RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 3 June 2004 Volume 23 : Issue 40 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/23.40.html> The current issue can be found at <http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt> Contents: MAILMAN has replaced Majordomo with this issue. Problems due to misfiled fingerprints (PGN) Building the A380: Just Like Software (Rex Black) eVoting standards and testing (Rebecca Mercuri) Re: Risks of believing in testing (Ken Knowlton, Spencer Cheng) Users, learning from history, social engineering, planning (Gadi Evron) Detectives follow the money trail to tackle spam (NewsScan) Are passwords passe'? (NewsScan) Re: Boa triggers blackout in Honduras (Ralph Barone) The lighter side of electronic voting (Marcus L. Rowland) Re: New GAO Report on Government Data Mining (Robert I. Eachus) Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses (Monty Solomon) Daft security questions (Ian Chard) Abridged info on RISKS: MAILMAN replaces Majordomo (comp.risks) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 00:12:10 GMT From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@private> Subject: Problems due to misfiled fingerprints If you Google "Sanchez Rosario fingerprints", you get a remarkable case of a man named Rene Ramon Sanchez who bore absolutely no resemblance to Leo Rosario, a drug dealer and deportation candidate, but whose fingerprints seemingly matched those of Rosario. To make a long story very short, the problem was that Rosario's fingerprints had been substituted for Sanchez's. A judge insisted that fingerprints never lie, causing Sanchez an enormous amount of grief. In fact, Sanchez was arrested three times for Rosario's crimes, spending two months in custody and threatened with deportation. Thus, a single error propagated and the justice system failed to correct it. [Source: Benjamin Weiser, Can Prints Lie? Yes, Man Finds to His Dismay, *The New York Times*, 31 May 2004; PGN-ed] [Please dig up the full text. This is a grueling parable for our times, as was the Brandon Mayfield case noted in RISKS-23.38 and 39. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 18:10:49 +1200 From: Rex Black <rexblack@private> Subject: Building the A380: Just Like Software I don't have the references right now, but I read an article in the *Asian Wall-Street Journal* on 28 May 2004 that talked about the A380 development project. (The A380 is Airbus' superjumbo, doubledeck jet.) Apparently, lots of new, previously-unused technologies and materials are involved. The project management methodology: Commit to fixed delivery deadlines for major clients like Singapore Airlines before the composite wing struts and supports were fully tested. Hey, if it's good enough for software that ends up in critical information infrastructure, it's good enough for a 500+ passenger airplane, right? Rex Black Consulting Services, Inc., 31520 Beck Road, Bulverde, TX 78163 USA www.rexblackconsulting.com +1-830-438-4830 rex_black@private ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 07:54:35 -0400 From: "R. Mercuri" <notable@private> Subject: eVoting standards and testing On eVoting Standards and Testing, see two articles from 30 May 2004: Elise Ackerman of the *San Jose Mercury News* reported on CA Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's difficulties in obtaining information about the voting systems' so-called "federal testing" by the so-called "independent" testing authorities: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/8797832.htm *The New York Times* also ran an editorial pointing out the lack of transparency in the election system testing process. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/opinion/30SUN1.html It is important to note that the U.S. Federal government does NOT oversee the testing of election equipment, this is a privatized process paid for by the voting system vendors. Nor are there any true Federal "standards" for election systems -- the FEC's guidelines are not Federally required and have not been mandated by all of the states. Opposers to voter verified paper ballots (VVPB) claim that the ballot printers are not implementable because there are no "Federal standards" -- yet there is NOTHING in the FEC guidelines that PREVENTS a state (or a vendor) from ADDING security features (such as VVPB) -- so this argument is just a smokescreen! In fact, the FEC declined to include such guidelines in their 2002 VSS document, despite having been alerted to the necessity of independent auditability for electronic voting systems by numerous scientists who had been requested to provide formal remarks (see my comment at www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html). California, thankfully, is creating its own VVPB standards -- other states should be encouraged to do likewise. (Note that there are FEC guidelines for optically scanned ballots, which are VVPB.) The new Election Assistance Commission has yet to establish its technical commission -- the group that was supposed to create a new set of standards, presumably BEFORE states were to rush out and spend their HAVA money on voting equipment -- but now the $3B in HAVA funding is a true cart-before-the-horse porkbelly (to mix metaphors!) and the $30M that NIST was supposed to receive for their participation in the formation of the HAVA standards has yet to materialize. The IEEE is working on a voting system standard, but it is currently limited to vote casting equipment and the committee is heavily vendor controlled. http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/index.htm Voting system standards are of increasing concern, because vendors and election officials claim that products are safe because they have been "Federally certified" yet investigations have revealed uncertified software used in equipment in California, Indiana, and Georgia. The standards lack security controls that would enable tracking of software changes, but even so, they are being ignored in blatant violation of state election laws. This situation will bear monitoring, and it is helpful that some major press agencies have now begun to give it a closer look. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 21:30:29 EDT From: Ken Knowlton <KCKnowlton@private> Subject: Re: Risks of believing in testing (Jewell, RISKS-23.39) Well, I've turned "store" into a macro that redundantly puts data in the intended location and those before and after it, just to be super-safe -- because some other part of the program may contain an off-by-one error when trying to fetch it. It has tested perfectly. Could I still be in trouble? [Certainly. The data you are storing could be already corrupted. This is a problem with voting machines whose vendors claim that there are THREE INDEPENDENT VERSIONS OF YOUR VOTE, when all three come from the same possibly erroneous program. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 22:36:02 -0400 From: Spencer Cheng <spencer@private> Subject: Re: Risks of believing in testing (Jewell, RISKS-23.39) While Chris Jewell is quite correct, the state of the industry on S/W testing is very inadequate today. I would be very happy to have any S/W that has actually being tested properly for functionality even if there are latent errors in the S/W. There is at least one testing technology available which can do proper functional testing by generating optimally minimal test suites using formal interface specification but the acceptance by industry has been very slow. I have looked long and hard at proof of correctness in a previous job but other than safety critical systems, the cost is difficult to justify. In addition, proof of correctness is not very useful if the implementation changes even slightly. I have become a firm believer over the years in proper black box testing since - 1) it is the only way I know to establish that mythical S/W contract that people have been talking about for the last 20 years. 2) Properly done, it can shield the applications from changes in the underlying system. A complete and optimal set of black box test cases *IS* the S/W contract since it defines the semantics. Any implementation changes that changes interface behaviour would fail the black box tests. 3) Requirement traceability can be satisfied by tracing the requirement to the interface specification and onward to the test cases. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 20:29:40 +0200 From: Gadi Evron <ge@private> Subject: Users, learning from history, social engineering, planning Apparently, although the security industry came a long way and proper working procedures, risk analysis and billions of USD in products every year do exist, we still didn't find a way to effectively attack the simplest of problems. Any problem can be addressed, but usually running a firewall or running after a virus outbreak take precedent over methodology and planning. Security professionals many times ignore the simplest of issues, being over-whelmed by work and believing the basics are covered. Here are a few examples. Although different policies are being implemented in many organizations, as well as many organizations do extensive security planning, users still find ways to get by any restriction and go with the easiest solution which would allow them to circumvent security and work in ease. I truly believe that if we provide solutions that a user won't find easy to use and integrated into the day-to-day job, the user will give us hell and do anything and everything to compromise the security that is set in place. Why should users circumvent our security? Not because we have malicious users (or do we?) but rather because the average user does not understand the risks. Nor should he/she. Finding solutions to problems is our job (see comment on user education below). The average user wants to work, and if security gets in the way... users will find a way around our solutions. Security should be implemented in such a way that a user can do his or her work as they always do and if that is not possible and security *must* take precedence then the easiest solution for the user to work with must be found. Social engineering is another serious risk which usually doesn't get addressed very well, if only for the difficulty in trying to address it. However, I'd think we have learned something since the 1960's, apparently they had the very same problems, only with different systems (see below). Educating users to understand the risk would in the long run save serious investment in damage control and extra security measures. As I mentioned, users want to do their jobs but I doubt that users would chose to become a security risk if things are explained to them. I am partially contradicting myself. Should or shouldn't user education be implemented? Absolutely, yes. Should we rely solely on education? No! But education or not, if we work against the user we'd lose every time. A third issue I'd like to discuss is learning and implementing conclusions. Nowadays we are facing security issues on our cell phones and