The RISKS Digest
Volume 16 Issue 10

Tuesday, 31st May 1994

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

Closed Doors in Glasgow
Human.risks-- Scapegoats and Puddlejumpers...
Peter Wayner
Man charged with E-mail stalking
John C. Rivard
Police BBS in Silver Spring, MD
Mich Kabay
Re: alt fan karla homolka
Phil Overy
Eavesdropping hits NSA
Peter Wayner
Risks of too-simple responses
Jerry Leichter
"Zap!" by Sellers
Rob Slade
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Closed Doors in Glasgow

<kh@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Wed, 25 May 94 21:12:10 BST
GUARD DIED AFTER DOORS FAILED IN COURT FIRE.
The Glasgow Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, 25 May 1994

A failsafe system on security doors at Edinburgh's new sheriff courthouse did
not work on the night of a fire in which a security guard died, a fatal
accident inquiry heard yesterday.  Graham Scott, 39, managing director of
computer firm System 4, told the inquiry at Edinburgh Sheriff Court that
security doors which should have opened automatically in the event of fire had
remained locked.  Security guard George Campbell, 57, of Claremont Grove,
Edinburgh died when he was trapped in a lift by the fire on November 19 last
year.  Mr Scott said that a programmable computer chip in the system had its
information wiped accidentally and did not signal the doors to open.  The
doors normally worked by having a security card "swiped" through a device
which identified the card and allowed them to open.  The inquiry heard that
efforts by another security guard to reach Mr. Campbell failed when his card
would not open a door on to the sixth level where Mr.  Campbell was trapped.
Mr. Scott said that because the fire had burned for some time before being
discovered, it had probably burned through the cable connecting the door to
the main control computer, but a push button on the inside should still have
opened it.  He said that under the new system any door which was cut off from
the main control for more than 10 seconds would automatically unlock itself.

  [This tragedy seems to have been the result of a combination of
  problems: no escape route from the lift (elevator); no way of opening
  doors from the outside without the door computer working (sounds
  familiar!); and a specified but untested exceptional case.  The new
  failure mode is interesting too: they'd better keep that computer
  working if they don't want thieves to break into the courthouse! KH]


Human.risks-- Scapegoats and Puddlejumpers...

Peter Wayner <pcw@access.digex.net>
Thu, 26 May 1994 09:03:58 -0400
The May 25th edition of the Wall Street Journal has a long story by Daniel
Pearl about a crash of a small commuter airplane. The company seems to be
blaming the pilot and the story goes to long lengths to document his bad
attitude. His anger, the theory proposes, lead him to screw up in the bad
weather and misjudge the position of the ground by 300 ft.

The story is well-written and essentially balanced, but I wonder if the author
really thought about the spin he was putting on the story.  For instance, the
author "documents" the pilot's anger and abrasive behavior as such:

   "Always a meticulous person, Mr. Falitz became even more of a
   stickler. He filed 14 anonymous (sic) air-safety reports,
   including one about a flight attendant who didn't have up-to-date
   paperwork." (I hope their anti-terrorist security is better
   then their protections for anonymity.)

   (Before the Flight) "Mr. Falitz had an angry argument with a
   gate agent over his paperwork, and a ramp worker in Minneapolis
   told the safety board that he saw Mr. Falitz chew out Mr.
   Erickson (the co-pilot) for not checking the landing light
   from outside the plane. After the Hibbing-bound passengers were
   aboard, Mr. Falitz insisted on bumping one passenger to meet the
   weight limit; a woman travelling with her family volunteered to get off."

To be fair, the writer also documents a time when Falitz slapped the headset
of a co-pilot after the co-pilot set it to the wrong channel. There are a few
other quotes that make Falitz seem a bit too disgruntled. For instance, Falitz
was annoyed because the airline was forcing him to make the doomed flight and
he would have to fly home on his day off.

But, I still was rather disturbed by the fact that the writer seemed to be
building an argument about Falitz's abrasiveness by citing Falitz's desire to
abide by the rules. The second paragraph I quoted ran directly under the
sub-heading "Quarrels with Colleagues." I wonder if the woman who was bumped
by the flight believes that the doomed plane should have taken off with too
much weight as well?

