Saturday, June 04, 2005

The Modern Slave Trade


Picture credit: http://www.ishr.org
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueIf you strip away Microsoft Word-generated Air National Guard memos, the bogus comparisons of Gitmo to mass-murdering Gulags, the fake but accurate Quran-flushing reports... if you strip away almost all of what passes for news these days, what are we left with?

The real stories. The important stories. The stories that CBS, Newsweek, and the Gray Lady should be covering. But don't.

No, it's left up to the Bush State Department, vilified for lo these many years, to expose the vast scope of the modern slave trade. Perhaps the mainstream media hasn't had enough time to research this "real news". After all, this is only the fifth annual Trafficking In Persons Report.

Look, only about 800,000 people are bought and sold each year, so I suppose Abu Graib, Halliburton, and the occasional, TV-friendly car bomb detonation should have top priority. Surely you don't expect the likes of Maureen Dowd to hoist themselves off their derrieres, do some real investigation, and write about true evil and injustice?

And, look, it only involves sexual slavery, child beggars, forced domestication, starvation, unreported rapes, beatings, and deaths, so I suppose these miserable souls (who number well under a million) don't deserve any investigative reporting. Leave it up to the State Department! The mainstream media has fake but accurate stories to cover!

Do me a favor. Click on any of the following search links for 'modern slave trade' at the LA Times, the New York Times, CBS News, or ABC News, just as a little test.

You see, the modern slave trade really isn't worth covering as news.

Because investigating this scourge on humanity would require scape-goating parties other than the Bush Administration and the U.S. Military. It would require delving into the true nature of evil. And, goodness knows, the mainstream media doesn't have any time for that.

Fox: The Modern Slave Trade and the State Department's 2005 Trafficking In Persons Report
 

Hate Mail


Picture credit: http://www.tsn.com
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueFrom Gregg Doyel, a senior writer at CBS SportsLine, comes this sparkling repartee:

Q: I was at Kansas during the period you talk about. I believe that you are incorrect! Larry Brown did not leave KU with probation issues. He made us mad by saying he was going to UCLA and later leaving to go to the NBA (Spurs pay a lot better than KU), but I do not believe we were ever under investigation or probation for anything Larry did. I think you are a KU hater just making up stuff about Larry. Prove it to me!

A: Trying to show restraint, trying to show restraining, failing, failing miserably. ... Patrick, if you were at Kansas at the time of Larry Brown, you'd be close to 40 now. How a man of your intelligence survived 40 years is a mystery. Try Google, Patrick. Insert the words "Larry Brown" and "Kansas" and, I don't know, "probation." The results will shock you and your parents, who sure would like you to move out.


CBS SportsLine: Hate Mail
 

Friday, June 03, 2005

Dan Rather on Larry King Live - a Retrospective



Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe revelation that Mark Felt was "Deep Throat" has been a highly entertaining experience. Most notably, it's brought about the nostalgic triumphalism of the mainstream media, wounded of late by the Rather, Jordan, Blair, et. al. affairs.

In 'celebration' of the Felt disclosure, Dan Rather reemerged from a self-imposed exile by visiting the Larry King Live show. Contrary to conventional wisdom, King didn't just throw softballs at the GIF-impaired journalist. He came to play (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt).

My smart-aleck remarks are interspersed throughout.

KING: Do you think the Republicans, the right-wing Republicans were after you?

RATHER: No. Again, I'm not a victim of anything. I don't say, no, they weren't. I don't know.

Ed: Uhmmm, wha....?

KING: ...what went wrong in your [story] on the Air National Guard story?

RATHER: Without agreeing with the premise of whether it snapped or not...

Ed: Oh, Dan... it snapped. It snapped you right out of your anchor chair... and right out of a job. Yes, I'd say it snapped.

KING: Well, I don't know another word. You might still believe the story, by the way.

RATHER: Well, without getting into that because the panel, this panel that was chosen by CBS to look into it, they issued their report... I absorbed it...

The situation that we had and still have is the last line of this has not been written.

Ed: Oh, for the love of... He still believes that the memos were real. Next, maybe he'll break a story on Elvis' evil twin, who was cloned by Colonel Parker.

RATHER: ...we don't know whether the documents were fraudulent or not.

Photo
The Smoking Memos (LGF)



KING: Are you saying the story might be correct?

RATHER: Well, I'm saying a prudent person might take that view.

Ed: Given that definition, a 'prudent person' might also believe himself capable of hitting a home-run in Yankee Stadium with a breadstick from Olive Garden.

RATHER: ...This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science.

