Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…
>From the Associated Press newswire (94.07.21 @ 12:15 EDST) via Executive News Service (GO ENS) on CompuServe: Internet-Hackers By JOHN DIAMOND, Associated Press Writer "WASHINGTON (AP) — Intruders have been tapping into the Pentagon's unclassified computer system through the Internet for the past seven months and some have stolen, altered and erased records, officials said today. Investigators have found no indication that the hackers have entered classified systems that control critical functions such as nuclear weapons and the movement of troops and ships." The author provides the following key points: o "...Betsy McDonald, spokeswoman for the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the compromised systems include those used for ballistic weapons research, aircraft and ship design, military payroll, personnel records, procurement, electronic mail, supercomputer modeling of battlefield environments and computer security research." o The Pentagon is taking the attacks seriously: the intruders evidently breached data confidentiality, damaged information integrity and threatened system availability. o The US and foreign attackers were able "to guarantee their ability to gain later access and to keep tabs on passwords needed to get into the system." o Michael Higgins, Deputy Director for Information Security at DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) is reported as having said that '"major portions" of the Defense Department's unclassified networks had been penetrated by hackers, "adversely affecting DOD military readiness." o The attacks are related to the February 1994 CERT alert about network sniffers trapping passwords. o Because of the nature of computer crime, the Pentagon admits that it is difficult or impossible to determine the extent of the security breaches. o The Senate Armed Services Committee has been echoing the warnings of analysts [such as Winn Schwartau] about systematic attacks on the information infrastructure: "With almost no security protections, the nation faces the prospect of potentially grievous assaults by even small groups with limited resources." o Pentagon sources pointed to "the inherent difficulty of security for a computer system that, by its very design, allows outside access and easy communication." [Comments from MK: gosh, and only one day after the preliminary announcement of the Second International Conference on Information Warfare, too... <g>] Michel E. Kabay, Ph.D. / Dir Education / Natl Computer Security Assn
Chemical Bank's ATMs were out of commission for more than five hours, beginning at 6:45 a.m. on 20 July 1994. A routine file update was botched, overloading the computer system. This came six months after Chemical systematically [no pun intended] charged its customers twice for cash withdrawals. [PGN abstracting from a NY Post article by Paul Tharp, Wed 20 Jul 1994.]
> The display I encountered contained a number of error messages (file > not found, could not create file, etc) followed by the prompt (A>). Users of operating systems, such as MS-DOS and Unix, in which the operating system is owned by or owns the "standard input" often believe that the normal way for an application to fail is to return control to the user. (I have had this discussion ad nauseam with our beloved moderator, who seems unable to believe in any other failure mode for more than a few minutes at a time.) In fact, for the first 30 years of computing that was an unusual way of failing. With the exception of those running on Unix, most applications failed by doing nothing or by returning the user to logon. IBM's MVS, the successor to an operating system for processing punched paper input and producing printed paper output, did not even know about terminals and had no operating system prompt. The prompt that the users saw came from a subsystem such as CICS. CICS Applications failed in many mysterious and disruptive ways but almost never by giving a legitimate user of an application unintended operating system privileges. Applications running on Unix, an operating system originally intended by programmers for programmers, usually fail by returning control to the user at the operating system prompt. To limit the exposures associated with this mode of failure, Unix was extended with the "setuid" (set user id) function. The intent was to have applications run with a special limited profile. This would permit a user to run an application with privileges that would not be appropriate with all of the generality of the operating system. In practice programmers use the function to have their programs run with either their privileges or with "root" privileges. Setuid has hurt instead of helped. Modern operating systems, such as OS/400, often have a mechanism like setuid that permits a user to run an application with privileges that are unique to the application. However, they do not permit the user to retain those privileges across the failure of the application. (Indeed, one of the things that characterizes such operating systems is that they have very few failure modes.) Application machines, such as ATMs or the Teller described by the poster, should normally fail by doing nothing. While it is appropriate for my program to fail by returning ME to the operating system, my program should not fail by returning YOU to the operating system prompt with privileges that are different from those that you have on your own. Application machines should fail by doing nothing. PAC-MAN never fails by exposing either itself or its host environment. William Hugh Murray, New Canaan, Connecticut
[Reprinted with permission from EPIC ALERT, Volume 1.04 (special edition),
July 21, 1994 Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Washington, DC (Alert@epic.org)
SPECIAL EDITION — "SON OF CLIPPER" [excerpts]
[1] Administration "Reversal" on Clipper
[2] EPIC Statement
[3] Letter from Gore to Cantwell
[4] What You Can Do (Email the VP)
=======================================================================
[1] Administration "Reversal" on Clipper
=======================================================================
A letter from Vice President Al Gore to Representative Maria
Cantwell (D-WA) sent this week during Congressional debate on the
Export Administration Act has raised important questions about the
current state of the Clipper proposal. Some have hailed the statement
as a major reversal. Others say the letter seals a bad deal.
