[risks] Risks Digest 23.22

From: RISKS List Owner (risko@private)
Date: Mon Mar 01 2004 - 16:19:22 PST

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    RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Monday 1 March 2004  Volume 23 : Issue 22
    
       FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
       ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
    
    ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
    This issue is archived at http://www.risks.org as
      http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.22.html
    The current issue can be found at
      http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt
    
      Contents:
    Stolen heart monitor (Nigel Metheringham)
    Keeping online games honest (NewsScan)
    4.6-million DSL subscribers' data leaked in Japan? (via Dave Farber)
    E-mail robbery, the easy way (Ralf Ertzinger)
    Solving e-mail problems economically (Peter B. Ladkin)
    Laptop security (Gadi Evron)
    "Where did it print?" 1990 version (Daniel P. B. Smith)
    Buffer overflows and Burroughs/Unisys (Keith Gobeski, Michael LeVine)
    MS Java Virtual machine (Curtis Karnow)
    Garage-Door openers; Rapid disassembly of PCS phones (Charles Jackson)
    Re: Garage-door openers (Michael Kent)
    Re: Garage-door openings by aircraft (Scott Peterson)
    Further misdirected on-line trip planning (Bob Heuman)
    Amtrak Website routing (Richard S. Russell)
    REVIEW: "Developing Secure Distributed Systems with CORBA", Lang/Schreiner
      (Rob Slade)
    Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 11:57:09 +0000
    From: Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham@private>
    Subject: Stolen heart monitor
    
    Seen at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3492778.stm
    
      A mother is urgently appealing for help after her eight-year-old son's
      heart monitor scanner was stolen from her car outside the family home.
      Daniel Hunter from Bridgend in south Wales, is fitted with a pacemaker
      which is monitored by the scanner -- the size of a mobile phone -- without
      which his health is at risk.  It is the only one he can use, and if it is
      not found he will have to undergo potentially dangerous operation to be
      fitted with a new pacemaker -- a device which sends electrical impulses to
      the heart to keep it beating regularly.
    
    The idea of an implantable medical device apparently requiring physical
    reconfiguration (at least) to talk to an external monitor implies a level of
    trust in the reliability of the external device which is seriously scary.
    The RISKS hardly need pointing out here...
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 08:14:17 -0700
    From: "NewsScan" <newsscan@private>
    Subject: Keeping online games honest
    
    IT GlobalSecure sells software that prevents network vandals and dishonest
    players from manipulating online gambling. The company's chief executive
    says: "If you look online, there are whole Web sites either complaining
    about cheating or sharing ways to cheat. We've had people who are even just
    playing gin rummy online saying, 'We think we're being cheated, but we don't
    know what to do.'" The firm's software is based on encryption technology
    that can be applied to any network gaming system to validate the randomness
    of events in games of chance, verify player identities and create audits of
    each game.  [*The Washington Post*, 1 Mar 2004; NewsScan Daily, 1 Mar 2004]
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17983-2004Feb29.html
    
      [What about keeping the gambling software "honest"?  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 18:09:55 -0500
    From: [Identity unknown]
    Subject: 4.6-million DSL subscribers' data leaked in Japan? (From IP)
    
      [From Dave Farber's IP list, where the identity of the contributor
      was withheld.  PGN]
    
    The Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested three men on suspicion of trying to
    extort up to 3 billion yen (U.S. $28 million) from Softbank. The suspects
    claimed that they obtained DVD and CD disks filled with 4.6 million Yahoo BB
    customer information. The two of the suspects run Yahoo BB agencies which
    sells DSL and IP Telephone services.
    
    Last month, Softbank was contacted by the suspects who demanded investment
    to their venture in exchange for the disks. Although the company confirmed
    that a part of the customer data shown by the blackmailers was that of real
    Yahoo BB customers, the company so far has not admitted their whole customer
    data was stolen. The police and Softbank will examine the data on the seized
    disks. It will take several days before we know the exact scale of the
    leak. According to Softbank, the stolen data includes name, address,
    telephone number, and e-mail. No billing or credit card information was
    leaked.
    
    Also, it has been reported that the police in Nagoya arrested another man
    who attempted to extort 10 million yen (U.S. $ 90,000) from Softbank. The
    man sent the company e-mail messages including the one with 104 customer
    data and claimed to have over 1 million customer information on floppies. He
    worked as a temporary customer support personnel for Yahoo BB in the past
    and it was likely that he stole the customer data while he worked for the
    DSL provider. The police considers the Nagoya attempt is not related to the
    Tokyo case and the sources of the data leak are different.
    
