone in an airplane seat; the
police cordon off the area, make arrests, and/or evacuate airplanes; and
in the end the cause of the alarm is revealed as a pot of Thai chili
sauce, or flour, or a utility bill, or an English professor recycling,
or a cell phone in an airplane seat.
Of course, by then it's too late for the authorities to admit that they
made a mistake and overreacted, that a sane voice of reason at some
level should have prevailed. What follows is the parade of police and
elected officials praising each other for doing a great job, and
prosecuting the poor victim -- the person who was different in the first
place -- for having the temerity to try to trick them.
For some reason, governments are encouraging this kind of behavior. It's
not just the publicity campaigns asking people to come forward and
snitch on their neighbors; they're asking certain professions to pay
particular attention: truckers to watch the highways, students to watch
campuses, and scuba instructors to watch their students. The U.S. wanted
meter readers and telephone repairmen to snoop around houses. There's
even a new law protecting people who turn in their travel mates based on
some undefined "objectively reasonable suspicion," whatever that is.
If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you
shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security.
We need to do two things. The first is to stop urging people to report
their fears. People have always come forward to tell the police when
they see something genuinely suspicious, and should continue to do so.
But encouraging people to raise an alarm every time they're spooked only
squanders our security resources and makes no one safer.
We don't want people to never report anything. A store clerk's tip led
to the unraveling of a plot to attack Fort Dix last May, and in March an
alert Southern California woman foiled a kidnapping by calling the
police about a suspicious man carting around a person-sized crate. But
these incidents only reinforce the need to realistically assess, not
automatically escalate, citizen tips. In criminal matters, law
enforcement is experienced in separating legitimate tips from
unsubstantiated fears, and allocating resources accordingly; we should
expect no less from them when it comes to terrorism.
Equally important, politicians need to stop praising and promoting the
officers who get it wrong. And everyone needs to stop castigating, and
prosecuting, the victims just because they embarrassed the police by
their innocence.
Causing a city-wide panic over blinking signs, a guy with a pellet gun,
or stray backpacks, is not evidence of doing a good job: it's evidence
of squandering police resources. Even worse, it causes its own form of
terror, and encourages people to be even more alarmist in the future. We
need to spend our resources on things that actually make us safer, not
on chasing down and trumpeting every paranoid threat anyone can come up
with.
Ad campaigns:
http://www.mta.info/mta/security/index.html
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1000/1000981_help_us_spot_terrorists__police.html
or http://tinyurl.com/27wuan
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/citizencountert.html
Administration comments:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/attacked/transcripts/ashcroft_100801.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-07-07-dc-londonblasts_x.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/25vf3y
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E6DC1F3AF932A05752C0A9649C8B63
or http://tinyurl.com/2463aw
Incidents:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6387857.stm
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/woman_arrested.html
http://www.lineofduty.com/content/view/84004/128/
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/05/uk_police_blow.html
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/826056.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/col/smith/2004/07/21/askthepilot95/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2bn3qo
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/this_is_what_vi.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/latest_terroris.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20441775/
http://www.thisisbournemouth.co.uk/display.var.1717690.0.seized_by_the_police.php
or http://tinyurl.com/36dgj8
http://alternet.org/rights/50939/
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/english_profess.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7084101?nclick_check=1
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/01/bomb_squad_remo.html
or http://tinyurl.com/ywumfl
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06081/674773.stm
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/another_boston.html
CYA:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1.html
Public campaigns:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/truckers_watchi.html
http://www.winnipegfirst.ca/article/2007/09/24/report_suspicious_behaviour_u_of_m_tells_students
or http://tinyurl.com/2c2t2a
http://www.underwatertimes.com/print.php?article_id=64810251370
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_TIPS
Law protecting tipsters:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07245/813550-37.stm
Successful tips:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/08/AR2007050800465.html
or http://tinyurl.com/38t6vd
http://www.pe.com/localnews/publicsafety/stories/PE_News_Local_D_honor06.3ee3472.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2g26xv
This essay originally appeared in Wired.com:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1101
or http://tinyurl.com/yqvoy6
Some links didn't make it into the original article. There's this
creepy "if you see a father holding his child's hands, call the cops"
campaign:
http://www.bloggernews.net/18108
There's this story of an iPod found on an airplane:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166&pageNo=1
or http://tinyurl.com/ogpbv
There's this story of an "improvised electronics device" trying to get
through airport security:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/09/microcontroller_programme.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890
or http://tinyurl.com/2ynbru
This is a good essay on the "war on electronics."
http://www.cnet.com/surveillance-state/8301-13739_1-9782861-46.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Security Risks of Online Political Contributing
Security researcher Christopher Soghoian gave a presentation last month
warning of the potential phishing risk caused by online political
donation sites. The Threat Level blog reported:
"The presidential campaigns' tactic of relying on impulsive giving
spurred by controversial news events and hyped-up deadlines, combined
with a number of other factors such as inconsistent Web addresses and a
muddle of payment mechanisms creates a conducive environment for fraud,
says Soghoian."
