CRYPTO-GRAM
January 15, 2002
by Bruce Schneier
Founder and CTO
Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
schneierat_private
<http://www.counterpane.com>
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and
commentaries on computer security and cryptography.
Back issues are available at
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html>. To subscribe, visit
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html> or send a blank message to
crypto-gram-subscribeat_private
Copyright (c) 2002 by Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
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In this issue:
Windows UPnP Vulnerability
Crypto-Gram Reprints
News
Counterpane News
Password Safe 2.0
The Doghouse: AGS Encryptions
Comments from Readers
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Windows UPnP Vulnerability
The big news of late December was a security flaw in Microsoft's Universal
Plug and Play system, a feature in a variety of Windows flavors. On the
one hand, this is a big deal: the vulnerability can allow anyone to take
over a target computer. On the other hand, this is just one of many
similar vulnerabilities in all sorts of software -- Microsoft and
non-Microsoft -- and one for which there is no rapidly spreading exploit.
There are several lessons from all of this.
One, the amount of press coverage is not indicative of the level of
severity, and the press is the only way to get the news out to the
public. This thing got Nimda-like press, but there was no exploit. While
it is a critical patch to install, it's not severe enough to trigger the
"wake up, drive to work, and install this patch now!"
reflex. Unfortunately, the public will have patience for only so many of
these stories before their eyes glaze over. The rate of patch installation
is decreasing, as people simply stop paying attention.
Two, Microsoft still sacrifices accuracy for public relations
value. Here's a quote from Scott Culp, manager of Microsoft's security
response center: "This is the first network-based, remote compromise that
I'm aware of for Windows desktop systems." I was all set to write a
longish rant, calling the statement a lie and listing other network-based
remote Windows compromises -- Back Orifice, Nimda, etc., etc., etc. -- but
Richard Forno beat me to it. Read his excellent commentary on Microsoft
and security.
To combat this, open and public discussion is important. In the first days
of the vulnerability, there was a lot of debate in the press: which systems
were vulnerable by default, how best to fix the problem, etc. Even the FBI
got into the act, albeit with wrong information they later adjusted. The
importance here is a multitude of voices and a multitude of views,
something that secrecy won't provide. As Greg Guerin commented, when
there's a fire in a theater, you want as many audience members as possible
to shout "Fire!" rather than sitting around waiting for the theater manager
to say it. The theater manager is going to put his own spin on the news,
and it's not likely to be an unbiased one.
Three, bug secrecy hurts us all. According to reports, eEye Digital
Security told Microsoft about this vulnerability nearly two months before
Microsoft released its patch. What's with the two-month delay? It's a
simple buffer overflow, and should be patched within days. Delays just
increase the likelihood that someone will exploit the vulnerability. (To
think, some time ago I criticized eEye for not waiting long enough before
releasing a vulnerability. Shows how hard it is to get the balance right.)
Four, Microsoft still pays lip service to security. This vulnerability is
a buffer overflow, the easy-to-use low-hanging-fruit automatic-tools-to-fix
kind of security vulnerability. It's not new or subtle; buffer overflows
have been causing serious security problems for decades. It's an obvious,
stupid-ass programming mistake that ANY reasonably implemented security
program should have caught. Remember Microsoft's big PR fuss about their
Secure Windows Initiative? If it can't catch this simple stuff, how can it
secure software against the complex attacks and vulnerabilities? This is a
software quality problem, pure and simple. And the real solution is better
software design, implementation, and quality procedures, not more patches
and alerts and press releases.
And five, complexity equals insecurity. UPnP is a complex set of protocols
to support ad hoc peer-to-peer networking. Even though no one uses it,
it's installed in a bunch of Microsoft OSs. Even though no one needs it
turned on, sometimes it's turned on by default. This kind of "feature
feature feature" mentality, without regard to security, means this kind of
thing is going to happen again and again. Until software companies are
held liable for the code they produce, they will continue to pack their
software with needless features and neglect to consider their associated
security ramifications.
This vulnerability also illustrates why Microsoft is so keen on bug
secrecy. The industry analysts at Gartner issued a warning, urging
companies to delay upgrading to Windows XP for "three to six months," lest
more of these kind of vulnerabilities surface. If Microsoft had learned of
this vulnerability in secret, and fixed it in secret, Gartner would not
make any such statements. No one would be the wiser. (But, of course, if
Microsoft learned of this vulnerability in secret, what impetus would they
have to fix it quickly? Wouldn't it be easier on everyone if they just
rolled it into the next product update?)
Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because we have some
fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft's poor products are
one of the reasons we're in business. We pick on them because they've done
more to harm Internet security than anyone else, because they repeatedly
lie to the public about their products' security, and because they do
everything they can to convince people that the problems lie anywhere but
inside Microsoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public
relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kind of
nonsense from Microsoft and its products. (Note to Gartner: The
vulnerabilities will come, a couple of them a week, for years and
years...until people stop looking for them. Waiting six months isn't going
to make this OS safer.)
News
<http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100941,00.html>
<http://theregister.co.uk/content/55/23480.html>
<http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,49301,00.html>
<http://www.msnbc.com/news/675850.asp?0dm=B13QT>
News article with the Culp quote:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7050-2001Dec20.html>
Advisories:
<http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20011220.html>
<http://www.nipc.gov/warnings/advisories/2001/01-030-2.htm>
<http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-37.html>
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp>
FBI's statement:
<http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO66939,00.html>
FBI's retraction:
<http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/210127p-2028258c.html>
<http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO67069,00.html>
Gartner commentary:
<http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-8254545-0.html?tag=prntfr>
Forno's commentary:
<http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2001-15.html>
Gibson's commentary:
<http://grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm>
Other analysis:
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/50>
<http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article/0,,10_945371,00.html>
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Crypto-Gram Reprints
A cyber Underwriters Laboratories?
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0101.html#1>
Code signing:
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0101.html#10>
Publicity attacks:
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0001.html#KeyFindingAttacksandPublic
ityAttacks>
Block and stream ciphers:
<http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0001.html#BlockandStreamCiphers>
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News
The year in vulnerabilities. This document contains a list (with
references) of all the operating systems and applications with
vulnerabilities (not necessarily known or public exploits).
<http://www.nipc.gov/cybernotes/2001/cyberissue2001-26.pdf>
Software and liabilities:
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/47>
Dmitry Sklyarov reached a plea bargain with U.S. attorneys. He's free.
<http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8324114.html>
The agreement:
<http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/press/assets/applets/2001_12_13_sklyarov.pdf>
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49272,00.html>
And here's Sklyarov's side. It turns out that the Justice Department
misrepresented several facts:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/983>
IDSs and false alarms:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23420.html>
Viruses and Trojans will be commonplace on cellphones before long. Lots of
them will accept executable code over the air.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/newsid_170
9000/1709107.stm>
Why not spam a Trojan to a million cellphones?
Excellent essay by Mike Godwin on digital rights management and the battle
between computer companies and entertainment companies:
<http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-net-mg.htm>
Two more good essays on the inherent dangers in keeping security
vulnerabilities secret, and Microsoft's threat to security:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23418.html>
<http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2001-11.html>
Judge upholds government in Scarfo case. The evidence surreptitiously
gathered from the defendant's computer can be admitted in court.
<http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/jersey/ledger/1568cd5.html>
<http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49455,00.html>
Text of the decision:
<http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/fed/html/scarfo2.html-1.html>
CCBill hacked:
<http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100990,00.html>
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23482.html>
<http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO66920,00.html>
Even worse, CCBill knew about their security problem months ago. They made
a quick fix of part of the problem, and then hoped that no one would find
out about the rest of the insecurities. This is a good illustration of the
problems that ensue when there is no pressure on a company to fix its
security problems. If researchers are prohibited from making their
discoveries public, expect a lot more of this kind of thing.
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23493.html>
Good essay on the flaws inherent in large databases, and how they can
affect any national ID system:
<http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a122001.html>
GAO Security Auditing Guide. Interesting reading.
<http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/mgmtpln.pdf>
Yet another report saying the obvious: many companies are vulnerable to
cyber attacks.
<http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/01/08/security.reut/index.html>
And attacks are on the rise:
<http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,79303,00.asp>
New virus that infects Shockwave Flash files:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/23594.html>
Microsoft caught rigging online poll:
<http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2102244,00.html>
This has interesting security implications. On the one hand, these polls
are not to be trusted, and anyone who knows anything about statistics knows
this. On the other hand, almost no one knows anything about statistics,
and companies rely on these polls to make business decisions. This
incident illustrates how little security there is in on-line polling, and
this incident illustrates the lengths Microsoft will go to rewrite the
truth. But the real moral is about PR vs. reality. Any time that PR
dominates the information stream, you can't trust the information.
