CRYPTO-GRAM, October 15, 2004

                  CRYPTO-GRAM

                October 15, 2004

               by Bruce Schneier
                Founder and CTO
       Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
            [email protected]
            <http://www.schneier.com>
           <http://www.counterpane.com>


A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and 
commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.

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Crypto-Gram also has an RSS feed at 
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Or you can read it on the web at 
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0410.html>.

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In this issue:
      New Blog, and Changes to Crypto-Gram
      Keeping Network Outages Secret
      RFID Passports
      Disrupting Air Travel with Arabic Writing
      Crypto-Gram Reprints
      News
      Counterpane News
      The Doghouse:  Lexar JumpDrives
      License Plate "Guns" and Privacy
      Academic Freedom and Security
      Comments from Readers



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      New Blog, and Changes to Crypto-Gram



I'm in the process of making several changes to Crypto-Gram, all 
designed to give readers more reading options.

Blog:  Crypto-Gram is now available in blog form.  Called "Schneier on 
Security," the blog will have the same content as Crypto-Gram but it 
will be posted continually rather than only on the 15th of the 
month.  Initially, blog comments will be turned off.  I'll enable them 
as soon as  my anti-blog-spam software is working.

RSS:  The Crypto-Gram RSS feed has been working for about six months 
now.  Current RSS subscribers will receive the blog version of 
Crypto-Gram instead of the once-a-month version.

E-Mail:  Crypto-Gram will still be available as a once-a-month e-mail, 
and back issues of Crypto-Gram will still be available on the Web.

Between now and the next issue, the mailing list will be moving to 
schneier.com, with new software, so the instructions for subscribing 
and unsubscribing will change.  If you need to subscribe or unsubscribe 
during that time, the Crypto-Gram webpage at 
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html> will always have the current 
instructions.

Many of these changes are based on a 400-person reader survey I 
conducted (making it more accurate than most political polls).  Thank 
you to those who completed the survey, and to everyone for your 
continued support.


<http://www.schneier.com/blog/>


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         Keeping Network Outages Secret



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/keeping_network.html>

There's considerable confusion between the concept of secrecy and the 
concept of security, and it is causing a lot of bad security and some 
surprising political arguments. Secrecy is not the same as security, 
and most of the time secrecy contributes to a false feeling of security 
instead of to real security.

In June, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security urged regulators to 
keep network outage information secret.  The Federal Communications 
Commission already requires telephone companies to report large 
disruptions of telephone service, and wants to extend that requirement 
to high-speed data lines and wireless networks.  But the DHS fears that 
such information would give cyberterrorists a "virtual road map" to 
target critical infrastructures.

This sounds like the "full disclosure" debate all over again.  Is 
publishing computer and network vulnerability information a good idea, 
or does it just help the hackers?  It arises again and again, as 
malware takes advantage of software vulnerabilities after they've been 
made public.

The argument that secrecy is good for security is naive, and always 
worth rebutting.  Secrecy is only beneficial to security in limited 
circumstances, and certainly not with respect to vulnerability or 
reliability information. Secrets are fragile; once they're lost they're 
lost forever.  Security that relies on secrecy is also fragile; once 
secrecy is lost there's no way to recover security.  Trying to base 
security on secrecy is just plain bad design.

Cryptography is based on secrets -- keys -- but look at all the work 
that goes into making them effective.  Keys are short and easy to 
transfer. They're easy to update and change.  And the key is the only 
secret component of a cryptographic system.  Cryptographic algorithms 
make terrible secrets, which is why one of cryptography's most basic 
principles is to assume that the algorithm is public.

That's the other fallacy with the secrecy argument: the assumption that 
secrecy works. Do we really think that the physical weak points of 
networks are such a mystery to the bad guys?  Do we really think that 
the hacker underground never discovers vulnerabilities?

Proponents of secrecy ignore the security value of openness: public 
scrutiny is the only reliable way to improve security.  Before software 
bugs were routinely published, software companies routinely denied 
their existence and wouldn't bother fixing them, believing in the 
security of secrecy. And because customers didn't know any better, they 
bought these systems, believing them to be secure. If we return to a 
practice of keeping software bugs secret, we'll have vulnerabilities 
known to a few in the security community and to much of the hacker 
underground.

Secrecy prevents people from assessing their own risks.