And:
"Fraudsters could easily send out e-mails and establish Web sites that
mimic the official campaigns' sites and similarly send out such e-mails
that would encourage people to 'donate' money without checking for the
authenticity of the site."
He has a point, but it's not new to online contributions. Fake
charities and political organizations have long been problems. When you
get a solicitation in the mail for "Concerned Citizens for a More
Perfect Country" -- insert whatever personal definition you have for
"more perfect" and "country" -- you don't know if the money is going to
your cause or into someone's pocket. When you give money on the street
to someone soliciting contributions for this cause or that one, you have
no idea what will happen to the money at the end of the day.
In the end, contributing money requires trust. While the Internet
certainly makes frauds like this easier -- anyone can set up a webpage
that accepts PayPal and send out a zillion e-mails -- it's nothing new.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/online-campaign.html
http://www.politicalphishing.com/political-phishing-slides.pdf
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Chemical Plant Security and Externalities
It's not true that no one worries about terrorists attacking chemical
plants, it's just that our politics seem to leave us unable to deal with
the threat.
Toxins such as ammonia, chlorine, propane, and flammable mixtures are
constantly being produced or stored in the United States as a result of
legitimate industrial processes. Chlorine gas is particularly toxic; in
addition to bombing a plant, someone could hijack a chlorine truck or
blow up a railcar. Phosgene is even more dangerous. According to the
Environmental Protection Agency, there are 7,728 chemical plants in the
United States where an act of sabotage -- or an accident -- could
threaten more than 1,000 people. Of those, 106 facilities could threaten
more than a million people.
The problem of securing chemical plants against terrorism -- or even
accidents -- is actually simple once you understand the underlying
economics. Normally, we leave the security of something up to its owner.
The basic idea is that the owner of each chemical plant 1) best
understands the risks, and 2) is the one who loses out if security
fails. Any outsider -- i.e., regulatory agency -- is just going to get
it wrong. It's the basic free-market argument, and in most instances it
makes a lot of sense.
And chemical plants do have security. They have fences and guards (which
might or might not be effective). They have fail-safe mechanisms built
into their operations. For example, many large chemical companies use
hazardous substances like phosgene, methyl isocyanate and ethylene oxide
in their plants, but don't ship them between locations. They minimize
the amounts that are stored as process intermediates. In rare cases of
extremely hazardous materials, no significant amounts are stored;
instead they are only present in pipes connecting the reactors that make
them with the reactors that consume them.
This is all good and right, and what free-market capitalism dictates.
The problem is, that isn't enough.
Any rational chemical plant owner will only secure the plant up to its
value to him. That is, if the plant is worth $100 million, then it makes
no sense to spend $200 million on securing it. If the odds of it being
attacked are less than 1 percent, it doesn't even make sense to spend $1
million on securing it. The math is more complicated than this, because
you have to factor in such things as the reputational cost of having
your name splashed all over the media after an incident, but that's the
basic idea.
But to society, the cost of an actual attack can be much, much greater.
If a terrorist blows up a particularly toxic plant in the middle of a
densely populated area, deaths could be in the tens of thousands and
damage could be in the hundreds of millions. Indirect economic damage
could be in the billions. The owner of the chlorine plant would pay none
of these potential costs.
Sure, the owner could be sued. But he's not at risk for more than the
value of his company, and -- in any case -- he'd probably be smarter to
take the chance. Expensive lawyers can work wonders, courts can be
fickle, and the government could step in and bail him out (as it did
with airlines after Sept. 11). And a smart company can often protect
itself by spinning off the risky asset in a subsidiary company, or
selling it off completely. The overall result is that our nation's
chemical plants are secured to a much smaller degree than the risk warrants.
In economics, this is called an *externality*: an effect of a decision
not borne by the decision maker. The decision maker in this case, the
chemical plant owner, makes a rational economic decision based on the
risks and costs *to him*.
