The RISKS Digest
Volume 12 Issue 61

Thursday, 7th November 1991

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

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Contents

Cop Charged with Doctoring Computerized Citation Record
PGN
Legal status of digital signatures
Steve Bellovin
The dangers of telco competition
Lauren Weinstein
Oven temperature regulator problem
Jane Beckman
No Power backup on Electronic Fuel Injection
Gareth Howell
Another smart card risk
34AEJ7D
UK Phone charge card risk
Graham Toal
Risks of telephones with status displays
Neil Strauss
Don't bank on computer viruses!
Gene Spafford
NSF researchers required to undergo security checks?
Nancy Leveson
Re: Have you tested your machine lately?
Matt Crawford
Dave W. Hamaker
Re: Blaming the computer (again)
George Malits
Paul J Karafiol
Re: A new twist on "Speed Controlled by Radar"
Clive Dawson
Re: Electronically controlled bus transmission
Adam V Reed
Jamie Mason
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Cop Charged with Doctoring Computerized Citation Record

"Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Thu, 7 Nov 91 9:15:27 PST
Emily Fields, a San Francisco police officer, has been charged with evading
payment and tampering with records after accumulating almost $700 in traffic
citations.  Assigned to the PD's warrant section, she allegedly gained access
to the police computer and cleared a warrant issued against her for nonpayment
of tickets, changing the record to indicate she had been arrested and taken
into custody.  (She had previously defaulted on payment and failed to appear in
court, which resulted in the warrant appearing in the computer database.)
[San Francisco Chronicle, 5Nov91]


Legal status of digital signatures

<smb@ulysses.att.com>
Wed, 06 Nov 91 20:08:37 EST
I'm looking for information the legal status of documents authenticated by
digital means, i.e., RSA, ElGamal, the recent proposal by NIST, etc.  Do any
countries have laws, regulations, or judicial precedents governing such
matters?  Are such records admissible as evidence in civil or criminal trials
in these jurisdictions?  Will the relevant government authorities, or
non-government financial practices bodies (i.e., the FASB in the United States)
accept digital signatures in contexts where a paper audit trail had been
required?  I'm thinking of things like employee time cards, payment vouchers,
purchase orders, etc.

Please reply by mail.  I'll be happy to compile a summary for any interested
parties (and for the list as a whole, if demand so indicates, and the quality
of the information received permits).
                              --Steve Bellovin  smb@ulysses.att.com


The dangers of telco competition

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Tue, 5 Nov 91 19:25:29 PST
There are quite a number of reasons why various items now on the local telcos'
agendas, especially those relating to the provision of information services or
television programming, would ultimately be bad news for most consumers.

Fundamentally, the problems relate to there being, in practice, an extremely
uneven "playing field" involving local telcos vs.  any outside competition.

It can be expected that most enhanced services that telcos operate will be
priced in such a way as to undercut competition, either in terms of pricing, or
in terms of features that only the telco can provide, due specifically to the
telco's unwillingness to provide equal access to their switches at "fair"
prices.

Meanwhile, the telcos have the ability to jack up the price on those services
for which there is no effective competition and for which most consumers have
nowhere else to go.  Exactly this is happening right now in California, with
the two main telcos, PacBell and GTE, requesting massive increases in basic
local service rates, theoretically in exchange for lower rates for certain
types of toll calls.  Unfortunately, any consumer or small business who has a
number of lines and doesn't make enough of the "correct" type of toll calls
loses out big time.  While there is supposed to be a division between telco
enhanced services and basic services in terms of funding and cost factors, in
practice the two are usually so intertwined that its essentially impossible to
control.

I mentioned the uneven playing field above.  There's an obvious example of this
right now.  Look at the telco provided "voicemail" services in comparison to
the similar services provided by outside firms.  With outside firms, you have
to call forward into the service, and if you're on a measured rate phone line
(as most businesses are these days, usually by edict, and increasing numbers of
residence subscribers as well) you have to pay for every call transferred to
the voicemail vendor.  When you want to check to see if you have messages, you
have to make yet another call to check on the status of your voicemail box.