Ed: (breaking down in conniption fits of laughter)

KING: You have been holding a piece of paper in front of you for half an hour, and you better tell me what it is.

RATHER: Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Larry. That CBS News played a role in this Watergate story -- nothing to compare with "The Washington Post" role...

...the whole power of the executive branch was to isolate "The Post," say it's just "The Post." You know, not have it break out to be a national story, and they did not want it on national network television.

And they almost succeeded in keeping it off. But Dick Salant, who was former president of CBS News, he was president at that time, that he wrote something, and if you had time, it's not a bad way to close the hour...

"I strongly believe that responsible journalism cannot have as its central objective giving people what they want, or avoiding displeasing them. The objective must not be merely to interest and titillate to grab an audience, but to provide the information they need. And, so, if journalism is to perform the function which a democratic society has a right to expect, there will inevitably be some, usually the most vocal, who will be displeased."

Ed: Here's another one, Dan. Pay close attention.

The primary duty of journalists and news organizations is to seek the truth and report it as fully as possible...

The second guiding principle is Independence. If we are to succeed in our pursuit of truth, we must not be deterred by outside forces that could undermine our professionalism or erode the quality and integrity of our finished product. We must vigorously guard our credibility and insure that we are not unduly influenced by those who might use their power or position to keep us from serving the public.


Sounds like you get a big, fat, red F on both counts, Daniel.


CNN: CNN LARRY KING LIVE - Interview With Dan Rather
 

End of an Era or End of the line for Java?


(Picture credit http://www.starwars.jediknights.co.uk)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsHave you ever wondered why IBM and Oracle have so dramatically thrown their hats in the PHP ring? And why PHP will be such a crucial element in their product roadmaps over the next few years? Or Why Java has fallen from favor so far and so fast among the behemoths of the web application market?

To get a good sense for why these announcements are coming, fast and furious, you only need review this article from Sun's weblogs, entitled "Easy JBoss Connection Pooling with NetBeans IDE 4.1 and XDoclet".

Here's an excerpt from the thirteen-step "quick-start guide":

5) Start JBoss from the IDE. Modify the jboss.home property in servers-build.properties and run the jboss-start target. Run it from inside the IDE (you can create a menu item, toolbar button, or shortcut key for it, as described in earlier blog entries). JBoss starts up and the Output window displays output received from JBoss. You'll see a lot of output and it might take a while. Somewhere near the end you should see something similar to the following (truncated here for easier reading)...

6) Build the project to the JBoss autodeploy directory. Right-click the project in the Projects window to build it. (You can also build it in the Files window -- choose File > Set Main Project, set the current project as the main project, and click F11 whenever you want to build.) Modify the jboss-deploy target in servers-build.xml so that war.name is used instead of jar.name. Now run the jboss-deploy target. (If you haven't built the project, you'll get errors because the WAR file that the target tries to copy to the JBoss deployment directory hasn't been built yet.) This copies the application's WAR file to the JBoss autodeploy directory. In the Output window you should see something similar to the following...


Well, you get the picture. The elaborate process is hardly what I would term 'easy' nor, for that matter, intuitive. It makes neurosurgery almost mundane by comparison.

Information Week comments:

...With increasing support among big vendors, it's clear that Java's future is bounded by the scripting languages PHP, Perl, Python and Tcl. These languages are both easier to learn and use than Java 2 Enterprise Edition or C++ or C#. A lot of creativity resides in the hands of these scripting language users. They are less concerned with Java's discipline, which is very good for high-value business functions, such as transaction processing, and more concerned with mixing up what's available in response to individual users on a site.

Some PHP advocates say there's no reason enterprise applications won't be built with PHP. Indeed, they already are. The Lufthansa E-ticket site runs on PHP programming. Why not your company's E-commerce?

IBM and Oracle are following, not leading, this movement...


Well, it's certainly not the 'end of the line' for Java. But this truly marks the 'end of the beginning' for PHP.

Information Week: End of an Era or End of the line for Java?
 

Book Review: Numbered Account


Picture credit: http://www.bonnietoews.com
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueI just posted this review at Amazon.

Nick Neumann has what, at first glance, appears to be the perfect life. The former U.S. Marine just graduated from Harvard Business School and has joined the fast-paced world of Wall Street. His girlfriend is beautiful, the scion of an incredibly wealthy family. But Nick does have one problem: the unsolved murder of his father weighs heavily on his mind.

His father, murdered almost twenty years ago, worked for the secretive Swiss bank USB. And so Nick decides to follow in his footsteps: to move to Switzerland, join USB, and determine whether the trail can be followed or whether's it's gone cold.

