Security & privacy

Can the Internet be encrypted by default?

With the current debates about lawful intercept and increasing numbers of man-in-the-middle attacks, maybe the Internet should finally be made secure by default.

Encryption is currently used sparingly, mostly when connecting to e-commerce and financial services over the web. Here the https protocol is used and traffic between the user’s web browser and the server is protected from eavesdropping using SSL. The problems with this scheme are legendary, mostly associated with requiring users to notice when encryption is on and off, and knowing how to interpret certificate information and error messages.

But could encryption be turned on all the time, automatically?

Google has recently made https the default for Gmail, demonstrated that encryption can be scaled to millions of users. What about scaling it to the entire Internet?

Tcpcrypt is an extension to the TCP protocol designed to make encryption the default. It is backwardly compatible with traditional TCP, and it would protect old applications that don’t have encryption. And it works faster than the SSL we rely on today.

You can read more about tcpcrypt in a recent technical paper, on a tcpcrypt community web site, and on Wikipedia.

A good, brief article on economics and security failures by Ross Anderson contains some great quotes…

The discipline of security economics teaches us that large systems often fail because incentives are poorly aligned; if someone guards a system while someone else bears the cost of failure, then failure is likely.

…

As one of my students put it, “All the party invitations in Cambridge come through Facebook. If you don’t use Facebook you don’t get to any parties, so you’ll never meet any girls, you won’t have any kids and your genes will die out.”

Google is introducing two-factor authentication to its Google Apps products. This means that in order to access the enterprise services (mail, documents, etc.) the Google user will have to know their password and also supply a one-time verification code. That code will be sent to your cell phone, or generated by a special application on the smart phone.

The approach is not novel, and does not provide 100% security, but it is notable because of Google’s size and influence. Having such a large player adopt stronger authentication can only help to speed the adoption by other organizations, and that is a good thing.

By doing this now, and previously making https the default in gmail, Google is demonstrating that better security can be done on a large scale, with general users.

There are two research positions open at CMU in the area of privacy decision making. One is at the Post-Doc level and the other is for Ph.D. students. The principle investigator is Alessandro Acquisti.

The project aims at investigating the role of soft paternalistic approaches in assisting users who face privacy-sensitive trade-offs. Such privacy “nudges” will be incorporated into policy proposals as well as tools and technologies to be developed by other members of the project.

The US military has been collecting millions of biometric samples from Iraqi citizens, both good guys and bad guys. Now that the US is leaving, what should be done with the biometric waste? There are real risks that the records could be used to determine who worked with the US forces during the occupation, or to identify members of rival tribes. And can the new Iraqi government be trusted to use the records properly?

As the war draws down, however, the collection of so much personal information has raised questions about how data gathered during wartime should be used during times of peace, and with whom that information should be shared.

via Questions arise about use of data gathered in Iraq war – The Boston Globe.

Employers are looking for specific skills when hiring security professionals, and these mirror the most common issues are threats seen today.

So what do employers in the federal and private sectors want in a security pro today? The most in-demand qualifications basically mirror the types of attacks, breaches, and threats these organizations face today, as well as the regulations that help dictate their defenses: They’re looking for experience in incident-handling and response, compliance, risk management, business-side acumen, security clearance for sensitive government work, and leadership.

Researchers will be presenting a paper at the IEEE security conference in Oakland next week that demonstrates various attacks against the computer systems in modern cars. These attacks allow someone to control a variety of systems, including the breaks, and even erase all evidence of the attacks. We know a lot about building safety critical systems, but we seem to also be good at ignoring the lessons.

Over a range of experiments, both in the lab and in road tests, we demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input — including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on. We find that it is possible to bypass rudimentary network security protections within the car, such as maliciously bridging between our car’s two internal subnets.

The paper is available here.

Media coverage can be read here.

Here is an interesting attack method: launch a denial-of-phone attack to prevent communication with a bank while draining the accounts. Apparently, fake VoIP accounts were setup to phone the victim repeatedly while the bad guys transferred thousands of dollars out of the accounts. This is an example of a cross-over attack using different types of technologies to perform the fraud.

The FBI says the calls were a diversionary tactic, meant to tie up Thousand’s line so that Ameritrade couldn’t reach him to authenticate the money transfer requests.

via Denial-of-Phone While Draining Accounts Read More »

My new employer, The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, is again calling for research and public education proposals for its contributions programs.

Research into the privacy implications of information technologies is one of the four priority areas for funding support under this year’s program. Emerging information technologies can threaten the privacy of Canadians or enhance it – and sometimes both simultaneously. For that reason, the Office is especially interested in receiving funding applications from researchers examining, from a scientific or technical standpoint, the impact of information technologies on privacy.

Not-for-profit organizations, including education institutions, industry and trade associations, consumer, voluntary and advocacy organizations are all eligible under the program. Up to $50,000 is available for successful projects. The deadline for submitting applications is February 26, 2010.

More information is available at:

http://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/cp/p_index_e.cfm