Public reporting of network outages forces telephone companies to 
improve their service.  It allows consumers to compare the reliability 
of different companies, and to choose one that best serves their 
needs.  Without public disclosure, companies could hide their 
reliability performance from the public.

Just look at who supports secrecy.  Software vendors such as Microsoft 
want very much to keep vulnerability information secret.  The 
Department of Homeland Security's recommendations were loudly echoed by 
the phone companies.  It's the interests of these companies that are 
served by secrecy, not the interests of consumers, citizens, or society.

In the post-9/11 world, we're seeing this clash of secrecy versus 
openness everywhere.  The U.S. government is trying to keep details of 
many anti-terrorism countermeasures -- and even routine government 
operations -- secret.  Information about the infrastructure of plants 
and government buildings is secret.  Profiling information used to flag 
certain airline passengers is secret.  The standards for the Department 
of Homeland Security's color-coded terrorism threat levels are 
secret.  Even information about government operations without any 
terrorism connections is being kept secret.

This keeps terrorists in the dark, especially "dumb" terrorists who 
might not be able to figure out these vulnerabilities on their 
own.  But at the same time, the citizenry -- to whom the government is 
ultimately accountable -- is not allowed to evaluate the 
countermeasures, or comment on their efficacy.  Security can't improve 
because there's no public debate or public education.

Recent studies have shown that most water, power, gas, telephone, data, 
transportation, and distribution systems are scale-free networks.  This 
means they always have highly connected hubs.  Attackers know this 
intuitively and go after the hubs.  Defenders are beginning to learn 
how to harden the hubs and provide redundancy among them.  Trying to 
keep it a secret that a network has hubs is futile.  Better to identify 
and protect them.

We're all safer when we have the information we need to exert market 
pressure on vendors to improve security.  We would all be less secure 
if software vendors didn't make their security vulnerabilities public, 
and if telephone companies didn't have to report network outages.  And 
when government operates without accountability, that serves the 
security interests of the government, not of the people.


<http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8966>
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/07/14/telecom.secrecy.ap/index.html>


Another version of this essay appeared in the October Communications of 
the ACM.
<http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/insiderisks04.html>


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                 RFID Passports



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/rfid_passports.html>

Since 9/11, the Bush administration -- specifically, the Department of 
Homeland Security -- has wanted the world to standardize on 
machine-readable passports.  Future U.S. passports, currently being 
tested, will include an embedded computer chip.  This chip will allow 
the passport to contain much more information than a simple 
machine-readable character font, and will allow passport officials to 
quickly and easily read that information.  That's a reasonable 
requirement, and a good idea for bringing passport technology into the 
21st Century.  But the administration is advocating radio frequency 
identification (RFID) chips for both US and foreign passports, and 
that's a very bad thing.

RFID chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a 
distance.   A receiving device can "talk" to the chip remotely, without 
any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on 
it.  Passport officials envision being able to download the information 
on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of a reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones 
at passport control.  The upshot of this is that anyone carrying around 
an RFID passport is broadcasting his identity.

Think about what that means for a minute.  It means that a passport 
holder is continuously broadcasting his name, nationality, age, 
address, and whatever else is on the RFID chip.  It means that anyone 
with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder's 
knowledge or consent.  It means that pickpockets, kidnappers, and 
terrorists can easily -- and surreptitiously -- pick Americans out of a 
crowd.

It's a clear threat to both privacy and personal safety.  Quite simply, 
it's a bad idea.

The administration claims that the chips can only be read from a few 
centimeters away, so there's no potential for abuse.  This is a 
spectacularly naive claim.  All wireless protocols can work at much 
longer ranges than specified.  In tests, RFID chips have been read by 
receivers 20 meters away.  Improvements in technology are inevitable.

Security is always a trade-off.  If the benefits of RFID outweigh the 
risks, then maybe it's worth it.  Certainly there isn't a significant 
benefit when people present their passport to a customs official.  If 
that customs official is going to take the passport and bring it near a 
reader, why can't he go those extra few centimeters that a contact chip 
would require?

The administration is deliberately choosing a less secure technology 
without justification.  If there were a good reason to choose that 
technology, then it might make sense.  But there isn't.  There's a 
large cost in security and privacy, and no benefit.  Any rational 
analysis will conclude that there isn't any reason to choose an RFID 
chip over a conventional chip.