The best "fact" that proves Falitz was an abrasive pilot with an attitude was
that "On one sweaty flight, he announced to passengers that 'the company is
too cheap to fix the air conditioner.'"

Incidentally, the co-pilot on this flight that crashed made $18,000 a year. At
the time, small commuter planes were not required to have low altitude warning
devices that would have alerted the pilots to the fact that they were too low.
Big jets had them, but the companies didn't have to spend the money on the
little planes. They became required last month. The article also mentions that
the altimeters often stick.

The most dangerous subtext hidden in the article is the fact that the Federal
Aviation Administration is funding a program to develop personality tests for
pilots. I just hope that they can find a way to tame the anger without turning
the pilots into lemmings that accept low pay and badly maintained planes that
are overloaded with passengers and luggage.


Man charged with E-mail stalking

John C. Rivard <jcr@garnet.msen.com>
Thu, 26 May 1994 12:27:36 -0400
A front-page story (!) in the May 26, 1994 _Detroit Free Press_ tells the tale
of a 31-year-old suburban Dearborn Heights man who has been arrested and
charged under Michigan's new anti-stalking law for alleged harassment of a
29-year-old Farmington Hills (another Detroit suburb) woman via E-mail. The
article refers to this as "one of the first cases of stalking based primarily
on E-mail.

Under a large color photo of Mr. Archambeau with his arm draped casually
over his computer, the story tells of how he was jilted five days into an
E-mail relationship carried out over America Online. After the woman
(anonymous in the article per her request) sent the "Dear John" E-mail
message, he has been sending her E-mail trying to win her back.

The two met via a video dating service. The woman states that received a
total of "about 20 E-mail letters" from Archambeau since the day she met
him, hardly mail-bombing by most RISKS readers' standards. She has saved
and printed the messages for her lawyers.

Archambeau claims that E-mail, by its nature, is non-harassing, because she
can refuse to read the message after seeing the sender: "I was courting her
in a way that she could easily ignore."

The recipient of his unwanted advances points out that her system won't
delete unread mail for 37 days, so she has to look at it for that long,
"which is more harassing than postal mail."

After being contacted by a Farmington Hills detective, Archambeau sent
several more messages to the woman, as well as one to the detective
explaining his side of the story. The detective said that the woman wasn't
"terribly concerned" about the E-mail until she received a phone message
from Archambeau in which he apologized for watching her leave her
workplace, which is a block away from where he lives.

The woman seems to be claiming that E-mail itself is harassing by its very
nature. She does not claim that the content of any of the messages were in
any way threatening, although the Farmington Hills detective said after he
had initially contacted Archambeau, later messages contained "other methods
of harassment if she carried through with a police complaint."

The Michigan "stalker" law makes it a misdemeanor to maliciously and
relentlessly harass and pursue someone, punishable by up to a year in jail
and a $1,000 fine. This is the charge against Archambeau.

The offense becomes a felony if threats are made or the person is under
court order to stay away from the alleged victim. Then the perpetrator
faces five years and $10,000.

Women's rights groups who helped draft the law say they are certain that it
covers E-mail harassment, but the ACLU, which has expressed concern over
the law being able to withstand constitutional challenge, is not so sure.

There is a strange and extreme dichotomy in this story. On the one hand, we
have the alleged perpetrator is claiming that E-mail by its nature *cannot*
be threatening, and on the other hand, the alleged victim is claiming the
opposite, that unsolicited E-mail is *harassing* by it's nature. Both
positions don't consider about the *content* of the message at all! This
case brings the all the RISKS of treating the medium of E-mail differently
than other channels of communication to the forefront in what may be a
precedent-setting court case.

A second RISK is in the news media's overemphasis on E-mail as a stalking
tool. In fact, the text of the article indicates that the only blatantly
threatening act (watching the victim leave work) was related over the phone.
Nonetheless, the media spin on this issue is solely the ground-breaking act of
stalking by E-mail.