The author of DeCSS has been indicted in Norway:
<http://www.securityfocus.com/news/306>
<http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8434181.html>
Announcing a Workshop on Economics and Information Security.
<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/econws.html>
Interesting research on full-disclosure and security. This research tracks
all the CERT vulnerabilities of 2001 and who discovered them. Only 22 of
the 200 vulnerabilities looked at were discovered by vendors.
<http://www.software.umn.edu/~mcarney/>
Interview with Ed Felton on the futility of digital copy prevention:
<http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2002/nf2002019_7170.htm>
Two-part article on social engineering:
<http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1527>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1533>
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Counterpane News
Network World Magazine named Bruce Schneier a Power Executive for 2002. (I
promise to use my power only for good.)
<http://www.nwfusion.com/power01/50most/executives.html>
<http://www.counterpane.com/pr-power.html>
CEO Tom Rowley was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum:
<http://www.counterpane.com/pr-pioneers.html>
Counterpane has its first Asian reseller:
<http://www.counterpane.com/pr-infinitum.html>
Schneier is speaking about Counterpane and its monitoring services in Los
Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Detroit, and DC. If you are
interested in attending, please contact Robin Caputo at
<caputoat_private>.
Schneier is speaking at the International Security Management Association
winter meeting in San Diego on 1/21.
Schneier is speaking at the RSA Conference. He will chair the
Cryptographers' Panel on 2/19, and give a solo talk on 2/20 at (ick) 8:00 AM.
<http://www.rsaconference.com>
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Password Safe 2.0
Better. Cleaner. Tighter. Multi-platform support. Open source. And
it's under development. You can watch the progress on SourceForge. I hope
to have beta, with most if not all of the high-priority fixes and
enhancements, available for download by the end of the month.
Soon I will be looking for someone to port the code to Linux, Macintosh,
and PalmOS.
<http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net>
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The Doghouse: AGS Encryptions
This company believes they can get the perfect security of a one-time pad,
but without the annoyance of long keys.
How will they accomplish this magic? They specify keys with no preset
length. Interesting idea, but in practice users will almost always select
a short key, because long keys are too hard to manage. However, they argue
that the cryptanalyst has to keep in mind the possibility that the user
might have used a long key. Presumably the intention is that the
cryptanalyst won't be able to rule out any possible plaintext, because
there's always some key (no matter how unlikely) that could yield this
plaintext. That's the argument, anyway. To make things sound even more
secure, they get to use fancy words like "key equivocation."
Pay no attention to the bogosity of this reasoning. AGS ought to know
better. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and if you want the
unconditional security of a one-time pad, you have to pay for it with long
keys. Shannon proved this (a mathematical proof, not open for debate)
fifty years ago. You'd think people would have caught on by now.
The AGS Web site has various hard-to-read white papers on it:
<http://www.agsencryptions.com/>
And they somehow even got an academic paper published at INDOCRYPT
2001. (Don't ask me how; the program committee has some sharp people on
it, and the paper is an embarrassment.)
<http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/bibs/2247/22470330.htm>
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Comments from Readers
From: Greg Guerin <glguerinat_private>
Subject: Thoughts on Software Liability
The purpose of liability is to hold someone accountable. Liability is a
means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is accountability, and
there may be other ways to achieve it. Liability is just one way.
Liability is a tangible cost for making mistakes. Being tangible, it can
also be predicted or forecast with some degree of accuracy. Good
predictions of the cost rely on experience and analysis. Good decisions
come from a history of good predictions. Bad predictions broaden the
experience of what contributes to the cost of mistakes, and improves the
analysis process. Errors in assessing liability are not just inevitable,
but necessary.
Liability can only work when there is a specific "someone" who can be held
accountable. That someone could also be a small group. It can't be too
large a group, though, or liability fails. "Holding society accountable"
is a nice phrase, but it's completely impractical when it comes to
liability. Political action and legislation, not liability, are the means
to hold an industry, a government, or a society accountable.
Liability also fails if there's no one that can be found and held
accountable, or if the consequences of being held accountable are
insignificant. People you can't find or hold can't be made accountable,
even to criminal laws. People without tangible assets don't care if they
are held accountable, because they can't lose anything
significant. "Nothing to lose" breaks accountability and
liability. That's why tougher laws sometimes have no effect. If you have
nothing to lose, then losing more of nothing is still nothing, so what's
the difference?