Unfortunately, there is a reason.  At least, it's the only reason I can 
think of for the administration wanting RFID chips in passports: they 
want surreptitious access themselves.  They want to be able to identify 
people in crowds.  They want to pick out the Americans, and pick out 
the foreigners.  They want to do the very thing that they insist, 
despite demonstrations to the contrary, can't be done.

Normally I am very careful before I ascribe such sinister motives to a 
government agency.  Incompetence is the norm, and malevolence is much 
rarer.  But this seems like a clear case of the government putting its 
own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then 
lying about it.


<http://news.com.com/E-passports+to+put+new+face+on+old+documents/2100-7 
337_3-5313650.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?M36123989>
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/20/us_passports/>


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    Disrupting Air Travel with Arabic Writing



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/disrupting_air.html>

In August, I wrote about the stupidity of United Airlines returning a 
flight from Sydney to Los Angeles back to Sydney because a flight 
attendant found an airsickness bag with the letters "BOB" written on it 
in a lavatory.  ("BOB" supposedly stood for "Bomb on Board.")

I received quite a bit of mail about that.  Most of it was supportive, 
but some people argued that the airline should do everything in its 
power to protect its passengers and that the airline was reasonable and 
acting prudently.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it has no limits.  In 
corresponding with people, I asked whether a flight should be diverted 
if one of the passengers was wearing an orange shirt: orange being the 
color of the DHS's heightened alert level.  If you believe that the 
airline should respond drastically to any threat, no matter how small, 
then they should.

That example was fanciful, and deliberately so.  Here's another, even 
more fanciful, example.  Unfortunately, it's a real one.

Last month in Milwaukee, a Midway Airlines flight had already pulled 
away from the gate when someone, the articles don't say who, found 
Arabic writing in his or her copy of the airline's in-flight magazine.

I have no idea what sort of panic ensued, but the airplane turned 
around and returned to the gate.  Everyone was taken off the plane and 
inspected.  The plane and all the luggage was inspected.  Surprise; 
nothing was found.

The passengers didn't fly out until the next morning.

This kind of thing is idiotic.  Terrorism is a serious problem, and 
we're not going to protect ourselves by overreacting every time 
someone's overactive imagination kicks in.  We need to be alert to the 
real threats, instead of making up random ones.  It simply makes no sense.

News article:
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/09/21/flight.canceled.ap/index.html>

My original essay:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0408.html#1>


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              Crypto-Gram Reprints



Crypto-Gram is currently in its seventh year of publication.  Back 
issues cover a variety of security-related topics, and can all be found 
on <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>.  These are a selection 
of articles that appeared in this calendar month in other years.

The Future of Surveillance:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0310.html#1>

National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace:
<http://www.schneier.com./crypto-gram-0210.html#1>

Cyberterrorism:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0110.html#1>

Dangers of Port 80
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0110.html#9>

Semantic Attacks:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0010.html#1>

NSA on Security:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0010.html#7>

So, You Want to be a Cryptographer:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9910.html#SoYouWanttobeaCryptographer>

Key Length and Security:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9910.html#KeyLengthandSecurity>

Steganography: Truths and Fictions:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9810.html#steganography>

Memo to the Amateur Cipher Designer:
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9810.html#cipherdesign>


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                      News



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/news.html>

Last month I wrote:  "Long and interesting review of Windows XP SP2, 
including a list of missed opportunities for increased security.  Worth 
reading: 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/02/winxpsp2_security_review/>." 
Be sure you read this follow-up as well:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/14/reg_readers_windows/>

The author of the Sasser worm has been arrested:
<http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,95787,00.html>
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/08/sasser_charges/print.html>
And been offered a job:
<http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/0,7208,10819809%5E15331%5E 
%5Enbv%5E15306%2D15318,00.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?M27156989>

Interesting essay on the psychology of terrorist alerts:
<http://www.zimbardo.com/downloads/2002%20Political%20Psychology%20of%20 
Terrorist%20Alarms.pdf> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q2A712738>

Encrypted e-mail client for the Treo:
<http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=57658>

The Honeynet Project is publishing a bi-annual CD-ROM and 
newsletter.  If you're involved in honeynets, it's definitely worth 
getting.  And even if you're not, it's worth supporting this endeavor.
<http://www.honeynet.org/funds/cdrom.html>

