[RISKS] Risks Digest 26.15

From: RISKS List Owner <risko_at_private>
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 21:19:22 PDT
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Wednesday 8 September 2010 Volume 26 : Issue 15

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy

***** 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/26.15.html>
The current issue can be found at
  <http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt>

  Contents:
NTSB on WMATA (David Lesher)
Software glitches, systemic failure and airplane crashes together
  (Peter Wayner)
"iPod trance" increases traffic risk to pedestrians (Mike Martin)
German goverment ID already cracked (Peter Houppermans)
Malware Used to Steal South Korean Military Secrets (Monty Solomon)
Risks: Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond (Gabe Goldberg)
Scary e-mail -- invite from Facebook (Ted Lee)
Facebook: Backfire to Come? (Gene Wirchenko)
Twitter to log every click on every link in every tweet (Lauren Weinstein)
Ford's car-monitoring software (Chris D.)
Risks of Not Following Standards (Robert McMillan via Gene Wirchenko)
A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security (Randall Stross via
  Monty Solomon)
Really, no *really* aggressive "anti-virus" software (Paul Robinson)
Found 4 security problems at a bank (Mark Fineman)
Re: WSJ: What Do Online Advertisers Know About You? (Mark Fineman)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:21:36 -0400
From: David Lesher <wb8foz_at_private>
Subject: NTSB on WMATA

WARNING -- LONG!

NTSB on WMATA Crash [DCA-09-MR-007] (Risks-25.79)

On 27 July, 2010 NTSB held a public hearing to announce their report on the
22 May 2009 Metro crash of train #112 into #214.

The report is technical, long, detailed, and leaves few parties untainted.
Foremost, NTSB found the primary cause was "a failure of the track circuit
modules, built by GRS/Alstom Signaling Inc., that caused the automatic train
control system to lose detection of train 214"... The second cause was
WMATA's failure to use tools they created after another detection
failure/near miss in 2005. There are many more aspects detailed.

I urge anyone involved in RISKS-topics to invest the time in reading the
full report [final version due out soon] and exhibits, but I'll attempt a
synopsis. Even it won't be short.

WMATA uses bog-standard AC track signaling, around for over one hundred
years. Basically, an audio frequency signal is injected across the rails [by
a transmitter module] at one end of a several hundred foot block of track;
if it's detected [receiver module] at the far end [receiver module], the
block is empty & an output relay is held energized; if it is NOT, either a
train is shorting Rail 1 to Rail 2, or something has failed; that track is
considered occupied. In short, it should be fail-safe; broken wires, cracked
rails, blown fuses etc all drop the relay.

>From those core inputs, the automatic train control system manages trains to
maintain safe & desired spacing. Even in "manual" mode; the train operator
can not do better than slowly creep into an occupied block.

What happened in 2005 in the Potomac tunnel just before Rosslyn was... this
failed. A running train almost tail-ended one stopped in the tunnel, and the
one behind *it* also did likewise. [1] After a lot of work, WMATA
engineering thought it was a cable fault, and after repositioning them,
could not replicate the problem. As one consequence, the WMATA chief
signaling engineer created a test well beyond GRS/Alstom's; his used a test
shunt [short between rails] at three places per block [not just one], at
each end and in the middle.

In 2009, at Ft. Totten, the same problem occurred on a curve. Because of the
limited line-of-sight she had, the 112 operator's emergency stop command
only reduced the collision from being at >55mph to ~40mph. 112's lead car
collapsed, and 9 including the operator died.

After weeks of work by WMATA Engineering & NTSB [who was on-site for 68
days], they found that the audio frequency transmitter stage was breaking
into parasitic oscillation at the peak of its waveform. That noise was
coupling through the common power supply and the metal rack over to the
receiver. (Even with the field wiring disconnected, the receiver said
"unoccupied.") Further work showed "loss of shunt" cases were occurring
hundreds of times *per day* and had been for years. But one cause of these
was the GRS parasitic; found on hundreds of other track circuits across the
system, all using the same generation of modules, as had Rosslyn.