Below we have included the letter from the Vice President, a
statement from EPIC, and recommendations for further action.
=======================================================================
[2] EPIC Statement on Gore Letter to Cantwell
=======================================================================
News reports that the Clinton Administration has reversed
itself on encryption policy are not supported by the letter from Vice
President Gore to Maria Cantwell regarding export control policy. In
fact, the letter reiterates the White House's commitment to the NSA's
key escrow proposal and calls on the private sector to develop
products that will facilitate electronic surveillance.
The letter from the Vice President calls on the government and
the industry to develop jointly systems for key escrow cryptography.
Key escrow is the central feature of the Clipper chip and the NSA's
recommended method for electronic surveillance of digital
communications.
The letter also reaffirms the Administration's support for
Clipper Chip as the federal standard for voice networks. There is no
indication that the White House will withdraw this proposal.
Statements that Clipper is "dead" are absurd.
The letter offers no changes in export control policy. It
recommends instead that the status quo be maintained and that more
studies be conducted. (The White House already completed such a
study earlier this year. The results were never disclosed to the
public, despite EPIC's request for release of the findings under the
Freedom of Information Act.)
This is a significant setback for groups expecting that export
control laws would be revised this year.
The White House expresses a willingness to allow unclassified
algorithms and to hold key escrow agents liable for misuse. These are
the only provisions of the Gore letter favorable to the user
community. But neither provision would even be necessary if the White
House did not attempt to regulate cryptography in the first place.
The Administration's willingness to accept private sector
alternatives to Clipper for data networks essentially ratifies an
agreement to develop "wiretap ready" technologies for data networks.
We believe the letter from the Vice President is essentially
a blueprint for electronic surveillance of digital networks. The
government will set out the requirements for surveillance systems such
as key escrow, and the industry will build complying systems.
The plan dovetails neatly with the FBI's Digital Telephony
proposal, which will establish legal penalties for companies and users
that design systems that cannot be wiretapped.
We do not believe this is in the interests of users of the
information highway. Key escrow necessarily weakens the security and
privacy of electronic communications. It makes networks vulnerable to
tampering and confidential messages subject to compromise. It is the
approach urged by organizations that specialize in electronic
eavesdropping. No group of Internet users has ever called for key
escrow encryption.
If this proposal goes forward, electronic surveillance will
almost certainly increase, network security will be weakened, and
people who design strong cryptography without key escrow could become
criminals. This is not a victory for freedom or privacy.
We support unclassified standards and relaxation of export
controls. We cannot support the premise that the government and
industry should design key escrow systems. We also do not believe
that Clipper is an appropriate standard for federal voice
communications.
We are asking the Vice President to reconsider his position
and urging network users to make known their concerns about the
proposal.
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Washington, DC
July 21, 1994
=======================================================================
[3] Letter from Gore to Cantwell
=======================================================================
THE VICE PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON
July 20, 1994
The Honorable Maria Cantwell House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515
"Dear Maria,
"I write today to express my sincere appreciation of your
efforts to move the national debate forward on the issue of
information security and export controls. I share your strong
conviction for the need to develop a comprehensive policy regarding
encryption, incorporating an export policy that does not disadvantage
American software companies in world markets while preserving our law
enforcement and national security goals.