Liability also requires an authority accepted and recognized by both
parties. If one party or the other is not governed by the same authority,
or simply refuses governance, then liability is just an exercise in public
relations. The harmed party can't possibly recover any damages, or even
affect the liable party in any way (no consequences). So liability can't
work without a mutually accepted authority. For that authority to be
effective, though, it needs both laws and the power of enforceable
action. Without the laws, the authority is a lawless tyrant. Without
enforceable actions, the authority is a paper tiger.
If liability is a cost, then it can be insured against. Insurance is a way
to spread risk over a group by partitioning it into small amounts that each
group member pays for upfront. That's what an insurance premium is: your
fraction of the anticipated overall cost. But insurance only works with a
large enough population, or a predictable enough event, or a small enough
per-event cost. Small groups, utterly unpredictable events, or high
per-event costs mean no insurance. No insurance means you take the entire
risk on yourself. Risking everything is, well, risking everything. Lose
and you invariably lose big. Win and you may or may not win big.
To get insurance, an insurance company wants to know how reliable something
is before insuring against its failure. If reliability is unknown or
unknowable, then they just charge a high premium and take a gamble, hoping
to spread a loss to other less-risky areas. When we talk about software
security, we're really talking about software reliability. Secure software
is reliable. Unreliable software is insecure. So software liability
insurance is essentially software reliability insurance. Producing
unreliable software is simply shifting the costs from initial development
into deployment. Producing reliable software costs more in development,
but less in deployment and maintenance.
Insurance costs are directly related to reliability. Show that your
software is reliable before you release it, then your liability exposure is
diminished, and so is your liability insurance cost. If you can't show
reliability, or your software fails an expert analysis and assessment of
its predicted reliability, then your insurance costs are higher. To lower
your insurance costs, you then have to demonstrate in the marketplace that
your software is reliable in day-to-day practice in the real world. If it
works well enough and long enough, then your insurance costs go down. If
it doesn't, then your costs go up. If the costs exceed the revenues from
the software, you're losing money keeping the product on the market. So
even if the development costs were lower for producing unreliable software,
you can still end up losing money if the liability costs are too high.
Liability also acts as a barrier to market entry. If you can't show that
your new software is reliable, or that you have a history of producing
reliable software, then it costs you more to enter the software
marketplace. If you can't pay those entry costs, you can't release the
software. Just like in states with mandatory automobile liability
insurance, where you can't drive without insurance. Driving without
insurance is breaking the law, just as releasing software without insurance
would be if liability were the law. Or you have to take on higher risks to
enter the market, or you have to get someone reliable (trustworthy) to
vouch for your software, or you get a reliable intermediary to distribute
your software and provide the insurance, or you limit your liability
exposure in other ways.
Entry barriers, however, are basically filtering or censoring mechanisms,
and they have costs. One cost is that they keep out anyone who can't
afford reliability insurance, or who isn't willing to risk everything they
own on a single piece of software. That situation would pretty much kill
Free Software and Open Source as software providers. If liability is the
law, then disclaiming liability is a lawless act. Then you'd be risking
criminal penalties as well as civil ones.
One way to lower the barrier is to limit liability. For example, to no
more than the cost of the product. That's not a perfect solution, however,
since there's no way to prohibit dangerously unreliable software that's
given away or sold for a tiny amount. The problem seems insurmountable
until we simply accept the situation as a balance of forces: accountability
by liability vs. barriers to entry. We don't have to get it perfect, just
reasonably well balanced. We don't have to get it exactly balanced at the
outset, either, just set up a system that can evolve with time and experience.
Bad software also has another pressure to contend with: reputation. If
it's really bad, people will talk about it. This is true for freely
available software just as much as for commercial software. But this
speech can only occur if there are no constraints on the public discussion
of software quality. Today, some software licenses prohibit certain kinds
of public discussions, such as bugs or benchmark results involving the
licensed software. This approach may have short-term value to the vendor,
but it eventually erodes the reputation of the product or vendor
itself. When we can't fairly decide whether to trust something or not, we
call it "risky" or even "untrustworthy". A censored discussion is an
untrustworthy discussion -- you don't know what's being left out.
Reputations matter. Reputation is cumulative trustworthiness, and must be
earned. It can disappear much more rapidly than it was
acquired. Reputations are built from trustworthy statements about you made
by others. Of course, the reputations of the others matter, too. You don't
believe everything some random person tells you, and you don't do
everything some random person tells you to do. Well, not unless you're a
computer on the Internet.
