CRYPTO-GRAM
July 15, 2011
by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer, BT
[email protected]
http://www.schneier.com
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and
commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.
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In this issue:
Man Flies with Someone Else's Ticket and No Legal ID
News
Court Ruling on "Reasonable" Electronic Banking Security
Protecting Private Information on Smart Phones
Schneier News
Yet Another "People Plug in Strange USB Sticks" Story
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Man Flies with Someone Else's Ticket and No Legal ID
Last week, I got a bunch of press calls about Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi,
who flew from New York to Los Angeles using an expired ticket in someone
else's name and a university ID. They all wanted to know what this says
about airport security.
It says that airport security isn't perfect, and that people make
mistakes. But it's not something that anyone should worry about. It's
not like Noibi figured out a new hole in the airport security system,
one that he was able to exploit repeatedly. He got lucky. He got real
lucky. It's not something a terrorist can build a plot around.
I'm even less concerned because I've never thought the photo ID check
had any value. Noibi was screened, just like any other passenger. Even
the TSA blog makes this point: "In this case, TSA did not properly
authenticate the passenger's documentation. That said, it's important to
note that this individual received the same thorough physical screening
as other passengers, including being screened by advanced imaging
technology (body scanner)."
Seems like the TSA is regularly downplaying the value of the photo ID
check. This is from a Q&A about Secure Flight, their new system to
match passengers with watch lists:
Q: This particular "layer" isn't terribly effective. If this
"layer" of security can be circumvented by anyone with a printer
and a word processor, this doesn't seem to be a terribly useful
"layer" ... especially looking at the amount of money being
expended on this particular "layer". It might be that this money
could be more effectively spent on other "layers".
A: TSA uses layers of security to ensure the security of the
traveling public and the Nation's transportation system. Secure
Flight's watchlist name matching constitutes only one security
layer of the many in place to protect aviation. Others include
intelligence gathering and analysis, airport checkpoints, random
canine team searches at airports, federal air marshals, federal
flight deck officers and more security measures both visible and
invisible to the public.
Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist
attack. In combination their security value is multiplied,
creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has
to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an
attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail
during the attempt.
Yes, the answer says that they need to spend millions to ensure that
terrorists with a viable plot also need a computer, but you can tell
that their heart wasn't in the answer. "Checkpoints! Dogs! Air
marshals! Ignore the stupid photo ID requirement."
Noibi is an embarrassment for the TSA and for the airline Virgin
America, who are both supposed to catch this kind of thing. But I'm not
worried about the security risk, and neither is the TSA.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0701-airport-security-20110630,0,2315584.story
or http://tinyurl.com/3wvo9jb
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/07/stowaway-suspect-noibi.html or
http://tinyurl.com/3khzgep
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/01/MND11K5J1O.DTL
or http://tinyurl.com/3htuy7q
TSA blog on Noibi:
http://blog.tsa.gov/2011/07/jfk-lax-stowaway-was-screened-by-tsa.html
TSA blog on ID checking:
http://blog.tsa.gov/2009/08/secure-flight-q-ii.html
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News
Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS 2011).
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/weis_2011.html
http://weis2011.econinfosec.org/
Fourth Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2011) workshop.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/fourth_shb_work.html
Threat models colliding at movie-theater projectors.
http://www.pelicancrossing.net/theotherglass/2011/05/when-theat-models-collide.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3b25f6k
Interesting essay on the decline of al Qaeda:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110608-al-qaedas-new-video-message-defeat
or http://tinyurl.com/6botakq
Similar article from The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/06/jihad
Excellent satire: horse "no ride" list
http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2011/06/schumer-calls-for-horse-no-ride-list-in.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3khfuds
New paper from the RAND Corporation: "Assessing the Security Benefits of
a Trusted Traveler Program in the Presence of Attempted Attacker
Exploitation and Compromise":
http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR855.html
The life cycle of cryptographic hash functions:
http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html
Good paper: "Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys," Dinei Florencio and
Cormac Herley, Microsoft Research. I've been complaining about our
reliance on self-reported statistics for cyber-crime.
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/149886/SexLiesandCybercrimeSurveys.pdf or
http://tinyurl.com/3zsspah
Nice article on Firesheep in action.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/14/technology/firesheep_starbucks/index.htm
or http://tinyurl.com/36wotys
Many of our informal security systems involve convincing others to do
what we want them to. Here's a theory that says human reasoning evolved
not as a tool to better understand the world or solve problems, but to
win arguments and persuade other humans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html
or http://tinyurl.com/5sdq8vf
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1698090
Details of an insider attack against M&A information. The attacker only
looked at document titles, so as not to trigger any audit records.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/insider_attack.html
National Security Agency (NSA) SIGINT Reporter's Style and Usage Manual,
2010.
http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/NSA-SIGINT-style-manual_2010.pdf
People assisting a hostage taker via his Facebook page.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/assisting_a_hos.html
Selling a good reputation on eBay:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/selling_a_good.html
There's some great data on common iPhone passwords. I'm sure the
results also apply to banking PINs.
http://amitay.us/blog/files/most_common_iphone_passcodes.php
This is a really weird story about the Chinese army developing an online
first-person shooter game:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/chinese_army_de.html
Article on the NSA's Menwith Hill listening station in the UK.
http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/06/how-does-nsa-get-away-with-running-top-secret-menwith-hill-in-the-uk/
or http://tinyurl.com/3waka42
There's a new version of the TDSS rootkit.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/29/tdss_alureon_advances/
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. military is funding research in secure chips.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/spies-military-looking-for-hacker--backdoor-proof-circuits.ars
or http://tinyurl.com/5wjqkz9
A really interesting essay comparing the IRA and al Qaeda.
http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
The evolution of organized crime in Ireland in the face of increased
security:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0704/1224300030694.html or
http://tinyurl.com/3j7yuun
Nice article on the history of Stuxnet.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet-the-most-menacing-malware-in-history.ars
Stuxnet timeline:
http://www.infracritical.com/papers/stuxnet-timeline.txt
Interesting research: insurgent groups exhibit learning curves.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fatal-attacks-escalate
or http://tinyurl.com/6gefwg6
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6038/81.abstract
Interview with Evgeny Kaspersky.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,770191,00.html
This creates far more security risks than it solves: "The city council
in Cedar Falls, Iowa has absolutely crossed the line. They voted 6-1 in
favor of expanding the use of lock boxes on commercial property.