CIO Magazine has published a survey of corporate information 
security.  I have some issues with the survey, but it's worth reading.
<http://www.itsecurity.com/tecsnews/sep2004/sep143.htm>

At the Illinois State Capitol, someone shot an unarmed security guard 
and fled.  The security upgrade after the incident is -- get ready -- 
to change the building admittance policy from a "check IDs" procedure 
to a "sign in" procedure.  First off, identity checking does not 
increase security.  And secondly, why do they think that an attacker 
would be willing to forge/steal an identification card, but would be 
unwilling to sign their name on a clipboard?
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4502926,00.html>

Neat research: a quantum-encrypted TCP/IP network:
<http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77990>
<http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/15/1731216>
And NEC has its own quantum cryptography research results:
<http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/16/HNneccryptography_1.html>

Security story about the U.S. embassy in New Zealand.  It's a good 
lesson about the pitfalls of not thinking beyond the immediate problem.
<http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dominionpost/0,2106,3033986a6000,00.html>

The future of worms:
<http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,9589 
8,00.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z38152989>

Teacher arrested after a bookmark is called a concealed weapon:
<http://wjz.com/localstories/local_story_261133455.html>
Remember all those other things you can bring on an aircraft that can 
knock people unconscious: handbags, laptop computers, hardcover 
books.  And that dental floss can be used as a garrote.  And, and, 
oh...you get the idea.

Seems you can open Kryptonite bicycle locks with the cap from a plastic 
pen.  The attack works on what locksmiths call the "impressioning" 
principle.  Tubular locks are especially vulnerable to this because all 
the pins are exposed, and tools that require little skill to use can be 
relatively unsophisticated.  There have been commercial locksmithing 
products to do this to circular locks for a long time.  Once you get 
the feel for how to do it, it's pretty easy.  I find Kryptonite's 
proposed solution -- swapping for a smaller diameter lock so a 
particular brand of pen won't work -- to be especially amusing.
<http://www.indystar.com/articles/0/179342-1470-223.html>
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64987,00.html>
<http://www.bikeforums.net/>

I often talk about how most firewalls are ineffective because they're 
not configured properly.  Here's some research on firewall configuration:
<http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~yash/computer2004.pdf>

Reading RFID tags from three feet away:
<http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,96051,00.html>

AOL is offering two-factor authentication services.  It's not free: $10 
plus $2 per month.  It's an RSA Security token, with a number that 
changes every 60 seconds.
<http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117873,00.asp>

Counterterrorism has its own snake oil:
<http://www.qsleeper.com/>

Great moments in security screening:
<http://images.ucomics.com/comics/nq/2004/nq041005.gif>

The U.S. government's cybersecurity chief resigned with a day's 
notice.  I can understand his frustration; the position had no power 
and could only suggest, plead, and cheerlead.
<http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801, 
96369,00.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?A29135989>
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64915-2004Oct1> or 
<http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q4B122989>
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0927/web-amit-10-01-04.asp
http://news.com.com/2102-7348_3-5392501.html

North Korea had over 500 trained cyberwarriors, according to the South 
Korean Defense Ministry.  Maybe this is true, and maybe it's just 
propaganda--from either the North or the South.  Although certainly any 
smart military will train people in the art of attacking enemy computer 
networks.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/print/109911/1/.html


** *** ***** ******* *********** *************

                Counterpane News



Counterpane just completed a record quarter:
<http://www.counterpane.com/pr-20041014.html>

There is a two-part interview with Bruce Schneier on SearchSecurity.com
<http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci 
1011474,00.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?T1C152989>
<http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci 
1011476,00.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?A1D142989>

Schneier is speaking at the following conferences and events:

CSI Asia in Singapore, on 20 October.
<http://www.csi-asia.com/conference2004/sg/>

13th CACR Information Security Workshop & 5th Annual Privacy and 
Security Workshop, at the University of Toronto, on 28 October.
<http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/conferences/2004/isw/agenda.doc>

RSA Europe in Barcelona, on 4 November.
<http://2004.rsaconference.com/europe/>

Harvey Mudd College, in Ontario, California, on 10 November.