Now look at the telco systems, which are tightly integrated with their
switches.  The voicemail system is directly trunked to the various central
offices.  No forwarding, no call charges for each call.  If messages are
waiting, you get a "stutter" dialtone when you pick up the phone.

The outside vendors of voicemail services would very much like to get access to
the switch on the same basis.  But at this stage of the game, they can't.
Eventually a complex set of FCC rules may supposedly allow for the access of
outsiders to various network "elements" as individual units.  However, it
appears that the pricing of such elements will be quite predatory and in
practice continue the telcos' pricing advantage as it relates to tightly
coupled enhanced services.  Other similar cases already exist.  Various
telco-sponsored information services for cellular phone users, accessible more
easily (fewer digits) and more cheaply (even free!) than outside services, have
already been announced.

Now the telcos want to do video (Cable TV) too!  They're waving the promise of
fiber-to-the-home in front of Congress, and waxing poetic about all sorts of
glamorous future information services (most of which, by the way, sound much
the same as services available now from outside vendors).  Little (if any!)
mention of pricing ever comes up in these discussions (the high rates for
current ISDN implementations may be instructive here).  Nor is it mentioned
that, inevitably, the telcos will keep coming back to the local basic service
ratepayers to help bail them out from any failed projects.  You can also be
sure that most telco information services will be oriented toward dense urban
areas and well-heeled business customers.

The example of the French Minitel system comes up from time to time as a
"successful" telco-related info service with many outside vendors.  I don't
believe that this example can be applied to the U.S. telecommunications market.
The French government provided most of the Minitel terminals for "free", and
even now, after all these years, the system requires large government subsidies
to stay in operation.  The government/private industry/telecommunications
structure there is fundamentally different from what we see in the U.S.
environment, with government control and government funding/subsidies playing
much more central roles than would be tolerated in this country.

This message can but give a taste of the issues involved; it's all a very
complex matter.  But boiled down to its essence, the problem is that in
practice we cannot depend on the owners of the fundamental "pipelines" (the
telcos) being able or willing to provide truly equal access, both in terms of
pricing and features, to their competitors who need to use those same
pipelines.  This is especially critical since the telcos are in the enviable
position of having that handy collection of basic ratepayers to fall back on,
one way or another--theoretical provisions to prevent this notwithstanding.

--Lauren--


Oven temperature regulator problem

Jane Beckman <jane@stratus.swdc.stratus.com>
Mon, 28 Oct 91 18:02:05 PST
Seeing the recent discussion of furnace thermostats going haywire reminded
me of a recent problem a friend had with her oven.

Her stove is one of these modern models with electronically regulated oven
temperature control, digital readouts, etc.  These things are great, until...
She was baking some cookies, and when she took them out, she thought it was
weird that they were overdone.  The timing was right, but the oven temperature
seemed to be way too high.  She turned off the oven and didn't think a thing
about it until she put a casserole in a couple days later.  The casserole
seemed to be cooking too fast, and the oven was like a blast furnace, and yet
the stove told her everything was fine.  So she decided to turn off the oven.

The oven would not turn off.  For the next couple hours, she tried to turn off
the oven, to no avail.  The kitchen was getting pretty warm, by then.  The
final solution to this was to turn off the gas to the stove.  She called the
repairman, and when he came out and evaluated the problem, it turned out some
vital piece of electronics had shorted out, and the cost of replacement was
$200, which was a sizable chunk of the price of the stove!  She seriously
discussed simply replacing the stove with a $400 non-electronic stove, for fear
of this happening again, but finally broke down and had it fixed.  She has had
other problems, since, with the temperature not being what the sensors think it
is.  It sounds like the entire sensor system may have had design problems, from
the first.  (Sorry, I don't remember the brand of stove.)

      Jane Beckman  [jane@swdc.stratus.com]


No Power backup on Electronic Fuel Injection

Gareth Howell <garethh@sadss.uucp>
Thu, 03 Oct 91 04:57:15 BST
This concerns the risk to the environment when the Electronic
Control Unit (ECU) for the fuel injection doesn't have a protected
power supply.

