Tag: Cybersecurity

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The Importance of ZTE Security Deficits

A great of speculation exists around mobile companies of all stripes: are they secure? Do they secretly insert backdoors for government? What kinds of assurances do customers and citizens have around the devices?

Recently these concerns exploded (again) following a Reuters article that notes serious problems in ZTE mobile phones. There are a series of reasons that security agencies can, and do, raise concerns about foreign built equipment (some related more to economics than good security practice). While it’s possible that ZTE’s vulnerabilities were part of a Chinese national-security initiative, it’s entirely likely (and more probable) that ZTE’s backdoor access into their mobiles is a genuine, gigantic, mistake. Let’s not forget that even ‘our’ companies are known for gross security incompetence.

In the ZTE case it doesn’t matter if the backdoor was deliberate or not. It doesn’t matter if the company patches the devices, either, because a large number of customers will never apply updates to their phones. This means that, for all intents and purposes, these devices will have well publicized security holes for the duration of their existence. It’s that kind of ongoing vulnerability – one that persists regardless of vendor ‘patches’ – that is increasingly dangerous in the mobile world, and a threat that is arguably more significant (at the moment) than whether we can trust company X or Y.

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Cybersecurity and the Ex-Technical Director of NSA’s IAD

Brian Snow, the (now) ex Technical Director of the NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate, speaking on Cybersecurity. Actual talk begins at 2:10.

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Major Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities Disclosed

For years, researchers have warned that the systems that run critical infrastructure have systemic and serious code-based vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, governments have tended to use such warnings as a platform to raise ‘cyber-warfare’ arguments. Many such arguments are thinly-disguised efforts to assert more substantive government surveillance and control over citizens’ rights and expressions of freedom. Few of these arguments genuinely address the concerns researchers raise.

In the face of governmental lacklustre efforts to secure infrastructure, researchers have disclosed critical vulnerabilities in many of the systems responsible for manufacturing facilities, water and waste management plants, oil and gas refineries and pipelines, and chemical production plants. What’s incredibly depressing is this:

The exploits take advantage of the fact that the Modicon Quantum PLC doesn’t require a computer that is communicating with it to authenticate itself or any commands it sends to the PLC—essentially trusting any computer that can talk to the PLC. Without such protection, an unauthorized party with network access can send the device malicious commands to seize control of it, or simply send a “stop” command to halt the system from operating.

These kinds of ‘attacks’ or ‘exploits’ are possible because the most basic security precautions are not integrated into the logic controllers running such infrastructure. On the one hand this makes sense: many PLCs and the infrastructure they are embedded in were created and deployed prior to ‘the Internet’ being what it is today. On the other, however, one has to ask: if the money spent on security theatre at airports had been invested in hardening actual PLCs and other infrastructure, where would critical infrastructure security be today?

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Surprise: American Equipment Spies on Iranians

Steve Stecklow, for Reuters, has an special report discussing how Chinese vendor ZTE was able to resell American network infrastructure and surveillance products to the Iranian government. The equipment sold is significant;

Mahmoud Tadjallimehr, a former telecommunications project manager in Iran who has worked for major European and Chinese equipment makers, said the ZTE system supplied to TCI was “country-wide” and was “far more capable of monitoring citizens than I have ever seen in other equipment” sold by other companies to Iran. He said its capabilities included being able “to locate users, intercept their voice, text messaging … emails, chat conversations or web access.”

The ZTE-TCI documents also disclose a backdoor way Iran apparently obtains U.S. technology despite a longtime American ban on non-humanitarian sales to Iran – by purchasing them through a Chinese company.

ZTE’s 907-page “Packing List,” dated July 24, 2011, includes hardware and software products from some of America’s best-known tech companies, including Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Oracle Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Symantec Corp.

ZTE has partnerships with some of the U.S. firms. In interviews, all of the companies said they had no knowledge of the TCI deal. Several – including HP, Dell, Cisco and Juniper – said in statements they were launching internal investigations after learning about the contract from Reuters.