But while that was the core of the technical causes, it was only the first
step of NTSB's findings. Over the winter, they had held an evidentiary
hearing about the case. During that, the Chairman of the WMATA Board of
Directors testified that roughly, safety was not their problem; they just
set policy.

Perhaps as a result of that statement, the NTSB issued not just 15-odd
Recommendations to WMATA (and many to other parties), but one VERY pointed
and explicit one directly to the WMATA Board; to step up and take charge of
a creating a "safety culture" at the WMATA. As one example of how it is now,
the organization is so balkanized that the chief signaling engineer heard
only in post-accident interviews that not one of the questioned maintenance
technicians had ever heard of his enhanced test. It seemingly had never been
promulgated.

Since no WMATA Board members were even present for the Recommendations, the
NTSB Chairwoman told the (present) current interim General Manager that she
and the Members would go with him when he met his Board.

In short, while there were technical causes to the accident, the bigger
issue is no one in charge seemed concerned about rider or worker
safety. WMATA holds the dubious record for unresolved NTSB Recommendations
from past fatalities.

I wish these were new risks; but they are anything but.

One result of this is there is now significant Hill interest in establishing
and enforcing federal transit safety regulations. Until now, transit lines
such as WMATA & NYCTA have not fallen under FRA regulations.

Links: [from <http://ntsb.gov/events/boardmeeting.htm> page]

Synopsis
<http://ntsb.gov/Publictn/2010/RAR1002.htm>
Presentations
<http://ntsb.gov/events/2010/Washington-DC-Metro/presentations.htm>
Docket, with megabtyes of data.
<http://www.ntsb.gov/Dockets/RailRoad/DCA09MR007/default.htm>

[1] WMATA carries ~800,000 person-trips per day. If there is anything to
grateful for, it is that the inevitable collision took place in the open on
the Red Line, and in the off-peak direction. Fire/Rescue had good access and
got accolades from NTSB. If instead, the collision had been within the
Potomac tube during crush hour, there could easily have been hundreds
killed; each six-car train carries ~1000 people.

  [Just thinking about such a crash in the tube freaks me.... that's
  1500-1800 people in the two trains. The crash would immediately kill say
  200+, but the resulting fire would do in another 500+. The tube is NOT
  sprinklered.  DL]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:06:20 -0400
From: Peter Wayner <pcw2_at_private>
Subject: Software glitches, systemic failure and airplane crashes together

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-08-31-1Acockpits31_ST_N.htm

Flaws in flight simulator training helped trigger some of the worst airline
accidents in the past decade, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal
accident records.  More than half of the 522 fatalities in U.S. airline
accidents since 2000 have been linked to problems with simulators, devices
that are used nearly universally to train the nation's airline pilots, the
records show.

Simulator training is credited with saving thousands of lives. But the
problem, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) case files
and safety experts, is that in rare but critical instances they can trick
pilots into habits that lead to catastrophic mistakes.

  ["More than half" seems to me overblown.  PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:11:22 -0400
From: mike_martin_at_private
Subject: "iPod trance" increases traffic risk to pedestrians

The number of pedestrians killed on New South Wales roads in the 2010
 calendar year to date, 53, is up 25 per cent over the same period last year
 although the overall rate of road deaths has dropped. Concern is growing
 about the "iPod zombie trance" that people get into when listening to
 mobile music devices. This past weekend there were reports of at least six
 pedestrians hit by vehicles on the state's roads. Two of them died, one hit
 by a bus and the other by an ambulance that had its warning lights flashing
 and its siren sounding.

Pedestrian Council of Australia spokesman Harold Scruby is quoted as saying:

"'Death by iPod' is a relatively new phenomenon so it may be slow in showing
up because it can sometimes be a year between the fatality and the coroner's
finding. But we should be asking ourselves why are total road deaths
declining while pedestrian fatalities continue to escalate? Maybe listening
devices could be part of the explanation.''