If we -- whether we're the community living near the chemical plant or
the nation as a whole -- expect the owner of that plant to spend money
for increased security to account for those externalities, we're going
to have to pay for it. And we have three basic ways of doing that. One,
we can do it ourselves, stationing government police or military or
contractors around the chemical plants. Two, we can pay the owners to do
it, subsidizing some sort of security standard.
Or three, we could regulate security and force the companies to pay for
it themselves. There's no free lunch, of course. "We," as in society,
still pay for it in increased prices for whatever the chemical plants
are producing, but the cost is paid for by the product's consumers
rather than by taxpayers in general.
Personally, I don't care very much which method is chosen: that's
politics, not security. But I do know we'll have to pick one, or some
combination of the three. Asking nicely just isn't going to work. It
can't; not in a free-market economy.
We taxpayers pay for airport security, and not the airlines, because the
overall effects of a terrorist attack against an airline are far greater
than their effects to the particular airline targeted. We pay for port
security because the effects of bringing a large weapon into the country
are far greater than the concerns of the port's owners. And we should
pay for chemical plant, train and truck security for exactly the same
reasons.
Thankfully, after years of hoping the chemical industry would do it on
its own, this April the Department of Homeland Security started
regulating chemical plant security. Some complain that the regulations
don't go far enough, but at least it's a start.
Risks:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-23-chlorine-truck-bomb_N.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/2zk2a5
http://www.chemsafety.gov/index.cfm?folder=news_releases&page=news&NEWS_ID=379
or http://tinyurl.com/23bokt
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/phosgene/basics/facts.asp
http://www.opencrs.com/document/M20050627/2005-06-27%2000:00:00
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/permalink/meta-crs-9917
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0703.levine1.html
Regulations:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/03/chemical_plants_at_risk_us_agency_says/
or http://tinyurl.com/2babz5
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070427/a_chemplant27.art.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/22xwab
This essay previously appeared on Wired.com.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/10/securitymatters_1018
or http://tinyurl.com/yr2cd2
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
News
A handful of prominent security researchers have published a report on
the security risks of the large-scale eavesdropping made temporarily
legal by the "Protect America Act" passed in the U.S. in August, and
which may be made permanently legal soon. "Risking Communications
Security: Potential Hazards of the 'Protect America Act'" -- dated
October 1, 2007, and marked "draft" -- is well worth reading:
http://www.crypto.com/papers/paa-comsec-draft.pdf
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/security_risks_5.html
Hacker extensions for the Firefox web browser.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=136029
An excellent three-part series on trends in criminal malware, mostly
about Gozi. Malware as service.
http://www.cio.com/article/135500/
http://www.cio.com/article/135550/
http://www.cio.com/article/135551/
Macintosh security:
http://www.macworld.com/2007/10/features/lockup_others/index.php
Hacking a 911 emergency phone system. There are no details of what the
"hacking" was, or whether it was anything more than spoofing the caller ID.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003955611_hacker17.html
or http://tinyurl.com/ytqla2
http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/2216044/42831165/83643/2/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21336319/
http://www.ocregister.com/news/home-emami-county-1894171-ellis-system
Fascinating story of insider cheating in online poker:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/
or http://tinyurl.com/2869f9
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=12523924&an=&page=0&vc=1
or http://tinyurl.com/yuu3ts
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12579229&an=0&page=0#Post12579229
or http://tinyurl.com/23766y
This graph of players' river aggression is a great piece of evidence.
Note the single outlying point.
http://www.absolutepokercheats.com/500800vpip.GIF
A classified 2006 TSA report on airport security was leaked to USA
Today. (Other papers covered the story, but their articles all seem to
be derived from the original USA Today article.)
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20071018/a_insidescreeners18.art.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/yudwy4
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-airports19oct19,0,1334943.story?coll=la-home-local
or http://tinyurl.com/2f53yv
http://www.kutv.com/content/news/watercooler/story.aspx?content_id=8380cb0e-3088-4e6b-bbc4-2ca1d91754e1
or http://tinyurl.com/2h6x8g
Weirdest news: "At San Diego International Airport, tests are run by
passengers whom local TSA managers ask to carry a fake bomb, said
screener Cris Soulia, an official in a screeners union." Someone please
tell me this doesn't actually happen. "Hi Mr. Passenger. I'm a TSA
manager. You know I'm not lying to you because of this official-looking
laminated badge I have. We need you to help us test airport security.