I used to own a Rover 800 (sold as a Sterling in the US). One of
the models in the range (820E) has a 2litre single-point fuel injected
engine. The configuration setup of the ECU (which controls the fuel-air
mixture, and hence controls emissions) is held in volatile RAM, which
is powered from the car's battery.

Unfortunately, if you disconnect the battery the RAM is cleared, and whilst
you can still run the engine, it runs in a default state which can cause
excess emissions. The detailed workshop manual contains a method of
re-tuning the engine if the settings are lost, but it doesn't indicate
that disconnecting the battery (which has to be done for many repair/
service type operations) will cause the ECU settings to be wiped.

Here in the UK, we have just introduced emission checks on all cars as
part of their annual safety check - I wonder how many 820E's will fail
because either their owners or the garage didn't re-set the ECU settings?
73 Gareth
Note: As far as I know the other models in the range don't suffer from
this problem.

Gareth Howell, Information Technology Services Agency, Department of Social
Security, Lytham St Annes, England, FY8 1ZZ garethh@sadss.uucp
sadss!garethh@eros.uknet.ac.uk garethh@cix.compulink.co.uk +44 (253) 797096


Another smart card risk

<34AEJ7D@cmuvm.bitnet>
Mon, 04 Nov 91 11:36:47 EST
The Florida-based Advanced Promotion Technologies has developed a smart card,
dubbed a "Vision Value Card" to accumulate details of buying patterns, etc. at
various mega-markets. I believe the VVC is in use, or testing, in the
Mormon-owned Safeway foodstore chain.  The card also doubles as an electronic
"trading stamp" by accumulating "bonus points" awarded for purchasing certain
products. These points are redeemable for "gifts" from a catalog published by
APT.


UK Phone charge card risk

Graham Toal <gtoal@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl>
31 Oct 91 23:32:26 GMT
This may be old news to comp.risks or comp.dcom.telecom, but it was the first
time it was drawn to *my* attention; Barry Fox has an article in this week's
New Scientist (UK weekly) explaining that phone charge cards in the UK work by
dialling 144 + card no + PIN + phone no; it seems that Hotel/business/etc call
loggers (understandably) record this string of numbers as the number dialled.

He doesn't say that this *has* been used to fraudulently use someone's
account, but I think that's a fair assumption.  (There has been talk
on uk.telecom of possible large-scale fraud going on recently)

Fox says that 'Telecomms Regulation Review' trade magazine had informed BT of
this some time ago, but BT have done nothing to warn their customers.  [I
wonder what sort of warning would be appropriate?]

Graham

PS I'm posting to comp.risks for the risk aspect; to comp.dcom.telecom because
I wonder how this problem was solved in the US who have had this technology
much longer than us.


Risks of telephones with status displays

Neil Strauss <neil@ps.quotron.com>
Thu, 7 Nov 91 15:31:05 EST
I recently used a telephone at a customer of ours to call my office voicemail.
This phone had a LED display which echoed every button I pressed from the time
the handset was raised until I hung up. This resulted in my voicemail
password being prominently displayed to any passing individual.

The risks of my voicemail being compromised are relatively small, but the same
type of compromise would have occurred if I had been using a telephone credit
card.

I learned after completing the call that there is a button on the phone which
will prevent button presses from echoing, but this button was not clearly
labelled and could not be used by an uneducated user.

The most logical approach to a status display on a phone is to echo the phone
number to prevent wrong numbers and then inhibit echoing after the call has
been connected. I also wonder if a phone that displays my keystrokes may not
also be recording them somewhere for accounting purposes.


Don't bank on computer viruses! [WWN strikes again!]

<spaf@cs.purdue.edu>
Mon, 04 Nov 91 20:34:19 EST
We've heard all about the usual stealth computer viruses and "armored" viruses
that are being written these days.  It seems that in some places the writing of
nasty viruses has become a national pasttime.  Some of these authors delight in
finding new methods of damage and camouflage.  The problem has mainly been for
IBM PCs, and the most sophisticated virus-writing has been in Bulgaria and the
USSR.