The Automobile Association in the UK issued a statement last month
expressing concern that people were "increasingly guilty of focusing more on
Google Maps while walking the streets than paying attention to the world
around them".
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mp3s/pedestrian-death-rise-blamed-on-ipods-20100905-14w4d.html

Loss of situational awareness poses risks regardless of what people are
doing. When they are driving a vehicle or even walking in the streets,
consequences can be fatal.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/zombie-ipod-pedestrians-endangered-by-mobile-oblivion-says-aa-50000277/#ixzz0yhrj96oa

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:35:59 +0200
From: Peter Houppermans <peter_at_private>
Subject: German goverment ID already cracked

Surely this is some sort of record.

  "Public broadcaster ARD's show 'Plusminus' teamed up with the known hacker
  organization 'Chaos Computer Club' (CCC) to find out how secure the
  controversial new radio-frequency (RFID) chips were. The report shows how
  they used the basic new home scanners that will go along with the cards
  (for use with home computers to process the personal data for official
  government business) to demonstrate that scammers would have few problems
  extracting personal information. This includes two fingerprint scans and a
  new six-digit PIN meant to be used as a digital signature for official
  government business and beyond."
  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/09/02/1747213:

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:38:15 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty_at_private>
Subject: Malware Used to Steal South Korean Military Secrets

A lawmaker has uncovered that 1,715 files containing South Korean military
secrets, including war plans against North Korea, were stolen from infected
Army-issued computers.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Malware-Used-to-Steal-South-Korean-Military-Secrets-153153.shtml

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:28:08 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe_at_private>
Subject: Risks: Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond

In Nov 2005, three senior aides to Britain's royal family noticed odd things
happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were
somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar
were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the
country's biggest tabloids, News of the World.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html?hp

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:21:02 -0500
From: Ted Lee <TMPLee_at_private>
Subject: Scary e-mail -- invite from Facebook

I just received an invitation from Facebook on behalf of somebody I know to
join.  (I do not, and do not intend to, have a Facebook account.)  I haven't
heard back from him whether he actually sent it, but it doesn't really
matter.  Near the end of the email is the line "Other people you may know on
Facebook:" followed by eight names and pictures.  Seven of the names and
pictures are indeed of people I know and except for one correspond with more
or less frequently.  (That one was of someone I didn't recognize, but I
searched my email archives and indeed found one email from him.)  As best I
can remember, I have never received a Facebook invite from any of them.  How
could Facebook possibly know with such accuracy who I correspond with on the
Internet?  A couple of the people I interact with both via email and
newsgroups, but several definitely only via email.  I hope there's an
obvious explanation that someone who uses Facebook would know (like, for
instance, if it insisted that you share your address book with it) but
whether it's obvious or not it's pretty darn scary.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:16:00 -0700
From: Gene Wirchenko <genew_at_private>
Subject: Facebook: Backfire to Come?

Robert McMillan, Spammers get the boot with Facebook's new remote logout; The
social-networking company is rolling out a new security feature that lets
users see which computers and devices are logged into their Facebook
accounts.  7 Sep 2010
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/news.asp?id=59072

Facebook users will soon have a new way of knocking spammers out of
legitimate accounts.  The social-networking company is rolling out a new
security feature that lets users see which computers and devices are logged
into their Facebook accounts, and then removing the ones that they don't
want to have access. ...

  Why could a spammer using a stolen account not regularly monitor for other
  logins under the account and knock them off?

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:16:07 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren_at_private>
Subject: Twitter to log every click on every link in every tweet

Twitter to log every click on every link in every tweet
http://bit.ly/bYtPsp  (Google Buzz)

 "Soon, Twitter will be collecting data on which Twitter users click any
  links in any Twitter streams. They will also be able to collect IP address
  info for any user (even non-Twitter users) who click on any link in any
  Twitter message via the Twitter Web interface."  ...

  [From Network Neutrality Squad.  PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:13:08 +0100
From: "Chris D." <e767pmk_at_private>
Subject: Ford's car-monitoring software

here's an item in this weekend's newspaper about the Ford company offering a
driving economy check for Ford car owners (in the UK, may apply in other
countries too): http://www.ford.co.uk/OwnerServices/FordEconoCheck
Basically, they fit a logging device to your car, then you drive round as
normal for a week while it records when and where you've driven, then it's
mailed back to Ford for analysis.  They tell you if you're driving too
aggressively or leaving the engine idling too long, etc. and give you tips
on how to improve your fuel economy.