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                 The Legacy of DES



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/the_legacy_of_d.html>

The Data Encryption Standard, or DES, was a mid-'70s brainchild of the 
National Bureau of Standards: the first modern, public, freely 
available encryption algorithm. For over two decades, DES was the 
workhorse of commercial cryptography.

Over the decades, DES has been used to protect everything from 
databases in mainframe computers, to the communications links between 
ATMs and banks, to data transmissions between police cars and police 
stations. Whoever you are, I can guarantee that many times in your 
life, the security of your data was protected by DES.

Just last month, the former National Bureau of Standards--the agency is 
now called the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or 
NIST--proposed withdrawing DES as an encryption standard, signifying 
the end of the federal government's most important technology standard, 
one more important than ASCII, I would argue.

Today, cryptography is one of the most basic tools of computer 
security, but 30 years ago it barely existed as an academic discipline. 
In the days when the Internet was little more than a curiosity, 
cryptography wasn't even a recognized branch of mathematics. Secret 
codes were always fascinating, but they were pencil-and-paper codes 
based on alphabets. In the secret government labs during World War II, 
cryptography entered the computer era and became mathematics. But with 
no professors teaching it, and no conferences discussing it, all the 
cryptographic research in the United States was conducted at the 
National Security Agency.

And then came DES.

Back in the early 1970s, it was a radical idea. The National Bureau of 
Standards decided that there should be a free encryption standard. 
Because the agency wanted it to be non-military, they solicited 
encryption algorithms from the public. They got only one serious 
response--the Data Encryption Standard--from the labs of IBM. In 1976, 
DES became the government's standard encryption algorithm for 
"sensitive but unclassified" traffic. This included things like 
personal, financial and logistical information. And simply because 
there was nothing else, companies began using DES whenever they needed 
an encryption algorithm. Of course, not everyone believed DES was secure.

When IBM submitted DES as a standard, no one outside the National 
Security Agency had any expertise to analyze it. The NSA made two 
changes to DES: It tweaked the algorithm, and it cut the key size by 
more than half.

The strength of an algorithm is based on two things: how good the 
mathematics is, and how long the key is. A sure way of breaking an 
algorithm is to try every possible key. Modern algorithms have a key so 
long that this is impossible; even if you built a computer out of all 
the silicon atoms on the planet and ran it for millions of years, you 
couldn't do it. So cryptographers look for shortcuts. If the 
mathematics are weak, maybe there's a way to find the key faster: 
"breaking" the algorithm.

The NSA's changes caused outcry among the few who paid attention, both 
regarding the "invisible hand" of the NSA--the tweaks were not made 
public, and no rationale was given for the final design--and the short 
key length.

But with the outcry came research. It's not an exaggeration to say that 
the publication of DES created the modern academic discipline of 
cryptography. The first academic cryptographers began their careers by 
trying to break DES, or at least trying to understand the NSA's tweak. 
And almost all of the encryption algorithms--public-key cryptography, 
in particular--can trace their roots back to DES. Papers analyzing 
different aspects of DES are still being published today.

By the mid-1990s, it became widely believed that the NSA was able to 
break DES by trying every possible key. This ability was demonstrated 
in 1998, when a $220,000 machine was built that could brute-force a DES 
key in a few days. In 1985, the academic community proposed a DES 
variant with the same mathematics but a longer key, called triple-DES. 
This variant had been used in more secure applications in place of DES 
for years, but it was time for a new standard. In 1997, NIST solicited 
an algorithm to replace DES.

The process illustrates the complete transformation of cryptography 
from a secretive NSA technology to a worldwide public technology. NIST 
once again solicited algorithms from the public, but this time the 
agency got 15 submissions from 10 countries. My own algorithm, Twofish, 
was one of them. And after two years of analysis and debate, NIST chose 
a Belgian algorithm, Rijndael, to become the Advanced Encryption Standard.

It's a different world in cryptography now than it was 30 years ago. We 
know more about cryptography, and have more algorithms to choose among. 
AES won't become a ubiquitous standard in the same way that DES did. 
But it is finding its way into banking security products, Internet 
security protocols, even computerized voting machines. A NIST standard 
is an imprimatur of quality and security, and vendors recognize that.