printers, 5 years ago it was the beginning of the real problems with the Internet and 10 years ago it was the Personal Computer and the BBS's (I can't sign on the exact years, but you get my drift). Security issues follow us around to whatever systems we use, and it always seems like we run around putting out fires rather than build systems secure from the get-go (naturally, I'm generalizing, not everybody goes "live the moment" with security. Generalizing is wrong but I think you see where I am going with this). Not everybody implements security planning and procedures. As a matter of fact, most don't. Those who try many times face immense bureaucratic barriers as well as budget and time-frame issues that have to be dealt with and taken into consideration. The very basics of security [such as choosing a good password] are still the biggest issues we have to deal with as security professionals. Although this was discussed before, here is a paper which recently hit /.: http://www.ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/tr500.pdf. Side note: how many of us use the same passwords for many different applications? Here is a very recent /. story about a widely known "password" used in nuclear silos in the 1960's (00000000): http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm ("1, 2, 3, 4, 5? That's the exact same combination on my luggage!") To make a long e-mail short, I believe the very basics, while not being ignored, are not given enough attention thus leading to very serious security issues and incidents. Also, to state the obvious even if only for the simple reason it keeps being over-looked; as long as we do not plan our future services and projects with security in mind (not to mentions learning from lessons in history), we are doomed to keep repeating our mistakes. Oh. And educate users and try to find solutions they'd find easy to use. Nearly forgot that one after my overzealousness. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 11:10:11 -0700 From: "NewsScan" <newsscan@private> Subject: Detectives follow the money trail to tackle spam It seems like spammers have been working overtime since the federal antispam legislation took effect Jan.1, and the government is now turning away from technical fixes offered by software engineers in favor of private investigators' expertise to boost their efforts to stem the deluge of unsolicited e-mail. In an unusual arrangement, the Direct Marketing Association has paid $500,000 to hire 15 investigators to work alongside the FBI agents and other government officials in a program known as Project Slam-Spam. The project has built a case against 50 spammers, mostly by following the money trail and relying on informants. "Spammers are more than willing to rat each other out," says Microsoft investigator Sterling McBride. "The most useful information is who pays for various aspects of the spam operation," says attorney David Bateman, who represents Microsoft in spam cases. "To spam, you need four or five things -- a hosting service, a domain name, mailing software, mailing lists and so on. Each one you have to purchase from someone." Microsoft has filed 53 civil cases against spammers in the last 15 months, based on the work of its investigation team. "The real key is trying to figure out how to connect the virtual world" with "someone you can hold responsible for this," says McBride. Once you've nailed that down, "you can use all the tools of a normal investigation." [*The New York Times*, 31 May 2004; NewsScan Daily, 1 June 2004] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/technology/31spam.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 11:10:11 -0700 From: "NewsScan" <newsscan@private> Subject: Are passwords passe'? Scandinavian countries are at the forefront of a movement to ditch conventional passwords in favor of so-called two-factor authentication. These "password-plus" systems use things like disposable cards with scratch-off codes in conjunction with the usual four-digit PIN for online banking and other secure transactions. Each code is used once, and the bank replenishes the supply by sending a new card when the customer is running low. "A password is a construct of the past that has run out of steam," says Identix CEO Joseph Atick. "The human mind-set is not used to dealing with so many different passwords and so many different PINs." Other "password-plus" options include Vasco Data Security International's pocket-sized device that issues a random second code each time you type your regular password in. Or MasterCard International's system, which requires swiping your "smart" credit card through a special reader and entering your PIN to obtain a single-use password good at Office Max, British Airways and a dozen other merchants. And while U.S. banks are well aware of the perils of password theft, they're "all afraid of making the first step," says a Gartner analyst. "They don't want consumers going to other banks because it's too hard." [AP/*The Washington Post*. 1 Jun 2004; NewsScan Daily, 1 June 2004] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5693-2004Jun1.