Here's a 'fake' bomb that we'd like you to carry through security in
your luggage. Another TSA manager will, um, meet you at your
destination. Give the fake bomb to him when you land. And, by the way,
what's your mother's maiden name?" How in the world is this a good
idea? And how hard is it to dress real TSA managers up like vacationers?
TSA claims that this doesn't happen:
http://www.tsa.gov/approach/mythbusters/fake_bomb.shtm
Here's someone who said that it did, at Dulles Airport:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=737223
"Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower In Jell-O"
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/conceptual_terrorists_encase_sears
or http://tinyurl.com/2pgnrk
Hiding data behind attorney-client privilege:
http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2007/09/10/story3.html
Gregory Engel has some good comments about this:
http://weblog.javazen.com/?p=528
This talk from Defcon this year is related.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1528717968000992954
Detecting restaurant credit card fraud with checksums.
http://www.punny.org/money/fight-thieving-restaurant-servers-with-checksum-tips/
or http://tinyurl.com/2ga8sh
I don't know how common tip fraud is. This thread implies that it's
pretty common, but I use my credit card in restaurants all the time all
over the world and I've never been the victim of this sort of fraud. On
the other hand, I'm not a lousy tipper. And maybe I don't frequent the
right sort of restaurants.
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/771939/
Declan McCullagh on the politicization of security:
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9795316-38.html
Urban camouflage: I want to be able to disguise myself as a Japanese
vending machine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/world/asia/20japan.html?em&ex=1193198400&en=2d37e48f1fcd907c&ei=5087%0A
or http://tinyurl.com/29vb8k
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/urban_camouflag.php"
I made my own hollow book as a kid. These are much nicer. You can even
order your hollow book by topic, the better to blend it into the rest of
your library.
http://www.secretstoragebooks.com/
Terrorist insects: Yet another movie-plot threat to worry about.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/10/21/bug_bomb/
A school in the UK is using RFID chips in school uniforms to track
attendance. So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry
your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/kid_chipping_doncaster_go/
Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon man who was arrested because his
fingerprint "matched" that of an Algerian who handled one of the Madrid
bombs, now has a legacy: a judge has ruled partial prints cannot be used
in a murder case.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_county/bal-te.md.co.prints23oct23,0,6370011.story
or http://tinyurl.com/2vnyg8
World Series ticket website hacked? Maybe. Certainly scalpers have an
incentive to attack this system.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/world_series_ti_1.html
So, this pedophile posts photos of himself with young boys, but obscures
his face with the Photoshop "twirl" tool. Turns out that the
transformation isn't lossy, and that you can untwirl his face. He was
caught in Thailand. Moral: Don't blindly trust technology; you need to
really know what it's doing.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/08/untwirling-photo-of.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSBKK21344820071019
The Russian company Elcomsoft ported password cracking software to a
graphics card, boosting speed by 25 times. Why is this news?
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12825-passwordcracking-chip-causes-security-concerns.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2sjh8v
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1433&tag=nl.e019
The Utah company AccessData has been doing this sort of thing much
longer, and has much better technology.
http://www.schneier.com/essay-148.html
Dilbert on profiling:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071020.html
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071022.html
In a stupid terrorism overreaction, Pennsylvania state officials decided
not to publicize the list of polling places.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305537,00.html
A few days later, the governor rescinded the order.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-10-26-pa-polls_N.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/yvs3vr
A specialized printer used to print Missouri driver's licenses was
stolen and recovered. It's a funny story, actually. Turns out the
thief couldn't get access to the software needed to run the printer; a
lockout on the control computer apparently thwarted him. When he called
tech support, they tipped off the Secret Service. On the one hand, this
probably won't deter a more sophisticated thief. On the other hand, you
can make pretty good forgeries with off-the-shelf equipment.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9803114-7.html
AT&T has a programming language for wholesale surveillance and data mining:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/att-invents-pro.html
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1219
The House of Lords on the airplane liquid ban: "We continuously monitor
the effectiveness of, in particular, the liquid security measures..."
How? "The fact that there has not been a serious incident involving
liquid explosives indicates, I would have thought, that the measures
that we have put in place so far have been very effective."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/lords_liquid_ban/
Architecture and anti-terrorist paranoia:
http://asla.org/awards/2007/studentawards/393.html
http://www.asymmetry.org/2007/10/11/insecurity/
Spammers using porn to break captchas:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7067962.stm
I've been saying that spammers would start doing this for years. I'm
actually surprised it took this long.