Now, however, we have a new and far worse problem from South America, according
to the November 12th issue of the "Weekly World News."  [This is the
"newspaper" you may find at supermarket checkout lines with the kind of
headlines you don't see in the more mainstream media.  Obviously, a conspiracy
by the mainstream media.  The November 12th issue is headlined with "Ohio Woman
has a 3rd Eye — in the back of her head!"]

On page 7, there is an article by one Sally O'Day, "special to the WWN,"
and entitled: "Demon Computer Kills 2 Workers!"  It is subtitled "Exorcist
called in after experts discover virus-bred evil spirit!"

The article goes on to explain how a computer system installed in a bank in
Valparaiso, Chile is possessed by a demon.  A consultant from the computer
company that installed the system claims that it must be the result of a virus
installing an evil demon that has caused:

   * observers to see a hideous horned demon appear on the screen
   * anyone who tries to turn off the machine to black out and fall to the
     floor
   * Carmen de la Fuente to have a fatal heart attack within 2 minutes of
     sitting down at the terminal
   * Maria Catalan to be found sitting at the terminal with her head in her
     lap [decapitated, I presume, rather than a contortionist]
   * a computer expert to began babbling like a madman when he got within
     10 feet of the terminal

This brings up many interesting questions:
   — How long before commercial anti-virus vendors start advertising
      that their products work against this type of virus?
   — Does the exorcism ritual end with extinguishing the candle, closing
      the book, and sounding the BEL?
   — Could this actually be the result of using Ada rather than a virus?
   — Do you know any computer experts who don't begin to babble when
      within 10 feet of a computer?
   — Does normal business insurance cover an exorcism?
   — Maybe it's a Unix system and this is the first time they've seen
      the sendmail daemon?
   — Will Fred Cohen allow this to be entered in his virus-writing contest?

Or, it could be that Ms. O'Day has recently seen the movie "Evilspeak"?  [If
you have yet to see the movie, rush right out and rent it.  Lay in a supply of
beer and pizza, and invite the neighbors over.  It is a classic wherein a nerdy
Ken Howard (Ron's little brother — the one who used to hang out with Gentle
Ben) summons up the devil on an Apple II computer.  He should have guessed
something was amiss when he started getting Stardent-level graphics on his
little Apple, and when it started demanding blood sacrifices.  The credits
include mention of the "stunt demons" and "Satan's Sows."  Not to be missed.]

Hey, it must be true if they printed it, right? :-)

   [It is astounding how they manage to recycle old stories.  The basics of
   this appeared years ago in WWN, 3 March 1987 (see RISKS-4.50, 23 February
   1987, 

NSF researchers required to undergo security checks?

<leveson@cs.washington.edu>
Fri, 01 Nov 91 06:18:33 -0800
The Washington Post, on Tuesday 29 Oct. 1991, page A21, contains an article
about the new NSF Presidential Faculty Fellows program (like PYI but more
money).  The article states:

   Recipients of the Presidential Faculty Fellows awards will have to be
   formally approved by the White House, though Bromley said no one will be
   denied a grant for political reasons.  They will also have to undergo an
   FBI background check.

Presidential approval is OK — that is also part of the PYI program and is
probably just a formality — but why should an FBI background check be required
to receive an NSF research award?  Surprisingly, the author of the Post article
did not mention the fact that this might be out of line (the article only
expressed concern that the award was just a shell game that would actually
reduce the total number of young scientists supported in the combined PYI and
PFF programs).  This seems like a very dangerous trend, and I am shocked that
NSF would agree to go along with this.
                                                      nancy

   [This item is marginally related to computer risks, but seemingly relevant
   to some of the related threads running through RISKS, such as privacy of
   computer scientists who might apply for PYIs?  PGN]


Re: Have you tested your machine lately? (Roberts, RISKS-12.54)

"Matt Crawford" <matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
Wed, 30 Oct 91 16:04:16 CST
> All the software using floating point is broken — in mysterious ways.

A few months back we had a problem with a VAX/8650 running VMS.  approximately
9 out of 10 attempts to log in would fail as if the password were wrong.  It
sounds like the classic Trojan horse login program, but it was actually a bad
floating point board.  It took a few days to figure it out, but eventually some
vax guru inside DEC gave field service the answer.