Within days of joining USB, Nick finds himself entangled in a nightmarish conflict. The "Pasha", USB's premier client, is moving ever larger sums of money through the bank in seemingly nonsensical fashion. The DEA, investigating large-scale money transfers through USB, begins squeezing Nick for information. And an attractive vice president at the bank seems to be paying very close attention to Nick's activities.

This is Reich's first book and is, simply put, masterful. While its length (750 pages) is daunting, Reich's firsthand knowledge of the Swiss banking industry is invaluable and enlightening. I can almost guarantee that you'll be swept into this ambitious and fulfilling story: revenge and terror mixed into a near-perfect concoction.

Christopher Reich: Numbered Account
 

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Where were the Senior Managers?


(Picture credit http://www.cokingcokers.com)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsI read this a couple of weeks ago. It's an AP article regarding BP, which explains the reasons for a massive explosion at their Texas City plant. The blast killed 15 workers and injured more than 170. You can read the entire thing at your leisure, but here are some telling quotes.

..."Deeply disturbing" staff errors led to the oil refinery explosion and fire that killed 15 workers, and some employees could be dismissed as a result, plant operators said Tuesday...

..."The mistakes made during the startup of this unit were surprising and deeply disturbing"...

...Supervisors and hourly workers face discipline ranging from written reprimands to dismissal, Pillari said. He declined to say how many employees would be punished...

...The BP investigation determined that fluid level in a tower was 20 times higher than it should have been. Water or nitrogen in the tower when the unit was restarted may have caused a sudden increase in pressure that forced hydrocarbon liquid and vapor into the unit's stack.

But investigators still don't know what ignited the resulting vapor cloud. Earlier theories have suggested that sparks from a running truck engine could have been to blame.

Investigators found that supervisors seemed to be absent at times during the unit startup, and crews didn't know who was in charge.

Also, any of six supervisors had a six-minute window in which they could have sounded an alarm to evacuate the area, but that alarm was never sounded, Pillari said. The decision, he said, denied other workers "the opportunity to get out of harm's way." ...


I've highlighted what I consider the key phrase. During the startup of an immensely expensive and dangerous refinery, wouldn't senior management have plenty of feet on the ground?

Sidebar: Ironically, Texas City was also the site of the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. A fire aboard a ship at the city's docks triggered an explosion that killed more than 550 people.
Supervisors were absent? Where were the refinery managers?

Crews didn't know who was in charge? Wha...? Where were the refinery managers?

Pinning this on supervisory and hourly personnel appears, at face value, to be the ultimate cop-out.

Senior management needs to define strict processes for an operation this complex and then audit those processes to ensure they are followed. This is a failure of senior management, plain and simple.

AP: BP: Personnel Failures Led to Texas Blast
 

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Making Phishers Solve the Captcha Problem



Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe more I read about Bank of America's solution to the phishing problem, the more I believe it susceptible to man-in-the-middle (MIM) attacks. The Wall Street Journal today described their new system, called SiteKey, in a bit more detail. The BofA site describes it as well.

As I understand it, if you haven't signed into SiteKey before, you will get a randomly selected challenge question. Once you've answered the challenge successfully, a secure cookie is deposited on your PC. Subsequent authentications from that PC will force you to view a pre-selected image that will confirm you're signing into Bank of America, rather than a spammer's zombie machine in Chung Li, Taiwan.

Sidebar: isn't it odd that when you go the Bank of America site, you immediately note that the page is presented in cleartext ("http://"), not SSL ("https://). The first step to combat phishers is to provide an SSL connection... first time, every time. Customers need to get used to expecting a secure connection on every BofA page.

Yes, their sign-in operation itself is secure. I just think it a tad bizarre that every page isn't secure as well. Just for the customer's peace of mind.


As far as I can tell, there's no way for SiteKey to distinguish a malicious, zombie PC from a user's virgin computer. The zombie PC could present a false BofA store-front to the victim and proxy login information from the user to the bank and any resulting pages and images from the bank to the victim.

Step 4 of the BofA SiteKey page even states the following:

If we don't recognize your computer:
We will ask you one of your secret SiteKey Confirmation Questions.

After you answer your question correctly, we will show you your SiteKey.


Sounds like it's completely susceptible to a man-in-the-middle: the classic phisher's false store-front.

I believe you've got to make phishers solve the captcha problem.

Photo
A Blogger Captcha

You know captchas: they're the odd-looking images representing stretched or melted alphanumeric text that can (presumably) be read by humans, but not malicious bots.