    At this point, there is only speculation on how the customer data was
    stolen. The data was not accessible from the public networks and Softbank
    denied any intrusions to their computer networks from the outside. It was
    likely to be an inside job. There might have been an accomplice(s) in the
    company or its subsidiaries/affiliates. An Softbank executive stated that
    there were over 100 people who could log-on to the PCs connected to the
    customer database. The company is in the process of cheking the log to find
    any suspicious access to the data. (Although Softbank is a victim of hideous
    crime, I expect that there will be a lot of scrutiny on the company's policy
    and practice regarding data security and privacy protection.)
    
    Although the both extortion attempts were foiled, the backgrounds of the
    Tokyo suspects are disturbing. One of the Tokyo suspect is the leader of a
    right-wing political organization. In Japan, the shady right-wing groups are
    often a part of the organized crime(Yakuza gangsters) or have a close tie
    with Yakuza. It is unthinkable that the 4.6 million personal data fell into
    the hands of the underworld. The bogus Internet bills from the use of dating
    and porn sites have become social problem in Japan.(Even they have no idea
    of using those services, some people send money when they receive a letter
    or e-mail from the collection agencies sounding like Yakuza-related. I am
    hoping the suspects are just bluffing.)
    
    The other two are the followers of a powerful religious group affiliated
    with a major political party. According to some tabloids, one of them was a
    former ranking member and was participated in the wiretapping of the home of
    the communist party leader in some 30 years ago (The communist party and the
    religious party were strongly criticising each other then.). Although he was
    acquitted in criminal courts, a civil trial acknowledged his involvement
    (like O.J.?).
    
    The opposition parties are demanding the government to investigate the
    unprecedented scope of the personal data theft and a committee in the House
    of Representatives is considering to call Masayoshi Son, the Softbank
    president to testify.
    
    IP Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 23:23:45 +0100
    From: Ralf Ertzinger <ralf@private>
    Subject: E-mail robbery, the easy way
    
    The German online news magazine Spiegel Online [1] recently reported on an
    interesting combination of risks [2]: using T-Online as your Internet
    provider, and having a WLAN access point.
    
    T-Online is Germany's largest Internet provider, and while this in itself is
    not a risk, T-Online has always used a unique approach towards POP3 mail
    delivery. When being connected via T-Online, one does not have to provide a
    username or password to connect to the T-Online POP3 server in order to
    fetch mail, since the user is identified by his IP address.
    
    Combine this with the growing number of (unsecured) WLAN access points and
    DSL routers and you get to read other people's mail just by driving along
    the streets.  T-Online is aware of the problem, and provides information to
    secure WLAN access points on their web site, but changing the POP3
    identification system (which was introduced long before anyone thought of
    broadband Internet, connection sharing and wireless LAN) seems to be almost
    impossible, having millions of customers.
    
    [1] http://www.spiegel.de
    [2] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/technologie/0,1518,288033,00.html
    
      [PGN showed this a colleague, who commented thusly:
        "Just how long have we been telling people that it's a bad idea to do
        authentication based on IP address?  The Berkeley r-commands, after all,
        where supposed to be an interim solution, IIRC.  That was 1982.
        Anyways, I'm quite sure that this was known to be a Bad Idea(tm) before
        T-Online went into business."
      And when a very well-known bank first put up its Internet banking on the
      Web, it authenticated on IP addresses.  Bad ideas are often popular.
      PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:47:37 +0100
    From: "Peter B. Ladkin" <ladkin@private-bielefeld.de>
    Subject: Solving e-mail problems economically (Re: Kestenbaum, RISKS-23.19)
    
    Lawrence Kestenbaum substantiates in his RISKS-23.19 note the considerable
    problem generated by inappropriate e-mail server responses to
    virus/worm/spam e-mail, which I noted with regard to Sobig (Some
    observations on e-mail phenomenology, RISKS-22.88). However, his last
    paragraph misplaces blame.
    
    The spammers and worm/virus writers are no more responsible for the amounts
    of junk generated by misconfigured e-mail servers than I am responsible for
    the damage caused by an automobile whose driver does not observe my bicycle
    until the last second and manoeuvres suddenly.
    
    I agree with Kestenbaum that the e-mail system is more or less broken.
    