Re: Have you tested your machine lately? (Roberts,RISKS-12.54)

Dave W. Hamaker <dwh@eco.twg.com>
25 Oct 91 17:33:54 GMT
In RISKS-12.54 Boyd Roberts writes about his tribulations with his DECstation
5000 when its FPU failed.  A day of his time was consumed trying to figure out
why strange things were happening, and the problem became evident only after he
started trying hardware swaps.  This necessitated rebooting and the self tests
then incidentally revealed the true problem.

This reminds me of the time the FPU in a mainframe had a failure which took me
only a few minutes to diagnose.  I was responsible for taking care of the
system software.  It was reported to me that many DBMS users were getting
incorrect results.  I knew the software hadn't been changed recently and there
were too many reports for me to suspect "user error."  Hardware seemed the only
other alternative.  "But why isn't the whole system crashing?," I thought.
"Maybe the operating system doesn't use floating point," and a few quick tests
showed the results of floating point adds and subtracts always came out
negative (1 + 1 = -2).  Sometimes one is fortunate enough to ask the right
question first.

At another job, a colleague got the source code for a quick instruction set
diagnostic from the computer vendor's service engineers and spliced it into the
operating system's "idle" loop.  When the machine wasn't doing anything else,
it would be testing itself.  As I recall, that this caught a hardware failure
at least once.  Perhaps this is something hardware vendors might do that would
help with the kind of failure Boyd Roberts experienced.
                                                             Dave Hamaker


Re: Blaming the computer (again) (Schwartz, RISKS-12.60)

George Malits <malits@sgtyork.sw.stratus.com>
Thu, 7 Nov 91 09:33:02 EST
Concerning the article on the $1M tax bill.  Deja Vu all over again.  If you've
ever read _The Elements of Programming Style_ there is a very similar example.
This was back in the days of punch cards and a data entry error shifted one of
the fields by one column.  The result was that the rightmost character in one
field ended up in the leftmost column of the next field.  This turned out to
place a letter in what was supposed to be a numeric field.  No matter, the
software managed to "interpret" the letter into a digit.  The result was that
some poor guys Chevy was valued at several million dollars.  The best part of
the whole thing was the error was detected (by manual inspection and not by
the software) and a new card punched but somehow the old card was not destroyed.
The tax payer received 2 bills, one correct and one very wrong.  In this case,
the town could/would not print new tax bills at a higher rate so they were
forced to cut the town budget to make up the deficit BTW: All of this is from
memory so I apologize in advance for any errors in detail that might have
crept in.


ORegon Misassessed property tax (Re: Schwartz, RISKS-12.60)

<karafiol@husc.harvard.edu>
Thu, 7 Nov 91 14:07:47 -0500
>[a farm in rural Oregon] should have received an $8,850 assessment,
>instead of the $97 million property valuation. Their tax bill should have
>been for just $117 [...].

whereas, according to the Oregonian, they were billed for $986,312.
So, Schwartz notes,

>Bill for someone [else's] $70K home will go from $710 to $760 to make up
>for the deficit from the bad math.

There is another problem that came out in a similar case in Massachusetts last
spring: the county may well have counted on their share of the incorrectly
billed $986,312. This indeed happened in the Mass. case, which led to a fiscal
crisis: the county had by that time committed itself to spending money which it
just wasn't going to get, (a) because it wasn't owed it, (b) because the
possibilities for a small town getting a million-dollar loan to cover such a
screwup are low, and (c) because there was no clear governmental agency willing
or able to cover them.

Questions, comments, solutions? Note that it wasn't at all the county's fault:
they got a printout from the state that said, "Your share of local property
taxes is going to be so-and-so-much." And while we would like to say that the
state owes them the money, realistically speaking, that would probably be an
unacceptable solution.
                        == paul j karafiol


Re: A new twist on "Speed Controlled by Radar"

Clive Dawson <AI.CLIVE@MCC.COM>
Thu 31 Oct 91 07:54:33-CST
A recent message from Andrew Green (acg@hermes.dlogics.com) described the use
of unattended radar transmitters to cause vehicles to slow down by triggering
their radar detectors, and raised the question of how failure of these
transmitters could be detected.