The example at right is the kind of captcha that Google's Gmail service employs. Mail services require strong captchas to prevent spambots from signing up for their free email services for mass-spam campaigns. We need more spam like GM needs more healthcare costs.

The challenge for systems like SiteKey is to create a captcha-like problem for phishers. I think I have the seeds of just such a solution. The idea is to make a man-in-the-middle attack bloody difficult.

Educating the users to expect an "anti-fraud" checklist on the sign-in page is obviously the first order of business. This can be achieved through a snail-mail campaign or equivalent PR effort. Once customers expect the anti-fraud checklist, the next action in the campaign is to:

Squeeze the man-in-the-middle

Force the man-in-the-middle (MIM) to present information specific to both the client and the server. After the user has entered a sign-in name, the anti-fraud checklist page depicted above, should appear.

The key element of the page is a GIF or JPEG image, dynamically created like a captcha, consisting of the three checklist items depicted at the top of this article.

Photo
The MIM gets squeezed by changing fonts

Why is this checklist so difficult for a MIM to present?

Checklist item 2: In a normal situation (with no MIM involved), the bank's server should be able to deduce the client's general location through IP-address geo-mapping.

For the MIM to present the correct location data, it will have to use an IP-address-to-geographic-location mapping algorithm and deduce it on its own.

Checklist item 3: The server has non-sensitive information about the customer (e.g., a check number that recently cleared) that can be presented on the page. This is called a "shared secret" that only the customer and the bank should know.

And for the MIM to retrieve a valid shared secret, it will have to screen-scrape the third line of the checklist from the image the bank has presented.

Captcha problem: Once the MIM has accomplished numbers two and three, it now has to somehow merge the images in a way that looks consistent. But the fonts are changing, the font sizes are changing, and the colors are changing. They're selected randomly.

Without some serious artificial intelligence, the MIM is trapped having to solve a classic captcha-style problem. And I, for one, thinks that's a hard road to hoe for the phishers.
 

Another Phish Tale


(Picture credit http://www.samsung.com)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsI received another phishing email that purports to be from PayPal. Let's just make the blanket statement that you should spam filter anything that even mentions PayPal. Anyhow, the source of the message reads, in part:

Please follow the link below and login to your account<br> and renew your account information<p><b> <a target="_blank" href="http://211.189.88.200/~wcconst/www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr=cmdxpt/cps/
clickthru2/Billing-Verification=CookieId=4801de10f2194572779a171135820269/" >https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run</a></b></p> <p>Sincerely,<br> Paypal customer department!</td>


A tracert of 211.189.88.200 yields:

9 110 ms 119 ms 113 ms unknown.Level3.net [63.215.71.10]
10 122 ms 114 ms 111 ms ge-2-0-0.0.cjr02.lax001.flagtel.com [62.216.140.77]
11 221 ms 229 ms 224 ms so-1-1-0.0.cjr04.tok002.flagtel.com [62.216.128.130]
12 261 ms 244 ms 244 ms so-0-3-0.0.ejr03.seo002.flagtel.com [62.216.128.18]
13 253 ms 248 ms 251 ms 62.216.147.82
14 249 ms 254 ms 259 ms user7.s148.samsung.co.kr [203.241.148.7]
15 244 ms 249 ms 244 ms 211.189.88.200


Hmmm... the user7 portion makes it almost appear that the next-to-last link in the chain is a typical workstation inside Samsung. Probably not the case, but interesting...
 

Mimicking is more persuasive


(Picture credit http://www.mmjp.or.jp)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsInteresting results from a Stanford study. A computer-generated sales agent was programmed to mimic a human prospect's facial movements in a "conversation". Sales agents that mimicked the prospect's movements (with a four second delay) were considerably more successful than agents programmed with pre-recorded facial movements:

...Researchers at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab strapped 69 student volunteers into an immersive, 3-D virtual-reality rig, where test subjects found themselves sitting across the table from a "digital agent" -- a computer-generated man or woman -- programmed to deliver a three-minute pitch advocating a notional university security policy requiring students to carry ID whenever they're on campus.

The anthropomorphic cyberhuckster featured moving lips and blinking eyes on a head that nodded and swayed realistically. But unbeknownst to the test subjects, the head movements weren't random. In half the sessions, the computer was programmed to mimic the student's movements exactly, with a precise four-second delay; if a test subject tilted her head thoughtfully and looked up at a 15-degree angle, the computer would repeat the gesture four seconds later...