"As you know, the Administration disagrees with you on the
extent to which existing controls are harming U.S. industry in the
short run and the extent to which their immediate relaxation would
affect national security. For that reason we have supported a
five-month Presidential study. In conducting this study, I want to
assure you that the Administration will use the best available
resources of the federal government. This will include the active
participation of the National Economic Council and the Department of
Commerce. In addition, consistent with the Senate-passed language,
the first study will be completed within 150 days of passage of the
Export Administration Act reauthorization bill, with the second study
to be completed within one year after the completion of the first. I
want to personally assure you that we will reassess our existing
export controls based on the results of these studies. Moreover, all
programs with encryption that can be exported today will continue to
be exportable.
"On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this
year to ensure that over time American companies are able to include
information security features in their program in order to maintain
their international competitiveness. We can achieve this by entering
into a new phase of cooperation among government, industry
representatives and privacy advocates with a goal of trying to develop
a key escrow encryption system that will provide strong encryption, be
acceptable to computer users worldwide, and address our national
security needs as well.
"Key escrow encryption offers a very effective way to
accomplish our mutual goals. That is why the Administration adopted
the key escrow encryption standard in the "Clipper Chip" to provide
very secure encryption for telephone communications while preserving
the ability for law enforcement and national security. But the
Clipper Chip is an approved federal standard for telephone
communication and not for computer networks and video networks. For
that reason, we are working with industry to investigate other
technologies for these applications.
"The administration understands the concerns that industry has
regarding the Clipper Chip. We welcome the opportunity to work with
industry to design a more versatile, less expensive system Such a key
escrow scheme would be implementable in software, firmware or
hardware, or any combination thereof, would not rely on a classified
algorithm, would be voluntary, and would be exportable. While there
are many severe challenges to developing such a system, we are
committed to a diligent effort with industry and academics to achieve
such a system. We welcome your offer to assist us in furthering this
effort.
"We also want to assure users of key escrow encryption
products that they will not be subject to unauthorized electronic
surveillance. As we have done with the Clipper Chip, future key
escrow schemes must contain safeguards to provide for key disclosure
only under legal authorization and should have audit procedures to
ensure the integrity of the system. Escrow holders should be strictly
liable for releasing keys without legal authorization.
"We also recognize that a new key escrow encryption system
must permit the use of private-sector key escrow agents as one option.
It is also possible that as key escrow encryption technology spreads,
companies may establish layered escrowing services for their own
products. Having a number of escrow agents would give individuals and
businesses more choice and flexibility in meeting their needs for
secure communications.
"I assure you the President and I are acutely aware of the
need to balance economic and privacy needs with law enforcement and
national security. This is not an easy task, I think that our
approach offers the best opportunity to strike an appropriate balance.
I am looking forward to working with you and others who share our
interest in developing a comprehensive national policy on encryption.
I am convinced that our cooperative endeavors will open new creative
solutions to this critical problems."
Sincerely
/s/ Al Gore
=======================================================================
[4] What You Can Do (Email the VP)
=======================================================================
The Clipper debate has reached a critical juncture. The White House
and industry are about to seal a deal to make key escrow the standard
for encrypted communications. If you believe that individuals should
have the right to make full use of new technologies to protect
privacy, now is the time for your voice to be heard (and your email to
be sent).
EMAIL the Vice President at vice.president@whitehouse.gov
- Thank him for the Administration's willingness to reconsider its
views on Clipper.
- Express support for the decision to support unclassified algorithms
and liability for key escrow agents.
- But urge him not to require key escrow as a standard for encryption
products.
- Emphasize that key escrow is the soul of Clipper, the method for
conducting electronic surveillance of digital communications.
- Call for extensive testing and studies before any key escrow system
is deployed.
You should also:
- Urge him to withdraw Clipper as a standard for voice communications.
- Urge him to support relaxation of export controls.
- Ask for the public release of the earlier White House study on
cryptography.
- Ask for the public release of White House documents reviewing the
weaknesses of the key escrow proposal.