So, how good is the NSA at cryptography? They're certainly better than 
the academic world. They have more mathematicians working on the 
problems, they've been working on them longer, and they have access to 
everything published in the academic world, while they don't have to 
make their own results public. But are they a year ahead of the state 
of the art? Five years? A decade? No one knows.

It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 
"tweaks" actually improved the security of DES. This means that back in 
the '70s, the National Security Agency was two decades ahead of the 
state of the art.

Today, the NSA is still smarter, but the rest of us are catching up 
quickly. In 1999, the academic community discovered a weakness in 
another NSA algorithm, SHA, that the NSA claimed to have discovered 
only four years previously. And just last week there was a published 
analysis of the NSA's SHA-1 that demonstrated weaknesses that we 
believe the NSA didn't know about at all.

Maybe now we're just a couple of years behind.


This essay was originally published on CNet.com
<http://news.com.com/Saluting+the+data+encryption+legacy/2010-1029_3-538 
1232.html> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?L2E112989>

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         The Doghouse:  Lexar JumpDrives



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/the_doghouse_le.html>

If you read Lexar's documentation, their JumpDrive Secure product is 
secure.  "If lost or stolen, you can rest assured that what you've 
saved there remains there with 256-bit AES encryption."  Sounds good, 
but security professionals are an untrusting sort.  @Stake decided to 
check.  They found that "the password can be observed in memory or read 
directly from the device, without evidence of tampering."  Even worse: 
the password "is stored in an XOR encrypted form and can be read 
directly from the device without any authentication."

The moral of the story: don't trust magic security words like "256-bit 
AES."  The devil is in the details, and it's easy to screw up security.

Although screwing it up this badly is impressive.

Lexar's product:
<http://www.lexar.com/jumpdrive/>

@Stake's analysis
<http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2004/a091304-1.txt>


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        License Plate "Guns" and Privacy



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/license_plate_g.html>

New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate 
scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving 
or parked cars and links with remote police databases, immediately 
providing information about the car and owner. Right now the police 
check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license 
plate is stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car 
that comes up positive is towed.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. The police have always been 
able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it 
manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn't feasible for the 
police to run the plates of every car in a parking garage, or every car 
that passed through an intersection. What's different isn't the police 
tactic, but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years 
ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down 
streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there 
was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the 
policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate 
scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a 
computer in the station. It's the same, but it's completely different. 
It's wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the 
rights of the people.

Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. New York's E-Z Pass 
tracks cars at tunnels and bridges with tolls. We can all be tracked by 
our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit card 
companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing 
habits by Web site operators. Security cameras are everywhere. If they 
wanted, the police could take the database of vehicles outfitted with 
the OnStar tracking system, and immediately locate all of those New 
Haven cars.

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave 
everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can 
be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in 
time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is 
profound; but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as 
a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be 
secure. This is wrong. It's obvious that we are all safer when the 
police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are 
corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse, and that don't place an 
unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation's history, we have maintained a balance between 
the necessary interests of police and the civil rights of the people. 
The license plate itself is such a balance. Imagine the debate from the 
early 1900s: The police proposed affixing a plaque to every car with 
the car owner's name, so they could better track cars used in crimes. 
Civil libertarians objected because that would reduce the privacy of 
every car owner. So a compromise was reached: a random string of letter 
and numbers that the police could use to determine the car owner. By 
deliberately designing a more cumbersome system, the needs of law 
enforcement and the public's right to privacy were balanced.

The search warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is 
another balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for 
telephone eavesdropping: the police must stop listening to a phone line 
if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the 
police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately, and 
not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on 
everyone's driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the 
information about them used in these automated searches, and to allow 
them to challenge inaccuracies.

We need to go further. Criminal penalties are severe in order to create 
a deterrent, because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become 
easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can 
automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer 
be any criminal penalty attached. For example, both red light cameras 
and speed-trap cameras all issue citations without any "points" 
assessed against the driver.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the 
police to do what they've always done. It's a new police power, one 
made possible with today's technology and one that will be made easier 
with tomorrow's. And with any new police power, we as a society need to 
take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do 
otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.


This essay was originally published in the New Haven Register.
<http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12954895&BRD=1281&PAG=46 
1&dept_id=517515&rfi=8> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?K2F132989>


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   Aerial Surveillance to Detect Building Code Violations



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/aerial_surveill.html>

Along similar lines to the essay above, the city of Baltimore is using 
aerial surveillance photography to detect building code violations.  I 
wrote an op ed for the Baltimore Sun about it, using much the same 
words as above.