...The results, to be published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Science, were dramatic... The remaining students liked the mimicking agent more than the recorded agent, rating the former more friendly, interesting, honest and persuasive. They also paid better attention to the parroting presenter, looking away less often. Most significantly, they were more likely to come around to the mimicking agent's way of thinking on the issue of mandatory ID...


Wired: AI Seduces Stanford Students
 

The Israeli Trojan Horse Affair... and Ad Agencies


(Picture credit http://www.momentum-design-house.com)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsThe Israeli corporate espionage affair is spreading from firm to firm like wild-fire. An interesting aspect: ad agencies were reportedly infected with trojans, presumably to glean strategic marketing information on competitors.

A question for senior managers: do your ad agencies (or other partners) possess your company's strategic data? If so, your legal team should be writing infosec process into your contracts... and your infosec team should be performing due diligence on their systems.

...Tel Aviv Police District Fraud Unit investigators yesterday raided the offices of international calls carrier Bezeq International Ltd., and detained for questioning its VP marketing and a strategic researcher. The company is suspected of obtaining from private investigators business information of Golden Lines International Communication Services Ltd. by uploading a Trojan Horse into computers of ad agency Shalmor-Avnon-Amichay Young and Rubicam...


Car importer Jacob Shachar questioned in Trojan Horse affair
 

WSJ: "Nightline" needs an enemies list


(Picture credit http://as.wn.com)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsThe Wall Street Journal features an op-ed on Nightline's broadcast of the honor roll of American troops who died serving in the war on terror:

...Much energy has been spent on the debate over whether Saddam actually backed al Qaeda, or merely spent some of his billions purloined out of the United Nations Oil for Food relief program in supporting such folks as Palestinian suicide bombers and buying the kinds of conventional weapons used to kill the troops whose faces we just saw on "Nightline." The larger point is that nations export to our globalizing world whatever it is they specialize in. Saddam specialized in terror. His legacy includes a roster of Iraqi dead so vast that it would take weeks if not months to read the full list of names, if anybody even knew the list. That is the kind of rule, or grotesque misrule, he brought to the international table--corrosive to all, and dangerous even to the great American superpower. Which is why, after 17 failed U.N. resolutions, our troops had to go to Iraq.

Second on the list of who killed our troops would be those who abetted Saddam's regime and continue to help his successors today. Topping that list would be the Baathist regime of Syria's dictator, Bashar Assad, and the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran--backing what is too often called an "insurgency" and would better be termed a fight for the resumption of tyranny.

Also on the list would be the corrupt and craven crew at the U.N., who hid the rebuilding of Saddam's resources, who preferred to give Saddam an 18th chance. It is important to understand that while the U.N.-approved investigation into Oil for Food, led by Paul Volcker, has focused narrowly on questions of whether anyone administering the program violated U.N. procedure, the deeper horror was the assurance of the U.N. that all was well--while Saddam skimmed billions... to buy weapons and restock the war chest [that] ...is very likely funding terror in Iraq today.... [T]wo unnamed high-ranking UN officials [are] alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam; this is a matter not only of venal and corrupt behavior among those entrusted with serving the public good, but of U.N. officials with blood on their hands...

...In thinking about the context for the past year's honor roll, however, I found there was another American president who also came to mind: Abraham Lincoln, who, as America struggled to shed its own evil of slavery, commemorated the dead at Gettysburg with a statement that holds true today. These Americans died "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."


Claudia Rosett: Never Forget - "Nightline" needs an enemies list
 

Corporate Espionage and Trojan Horses


Picture credit: http://www.emich.edu
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueVia Arik's blog, an excellent recap of the Israeli corporate espionage scandal.

* [Some] ...very prominent Israeli companies were infected by a trojan. Foreign companies may have been victims as well, but names of those were not provided.
* The trojan was targeted specifically at those companies by the perpetrator, and more specifically at key people in those companies and PR companies working for those companies.
* The trojan was targeted at Windows machines.
* The attack vector was social engineering, using e-mail and CD-ROMs sent to the victims as ‘a business proposal’.
* Data proliferated from some of the infected machines includes (but is not limited to) the ‘My Documents’ folder and screen captures.
* The stolen data was sent to “FTP servers” both out and inside Israel. The protocol used for the actual transfer was not disclosed.
* The trojan was never detected within the infiltrated companies until the police looked for it...


Saar Drimer also states, "...the police’s own computers were compromised by the very method they were investigating!"