Reputation is not an absolute, though. If a piece of software is the only
game in town, then you have to live with it no matter how bad it is or how
awful the vendor acts. But that, too, is a pressure, because some software
developer somewhere is eventually going to say "I can do better than this,"
and then do it. So competition is a way of making a reputation have
consequences. In a sense, competition is one of the liabilities of
reputation. But only if the entry barriers aren't too high. Competition
between elites is too easily turned into collusion between plunderers.
Laws are another pressure on reputation. Really serious harm becomes
criminal at some point, so the criminal laws come into effect. Sometimes
just a possibility or threat of harm is enough to make a crime, if that
threat is severe enough and plausible enough. Or if a hazard to the public
is left in an openly dangerous state. In some cases, the laws even
prescribe the actions of public officials if the owner of the hazard can't
be coerced into action. For example, food and health inspections, fire
codes, building condemnation, and so on.
In the end, liability does not stand alone. It's just one part of a larger
picture, which is the overall landscape of trustworthiness, reliability,
meaningful information, and informed action. Liability isn't a panacea,
either. It comes with costs. There are ways to balance the costs against
the benefits, but that takes a certain amount of time, experience, and
genuine wisdom in order to really work. There's no simple and easy
answer. If there were, we almost certainly would have thought of it by now.
From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhnat_private>
Subject: Re: National ID Cards
Your essay provides a sensible and knowledgeable overview of the pitfalls
in the design of national identity verification infrastructures, of which
photo ID cards are just one aspect. In particular, it avoids the common
mistake of basing the entire discussion of national identity
infrastructures solely around the question of whether it could have
prevented the September 11 plane crashes, a naive and narrow-minded
approach taken unfortunately by numerous other commentators.
Nevertheless, I'd like to add a few remarks and offer a few very different
conclusions:
Firstly, the discussion on counterfeiting is somewhat misleading as it
misses an essential point. While it is true that there are many fake
security documents in circulation, the overwhelming majority of these are
quite easily spotted by a professional verifier who is properly trained for
the document type in question. It might be impossible to design security
documents, seals, or even banknotes that any untrained offline user can
verify reliably. On the other hand, it requires quite enormous resources to
produce independently a convincing replica of a state-of-the-art security
document that will pass the inspection of a professional verifier, such as
for example a police officer or (hopefully) a bank clerk. Such people would
of course have to attend repeated training courses to learn how to verify
the security features.
Such courses usually train and examine the verification skills with
collections of many different types of fake documents that have to be
spotted by participants among genuine ones. The smaller the number of
different types of ID documents there are to be verified, the easier and
more effective such verification training will become, which is *the*
crucial advantage of having one single standard national ID card.
In high-security environments, officers would of course have to be
confronted deliberately with high-end sample fake documents during routine
work, in order to ensure their continued alertness for dubious
reproductions of security features. What is indeed more difficult to spot
offline are genuine security documents that were wrongfully issued by the
regular producers of these documents, for example with the help of bribed
employees in the relevant agencies. But experienced officers know a large
number of tricks for plausibility testing of an identity claim (starting
with now widely known tricks such as asking for both age and
date-of-birth), which would of course not be obsoleted by ID cards. Also,
good security management techniques will have to be used to guard issuing
facilities, and I hope and trust very much that a nation that manages vast
numbers of weapons of mass destruction can handle security management at
that scale adequately. If you can't even protect a national identity card
issuing facility properly....
Visitors from Continental Europe, where national ID card systems have been
used very successfully and have been a part of daily life for many decades,
are frequently amused about the bizarre identification rituals and at the
same time extremely sloppy document security practise they encounter in
those parts of the English speaking world that are so proud of their lack
of ID cards. As an anecdotal example, video rental shops in Cambridge
didn't accept my EU passport when I applied to become a member, but a
utility bill or recent bank statement would do (both merely laserprinted,
no standardized form or security features, without any biometric, not
routinely carried with me, and orders of magnitude easier to fake).
Similarly, I found that many places in the US ask for two forms of photo
ID, but then accept completely random laminated pieces of plastic such as
photo tickets.
Call it a cultural bias, but I *do* find it personally worrying that anyone
who stole a recent bank statement and knows my mother's maiden name and age
of my account will be easily able to acquire full access to my account. In
countries with national ID cards, any access to my account without both PIN
and banking card usually requires the verification of identity via a
national ID card. Similarly, national ID cards have to be presented to and
are verified by university examiners in many European countries to avoid
the for-hire exam sitting practice not uncommon in the US.