<http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.spying04oct04,1,78 
74969.story> or <http://makeashorterlink.com/?O20221989>


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              Terror Threat Alerts



I've written two essays on terror threat alerts, and how useless they 
are as a security countermeasure.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune essay:
<http://www.schneier.com/essay-055.html>

The Rake essay:
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/do_terror_alert.html>


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          Academic Freedom and Security



<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/academic_freedo.html>

Cryptography is the science of secret codes, and it is a primary 
Internet security tool to fight hackers, cyber crime, and cyber 
terrorism. CRYPTO is the world's premier cryptography conference. It's 
held every August in Santa Barbara.

This year, 400 people from 30 countries came to listen to dozens of 
talks. Lu Yi was not one of them. Her paper was accepted at the 
conference. But because she is a Chinese Ph.D. student in Switzerland, 
she was not able to get a visa in time to attend the conference.

In the three years since 9/11, the U.S. government has instituted a 
series of security measures at our borders, all designed to keep 
terrorists out. One of those measures was to tighten up the rules for 
foreign visas. Certainly this has hurt the tourism industry in the 
U.S., but the damage done to academic research is more profound and 
longer-lasting.

According to a survey by the Association of American Universities, many 
universities reported a drop of more than 10 percent in foreign student 
applications from last year. During the 2003 academic year, student 
visas were down 9 percent. Foreign applications to graduate schools 
were down 32 percent, according to another study by the Council of 
Graduate Schools.

There is an increasing trend for academic conferences, meetings and 
seminars to move outside of the United States simply to avoid visa 
hassles.

This affects all of high-tech, but ironically it particularly affects 
the very technologies that are critical in our fight against terrorism.

Also in August, on the other side of the country, the University of 
Connecticut held the second International Conference on Advanced 
Technologies for Homeland Security. The attendees came from a variety 
of disciplines -- chemical trace detection, communications 
compatibility, X-ray scanning, sensors of various types, data mining, 
HAZMAT clothing, network intrusion detection, bomb diffusion, 
remote-controlled drones -- and illustrate the enormous breadth of 
scientific know-how that can usefully be applied to counterterrorism.

It's wrong to believe that the U.S. can conduct the research we need 
alone. At the Connecticut conference, the researchers presenting 
results included many foreigners studying at U.S. universities. Only 30 
percent of the papers at CRYPTO had only U.S. authors. The most 
important discovery of the conference, a weakness in a mathematical 
function that protects the integrity of much of the critical 
information on the Internet, was made by four researchers from China.

Every time a foreign scientist can't attend a U.S. technology 
conference, our security suffers. Every time we turn away a qualified 
technology graduate student, our security suffers. Technology is one of 
our most potent weapons in the war on terrorism, and we're not 
fostering the international cooperation and development that is crucial 
for U.S. security.

Security is always a trade-off, and specific security countermeasures 
affect everyone, both the bad guys and the good guys. The new U.S. 
immigration rules may affect the few terrorists trying to enter the 
United States on visas, but they also affect honest people trying to do 
the same.

All scientific disciplines are international, and free and open 
information exchange -- both in conferences and in academic programs at 
universities -- will result in the maximum advance in the technologies 
vital to homeland security. The Soviet Union tried to restrict academic 
freedom along national lines, and it didn't do the country any good. We 
should try not to follow in those footsteps.


This essay was originally published in the San Jose Mercury News
<http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/9710963.htm?1c>


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              Comments from Readers



From: Bruno Treguier <[email protected]>
Subject: Comment on Finnish Mobile Phone Spoofing

The feature used for the spoofing attack has been known for several 
years, in fact. Nokia phones only compare the last 7 digits when trying 
to associate a number to a name (I don't know for other brands, but 
there's certainly a similar mechanism).  It was even documented in my 
old Nokia 3110 phone user's manual, if I remember correctly.  This is 
meant, I guess, because phone numbers can be stored in their 
international or national form by the user himself, and even caller ID 
can be different from one operator to another.  Bouygtel, in France, 
for instance, displays the numbers in their international form, whereas 
SFR uses the national 10 digit form (beginning with a 0).  SFR probably 
chose that form to display the caller IDs because they thought it would 
be easier for people to remember them.