Arik's blog: Trojan horses abound
 

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Offshore Firms Handling US Privacy Data


(Picture credit http://www.esecretary.net)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsIn early May, I noted Northwestern Mutual's new policy of shipping customer data overseas. The announcement, made at Gartner's Outsourcing Conference, noted that offshore contractors would have access to sensitive customer data in order to facilitate greater cost savings.

Security measures?

...Beyond secure lines and dumb terminals, the company insisted that Infosys put additional physical security measures in place. A guard is posted on the floor of the Infosys facility where Northwestern Mutual's work is performed, and employees aren't allowed to take any documents or media with them after they clock out...


Offshoring Management notes, as we did, that Northwestern Mutual has not notified customers of their new data-sharing practices:

...Northwestern’s terminals are even more restrictive than the terminals of yesteryear. They do not allow users to alter, record, or print the data they see on their monitors. The Indian workers are connected to Northwestern’s servers in Milwaukee via high-speed lines. They can monitor and test the company’s applications and perform maintenance operations but they can’t record or manipulate sensitive client data. Northwestern’s CIO Barbara Piehler told TechWeb that the company came up with the plan because it was not maximizing its savings from offshoring. As part of the plan, IT service workers are not allowed to take any documents or media with them at the completion of their shift, so the company also requires its contractor, Infosys, to post guards on the floors where its sensitive applications are serviced. Northwestern does not inform its customers that their personal information is being viewed by IT workers a world away. “It’s just the way we do business now,” Ms Piehler told the publication.


Northwestern Mutual still teeters on the precipice of a major security debacle. Consider a malicious employee at the offshore firm who is able to record U.S. identity data (SSN, name, birth date, etc.) using pen and paper, secrete it on their person and then sell it.

Short of cavity searches for all of the outsourcers, identity theft from these venues is all but certain.
 

The data kidnappers


(Picture credit http://www.n-tv.de)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsThe previous post references Bruce Schneier's discussion of "data kidnapping" malware. As reported by CNN, this malicious payload encrypts files on the victim's computer and then "holds the files hostage". A ransom note is prominently displayed on the PC, which includes an email address and a demand for $200 for the decryption key.

One of the blog comments noted the history of these sorts of "data kidnappers":

On Slashdot, there was mention of the "Casino.2330" virus that existed years ago. This virus erased the FAT (file allocation table) from the disk after copying it into memory. The virus then displayed a slot machine game and invited the user to play. The user had to win the game for their FAT to be restored. See http://www.avp.ch/avpve/file/c/casino.stm.

In 1989, a mailing consisting of a floppy disk and a license was sent to 20,000 recipients. The software on the disk provided an assessment of the user's risk from HIV/AIDS. Users were encouraged to install the software. However, a hidden mechanism in the software would encrypt and hide files on the user's system after a delay had passed. The included license warned (in very small print) of "most serious consequences" for violating the license. Users were supposed to send a license fee to a PO box in Panama for "PC Cyborg Corporation." A one-off license cost $189 and a lifetime license cost $378. Those who paid the license fee would receive a "renewal software package." The originator of the software was located but was found unfit to stand trial. See the "AIDS Diskette" entry at http://www.virusbtn.com/resources/malwareDirectory/about/history.xml.

[Regarding extortion] ...There was an incident where an individual was trying to extort money from a dairy company. They had already carried out an act of product tampering against this company. The individual demanded that bank card details for an account be embedded in an image file. This image file was to be posted on a public web site. Sometime afterwards, the image file was downloaded via an anonymity proxy service. However, the anonymity service cooperated and identified the individual who had downloaded the image. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/24/dutch_internet_blackmailer_gets/


The data kidnappers
 

Monday, May 30, 2005

Schneier on Internet attacks


Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueFour key sentences in Bruce Schneier's latest:

Internet attacks have changed over the last couple of years. They're no longer about hackers. They're about criminals. And we should expect to see more of this sort of thing in the future.

Two-Factor Authentication won't stop Phishing


Picture credit: http://www.sachsreport.com
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS), a banking industry organization, is putting the final touches on its plan to make online transactions "secure". Their approach uses two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication (TFA) utilizes the principles of "something you know" and "something you have." The classic embodiment of TFA is a SecurID card that provides a random, time-sensitive password when a PIN is entered into it. The time-sensitive password is matched up to a central server's version. If the password is used later, it won't work.

What's driving the adoption of TFA? And, more importantly, will it work?

To answer the first question, one need only read this blurb from Finextra:

BoA is currently embroiled in a legal challenge from a Miami businessman over $90,000 he says was stolen from his online banking account by Latvian cybercriminals. He says the thieves authorised a wire transfer out of his account using access details acquired by a Trojan keylogging device on his infected PC.