    *The Economist* has addressed the issue in its edition of 14 Feb 2004
    (Business Section. The article is available on its WWW site for a fee to
    non-subscribers). In an article entitled "Make 'em pay" (supertitled "The
    fight against spam", subtitled "The dismal science takes on spam"), the
    journal suggests that techies have had a go at the problem, then
    politicians, and now economists are "taking over". Risks readers may recall
    that Bill Gates said in an interview at the recent World Economic Forum at
    Davos that certain measures Microsoft favors will get rid of spam in two
    years.  One of those proposals was a per-mail fee, like postage. The article
    says that "Sceptics noted that Microsoft could also help by fixing security
    flaws in its products -- the latest confessed to this week -- that can be
    exploited by spammers".
    
    The article discusses various schemes, namely those by Goodmail
    Systems, IronPort Systems, and Balachander Krishnamurthy at AT&T Labs.
    
    I hope that the techies and politicians are not yet finished.  The payment
    proposals distinguish between two classes of user: bulk mailers and
    others. (The post office does also: bulk mail there is cheaper than ordinary
    mail.) Bulk mailers should, somehow, pay. But not all bulk mailers are
    spammers. I suggest that a much more fundamental distinction lies between
    fraudulent e-mail (e.g., that with intentionally false header information)
    and non-fraudulent e-mail. In my opinion, this issue must be addressed come
    what may. Fraud in electronic communication covers much broader issues, even
    for business, than spam and its responses: for example, one needs reliable
    processes for establishing, validating and enforcing contracts
    electronically. E-mail authentication would be a great help.
    
    Since the e-mail server market is dominated by very few pieces of SW, one
    imagines a coordinated effort to alter e-mail protocols to introduce some
    degree of authentication, say along the lines of Tripoli, lies at least as
    well within reach as schemes to introduce payment for e-mail. We may presume
    that producers of such SW are well aware of such proposals, and we may
    conclude that they are not favored because they do not fit someone's
    business model.
    
    I find some confirmation for this conclusion in that schemes to introduce
    individual payment for free e-mail service are being touted at the very time
    when just the reverse is happening with telephony: schemes for Internet
    telephony are apparently arousing interest in major telecommunications
    companies over the traditional individual payment model.
    
    I imagine that if one is a commercial SW producer it is easier to make money
    by responding incrementally to Internet users' issue du jour rather than by
    introducing a procedure that would handle a large class of such problems all
    at once.
    
    One argument in favor of the business model could be that the economy which
    has sprung up to deal with spam and Internet security issues is now large
    enough to lobby successfully against any proposal that would reduce its
    potential clientele at a stroke. If this is so, then incremental
    modification would seem to be the only socially viable possibility. What a
    depressing thought.
    
    Peter B. Ladkin, University of Bielefeld, http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 10:23:24 +0200
    From: Gadi Evron <ge@private>
    Subject: Laptop security
    
    I always say, whenever laptops are mentioned: "Forget everything else, I 
    have nightmares already!".
    
    The loss of information due to laptop thefts is extremely high, here is 
    an innovation that may possibly be as useless as car theft alarms 
    (unless you are nearby and didn't leave the laptop in the car), but it's 
    a good start. This may actually be useful.
    
    What I'd like to see is a GPS device with wireless communication to my 
    cell phone. It can be a quiet indicator, or perhaps ring when it is 
    being moved.. or even when I move too far away from it.
    
    You can find the article at:
      http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.html
      ?id=511952d3-89a0-4a03-a092-be29eaeb346f
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 18:58:49 -0500
    From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbsmith@private>
    Subject: "Where did it print?" 1990 version (Re: Meadows, RISKS-23.16)
    
    Chris Meadows account of printing sensitive information using a wireless
    network at Kinko's, only to discover that it had not printed on any printer
    _at_ Kinko's, reminded me of a vaguely similar occurrence circa 1990. I
    worked in R&D at a Fortune 500 minicomputer company, which at that time had
    one "corporate" fax number which connected to _one_ fax machine whose phone
    line was, understandably, usually busy. Someone at another company needed to
    send me an urgent fax. He happened to have a copy of my company's phone
    book. After listening to his fax machine redial continuously for five hours,
    he checked the phone book and noticed that it listed about fifteen fax other
    numbers. He selected the "R&D Documentation" number, and called me to let me
    know he had just gotten his confirmation that it had been received at "R&D
    Documentation." I went to R&D Documentation.
    
    They had no fax machine. They did not know of any "R&D Documentation" fax
    machine. Indeed, they did not know of any fax machine in R&D.  The phone
    book had no information beyond the machine names and numbers.
    