Seven digits probably sounded like a good compromise, as it is long 
enough for the collision probability to be rather low (at least as long 
as you're not trying to actively spoof the caller ID), and short enough 
for a varying prefix not to be taken into account...

Never thought about it, but this seems to be a pretty good reason for 
operators not to let people choose their whole phone number!  While it 
is no longer the case, Bouygtel, a few years ago, did let you choose 
the last 4 ones, as a commercial incentive.



From: "Howze, Blair" <[email protected]>
Subject: Security at the Olympics

There is some intrinsic value in "showing the badge" that you did not 
give credit to.  We have common criminals to worry about also, and it 
seems that the overwhelming numbers of badge-toters had some 
effectiveness in lessening the number of incidents.

Whether the payoff was worth the price is up to debate.  Although 
badges are not a credible solo deterrent to suicidal terrorists, it 
does make the potential terrorist plan around the additional eyes.

Second, most of the security was probably planned knowing that they 
couldn't stop a determined, intelligent, suicidal (or at least someone 
who didn't care about the consequences) individual.  The US Secret 
Service is highly concerned with this type of attack because 
intelligence operations have decreased effectiveness against solo 
operators who can keep a secret.  Therefore, they spend the bulk of the 
energy and money on stopping coordinated attacks where the volume of 
involved individuals gives a greater chance of something slipping out.

I do agree that there is a point of diminishing 
returns.  Unfortunately, the American public (and to some extent the 
Western world) seems intent on classifying any single death by 
terrorists as a failure of the whole system of intelligence, military 
operations, leadership, etc.

Therefore, public officials and their staffs are more likely to expend 
exorbitant amounts of money to defend against any incident whatsoever 
to avoid being castigated.

 > Far more effective would have been to spend most of that $1.5
 > billion on intelligence and on emergency response.  Intelligence
 > is an invaluable tool against terrorism, and it works regardless
 > of what the

The security WAS effective at the Olympics.  There was not a major 
incident.  I'm sure there could have been, but for a variety of reasons 
(at least one of which is luck) nothing happened.  However, the money 
was spent on a one-time basis that didn't help the overall long-term 
goal of reducing the effectiveness of terrorist organizations.  Your 
argument about spending more of the total on processes and the 
infrastructure of intelligence and response is well-taken.  Basically 
it comes down to opinion.  The Olympic security organizers' opinion was 
selfish in that their overriding concern was the Olympics.  They didn't 
really care about next year, because that is somebody else's 
problem.  So, they concentrated on spending money where it was 
conspicuous.  It did work, though.  It might not have been the best 
plan, but it was effective.  You have to remember the sheer number of 
competing interests involved in the planning of the security 
environment.  Just imagining the politics involved boggles the mind.



From: Anonymous
Subject: Fear and Security

This is in response to the letter you published last month by Wayne 
Schroeder:  Fear and security are closely coupled in simple situations, 
like riding a motorcycle.  The way to reduce the fear is to increase 
your safety, such as by driving more slowly.  Millions of years of 
evolution have evolved fear as a mechanism for keeping us alive, but 
millions of years of evolution never had to deal with a 767.  It 
evolved for simpler things, like bad weather, high speeds, and scary 
animals.

When it comes to the more complex security situations of the modern 
world, our natural instincts are inadequate.  People still rely on them 
to guide them, though, like in the now-notorious Annie Jacobsen 
freakout.  That's why we have security theater; people are trying to 
reduce fear, not increase safety, and they don't realize those aren't 
the same anymore.

That is also why people are reluctant to confront their poor choices. 
When you force them to do so, you are taking them from a place of 
reduced fear to one of heightened fear; as far as they're concerned, 
you're causing the fear.  The rational perspective is clearly that you 
are making them safer, but they don't see it that way.

The motorcycle example just doesn't work because it maps easily to our 
evolved instincts.  Modern security problems are so complicated that 
the ways to reduce fear have diverged from the ways to increase safety. 
Trying to map these primitive emotions to modern threats can't work; 
the gap is too large.  Relying on our fears to guide us won't make us 
safer; it will only make it more shocking when our defenses are 
breached again.


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Copyright (c) 2004 by Bruce Schneier.