Under some circumstances, TFA will help repel key-loggers that capture users' sign-in names and static passwords. The crooks won't be able to save the password for later use.

But the key-logger could easily notify the bad guy or open up a session for him. The bad guy just needs to man his computer, waiting for these time-sensitive notifications. Once he has hijacked a session, he's still free to perpetrate the same kinds of criminal acts that static passwords facilitated.

Will Two-Factor Authentication Help Fight Phishing?

BankOfAmerica has announced a system that they believe will, if not prevent, then dramatically reduce phishing:

The service will also provide customers with a way to confirm that the bank Web site they visit is legitimate. The PassMark is displayed during log in to a banking site and if the image is correct customers will know the site is genuine and that it is safe to enter passwords.


I'm not sure I see much of a benefit to these measures. In an earlier, more complete critique, I summarized some of its problems.

Basically, the new BofA measures appear susceptible to a simple man-in-the-middle attack. That is, a phishing site -- a false store-front, if you will -- can simply act as a proxy server to capture a victim's authentication data. If the BofA site presents a special image or a custom challenge, the "evil proxy" just relays that information to the victim.

The victim can't tell the difference between the proxy and the real site (after all, it looks correct!). Therefore, the victim provides the evil proxy with suitable sign-in data, the proxy relays it to the BofA site, and the phisher has now hijacked the session.

The only benefit I can deduce in BofA's new approach is time-sensitivity. That is, the hijacked session is only valid for a relatively short period of time. Thus, the phisher has to man a control computer, waiting for successful hijackings. The static sign-in ID and password is no longer quite as useful as it once was.

A longer-term approach? Customer education is paramount. I've also proposed an anti-fraud checklist that a financial institution could place on their website. This checklist would make it considerably tougher for a phisher to construct a false store-front.

That said, I don't think there are any silver bullets that can rid us of the phishing problem once and for all. The BofA approach is a baby step in the right direction, but many vulnerabilities remain.
 

Hacking phishing sites


Picture credit: http://news.bbc.co.uk
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe latest development in the war on phishing: vigilante hackers are defacing the phishers' false store-fronts. It's an interesting idea, though probably illegal in most venues. The vigilante hackers are likely using the same exploits the phishers employed.

The ironic upshot? The phisher now must consider patching any vulnerabilities on a target machine to ensure the store-front doesn't get defaced! Who'd have thunk it - phishers patching machines to remove vulnerabilities...

Call them modern Robin Hoods, hackers who use their skills to take down Web sites used in phishing scams. Several sites that at one point hosted fraudulent Web pages designed to trick usres into giving out personal data have been defaced, according to Netcraft, an Internet services company in Bath, England.

The hackers replaced the phishing sites with a warning page. Netcraft has posted several screenshots of purported defaced phishing sites.

Phishing sites often are hosted on hacked Web servers. It appears the defacers used the same server weaknesses that were exploited by the phishers to remove the phishing Web sites...


News.com: Hacking Phishing Sites
 

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Phishing: How Banks can Fight Back



Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueTrue to yesterday's promise, here are several suggestions for banks to more effectively combat the scourge of phishing. If you're unfamiliar with the 'phishing' concept, please refer to this primer. In short, phishing emails claim to be from a reputable financial website and encourage the victim to sign-in. The phisher puts up a false "store-front" that appears to be the real financial website and then captures the victim's sign-in data. The phisher then uses the victim's sign-in for a variety of nefarious purposes including theft of funds, identity theft, etc.

Yesterday's post discussed the pros and cons of Bank of America's new SiteKey anti-fraud measures. I gave BofA a C on their report card, primarily because their countermeasures could be spoofed by a false store-front smart enough to proxy the user's transactions.

In other words, BofA's SiteKey could be effectively defeated by a false store-front that accepted the user's log-in data, proxied it to the real site, and then presented the real site's page and images back to the user as if it were genuine.

Pictured above is how I think BofA's website should appear to the end-user. Note the topmost banner, which is a dynamically generated image. It consists of a checklist that users should read before signing in. I suspect most users would actually check this out due to its prominence on the page.

Here's how it works. The user would enter an online ID (user name) on the initial screen - there would be no password, PIN, or other truly 'secret' data entered on the first page. The screen pictured above would be the second page of the sign-in. The anti-fraud checklist on the topmost banner consists of three items. Let's review each.



1) The first line reads If your address bar does not read https://www.bankofamerica.com DO NOT SIGN IN. The address in the address bar -- the simplest anti-fraud measure -- is seldom noted on financial websites. It's the most crucial element in combatting phishing. If the address bar doesn't match up... don't sign in! It's... just... that... simple.