Denyability/accountability of E-mail is a RISK that is not dealt with in this
article, mostly because Archambeau openly admits sending the E-mail in
question.

John C. Rivard         jcr@mail.msen.com       JCR Design and Consulting


Police BBS in Silver Spring, MD

"Mich Kabay [NCSA Sys_Op]" <75300.3232@CompuServe.COM>
26 May 94 06:11:46 EDT
>From the Washington Post newswire (94.05.23) via Executive News Service (GO ENS)
on CompuServe:

"In Silver Spring, the Public Can Log On to the Police Log"
 By Veronica T. Jennings
 Washington Post Staff Writer

    "In the corner of a second-floor office in the Silver Spring district
police station sits a computer terminal that may launch Washington area police
agencies onto the information superhighway.
    "The computer contains information on crimes and suspects and, as of last
week, it's available to the public on a pilot basis."

The author makes the following key points:

<

re alt fan karla homolka

phil overy <PJO@ib.rl.ac.uk>
Thu, 26 May 94 15:07:40 BST
The newsgroup and offending details of this list also made their way to our
machine; I suppose the Ontario police object to details being published in a
case which is "sub judice". I have read (this may be wrong information) that
the details are being published by people who object to a plea bargain by the
(equally guilty?) Karla Homolka. This is not the way in which sub judice is
dealt with in Austria (I have recently moved back to the UK); often papers
will carry details from major court cases, but not name the defendants and not
quote any prosecution allegations. Many VERDICTS do not contain the convicted
man's name, so a "family" murder might be reported:
  "Dragan K. stabbed his father to death after an argument over the war in
  Yugoslavia" - the report will continue to expand on what took place, but the
  name is not given (anyone who thinks "Dragan" is a good clue has not met many
  (Yugoslav)s..).
The biggest advantage I can see to this approach is presented in minor crimes-
in the UK many minor crimes are wiped from the record 3 years after the end of
the sentence, but local newspapers indefatigably pillory the local fast
drivers, petty thieves etc by name - the only way to genuinely lose that
conviction 3 years after leaving prison is to move away, because someone may
dig up the newspaper report (indeed they WILL do so in Hicksville/
Nempnett Thrubwell).

"sub judice" publication of details of a case does of course cast doubt on
fair trials; I am sure that the individuals named as Lt. Starbuck etc in the
Homolka case do not want either of the accused to go free for lack of a fair
trial, but their actions could well cause a mistrial to be declared.

The Risk? The Internet is providing a sort of international newspaper; at the
moment it doesn't display a great deal of commitment to that role.  If The
Internet is "the new press", it's a pretty flabby alternative to the old one.

Phil Overy, Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory


Eavesdropping hits NSA

Peter Wayner <pcw@access.digex.net>
Sat, 28 May 1994 10:43:18 -0400
The Baltimore Sun ran an AP wire story (5/27/94, pg1) reporting that Dunkin
Donuts owners routinely places audio mikes in their stores for "security." The
story notes that the DD near Fort Meade, MD (the home of the NSA) contains the
equipment.

The story notes that the main corporate headquarters says that these hidden
microphones would be wrong. But it also cites Security systems dealer Jeff
Meuse who "told the Concord Monitor he has installed systems in 500 Dunkin'
Donuts in Massachusetts in the last five years; of those, 300 had audio
monitoring."

       [No telling what might be hidden in the donut holes!  PGN]


Risks of too-simple responses

Jerry Leichter <leichter@lrw.com>
Fri, 20 May 94 21:13:58 EDT
Several articles in a recent RISKS caught my eye in their common style of
taking too simple-minded an approach to a risk, thus missing important issues.

1.  Editor functionality mutates code

Kevin Lentin reports on an "extended vi" editor that has a CTRL/S command
which, if the cursor happens to be sitting on a number, decrements the number
by 1.  In a particular communication setup, CTRL/S was being used as XOFF and
also passed through to the editor, resulting in random mutations of code being
edited.  Mr. Lentin suggests that the fix is to be more careful about terminal
settings.