The sale of Western networking and surveillance equipment/software to the Iranian government isn’t new. In the past, corporate agents for major networking firms explained to me the means by which Iran is successfully importing the equipment; while firms cannot positively know that this is going on, it’s typically because of an intentional willingness to ignore what they strongly suspect is happening. Regardless, the actual sale of this specific equipment – while significant – isn’t the story that Western citizens can do a lot to change at this point.

Really, we should be asking: do we, as citizens of Western nations, believe that manufacturing of these kinds of equipment is permissible? While some degree of surveillance capacity is arguably needed for lawful purposes within a democracy it is theoretically possible to design devices such that they have limited intercept and analysis capability out of the box. In essence, we could demand that certain degrees of friction are baked into the surveillance equipment that is developed, and actively work to prevent companies from producing highly scaleable and multifunctional surveillance equipment and software. Going forward, this could prevent the next sale of significant surveillance equipment to Iran on grounds that the West simply doesn’t have any for (legal) sale.

In the case of government surveillance inefficiency and lack of scaleability are advantageous insofar as they hinder governmental surveillance capabilities. Limited equipment would add time and resources to surveillance-driven operations, and thus demand a greater general intent to conduct surveillance than when authorities have access to easy-to-use, advanced and scalable, surveillance systems.

Legal frameworks are insufficient to protect citizens’ rights and privacy, as has been demonstrated time and time again by governmental extensions or exploitations of legal frameworks. We need a normatively informed limitation of surveillance equipment that is included in the equipment at the vendor-level. Anything less will only legitimize, rather than truly work towards stopping, the spread of surveillance equipment that is used to monitor citizens across the globe.

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The Problems With Smartphone Password Managers

In today’s era of hyperbolic security warnings one of the easiest things that people can do to ‘protect’ themselves online is select super hard passwords to crack, stuff them in a centralized password manager, and then only have to remember a single password to access the rest in the manager. I’ve used a password manager for some time and there are real security benefits: specifically, if a single service that I’ve registered with is hacked then my entire online life isn’t compromised, just that one service.

Password manager companies recognize the first concern that most people have surrounding their services: how do the managers protect the sensitive information they’re entrusted with? The standard response from vendors tends to reference ‘strong security models and usage of cryptography. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is now quite apparent that the standard responses really can’t be trusted.

In a recent paper (.pdf), researchers interrogated the security status of password managers. What they found is, quite frankly, shocking and shameful. They also demonstrate the incredible need for third-party vetting of stated security capabilities.

The abstract for the paper is below but you should really just go read the whole paper (.pdf). It’s worth your time and if you’re not a math person you can largely skim over the hard math: the authors have provided a convenient series of tables and special notes that indicate the core deficiencies in various managers’ security stance. Don’t use a password manager that is clearly incompetently designed and, perhaps in the future, you will be more skeptical of the claims companies make around security.

Abstract:

In this paper we will analyze applications designed to facilitate storing and management of passwords on mobile platforms, such as Apple iOS and BlackBerry. We will specifically focus our attention on the security of data at rest. We will show that many password keeper apps fail to provide claimed level of protection

Access the paper (.pdf)

The Problems With Smartphone Password Managers

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How to hack a smartphone via radio

Network World:

Encryption keys on smartphones can be stolen via a technique using radio waves, says one of the world’s foremost crypto experts, Paul Kocher, whose firm Cryptography Research will demonstrate the hacking stunt with several types of smartphones at the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco next month.

“You tune to the right frequency,” says Kocher, who described the hacking procedure as involving use of a radio device much like a common AM radio that will be set up within about 10 feet from the smartphone. The radio-based device will pick up electromagnetic waves occurring when the crypto libraries inside the smartphone are used, and computations can reveal the private key. “We’re stealing the key as it’s being used,” he says, adding, “It’s independent of key length.”

Kocher says the goal of the hacking demo, which Cryptography Research will demonstrate throughout the RSA Conference at its booth, is not to disparage any particular smartphone manufacturer but to point out that the way crypto is used on devices can be improved.

“This is a problem that can be fixed,” he says, noting Cryptography Research is working with at least one of the major smartphone makers, which he declined to name, on the issues around these types of radio-based attacks.

This is a high level of awesome. I wonder who the major smartphone maker is; Microsoft? Apple?