About ten days ago while visiting Canada, I was driving from Toronto to Buffalo
and noticed a similar system.  During the approach to a particularly sharp turn
along Queen Elizabeth [Free]Way, I observed the usual warning signs indicating
that it would be a good idea to slow down.  I slowed down slightly, but not
down to the recommended speed.  When the turn was imminent, I saw a large red
sign directly ahead suddenly begin to flash "TOO FAST".  My instant reaction as
I immediately slowed down further was, "Wow, what an effective feedback
device!"

I would suggest that adding a visual sign of this sort to the system ain
Chicago would not only serve to warn vehicles without radar detectors as well,
but would also address the risk of error-detection, since a transmitter failure
would be much more obvious.

What about other uses for unattended radar?  I know of several residential
neighborhoods that use huge(!) speed bumps (the kind would rip out your
suspension at anything over 15 mph but are a pain at any speed) to enforce
speed limits.  I can imagine a system in which radar could raise physical
devices which would make speeding noticeable (1-inch bumps), unpleasant (4-inch
bumps), or impossible (parking-lot-style spikes?! ;-), thus allowing a smooth
ride for vehicles within the speed limit.

One of the Risks which I find fascinating is the idea that once people are
accustomed to having a system like this provide a warning about a speed-limit
(or any other law or regulation), then failure of the system causes people to
think they have temporary license to ignore the law, even in the face of all of
the conventional warning signs, etc.  The more general theme here is that any
time we allow a computer to assume the role of a conscience, we must remember
that a failure does not imply that people will automatically and immediately
revert to a backup system, i.e. using their own consciences!

Clive Dawson, MCC, Austin, Texas


Re: Electronically controlled bus transmission (Seecof, RISKS-12.60)

Adam V Reed <avr@mtfmi.att.com>
Wed, 6 Nov 91 22:25:15 EST
More on risks of accepting human-hostile design!

===> A car with misplaced pedals is just as faulty as one with misplaced gears.

[Audi...]  Blink. Are the pedals any less a part of the car's acceleration
control subsystem than is the transmission?  Audi lost half it market share
because its wanna-be-"engineers" placed the brake and accelerator pedals so
close together, that drivers could not tell what they were stepping on.  This,
even though reliable standards for the placement of mechanical controls,
including pedals, have been available since the early 1950s. As an engineer and
a human, I find Audi's fate justified, market forces vindicated, and
consequences salutary.
                    Adam_V_Reed@ATT.com


Re: Electronically controlled bus transmission (Seecof, RISKS-12.60)

Jamie Mason <jmason2@utcs.utoronto.ca>
Thu, 7 Nov 1991 04:23:30 -0500
    The problem here is the `computer knows best' attitude.  Far too many
problems arise because of this.  Not only does that automatic transmission make
decisions that a competent human should be making (the choice of gear), but it
also ignores an explicit override.

    This is one of many reasons why I chose to drive manual transmission
vehicles.  When you have a stick physically linked to a gearbox, it is hard for
the car to second-guess you.

    Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have heard of automatic
transmissions doing this.  Many expensive cars have this feature, I believe the
Benz will prevent you from putting the car in an 'inappropriate' gear.  I'm not
sure what it would do if you put it in "LO".  I think the Tiptronic manual/auto
transmission on the new Porsche is like this as well.  (You would think that
those who could afford a car like THAT would not put up with their car telling
them what to do!)

    It's a bad day when critical systems have NO manual override.  There
should always be SOME way for the OPERATOR to have the final word.
Unfortunately, some designers must not realize how critical the control systems
of an automobile are.  I hope the designers of "electronically controlled
super-highways" keep this in mind.

    The driver is smarter than a tachometer.  Even if the passengers DID
NOT MATTER, and the sole purpose of the rev-limiter was to protect the engine
(from over-revving) the device FAILED at its task.  Afterall, the engine WAS
destroyed in the crash, wasn't it?  :-)
                                                   Jamie  ...

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