All well and good, but then the newspaper reviewer advocates this as a great
idea for law enforcement -- "If the police and insurers ever get this type
of information, some serial-offender motorists could be providing damning
evidence that might invalidate their policies or land them in court.  For
the law-abiding majority, EconoCheck will work in your favour... responsible
motorists will have data sheets that show they drive sensibly..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/columnists/mike-rutherford/7950309/Mr-Money-Big-Brother-is-watching.html

Lots of data-protection and security alarm bells ringing here, with the
usual RISKS of genuine mistakes, blackmail, and so on.  What are the
standards for the legal validity of the data, and do innocent people have to
prove their innocence?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:12:43 -0700
From: Gene Wirchenko <genew_at_private>
Subject: Risks of Not Following Standards (Robert McMillan)

Robert McMillan, Cisco patches bug that caused partial Internet blackout; A
Duke University experiment inadvertently uncovered a bug in Cisco IOS XR.
InfoWorld Home, 30 Aug 2010 | IDG News Service
http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/cisco-patches-bug-caused-partial-internet-blackout-811?source=IFWNLE_nlt_sec_2010-08-31

Selected text:

In a security advisory released just hours after the incident, Cisco
confirmed that an incident disclosed the bug. "An advertisement of an
unrecognized but valid BGP attribute resulted in resetting of several BGP
neighbors on 27 August 2010. This advertisement was not malicious but
inadvertently triggered this vulnerability," Cisco said in its advisory.
Duke University assistant professor Xiaowei Yang declined to explain the
point of her experiment, but she said that all of the data that her team
sent was "100 percent standard compliant."

In an interview [on 30 Aug], Zmijewski said that while Cisco's buggy
software caused the problems, the Duke team running the experiment should
have been more careful. "The days of academics playing with a live network
are kind of gone now," he said. "I think it would be foolhardy to try
something like this in the future. ... I'm amazed that this happened in the
first place."

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2010 09:09:33 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty_at_private>
Subject: A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security (Randall Stross)

Randall Stross, A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security,
*The New York Times*, 4 Sep 2010

  "Make your password strong, with a unique jumble of letters, numbers and
  punctuation marks. But memorize it - never write it down. And, oh yes,
  change it every few months."

These instructions are supposed to protect us. But they don't.

Some computer security experts are advancing the heretical thought that
passwords might not need to be "strong," or changed constantly.  They say
onerous requirements for passwords have given us a false sense of protection
against potential attacks. In fact, they say, we aren't paying enough
attention to more potent threats.

Here's one threat to keep you awake at night: Keylogging software, which is
deposited on a PC by a virus, records all keystrokes - including the
strongest passwords you can concoct - and then sends it surreptitiously to a
remote location. ...
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/business/05digi.html

    [Also noted by Matthew Kruk, who quoted another para:
  Donald A. Norman, a co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a design
  consulting firm in Fremont, Calif., makes a similar case. In "When
  Security Gets in the Way," an essay published last year, he noted the
  password rules of Northwestern University, where he then taught. It was a
  daunting list of 15 requirements. He said unreasonable rules can end up
  rendering a system less secure: users end up writing down passwords and
  storing them in places that can be readily discovered.  "These
  requirements keep out the good guys without deterring the bad guys," he
  said.
    PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:43:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Robinson <paul_at_paul-robinson.us>
Subject: Really, no *really* aggressive "anti-virus" software [LONG]

I thought I should pass this along because as with almost every type of
"software" developed the first ones tend to be crude and the others get more
refined, I felt I should report this to make people aware of it.

I've seen aggressive anti-virus software, especially in the so-called "free
trial" models, most typically in the extent of being aggressive in claiming
one's system is horribly infected, with viruses, spyware, malware, and every
other piece of worthless or harmful software there is, telling you how
terribly bad everything is on your system, and holding its hand out waiting
for a tip in the form of demanding you buy the product to fix the multitude
of problems it's claimed it found.