Property owners would be forced to place the keys to their businesses in
boxes outside their doors so that firefighters, in that one-in-a-million
chance, would have easy access to get inside."
http://www.timcartersfirepit.com/cedar-falls-iowa-lock-box-controversy.html
or http://tinyurl.com/6axlnol
We in the computer security world have been here before, over ten years ago.
http://www.schneier.com/paper-key-escrow.html
Indiana University of Pennsylvania is offering a Master of Science in
Strategic Studies in Weapons of Mass Destruction.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_746308.html
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Court Ruling on "Reasonable" Electronic Banking Security
One of the pleasant side effects of being too busy to write longer blog
posts is that -- if I wait long enough -- someone else writes what I
would have wanted to.
The ruling in the Patco Construction vs. People's United Bank case is
important, because the judge basically ruled that the bank's substandard
security was good enough -- and Patco is stuck paying for the fraud that
was a result of that substandard security. The details are important,
and Brian Krebs has written an excellent summary.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/06/court-passwords-secret-questions-reasonable-ebanking-security/
or http://tinyurl.com/6xdaa43
Krebs also writes about a case going in the opposite direction in a
Michigan court.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/06/court-favors-small-business-in-ebanking-fraud-case/
or http://tinyurl.com/5txo4ck
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Protecting Private Information on Smart Phones
AppFence is a technology -- with a working prototype -- that protects
personal information on smart phones. It does this by either
substituting innocuous information in place of sensitive information or
blocking attempts by the application to send the sensitive information
over the network.
The significance of systems like AppFence is that they have the
potential to change the balance of power in privacy between mobile
application developers and users. Today, application developers get to
choose what information an application will have access to, and the user
faces a take-it-or-leave-it proposition: users must either grant all
the permissions requested by the application developer or abandon
installation. Take-it-or-leave it offers may make it easier for
applications to obtain access to information that users don't want
applications to have. Many applications take advantage of this to gain
access to users' device identifiers and location for behavioral tracking
and advertising. Systems like AppFence could make it harder for
applications to access these types of information without more explicit
consent and cooperation from users.
The problem is that the mobile OS providers might not like AppFence.
Google probably doesn't care, but Apple is one of the biggest consumers
of iPhone personal information. Right now, the prototype only works on
Android, because it requires flashing the phone. In theory, the
technology can be made to work on any mobile OS, but good luck getting
Apple to agree to it.
http://appfence.org/
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Schneier News
Blog post on the potential title and cover for my next book.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/my_next_book_ti.html
The title decision was made last week. It's "Liars and Outliers: How
Security Holds Society Together."
Interview with me from Infosecurity magazine:
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/19302/interview-bts-bruce-schneier/
or http://tinyurl.com/6xs8l64
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Yet Another "People Plug in Strange USB Sticks" Story
I'm really getting tired of stories like this: "Computer disks and USB
sticks were dropped in parking lots of government buildings and private
contractors, and 60% of the people who picked them up plugged the
devices into office computers. And if the drive or CD had an official
logo on it, 90% were installed."
Of *course* people plugged in USB sticks and computer disks. It's like
"75% of people who picked up a discarded newspaper on the bus read it."
What else are people supposed to do with them?
And this is not the right response: "Mark Rasch, director of network
security and privacy consulting for Falls Church, Virginia-based
Computer Sciences Corp., told Bloomberg: 'There's no device known to
mankind that will prevent people from being idiots.'"
Maybe it would be the right response if 60% of people tried to play the
USB sticks like ocarinas, or tried to make omelettes out of the computer
disks. But not if they plugged them into their computers. That's what
they're for.
People get USB sticks all the time. The problem isn't that people are
idiots, that they should know that a USB stick found on the street is
automatically bad and a USB stick given away at a trade show is
automatically good. The problem is that the OS trusts random USB sticks.
The problem is that the OS will automatically run a program that can
install malware from a USB stick. The problem is that it isn't safe to
plug a USB stick into a computer.
Quit blaming the victim. They're just trying to get by.
http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/28/us-govt-plant-usb-sticks-in-security-study-60-of-subjects-take-the-bait/
or http://tinyurl.com/3dtyngc
As of February of this year, Windows no longer supports AutoRun for USB
drives.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2011/02/08/deeper-insight-into-the-security-advisory-967940-update.aspx
or http://tinyurl.com/429g8es
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Since 1998, CRYPTO-GRAM has been a free monthly newsletter providing
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and otherwise. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address
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Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to
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CRYPTO-GRAM is written by Bruce Schneier. Schneier is the author of the
best sellers "Schneier on Security," "Beyond Fear," "Secrets and Lies,"
and "Applied Cryptography," and an inventor of the Blowfish, Twofish,
Threefish, Helix, Phelix, and Skein algorithms. He is the Chief
Security Technology Officer of BT BCSG, and is on the Board of Directors
of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He is a frequent
writer and lecturer on security topics. See <http://www.schneier.com>.
Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not
necessarily those of BT.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Bruce Schneier.
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