    I worked my personal connections as best I could, asking every knowledgeable
    old-timer I knew to regale me with lore and legends relating the locations
    of _any_ fax machines other than corporate. I slowly discovered the location
    of several fax machines. The fifth one--located in Purchasing--happened to
    be the one that identified itself as "R&D Documentation." They'd inherited
    the machine and the phone line, and nobody knew how to change the message,
    so they'd left it set that way.
    
    Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@private alternate:  dpbsmith@private
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:27:26 -0500
    From: Keith Gobeski <gobeskik@private>
    Subject: Buffer overflows and Burroughs/Unisys
    
    Burroughs (now Unisys) large (now Clearpath/Libra) systems have had hardware
    detection of buffer overflows since at least the late sixties.  Only memory
    areas marked as code are executable and only certain processes can mark the
    memory as such.  Consequently, data cannot be executed.  Furthermore,
    although data can be overwritten by the user, hardware bounds checking in
    conjunction with memory bounds markers prevents writing outside the bounds
    of data owned by the user.  Usually this is a fatal error terminating the
    process.  The fatal error can be suppressed so that the process continues,
    but the process still cannot write into data areas not owned by itself or
    into code areas.  To a certain extent, these mechanisms also serve to
    protect the user from himself.
    
    Of course, the MCP (OS) can overcome these limitations through the use of
    special constructs in the language (NEWP) in which the OS is written, as can
    other processes written in NEWP and granted privileged abilities.
    
    It is also worth noting that only high-level languages are used for
    programming: there is no assembler or machine code programming (not even for
    the MCP, although some NEWP constructs are very close to machine code).
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 09:01:59 -0800
    From: Michael LeVine <mlevine@private>
    Subject: Re: Buffer overflows and Multics
    
    IIRC the late VAX/VMS systems also had built in buffer overflow prevention
    features, probably a lesson learned from Multics. The hardware had
    protections that could be set on memory segments to be: Execute/No execute
    and read only/write only/read-write, and the OS system calls requiring
    buffers also had to have the length of the buffers specified.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:24:14 -0800
    From: "Karnow, Curtis E A." <ckarnow@private>
    Subject: MS Java Virtual machine
    
    Issues associated with the MSJVM have been the subject of legal proceedings
    between Sun and Microsoft. Further information on the transition can be
    reached at 
      http://today.java.net/pub/n/SUN_Upgrade_Site
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:36:00 -0500
    From: "Charles Jackson" <chuck@private>
    Subject: Garage-Door openers; Rapid disassembly of PCS phones" (R 23 20)
    
    * Regarding garage-door openers:
    
    Early garage door openers were quite simple.  IIRC, some of them were no
    more than a sequence of Antenna, Bandpass filter, Energy detector.
    
    They operated at low powers in bands shared with other operations.  Thus,
    false triggering of the garage door opener would not be uncommon.  Steve
    Bellovin's calculations are correct.  No way Sputnik could be exacted to
    trigger a garage door opener.  In contrast, a 707 flying 1,000 feet above
    such a garage door opener could easily trigger it.
    
    Modern garage door openers use modulated sequences-i.e. a string of 1s and
    0s-to carry commands.  False triggering by other systems, such as land
    mobile or aircraft transmitters, is thus highly unlikely.
    
    * Regarding exploding batteries in cellular phones:
    
    This is not an urban legend.  It has been widely reported.  I recently
    received a letter, dated 9 Feb 2004, from legal counsel for the manufacturer
    of the wireless phone that I use.  Some quotes from that letter:
    
      "an allotment of batteries ... Might contain a risk hazard."
      "the root cause was a quality-control issue at the battery manufacturer"
      "Of the 50,731 units shipped in the United States ... four(4) confirmed
      reports of rapid disassembly.  Of these four (4) reports, one involved
      personal injury in the form of a second-degree burn . . "
      Continued use of the phone ... could result in injury due to ... rapid
      disassembly (which may appear as an explosion) ... "
    
    The risks of this lawyer weasel wording are obvious.  While engineers may
    immediately recognize the hazards associated with "rapid disassembly" the
    everyday user may not.  Only later in the letter does the more familiar term
    "explosion" appear.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:03:44 -0000
    From: "Michael Kent" <michael.k@private>
    Subject: Re: Garage-door openers (Ladkin, RISKS-23.20)
    
    I had a similar experience recently and reading this prompted me to check
    something I thought I remembered reading.
      