Good essay on the no-joke zone at airports:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4256682a1861.html
Someone arrested as a homicide suspect walked out of jail after
identifying himself as someone else. The biometric system worked, but
human error overrode it. It's a neat scam. Find out someone else who's
been arrested, have a friend come and post bail for that person, and
then steal his identity when the jailers come into the cellblock.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/29/national/main3425770.shtml
Synthetic identity theft is poised to become a bigger problem than
regular identity theft:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119362045526074445.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/brn/070516/21861.html?.v=1
Interesting GAO testimony/report: "Internet Infrastructure: Challenges
in Developing a Public/Private Recovery Plan," Gregory C. Wilshusen,
Director, Information Security Issues, Government Accountability Office
(GAO), October 23, 2007.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08212t.pdf
Mad at someone? Turn him in as a terrorist:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071102/od_afp/swedenjusticeterrorismoffbeat_071102124748;_ylt=Ah8e3WCMqHLBJaArTqoWc2is0NUE
or http://tinyurl.com/24nthu
Businesses do this too: "In May 2005 Jet's application for a licence to
fly to America was held up after a firm based in Maryland, also called
Jet Airways, accused Mr Goyal's company of being a money-laundering
outfit for al-Qaeda. Mr Goyal says some of his local competitors were
behind the claim, which was later withdrawn."
http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9762898
This denial-of-service attack against electronic car locks was
accidental, but it could certainly be done on purpose.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7073935.stm
Interesting identity theft study. (It's long, but at least read the
executive summary.)
http://www.utica.edu/academic/institutes/cimip/publications/index.cfm?action=form&paper=6
or http://tinyurl.com/2y225d
http://www.siliconvalley.com/security/ci_7248917
GSMK CryptoPhone G10i: open source, and it uses Twofish.
http://www.cryptophone.de/products/CPG10i/index.html
A Salesforce.com data breach results in targeted phishing attacks:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/06/216228
This is a very moving story about a foreign tourist being removed from a
train for taking pictures:
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/war_and_peace/every_day_diplomacy.php
or http://tinyurl.com/3x5f6c
A response from the writer of the original article, after people
questioned the veracity of the story:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/taking_pictures.html#c215790
or http://tinyurl.com/27j8d8
An Al Qaeda hacker attack was supposed to begin last Sunday. I noticed
nothing.
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=4723
Funny security cartoon from "The New Yorker":
http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=119416
Suicide attacks in the computer game Halo 3:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2007/11/gamesfrontiers_1105
or http://tinyurl.com/3xcjcr
Computer security consultant admits to running a botnet:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/10/america/NA-GEN-US-Hacker-Charged.php
or http://tinyurl.com/yv2gy6
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/security_pro_admits_to_hijacki.html?nav=rss_blog
or http://tinyurl.com/246mh6
High-school football prank provokes terrorism fears:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/highschool_foot.html
Sensible comments from the Canadian privacy commissioner on the no-fly list:
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=4f6539d8-ccd7-4e32-a2d5-1231a6aee0a4&k=31493
or http://tinyurl.com/2ka3yl
Malcolm Gladwell makes a convincing case that criminal profiling is
nothing more than a "cold reading" magic trick.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_sham_of_cri.html
Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence,
made some very dangerous comments about redefining privacy. The press
reported only the most inflammatory comments:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/11/terrorist.surveillance.ap/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/ywqv2t
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/redefining_priv.html
His actual comments are more nuanced:
http://www.odni.gov/speeches/20071023_speech.pdf
Other comments:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/telling-it-straight-by-digby-intel.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2ohxnn
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/11/13/the-cafferty-file-redefining-privacy/
or http://tinyurl.com/ypjjj6
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2007-11/2007-11-12.html
Me on the value of privacy:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html
Hushmail turns encrypted e-mail over to the government:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai.html
The overblown threat of suitcase nukes:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TALE_OF_THE_SUITCASE_NUKE?SITE=WIMIL
or http://tinyurl.com/22az8h
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Switzerland Protects its Vote with Quantum Cryptography
This is so silly I wasn't going to even bother blogging about it. But
the sheer number of news stories has made me change my mind.
Basically, the Swiss company ID Quantique convinced the Swiss government
to use quantum cryptography to protect vote transmissions during their
October 21 election. It was a great publicity stunt, and the news
articles were filled with hyperbole: how the "unbreakable" encryption
will ensure the integrity of the election, how this will protect the
election against hacking, and so on.