This rationale of raising the threat level of everything that is on your
system that is even in the slightest bit out of line to the level of an
unmitigated disaster requiring immediate repair (by purchasing the product,
of course) or even worse disaster will result, extends to the newest crop of
"fix up" software in which it also looks for things like registry errors,
old and unnecessary modules of half-installed, partially-installed or
partly-uninstalled applications, in the program declares that every error,
mistake or misconfiguration it can find or think of telling you about is
about as dangerous to your system as if it was installed by BP or is the
software equivalent of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Nothing necessarily wrong with this, it reminds me of the days of carnival
barkers announcing how you can win a fortune in prizes in what were often
rigged games, and newsboys on street corners screaming out lurid headlines
to get people to buy the paper, except, of course, the software product
always tends to be even more overly alarmist, even to the point in some AV
or PC tune-up products of claiming browser cookies for various advertising
sites - used for tracking, but otherwise harmless - to be a source of
danger.  That, and one other issue I'll get to later.

I helped out one customer who had a really aggressive product that kept
claiming her laptop was full of viruses and spyware and screaming how she
really, I mean *really* needed to buy the product before her computer was
sold off as part of a botnet to spammers in China or it melted down from the
heat generated by the infected software on her computer.

I'm not sure if anti-virus software makers think that making their software
as obnoxiously irritating as possible is going to make more sales, but there
is a "point of diminishing returns" when the anti-virus software becomes so
demanding of a tip like an aggressive waiter in a restaurant that you'll
choose to go to a different eatery and never go back there again.

The software equivalent of this, of course, is the uninstall function.  Back
in the MSDos days you simply uninstalled a program by deleting its
directory, possibly removing a path statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT and that might
be it.

Now, install and uninstall of the typical Windows application has so many
features and options that there are install packages like Installshield and
Wise Installer in order to make sure the developer hasn't forgotten anything
the app needs and to make sure when the user is uninstalling the application
that it's cleanly removed so pieces don't get left behind and unnecessary or
now incorrect registry entries are removed.  In fact, it's the failure of
some uninstallers to either properly do this, do all that is necessary to
completely uninstall the program, or do it correctly that PC tune-up
programs fix these sort of errors.

That is, regular applications tend to provide an uninstall feature and will
uninstall themselves when requested.  Uninstalling a trial-version of an an
anti-virus, software tune-up or similar application is basically an
unmitigated disaster for the maker of that product - they didn't get paid
for telling you about your problems - and they try very hard to prevent this
from happening.  A typical application - even a demonstration program -
puts an entry in the install/uninstall registry list so you can use
"add/remove programs" in Control Panel (at least for versions of Windows
through XP; I'm not sure what the program removal tool is called on Vista as
I really don't understand it much and I've never used Windows 7).

A number of these "anti virus" or tune-up applications won't put an entry in
add/remove programs.  Obviously, they do not want you to shut up their
screaming banshee applications without paying for them, they want you to buy
them off!

So going back to the lady with the aggressive anti-virus on her laptop, it
didn't have an uninstall but I figured out where it was and basically ripped
it out by the throat, deleted its directory and related files and if
anything showed up as missing during a reboot, remove references to those
files too.

That was about two years ago.

So my sister calls me last week because for the first time now she has an
"anti-virus" program that is warning her about a bunch of problems on her
system, and even refusing to let her install the Internet telephony
application Skype.  Basically this program is telling her that almost
everything is infected and she needs to fix it (by buying the full version
of this "anti-virus" program, natch.)  I'll explain why I put "anti-virus"
in quotes in a moment.

I take a visit over to her place and find some "anti-virus" product whose
name I can't remember exactly, but I think it was something like System
Protector, or something like that. She doesn't even know how this program
got on her computer.  Basically it was a one-trick pony, telling how just
about everything on the system was infected with a virus that was attempting
to "send your credit card numbers over the Internet" to someone in Russia or
one of the various countries well known for credit card fraud.

It's blocking just about everything as being infected.  My sister called me
because she was having trouble being able to use her computer - from all the
warning messages of this so-called "anti-virus" software - or being able to
use the Internet.