    In late 2002 the Shell company was under fire for having hidden mobile phone
    masts in the forecourt signs of 210 of its 1,100 UK petrol stations.
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2309645.stm
    
    The criticism was directed at the perceived health risks associated with
    these masts -- a much discussed subject in it's own right.  I have been
    involved in the approval process for locating a transmitter close to gas
    storage tank, and most risks are calculated objectively.  Substance stored,
    loading and dispensing methods, transmitter power, distances etc are all
    taken in to account.
    
    I am somewhat bemused that the urban myth of the dangers of using mobile
    phones in petrol stations is still being spread by the companies who own
    them.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 09:12:17 -0800
    From: Scott Peterson <scottp4@private>
    Subject: Re: Garage-door openings by aircraft (Re: RISKS-23.19)
    
    A true story that can be found in the *LA Times* archives discusses problems
    back in the 1980's when Reagan was president.  When he was staying at his
    ranch in California, Air Force One would be parked at a local Air Force base
    near Riverside California. Whenever that plane was there, everyone for
    several miles around would know because their garage door openers would stop
    working.
    
    As soon as the plane left, they'd be working again.  The Secret Service 
    would not comment.
    
      [This was noted in my ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes vol 11 no 2,
      April 1985, issue, four months before the first issue of RISKS.  Most of
      the relevant pre-RISKS cases are indexed in my Illustrative Risks doc:
        http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/illustrative.html
      (with .pdf and .ps for printing rather than browsing).  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 12:47:54 -0500
    From: "R.S. (Bob) Heuman, Toronto, ON, Canada" <rsh@private>
    Subject: Further misdirected on-line trip planning (RISKS-23.20)
    
    Try to plan a trip from Calais, Maine to Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, using
    the DeLorme mapping product, or a trip from Niagara Falls, New York to
    Detroit, Michigan.  Look at the results and be prepared to spend extra time
    or days on the road.  The same thing happens if you are trying to travel to
    anywhere where traveling through Canada is substantially shorter than
    traveling through the US.
    
    The reason? Delorme leaves Canada out of their product totally! To go from
    upper Michigan to upper Maine you go south of the Great Lakes if using their
    product but north of the Great Lakes if trying for a rational trip.
    
    If you ask Delorme, who are located in Maine, they shrug their shoulders and
    say that those who really care about that minor problem know to use other
    sources of information... [I.E. They don't seem to care.]
    
    For what it worth, the risks are not only online...
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 09:42:27 -0600
    From: "Richard S. Russell" <RichardSRussell@private>
    Subject: Amtrak Website routing
    
    In Risks 23.20, Mike Brandt <MyLastName@private> was quoted as writing: "In
    the early days of Amtrak's online trip planner, I asked it about trains from
    Portland (Oregon) to Seattle. There are several trains each day that make
    this 3.5 hour trip. The first choice on the route planner's list was
    Portland -> Chicago -> LA -> Seattle taking about a week, and passing
    through Portland again 3.5 hours before arriving in Seattle."
    
    Has the problem been fixed? You be the judge. I live in Madison, Wisconsin,
    about 1/3 of the way across the North American continent. My sister lives in
    Denver, Colorado, about 2/3 of the way across. Amtrak's recommended route
    for getting from here to there had me going via Minneapolis to Seattle
    (apparently a magnet for Amtrak customers), then to San Francisco, then
    backtracking to Denver -- about 4 times as long a trip as necessary once you
    add the extraneous north-south travel to the extraneous east-west travel. My
    solution was to take a bus to Chicago and catch the direct train to Denver
    from there. I was bemused to notice, however, that the westbound train to
    Denver was scheduled to leave Chicago half an hour BEFORE the eastbound one
    arrived from Minneapolis and Madison, so Amtrak was apparently trying to
    spare me a 23.5-hour layover in the Windy City. Good theory; bad
    implementation.
    
    Solution: More frequent passenger trains. I continue to be frustrated that
    Congress insists that Amtrak must be 100% self-supporting while it lavishes
    billions of dollars in subsidies on its competitors -- highway builders;
    air-traffic control, National Weather Service, and airline bail-outs; and
    even the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the nation's locks, dams, and
    coastal waterways open to barge and riverboat traffic.  The game is rigged,
    and once again the victims are being blamed for the system's failures.
    