Complete idiocy. There are many serious security threats to voting
systems, especially paperless touch-screen voting systems, but they're
not centered around the transmission of votes from the voting site to
the central tabulating office. The software in the voting machines
themselves is a much bigger threat, one that quantum cryptography
doesn't solve in the least.
Moving data from point A to point B securely is one of the easiest
security problems we have. Conventional encryption works great. PGP,
SSL, SSH could all be used to solve this problem, as could pretty much
any good VPN software package; there's no need to use quantum crypto for
this at all. Software security, OS security, network security, and user
security are much harder security problems; and quantum crypto doesn't
even begin to address them.
So, congratulations to ID Quantique for a nice publicity stunt. But did
they actually increase the security of the Swiss election? Doubtful.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9982957
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14833/53/
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/101007-quantum-cryptography-secure-ballots.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2plz5a
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Swiss-to-use-encryption-voting-method/2007/10/13/1191696216022.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2buszw
http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~3/168988905/20071012-geneva-brings-quantum-cryptography-to-internet-voting.html
or http://tinyurl.com/ytxloe
http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/2191514/92085/83014/2/
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12786-quantum-cryptography-to-protect-swiss-election.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3ctx4y
Me on quantum cryptography:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#6
Me on voting:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0411.html#1
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0411.html#2
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#9
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0012.html#1
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Security by Letterhead
Worsethanfailure.com has an amusing story about someone trying to get
something done via phone tech support. The person at the other end of
the phone line needs a written request on "company letterhead," which --
after an argument -- is provided by fax.
Ha ha. The idiot ISP guy doesn't realize how easy it for anyone with a
word processor and a laser printer to fake a letterhead. But what this
story really shows is how hard it is for people to change their security
intuition. Security-by-letterhead was fairly robust when printing was
hard, and faking a letterhead was real work. Today it's easy, but
people -- especially people who grew up under the older paradigm --
don't act as if it is. They would if they thought about it, but most of
the time our security runs on intuition and not on explicit thought.
This kind of thing bites us all the time. Mother's maiden name is no
longer a good password. An impressive-looking storefront on the
Internet is not the same as an impressive-looking storefront in the real
world. The headers on an e-mail are not a good authenticator of its
origin. It's an effect of technology moving faster than our ability to
develop a good intuition about that technology.
And, as technology changes ever increasingly faster, this will only get
worse.
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Security-by-Letterhead.aspx
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Schneier/BT Counterpane News
Schneier is speaking at the ISMS Forum on November 20 in Madrid:
https://www.ismsforum.es/index.php
Schneier is speaking at the ISF Annual World Congress on December 10 in
Capetown:
http://www.securityforum.org/html/congres.htm
I spoke at the EDUCAUSE conference this year in Seattle. There's a
podcast and video of my talk available ("Ten Trends of Information
Security"; I've given the talk before) as well as a podcast of an
interview with me.
http://www.educause.edu/E07/Program/11073?PRODUCT_CODE=E07/GS02
http://connect.educause.edu/blog/mpasiewicz/e07podcastanintervie/45439
My blog, "Schneier on Security," has been listed as the Illuminated Site
of the Week by Daily Illuminator, run by Steve Jackson Games.
http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archives.html?y=2007&m=November&d=10
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Cyberwar: Myth or Reality?
The biggest problems in discussing cyberwar are the definitions. The
things most often described as cyberwar are really cyberterrorism, and
the things most often described as cyberterrorism are more like
cybercrime, cybervandalism or cyberhooliganism--or maybe cyberespionage.
At first glance, there's nothing new about these terms except the
"cyber" prefix. War, terrorism, crime and vandalism are old concepts.
What's new is the domain; it's the same old stuff occurring in a new
arena. But because cyberspace is different, there are differences worth
considering.
Of course, the terms overlap. Although the goals are different, many
tactics used by armies, terrorists and criminals are the same. Just as
they use guns and bombs, they can use cyberattacks. And just as every
shooting is not necessarily an act of war, every successful Internet
attack, no matter how deadly, is not necessarily an act of cyberwar. A
cyberattack that shuts down the power grid might be part of a cyberwar
campaign, but it also might be an act of cyberterrorism, cybercrime or
even--if done by some 14-year-old who doesn't really understand what
he's doing--cyberhooliganism. Which it is depends on the attacker's
motivations and the surrounding circumstances--just as in the real world.
For it to be cyberwar, it must first be war. In the 21st century, war
will inevitably include cyberwar. Just as war moved into the air with
the development of kites, balloons, and aircraft, and into space with
satellites and ballistic missiles, war will move into cyberspace with
the development of specialized weapons, tactics, and defenses.