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 09:33:30 -0700 From: "Barone, Ralph" <Ralph.Barone@private> Subject: RE: Boa triggers blackout in Honduras (Luntzel, RISKS-23.39) Of course, the humourous aspect of this is that the "Ads by Google" section below the article contains three advertisements for feather boas. Ad selection by algorithm has a way to go yet... [So have automatic pun detectors and pun generators! PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 20:58:59 +0100 From: "Marcus L. Rowland" <forgottenfutures@private> Subject: The lighter side of electronic voting (Miller, RISKS-23.39) > forgetting to check the capacity of the electrical infrastructure is > exactly the kind of bird-brained planning failure that would surprise no > one on RISKS. The number of outlet sockets isn't necessarily an indication of capacity. I work as a technician in a London school. Two weeks ago we ran our AS level physics practical exam; it's an important qualification, one of the last exams before university. One of the questions called for the use of boiling water, and suggested providing one kettle between two students doing the experiment. We had twelve students and it was one of two experiments, so at any given time six students would need hot water. So we followed their advice and provided three kettles. We then found, as the exam started, that if all three were switched on simultaneously the main breaker for the lab blew. Repeatedly. Somehow a lab with 60+ 13A mains sockets had all of its electricity connected to one 16A circuit breaker, and couldn't take three 10A kettles. In fact three out of four labs on that floor are like that, the smallest of the four has a 32A breaker. Amazingly none of these labs has ever tripped a main breaker before. In the end we ran extension cables in from the corridor and the adjoining lab and gave the students a few extra minutes. Our report to the examiners will make interesting reading. Marcus L. Rowland http://www.forgottenfutures.com/ LJ:ffutures http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 14:09:06 -0400 From: "Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@private> Subject: Re: New GAO Report on Government Data Mining (Steinhardt, R-23.39) If these are worrisome to the ACLU, my reaction is to say go away and stop bothering me. Let's turn the scare quotes around, and see what the purpose of these programs is. Verity K2 Enterprise seems to be reorganizing information on foreign terrorism activities so that it can by looking up the name of one of the individuals involved. Yes, there is a potential for abuse where individuals share the same name, but at the same time it can also be used to exculpate such individuals. If your namesake was in Botswana in February, and you were in Cedar Rapids, then either the investigator or your lawyer should twig to the fact that there are two individuals involved. Incidentally, in today's environment, it is a very good idea to "Google" yourself occasionally to find out what your namesakes are up to. As a case in point, one of my friends found a parole violation by a murderer in Alabama of the same first and last name, but much younger... Analyst Notebook I2, "Correlates events and people to specific information." This seems to be the reverse of the above. If a suspect was in Botswana in February were there events of interest such as terrorist meetings that he might have been involved in? Again, yes, subject to misuse, but the purpose is clearly not prosecutorial, but alert analysts to POTENTIAL correlations, when an individual is a suspect for other reasons. PATHFINDER: This is clearly a metadata tool. Its purpose is to help understand the structure and data dictionary of existing databases. Here I probably need to preach a bit as well. There is an issue in some people's minds that government access to sophisticated computer resources could have serious adverse consequences. However, there are lots of public resources available to me as a person, such as on-line databases, and data searching tools such as Google. To say that citizens can use these resources, but to try to prevent the government from using the same resources is ridiculous. What does make sense is to limit or restrict the government's ability to use its powers to collect data which individuals would prefer to keep private. Or when such data is needed by a government, to restrict sharing of the data to its original purpose. If this tool were being used to say, integrate state driver's license databases, that would be one thing. But given the agency involved (the Defense Intelligence Agency) I have to believe that the intent is to integrate public (and possibly non-public) data on weapon systems, and who currently owns them. Case Management Data Mart - DHS. "Assists in managing law enforcement cases" Sounds scary taken out of context, but legal proceedings today can get very complex, in part due to privacy laws. If you do have privacy concerns, you do want the government to do a good job of tracking data involved in a case, especially otherwise private data that was revealed in response to a subpoena. Again, the risk is not in having tools to manage the data, but when the government or others does a bad job of managing it. Realize that part of the job of managing data is to ensure that all copies are destroyed when that is appropriate. And no, I am not talking about white collar crimes here. For example, if the government subpoenas your bank or phone records, wouldn't you rather that all of the copies they made were destroyed when the case was closed? If really necessary, the originals can be subpoenaed again. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 11:11:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@private> Subject: Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses Excerpt from Recent GAO Reports and Testimony Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses. GAO-04-548, 4 May. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-548 Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d04548high.pdf Both the government and the private sector are increasingly using "data mining" -- that is, the application of database technology and techniques (such as statistical analysis and modeling) to uncover hidden patterns and subtle relationships in data and to infer rules that allow for the prediction of future results. As has been widely reported, many federal data mining efforts involve the use of personal information that is mined from databases maintained by public as well as private sector organizations. GAO was asked to survey data mining systems and activities in federal agencies. Specifically, GAO was asked to identify planned and operational federal data mining efforts and describe their characteristics. Federal agencies are using data mining for a variety of purposes, ranging from improving service or performance to analyzing and detecting terrorist patterns and activities. Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational. Of the most common uses, the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts aimed at improving service or performance, managing human resources, and analyzing intelligence and detecting terrorist activities. The Department of Education reported the largest number of efforts aimed at detecting fraud, waste, and abuse. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported the largest number of efforts aimed at analyzing scientific and research information. For detecting criminal activities or patterns, however, efforts are spread relatively evenly among the agencies that reported having such efforts. In addition, out of all 199 data mining efforts identified, 122 used personal information. For these efforts, the primary purposes were improving service or performance; detecting fraud, waste, and abuse; analyzing scientific and research information; managing human resources; detecting criminal activities or patterns; and analyzing intelligence and detecting terrorist activities. Agencies also identified efforts to mine data from the private sector and data from other federal agencies, both of which could include personal information. Of 54 efforts to mine data from the private sector (such as credit reports or credit card transactions), 36 involve personal information. Of 77 efforts to mine data from other federal agencies, 46 involve personal information (including student loan application data, bank account numbers, credit card information, and taxpayer identification numbers). http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04548.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 16:18:10 +0100 From: Ian Chard <ian@private> Subject: Daft security questions I recently registered with (yet another) online banking service, and it seems that the quest for 'secure' authentication challenges is generating some very odd decisions. As part of the registration process, as is commonplace these days, I had to think of an answer to four security questions, and was instructed only to give answers that would be known to me and 'not, for example, to a member of your family'. The questions were: - Memorable place? - Memorable date? - Memorable name? These three 'memorables' are difficult to answer with things that aren't memorable to anyone else I might know. The first thing that occurred to me is "birthplace, mother's date of birth, mother's maiden name", i.e. questions that other institutions commonly ask. I'm sure that plenty of people would assume that was what was wanted. - Favourite singer? This is fatally flawed as (a) there are lots of singers I like, (b) everyone knows my tastes in music, and worst of all (c) they change over time. You might as well ask 'what did you have for breakfast this morning?' - Secret question / answer? (for password resets) I'm not a secretive kind of guy, and with the 20 character limit on the question I just had to give an arbitrary answer, hoping that I'd never forget any of this other stuff. The risk here is that, in an attempt to make the sign-in process more secure, this institution has made it all but impossible to provide secure responses. The only other forms of authentication used at sign-in are the username and password, making all of this messing about with 'memorable' responses a bit pointless. Ironically, the only opportunity the user has to set something *really* secure (the secret question and answer) is wasted, as this isn't used by the sign-in process. Asking the user to set several question/answer pairs would need more thought on his part, but ultimately it would be far more secure. ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jun 2004 (LAST-MODIFIED) From: RISKS-request@private Subject: Abridged info on RISKS: MAILMAN replaces Majordomo (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. To subscribe or unsubscribe via e-mail to mailman your FROM: address, send a message to risks-request@private containing only the one-word text subscribe or unsubscribe. 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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. *** NOTE: 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 Lindsay Marshall's Newcastle archive http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html gets you 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 ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 23.40 ************************
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