2) The second line reads You appear to be signed in from Sandy Springs, GA USA. If that's not correct DO NOT SIGN IN. The physical location that the customer appears to be connecting from can be deduced (in most cases) from the customer's IP address. A geographic IP address location algorithm can be used to generate this sentence. This prevents a false store-front from acting as a proxy (a false store-front brokering requests to the real site would yield a different geographic location in Taiwan, Russia, etc.). A false store-front would therefore have to compute this information itself and paste it into a dynamically created image 'on the fly'. Do-able, but considerably more difficult.

3) The third line reads A recent check number that you wrote was 2046. If that's not correct DO NOT SIGN IN. A shared secret (in this case, a recent check number) is used to further authenticate the genuine site to the user. The bank will have the customer's recently cleared check numbers. The phisher won't.

Yes, a dedicated and tech-savvy phisher could construct a false store-front that proxies the initial sign-in page, grabs the resulting JPEG, looks up the geographic location from the IP address, pastes that in (while matching fonts)

But critical to this checklist is the fact that the typeface (font face) is chosen randomly. Now, the typeface will be consistent for the three items on each banner, but the typeface will vary randomly for each sign-in. Thus, if the false store-front goes to the trouble of painstakingly constructing the checklist itself, it will also have to match fonts to stick the correct location into the image.

The randomly selected typeface makes cutting and pasting text from the dynamically created image considerably -- considerably -- more difficult for the phisher! And interspersing a shared secret (the check number) ensures that the false store-front must (a) proxy the transaction, (b) compute the victim's real geographic location; and (c) match typefaces correctly in order to make the false storefront realistic.

That's quite a task.

Thus, we've turned the sign-in process into a bit of a captcha problem for phishers. I don't think this approach would be easy for the bad guys to defeat... but feel free to poke holes in this strategy, using the comments link.
 

Defusing Nuclear Terror


Picture credit: http://www.nationalterroralert.com
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueHighly interesting -- and nerve-wracking -- reading from the Bureau of Atomic Scientists regarding the history of nuclear terror threats and the founding of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST).

...in the summer of 1972, the terrorist group Black September seized, and ultimately murdered, nine members of the Israeli Olympic team. Among those who became seriously concerned over the prospect of nuclear terrorism was James Schlesinger, then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He held a series of meetings exploring whether terrorists could steal plutonium and make a bomb with it, whether they could steal a bomb, and whether the United States would be able to locate it. In 1974, while those issues were being considered and investigated, the FBI received a note demanding that $200,000 be left at a particular location in Boston or a nuclear device would be detonated somewhere in the city. This note was not part of an exercise, but the real thing (New York Times Magazine, December 14, 1980).

William Chambers, a Los Alamos nuclear physicist who was studying the detection issue, was instructed by the AEC and FBI to assemble the best team he could and head for Boston to search the city. The operation reflected its ad hoc origins. The group rented a fleet of mail vans to carry concealed equipment that could detect the emissions of a plutonium or uranium weapon. But the team found that they did not have the necessary drills to install the detectors in the vans. NEST field director Jerry Doyle recalled, "If they were counting on us to save the good folk of Boston . . . well, it was bye-bye Boston." ...


Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Defusing nuclear terror
 

Throw Bolton Under the Bus



Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueHugh Hewitt, writing in the World, exposes John McCain as a simple, publicity-seeking missile headed directly towards the 2008 primaries. That he underestimated the rage of the GOP base at his so-called "deal" is certain. Less certain is what will become of John Bolton, now that filibusters are to be used only for "exceptional" circumstances.

...great Americans can be lousy senators and terrible Republicans, and once again Mr. McCain has proven to be both. He has now done for the judicial nomination and confirmation process what he did for campaign finance reform. He brought the country George Soros and the scourge of the 527s, and with his leadership on the deal that threw at least two of George Bush's nominees under the bus in exchange for the most ambiguous of promises, the senator has once again turned his back on a core constitutional value in order to advance his own agenda...


In the old days, when the Democrats controlled both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the White House, the GOP uniformly accepted the President's judicial nominations. Now that they are in a decided minority, the Democrats have embarked on a course of wanton obstructionism. That such a course is unwise can be confirmed by one Tom Daschle, ex-communicated by South Dakotans.

If the Democrats want to control judicial nominations, here's a suggestion (paraphrasing Hugh Hewitt): win some elections for a change.

Hugh Hewitt: A house on fire