I have no doubt that smarter and better-funded militaries are planning
for cyberwar. They have Internet attack tools: denial-of-service tools;
exploits that would allow military intelligence to penetrate military
systems; viruses and worms similar to what we see now, but perhaps
country- or network-specific; and Trojans that eavesdrop on networks,
disrupt operations, or allow an attacker to penetrate other networks. I
believe militaries know of vulnerabilities in operating systems, generic
or custom military applications, and code to exploit those
vulnerabilities. It would be irresponsible for them not to.
The most obvious attack is the disabling of large parts of the Internet,
although in the absence of global war, I doubt a military would do so;
the Internet is too useful an asset and too large a part of the world
economy. More interesting is whether militaries would disable national
pieces of it. For a surgical approach, we can imagine a cyberattack
against a military headquarters, or networks handling logistical
information.
Destruction is the last thing a military wants to accomplish with a
communications network. A military only wants to shut down an enemy's
network if it isn't acquiring useful information. The best thing is to
infiltrate enemy computers and networks, spy on them, and
surreptitiously disrupt select pieces of their communications when
appropriate. The next best thing is to passively eavesdrop. After that,
perform traffic analysis: analyze the characteristics of communications.
Only if a military can't do any of this would it consider shutting the
thing down. Or if, as sometimes but rarely happens, the benefits of
completely denying the enemy the communications channel outweigh the
advantages of eavesdropping on it.
Cyberwar is certainly not a myth. But you haven't seen it yet, despite
the attacks on Estonia. Cyberwar is warfare in cyberspace. And warfare
involves massive death and destruction. When you see it, you'll know it.
This is the second half of a point/counterpoint with Marcus Ranum; it
appeared in the November issue of "Information Security Magazine." You
can read Marcus's half here:
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazineFeature/0,296894,sid14_gci1280052,00.html
or http://tinyurl.com/25bs56
Longer essay of mine on cyberwar:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/06/cyberwar.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Understanding the Black Market in Internet Crime
Here's an interesting paper from Carnegie Mellon University: "An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants."
The paper focuses on the large illicit market that specializes in the
commoditization of activities in support of Internet-based crime. The
main goal of the paper was to understand and measure how these markets
function, and discuss the incentives of the various market entities.
Using a dataset collected over seven months and comprising over 13
million messages, they were able to categorize the market's
participants, the goods and services advertised, and the asking prices
for selected interesting goods.
Really cool stuff.
Unfortunately, the data is extremely noisy and so far the authors have
no way to cross-validate it, so it is difficult to make any strong
conclusions.
The press focused on just one thing: a discussion of general ways to
disrupt the market. Contrary to the claims of the article, the authors
have not built any tools to disrupt the markets.
http://sparrow.ece.cmu.edu/group/pub/franklin_paxson_perrig_savage_miscreants.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/25cgas
Press:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071017-comp-sci-researchers-use-economic-theory-to-disrupt-malware-black-markets.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2gbok8
http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/October/oct15_internetblackmarkets.shtml
or http://tinyurl.com/2hhyos
Related blog posts:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/the_storm_worm.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/future_of_malwa.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG
Random numbers are critical for cryptography: for encryption keys,
random authentication challenges, initialization vectors, nonces, key
agreement schemes, generating prime numbers, and so on. Break the
random number generator, and most of the time you break the entire
security system. Which is why you should worry about a new random
number standard that includes an algorithm that is slow, badly designed,
and just might contain a backdoor for the NSA.
Generating random numbers isn't easy, and researchers have discovered
lots of problems and attacks over the years. A recent paper found a
flaw in the Windows 2000 random number generator; another paper found
flaws in the Linux random number generator. Back in 1996, an early
version of SSL was broken because of flaws in its random number
generator. In 1999, I co-authored (with John Kelsey and Ferguson)
Yarrow, a random number generator based on our own cryptanalysis work.
I improved this design four years later -- and renamed it Fortuna -- in
the book "Practical Cryptography," which I co-authored with Ferguson.
This year, the U.S. government released a new official standard for
random number generators, which will likely be followed by software and
hardware developers around the world. Called NIST Special Publication
800-90, the 130-page document contains four different approved
techniques, called DRBGs, or "Deterministic Random Bit Generators." All
four are based on existing cryptographic primitives. One is based on
hash functions, one on HMAC, one on block ciphers, and one on elliptic
curves. It's smart cryptographic design to use only a few well-trusted
cryptographic primitives, so building a random number generator out of
existing parts is a good thing.