So it's going along and telling me about all the stuff on the system that is
horribly infected with viruses that are trying to send my credit card
information over the Internet to who knows where and how it can stop this if
only I "upgrade" to the paid version, I'm trying to figure out how to shut
it up so we can actually use the computer.

The third most significant thing that made me suspicious was, to the extent
I could find the equivalent of add-remove programs in Windows Vista, this
program is, of course, not present; but nothing new here, this happens often
with many of these kinds of programs.  The second thing was its splash/main
screen which simply had its name, it had no other branding than then name of
the program (which again I'm calling System Protector because I can't
remember its name).  Every other real anti-virus application has a company
brand in addition to the product name, e.g. Symantec, McAfee, Kapersky, etc.
Nothing with this one.

But what got me most suspicious was its claims that essentially everything
is trying to export credit card numbers to unsavory characters in lawless
parts of the globe.  Not everything is doing this and claiming it is clearly
the worst kind of alarmist hysteria. My sister runs behind a firewall, there
couldn't be that many things infected as System Protector claimed.

It started when I can't access CMD.EXE, because "it's been infected with a
virus that is trying to transmit credit card numbers" etc. and won't allow
me to run it, but I can fix this by purchasing the full version, etc.  It
even prevents Adobe Flash from trying to install an upgrade, so maybe it's
not all bad.  Of course, I have no idea why a download from Adobe's website
has a virus trying to send credit card numbers, but the program must know
what it's talking about, right?  I basically can't use the Run command,
because everything I'd try to run is, you guessed it, trying to forward
credit card numbers to Afghanistan.

When I could not run Regedt32 because the program thought it was forwarding
my Visa and MasterCard information to Osama Bin Laden, I came to the
realization that basically this wasn't an anti-virus program, it was a
trojan faking an anti-virus and holding your computer for ransom until you
buy the full version of their so-called "anti-virus" whereupon you'll be
lulled into a false sense of security since it will now stop telling you
you're infected.  It's the high-tech version of selling counterfeit
prescriptions in which you think you're getting a necessary medication but
you're actually buying something that is, at best a do-nothing sugar pill or
possibly something full of harmful chemicals.

It is basically blocking anything you could use to disable, remove or shut
it down without paying for its useless "protection."  After some effort I
realize I can stop it by rebooting into Safe Mode. Now while I can't find
what directory "System Protector" is stored in, I can run Regedt32 and
discover that there is an entry in the Run Once and Run entries consisting
of a name in Chinese!  So the so-called "anti-virus" has fixed itself to be
restarted any time the computer is rebooted (other than in Safe Mode,
fortunately).

So while I couldn't remove the application because I couldn't figure out how
to translate the Chinese characters into a directory, I was able to evacuate
it from Run Once or Run, and when the computer was restarted, the
"anti-virus" was gone; I had stopped its execution.

One of the things I referred to earlier was the old days of newspaper
vendors hawking lurid headlines to get you to buy their paper.  But at least
they weren't blocking your way and refusing to let you leave unless you buy
a copy.  This is clearly extortion disguised as legitimate software
protection.

The obvious risks are first, that someone will believe this and pay them,
maybe becoming a victim of who-knows-what; if they can fool you into
thinking it's a legitimate anti-virus tool, it might have any number of nice
features including actually being a botnet manager or who knows what.  If
they ripped you off one way, no reason they can't find a way to rip you off
another way, and maybe another.  Second, since it surely isn't going to find
any real viruses, it will give someone a fake sense of security by thinking
they're protected.

As I said, this one was crude and way too obvious, but I suspect that there
will be other programs similar to this in the future which will be more
refined and harder to spot as fakes, and I felt people should be aware of
this sort of thing looming on the horizon.

And people used to wonder why I never use Internet Explorer and always have
a hardware firewall in place.  I don't use anti-virus software and have
never gotten an infection.  While maybe I'm just lucky or careful, it's
been over 15 years of using the Internet nearly every day and the number of
times I've gotten infected on my computers has been and is still zero.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:08:35 -0400
From: Mark Fineman <mark53916_at_private>
Subject: Found 4 security problems at a bank

  [This may be a timed-out e-mail address.  PGN]

I found 4 security problems at on a bank's website.  There were 3 security
problems that came up (due to the flawed mechanism that the bank has for
reporting security problems).  I coincidentally found a 4th problem that may
also be a security problem.