How useful a national ID card is depends mostly on a list of which
activities make proper identification mandatory, because only in these
areas will individuals be effectively protected by the system against
impersonation. This is an aspect often forgotten in discussions, and for
example in the UK, the idea of a national ID card is still tightly coupled
to the unrealistic assumption quoted routinely by its opponents that anyone
walking on a street would have to carry one.
There exist decades of solid experience and many detail lessons to be
learned from places such as Germany or Scandinavia, where national identity
systems have generally been found to be a useful and reassuring security
infrastructure that can easily be made compatible with far more paranoid
data-protection expectations than those common in the US.
Claims about the uselessness or cost of national identity verification
systems should be based first of all on the practical experience and
impersonation fraud statistics in countries who have already used such
facilities for a long time, instead of mere speculation.
National ID cards obviously will not prevent suicide terrorism. This is
simply because it is in the nature of that particular activity that known
repeat offenders are rare and post-mortem identification is not even in
their interest. Hardly *any* imaginable security mechanism will noticeably
deter creative suicide terrorists and all we can hope is that their overall
numbers are rather limited.
But an infrastructure for the convenient and reliable verification of
identity remains a useful and important element of fraud prevention in
daily activities ranging from proof-of-age to university examinations to
banking. A single standardized security document with anti-counterfeit
features superior to that of high-value banknotes will tremendously
increase the effectiveness of card verifier training. It will make it far
more difficult to use fake identities than an environment with a
bewildering range of identity documents, such as the many different state
driver licenses and banking cards used as de facto ID cards in the US
today, in which effective verifier training becomes a logistic nightmare.
From: Malcolm Melville <malcolmat_private>
Subject: "Judges Punish Bad Security"
If only those who take measures to prevent their connected system being
used to launch attacks on others are to be allowed to be connected to the
Internet, how is this to be policed, and how is it to be administered in a
manner that does not prevent legitimate users from being connected? The
law seems to be a very blunt instrument -- which largely acts after the
event currently -- and were it used up front, the hurdles put in the way of
small companies or individuals could be onerous to the point of a denial of
freedom of movement within the netWorld.
I understand where your brief article is coming from and agree with what
you wrote, but the implications maybe need further expansion. For example,
should telcos and service providers be obliged to provide the first line of
defence in order to prevent their subscribers' machines from being abused,
rather than requiring each connected entity to take that
responsibility? The relationship may then not be symmetrical, since as a
subscriber, I would want to put in place my own defences to protect myself
and my data, whereas the responsibility for preventing my machines from
being used for attacking others is that of the service provider. These may
well be different security issues, with different costs, borne by different
parties.
Was there not in the past a way in which Apple Macs could be used to launch
distributed DoS attacks without the user even being aware of it? Whose
responsibility is it then to prevent -- as far as is possible -- such an
occurrence?
Similarly, when mail relay was open by default on sendmail, whose
responsibility was it if the daemon was used for a mass relay of stuff
leading to a mail DoS? The software supplier, the subscriber running the
daemon or the service provider for not stopping the daemon being used in
that way?
The way your article concluded, we could end up with restrictions on who is
allowed to be connected simply because of a risk profile that says they may
not be able to correctly configure a service. Maybe we need something like
a driver's license that grants you the right to use the electronic highway,
and can be endorsed or removed if you use the vehicle in the wrong manner?
From: Alexander Gantman <agantmanat_private>
Subject: Bad Computer Laws
Have you seen the PA law on computer crime?
<http://hercules.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/BI/ALL/1999/0/SB1077.HTM>
My favorite part is the definition of "computer":
"Computer. An electronic, magnetic, optical, hydraulic, organic or other
high speed data processing device or system which performs logic,
arithmetic or memory functions and includes all input, output, processing,
storage, software or communication facilities which are connected or
related to the device in a system or network."
Hmm, an organic system which performs logic or memory functions.... It
seems obvious that animals are computers, but I wonder if plants are as
well. Can one claim that plants are performing memory functions by storing
information in their DNA?
From: Joergen Ramskov <joergenat_private>
Subject: Windows Update
I think it's funny how Windows Update forces you to lower your
security. If you run IE6 with high security, you get this message:
"To view and download updates for your computer, your Internet Explorer
security settings must meet the following requirements:
- Security must be set to medium or lower
- Active scripting must be set to enabled
- The download and initialization of ActiveX Controls must be set to enabled"
WindowsUpdate needs to download several ActiveX controls. To keep your PC
updated with the latest security fixes, you have no choice but to add
Microsoft into the Trusted Sites Zone -- nice.
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