But one of those generators -- the one based on elliptic curves -- is
not like the others. Called Dual_EC_DRBG, not only is it a mouthful to
say, it's also three orders of magnitude slower than its peers. It's in
the standard only because it's been championed by the NSA, which first
proposed it years ago in a related standardization project at the
American National Standards Institute.
The NSA has always been intimately involved in U.S. cryptography
standards -- it is, after all, expert in making and breaking secret
codes. So the agency's participation in the NIST standard is not
sinister in itself. It's only when you look under the hood at the NSA's
contribution that questions arise.
Problems with Dual_EC_DBRG were first described in early 2006. The math
is complicated, but the general point is that the random numbers it
produces have a small bias. The problem isn't large enough to make the
algorithm unusable -- and Appendix E of the NIST standard describes an
optional workaround to avoid the issue -- but it's cause for concern.
Cryptographers are a conservative bunch; we don't like to use algorithms
that have even a whiff of a problem.
But today there's an even bigger stink brewing around Dual_EC_DRBG. In
an informal presentation at the CRYPTO 2007 conference this past August,
Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed that the algorithm contains a
weakness that can only be described as a backdoor.
This is how it works: There are a bunch of constants -- fixed numbers
-- in the standard used to define the algorithm's elliptic curve. These
constants are listed in Appendix A of the NIST publication, but nowhere
is it explained where they came from.
What Shumow and Ferguson showed is that these numbers have a
relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind
of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can predict the
output of the random number generator after collecting just 32 bytes of
its output. To put that in real terms, you only need to monitor one TLS
internet encryption connection in order to crack the security of that
protocol. If you know the secret numbers, you can completely break any
instantiation of Dual_EC_DRBG.
The researchers don't know what the secret numbers are. But because of
the way the algorithm works, the person who produced the constants might
know; he had the mathematical opportunity to produce the constants and
the secret numbers in tandem.
Of course, we have no way of knowing whether the NSA knows the secret
numbers that break Dual_EC-DRBG. We have no way of knowing whether an
NSA employee, working on his own came up with the constants, and has the
secret numbers. We don't know if someone from NIST, or someone in the
ANSI working group, has them. Maybe nobody does.
We don't know where the constants came from in the first place; we only
know that whoever came up with them could have the key to this backdoor.
And we know there's no way for NIST -- or anyone else -- to prove
otherwise.
This is scary stuff indeed.
Even if no one knows the secret numbers, the fact that the backdoor is
present makes Dual_EC_DRBG very fragile. If someone were to solve just
one instance of the algorithm's elliptic curve problem, he would
effectively have the keys to the kingdom. He could then use it for
whatever nefarious purpose he wanted. Or he could publish his result,
and render every implementation of the random number generator
completely insecure.
It's possible to implement Dual_EC_DRBG in such a way as to protect it
against this backdoor, by generating new constants with another secure
random number generator and then publishing the seed. This method is
even in the NIST document, in Appendix A. But the procedure is
optional, and my guess is that most implementations of the Dual_EC_DRBG
won't bother.
If this story leaves you confused, join the club. I don't understand
why the NSA was so insistent about including Dual_EC-DRBG in the
standard. It makes no sense as a trap door: it's public, and rather
obvious. It makes no sense from an engineering perspective: it's too
slow for anyone to willingly use it. And it makes no sense from a
backwards compatibility perspective: swapping one random number
generator for another is easy.
My recommendation, if you're in need of a random number generator, is
not to use Dual_EC_DRBG under any circumstances. If you have to use
something in SP 800-90, use CTR_DRBG or Hash_DRBG. Or Fortuna or
Yarrow, for that matter.
In the meantime, both NIST and the NSA have some explaining to do.
RNG Flaws:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~rjg7v/annotated.html
http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/419
http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/086.pdf
http://www.ddj.com/windows/184409807
http://www.schneier.com/paper-prngs.html
Yarrow:
http://www.schneier.com/yarrow.html
NIST SP 800-90:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90/SP800-90revised_March2007.pdf
Dual_EC_DRBG problems:
http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/190
http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/048
Shumow-Ferguson presentation:
http://rump2007.cr.yp.to/15-shumow.pdf
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
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,
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Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to
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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 founder and CTO of BT Counterpane, and is a member of 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>.
BT Counterpane is the world's leading protector of networked information
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Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not
necessarily those of BT or BT Counterpane.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Bruce Schneier.
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