Here are the problems:

Initial security problem:

1. When logged on to the banking site and trying to send a message to the
 bank it is possible for the session for the message sending to timeout.
 That browser window says that the user timed out and he has to log in again
 to send the message.  While not actually saying that the user was logged
 out of his main banking session, most users would assume that they were and
 it was safe to leave the terminal.  However, in fact the user may not have
 been logged out of the main banking session and can actually do banking or
 send a message without logging in again.

Problems found while trying to report the problem to the bank:

2. The message center messages can't be used to report security problems.

3. When you use the phone to report a security problem, you are asked to
   prove you are a customer by giving your account number, even though you
   might not want to give your account number because of the security
   problem.  Also the human response that says you have to call a phone
   number to report the security problem should have contained a token that
   allows someone to confirm over the phone that he is a customer, AS SHOWN
   BY him getting the token which requires the user to enter his banking
   information.

4. There is no way to report a security problem if you are not a customer.

I also found that the bank's message system incorrectly processes the
included original message in reply to threads.  In particular, each
apostrophe seems to get changed into two apostrophes, although there might
be another factor involve in this doubling.  I consider this a security
problem since it indicates that text is being process someplace, rather than
merely being blindly included with an include string stuck at the start of
each line.  This type of processing often turns out to indicate a security
hole whereby text winds up getting executed with bad results.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:44:44 -0400
From: Mark Fineman <mark53916_at_private>
Subject: Re: WSJ: What Do Online Advertisers Know About You? (Jones, R-26.14)

Tim Jones, *Wall Street Journal*, 4 Aug 2010

In addition to the comments in the article, the technique usually makes it
possible for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th parties involved to violate the 1st
(user's) party's privacy, the privacy agreement that the 2nd party (the
site) has made with the 1st party, and the privacy agreements that the
actual advertisers (4th or 5th party or beyond) have made with the 1st
party.

Underlying principle: Of course this information personally identifies the
1st party - that is why the ad has been placed here in the first place.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 07:53:46 -0900
From: RISKS-request_at_private
Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

 The ACM RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest, with Usenet equivalent comp.risks.
=> SUBSCRIPTIONS: PLEASE read RISKS as a newsgroup (comp.risks or equivalent)
 if possible and convenient for you.   The mailman Web interface can
 be used directly to subscribe and unsubscribe:
   http://lists.csl.sri.com/mailman/listinfo/risks
 Alternatively, to subscribe or unsubscribe via e-mail to mailman
 your FROM: address, send a message to
   risks-request_at_private
 containing only the one-word text subscribe or unsubscribe.  You may
 also specify a different receiving address: subscribe address= ... .
 You may short-circuit that process by sending directly to either
   risks-subscribe_at_private or risks-unsubscribe_at_private
 depending on which action is to be taken.

 Subscription and unsubscription requests require that you reply to a
 confirmation message sent to the subscribing mail address.  Instructions
 are included in the confirmation message.  Each issue of RISKS that you
 receive contains information on how to post, unsubscribe, etc.

=> The complete INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites,
 copyright policy, etc.) is online.
   <http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html>
 The full info file may appear now and then in RISKS issues.
 *** Contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines.

=> .UK users should contact <Lindsay.Marshall_at_private>.
=> SPAM challenge-responses will not be honored.  Instead, use an alternative
 address from which you NEVER send mail!
=> SUBMISSIONS: to risks_at_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 for current volume
     or ftp://ftp.sri.com/VL/risks for previous VoLume
 <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
==> Special Offer to Join ACM for readers of the ACM RISKS Forum:
    <http://www.acm.org/joinacm1>

------------------------------

End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 26.15
************************
Received on Wed Sep 08 2010 - 21:19:22 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Wed Sep 08 2010 - 22:38:41 PDT