    Richard S. Russell, a Bright (the-brights.net), 2642 Kendall Ave
    Madison WI 53705-3736 608+233-5640  RichardSRussell@private
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:32:07 -0800
    From: Rob Slade <rslade@private>
    Subject: REVIEW: "Developing Secure Distributed Systems with CORBA", 
      Ulrich Lang/Rudolf Schreiner
    
    BKDSDSCO.RVW   20031201
    
    "Developing Secure Distributed Systems with CORBA", Ulrich Lang/Rudolf
    Schreiner, 2002, 1-58053-295-0, U$69.00/C$106.95
    %A   Ulrich Lang
    %A   Rudolf Schreiner
    %C   685 Canton St., Norwood, MA   02062
    %D   2002
    %G   1-58053-295-0
    %I   Artech House/Horizon
    %O   U$69.00/C$106.95 617-769-9750 800-225-9977 fax: +1-617-769-6334
    %O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580532950/robsladesinterne
      http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580532950/robsladesinte-21
    %O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580532950/robsladesin03-20
    %P   308 p.
    %T   "Developing Secure Distributed Systems with CORBA"
    
    Chapter one is an introduction, but it very quickly gets into CORBA
    (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) jargon, and C++ API calls. 
    The explanations could be written with more clarity for outsiders. 
    Security is first defined, in chapter two, in terms of restricting
    access, but the authors are not clear about whether they are primarily
    concerned with integrity or confidentiality.  The material then goes
    on to a good overview of security management basics and a very brief
    outline of some security concerns in the CORBA environment.  The lead-
    in to the CORBA security architecture, in chapter three, is a lengthy
    discussion of the benefits of flexibility, abstraction, and
    simplicity: the authors then note that the CORBA architecture is not
    simple.  MICO, an open source CORBA compliant object request broker,
    has a security component (MICOsec), and chapter four is dedicated
    mostly to installation instructions.  Chapter five looks at
    programming CORBA level one security, using MICOsec and C++, while
    chapter six takes a longer look at the more complex level two
    requirements.  CORBA security does have support for applications that
    do not contain any security provisions (a rather interesting concept),
    and these are reviewed in chapter seven.
    
    CORBA security is not widely understood, and this work can assist both those
    needing a conceptual idea of the system and those needing to program with
    it.
    
    copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003   BKDSDSCO.RVW   20031201
    rslade@private      slade@private      rslade@private
    http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: 28 Jan 2004 (LAST-MODIFIED)
    From: RISKS-request@private
    Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
     The RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest.  Its Usenet equivalent is comp.risks.
    => SUBSCRIPTIONS: PLEASE read RISKS as a newsgroup (comp.risks or equivalent)
     if possible and convenient for you.  Alternatively, via majordomo,
     send e-mail requests to <risks-request@private> with one-line body
       subscribe [OR unsubscribe]
     which requires your ANSWERing confirmation to majordomo@private .
     If Majordomo balks when you send your accept, please forward to risks.
     [If E-mail address differs from FROM:  subscribe "other-address <x@y>" ;
     this requires PGN's intervention -- but hinders spamming subscriptions, etc.]
     Lower-case only in address may get around a confirmation match glitch.
       INFO     [for unabridged version of RISKS information]
     There seems to be an occasional glitch in the confirmation process, in which
     case send mail to RISKS with a suitable SUBJECT and we'll do it manually.
       .UK users should contact <Lindsay.Marshall@private>.
    => SPAM challenge-responses will not be honored.  Instead, use an alternative
     address from which you NEVER send mail!
    => The INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites,
     copyright policy, PRIVACY digests, etc.) is also obtainable from
       http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html
     The full info file may appear now and then in future issues.  *** All
     contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. ***
    => SUBMISSIONS: to risks@private with meaningful SUBJECT: line.
     *** NEW: Including the string "notsp" at the beginning or end of the subject
     *** line will be very helpful in separating real contributions from spam.
     *** This attention-string may change, so watch this space now and then.
    => ARCHIVES: ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks [subdirectory i for earlier volume i]
     http://www.risks.org redirects you to the Lindsay Marshall's Newcastle archive
     http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html      [i.e., VoLume, ISsue]
       Lindsay has also added to the Newcastle catless site a palmtop version
       of the most recent RISKS issue and a WAP version that works for many but
       not all telephones: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/w/r
     http://the.wiretapped.net/security/info/textfiles/risks-digest/ .
    ==> PGN's comprehensive historical Illustrative Risks summary of one liners:
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.html for browsing,
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.pdf or .ps for printing
    
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    End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 23.22
    ************************
    



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