While this fixes the immediate problem, it ignores the underlying issue of
adaptation to the real world.  CTRL/Q and CTRL/S have been used for in-band
signalling as XON and XOFF for many years.  Using them as editing commands is
simply *very* poor design.  It's very poor because it's inherently dangerous:
There are too many ways to accidentally misconfigure an asynchronous terminal
connection so that XON and XOFF end up being passed to programs.  Further, in
the case of dial-up or network connections, the "proper" settings often have
to be made at so many intermediate systems, often systems with wildly
different interfaces, that errors are certain.

EMACS has always been the primary focus of this particular problem.  Its
designer has made it a point to bitch and moan about and generally refuse to
come to terms with any system that has the audacity not to deliver CTRL/Q and
CTRL/S.  Well, OK; that's fine for after-dinner conversation.  Safe software,
however, must adjust to the realities - and the realities for CTRL/Q and
CTRL/S are long established.

2.  UK ATM Spoof

Mich Kabay reports on an incident in London in which thieves stole an ATM
machine, repainted it, set it up in a shop, used it to gather card info and
PIN's, and eventually used those to steal some 240,000 pounds.  Mr. Kabay
comments that had the banks used smart cards and a challenge/response system,
this crime could not have occurred.

He's right, but for a different reason: Had banks waited for smart cards to be
practical before setting up ATM's, there would probably still be few if any
ATM's.  ATM's date back about 20 years by now, and it took a good ten of those
years from ATM's to become really widespread.  Smart cards are only just
becoming practical for mass use now.  They are still considerably more
expensive and fragile than the well-proven magnetic stripe card technology.

Meanwhile, the cost of conversion has inevitably mounted.  There's a huge
installed base of magnetic card readers, and a huge number of magnetic cards
in customer hands.  Conversion would be a very non-trivial task.

Should we as a society have waited before putting our trust in a technology
that has proved to be so easily abused?  A difficult question in general -
among technologists, there's always a push to just go ahead a build the
thing and see what happens.  In this particular case, I think you'd be hard
put to argue that waiting was called for.  What's ignored in just going ahead,
however, is that it inevitably raises the future costs of fixing the problems.

In practice, my bet is that we will *never* see the replacement of magnetic
stripe cards by smart cards.  Instead, we'll see improvements in stripe card
technology.  I saw a report not long ago about a technique that samples the
random noise on the magnetic stripe.  This noise is unique to a particular
card, is not changed by recording information on the stripe, and cannot be set
in a particular way by any known technique.  If, indeed, this technique is
practical - and the principle certainly appears sound - it would eliminate the
class of crime described here equally well.  (Curiously, a similar thing is
happening in the cellular phone arena, where the same kind of crime - the
theft of identification information for the purpose of faking a valid access
token - is being combated by analysis of the details of a phone's transmission
characteristics, which again appear to be unique to each unit, and not
forgeable.  There's a significant commonality here: These crimes are made
possible because in the digital world, "bits is bits".  Those of us who deal
with higher-level abstractions, where circuits really are binary - much less
those of us to whom the lowest level of abstraction is the software
architecture - easily lose sight of the fact that underlying our abstractions
is a physical world in which parts are not exactly interchangeable.  My
prediction: We'll see many more techniques based on looking "below" the
digital level in the years to come.)

3.  FIPS to be tied... [hashing, Capstone]

Peter Wayner notes that the recently discovered flaw in, and modification to,
the Secure Hash Algorithm "...proves the RISK of using a hardware based
standard."  It proves nothing of the sort.

    a.  Software isn't nearly as "soft" as people like to think.  There
    are still many systems out there running MSDOS Version 3.  Security
    bugs reported and patched years ago are still live in many Unix
    systems.  It's widely acknowledged that no fundamental change can be
    made in the UUCP algorithms or protocols, since many sites either
    would not, or simply could not, upgrade.

    The world of the individual programmer, ever ready to replace his
    copy of gcc with the latest and greatest release of yesterday morning,
    has little to do with the way most of the world works.

    b.  Hardware may be easier to change than software, if appropriately
    designed.  ROM updates are a common thing.

    c.  A ROM update blurs the line between software and hardware, but
    in practice any low-end implementation will have more of the
        characteristics of hardware than of software, simply because the
        economics favor something that can be duplicated very quickly and
        cheaply - and that's either a specialized chip, or a general purpose
        CPU plus ROM.

    d.  In any case, the Secure Hash Algorithm isn't a hardware-based
    standard - whatever that means - to begin with!

If, as Mr. Wayner worries, SHA were found to have a significant problem after
it was in wide use - it really would make little difference *how* it had been
realized.  Software, ROM, custom hardware - updating a million instances of
*anything* is an immense problem.
                    — Jerry


<"Rob Slade, Ed. DECrypt & ComNet, VARUG rep, 604-984-4067">
Tue, 31 May 1994 15:46:51 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: "Zap!" by Sellers

BKZAP.RVW  940311

Peachpit Press, Inc.
2414 Sixth Street
Berkeley, CA  94710
800/283-9444 or 510/548-4393
Fax: 510/548-5991
tbooth@peachpit.mhs.compuserve.com
"Zap!", Sellers, 1994, 1-56609-021-0, U$12.95/C$17.95
dsellers@hebron.connected.com

The industrial first aid class that I was in had come to problems associated
with bones and joints.  The instructor was discussing bursitis, and was using
the example of carpet layers.  The tool used to stretch carpet is designed to
be "kicked" with the knee while the worker is kneeling and tacking the carpet
in place.  Because of the repeated blows to the knee joint, bursitis is a
fairly common result.  Once it sets in, the worker can only hope to get a new
job before the pain gets too bad.  Someone in the class wouldn't accept this,
and kept asking what could be done.  The instructor patiently kept explaining
that nothing could be done.  Finally, the student pulled out what she thought
was her trump card: what if the worker's whole *life* was carpet laying?
"Well," replied the long-suffering teacher, "I guess he'd die, then."

This was immediately recalled to me by the anecdote used to open this book.
Some conditions are tragic and some are preventable.  The prevention, however,
may not always be within the control of the worker.

Still, this is an important book.  When you consider the possibly painful and
costly alternatives, "Zap" is probably well worth the price for any and every
computer user.  Home users may cavil, but they are the ones who probably have
the worst work setups and the most control over their environment.  Certainly
every large office should have a copy, although I suspect it will be used more
by staff than management, alas.

Given that the book's chapters cover not only body systems but also external
and environmental factors, it tends to seem a bit disjointed.  The jumps from
subject to subject are sometimes difficult.  It is, however, undoubtedly useful
in bringing together all manner of factors and problems into one place.  The
suggestions tend to be along the lines of common sense; relax; if something is
uncomfortable at first, it will get worse with repetition; keep moving, etc.;
but it is not to be despised on that account.  When the subject gets more
technical, as in the chapter on radiation, Sellers tends to waffle more.  (He
recommends a commercial monitor retrofit which can be accomplished more
effectively and for less money at home with a roll of tin foil.)  The resources
at the end of almost every chapter are helpful for further study in specific
areas.  There are, however, some odd gaps (such as the chapter on back pain).
Hopefully, future editions of the book will add more contacts and information.

The book is written to the user.  This might seem an obvious audience, but it
is probably management who need more prodding here.  It is a pity that more
information is not directed towards the solid business advantages of an
"ergonomic" workplace.  In discussing chairs, for example, one could note that
the cheapest steno chair might be available for sixty dollars, whereas the most
expensive is ten times that much.  This might appear to be a substantial price
difference--until you consider that the cheapest receptionist costs twenty
times as much, per year, as the most costly chair.  If you get only five
percent more work out of someone with a better chair, you pay for the chair in
a year.

While there are gaps in this work, it is significant for bringing together a
number of health issues in one place.  For this reason, I highly recommend it
and look forward to improved editions in the future.  Give it to your computer
novice friend and it might just save his or her neck.  Or eyes.  Or hands ...

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994   BKZAP.RVW  940311

Vancouver Institute for Research into User Security,        Canada V7K 2G6
ROBERTS@decus.ca   Robert_Slade@sfu.ca   rslade@cue.bc.ca    p1@CyberStore.ca

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