The Vice President has clearly shown a willingness to listen to the
concerns of the user community on this issue. Your letter could make a
difference.
[This message is included for your information. Whether you agree
or disagree with David's recommendations, if you care to, write
and tell the VP and cc: David Sobel <dsobel@washofc.epic.org>. PGN]
<> I'm thinking now of writing a magazine article on our <> experience, and am posting for two reasons. First, I'd like to hear <> from people who, like me, have become "victims on the infobahn," and <> second, I'd like to get some broader perspective. If this is a problem with the information superhighway, it's been around since the horse-and-buggy days the information dirt road. This is not a new problem. I can recall similar incidents happening over a decade ago, and I'm only 23 years old. I suspect occurrences that this problem will increase for a short period of time, while networking gains popularity, but decrease soon after, as data telecommunications (ISDN, frame relay, ATM, etc) becomes more popular. It's really hard to wake somebody up in the middle of the night with a misdirected ATM packet! I've yet to have someone complain at an errant ICMP echo, myself. Marc
This sort of situation is not new. I remember a problem we had with a uucp dial-out line in 1983. Someone added a dial-out entry but transposed two digits in the destination telephone number. This meant that once an hour we were calling up some poor folks and annoying them all night long! Luckily this only happened over one night. In the morning I investigated why none of our uucp connections to that host completed, and noticed the typo. I did call up the people who we had been bothering (sort of hoping that the number would be invalid and no one had been bothered!) and emphatically apologized for our error. They were understanding. I guess it helped that I was *not* a lawyer and was able to empathize with their plight. In fact I felt good about the call afterwards... now I knew that these folks would know what had happened and would not fear that someone was after them! Jeff
Mr Donahue's predicament is symptomatic of a wider problem which will grow
over the next few years - 'semantic overload' of the telephone system. PTT's
and Telco's are still stuck in a mode where a telephone line is used to allow
one human being to talk to another. In fact, more and more phone lines are
connected to machines, many of which can initiate as well as receive calls,
and vary in levels of human compatibility. Examples range from answering
machines, through voice mail systems, fax machines, 'smart boxes', pagers,
alarm systems, modems, all the way up members of the International Union of
Deaf-Mute Dyslexic Telephonists :-). The current telephone system is a mess -
it allows anything to connect to anything at any time, regardless of
compatibility, and regardless of the consequences. Yet this proliferation of
machines that use the telephone network has arisen precisely because of the
flexibility of connection on the telephone network. People use the phone
system to send text messages via fax and email, although the Telex system in
theory provides most of the same facilities. It just wasn't flexible enough.
To make the situation more bearable, without restricting connectivity, an
extension of caller ID could be made, so the calling line can say 'I am a xxxx
and I understand yyyy protocols'. Only once a 'speech' protocol is negotiated
between the ends of the link does the phone actually ring. Of course, this
requires Mr Donohue to purchase a phone with this facility. However, such a
phone could also route calls around his fax, modem, answering machine &WHY,
and would provide a better solution than the various 'smart boxes' currently
on the market. Or we could sit back and wait for the Coming Of Broadband
ISDN/ATM.
Max Hadley | Stewart Hughes Ltd.,
Principal Consultant | School Lane, Chandlers Ford
| Eastleigh, Hampshire SO53 4YG UK
mrh@shl.co.uk | Tel: +44 (0) 703 270027 x215
mrh@shluk.uucp | Fax: +44 (0) 703 270007
In RISKS-16.26 Bill Donahue writes of an incident of a 'modem' dialing his
home and giving him and his wife some apparent cause for worry for their
safety.
I'm not so sure I'd call his experience a fatality on the info-bahn,
maybe a pebble on the windshield(!).
I had a similar experience when a local school district put my home phone
number into their FAX machine as the number for the local TV station. I'd
get calls every 5 minutes for random amounts of time and random times of
the day. By the time I'd run upstairs and get my fax software ready to go
(faxes have a "chirp" from the calling to caller machines that make it easy to
tell it was a fax) it would stop. Then it would quit for days or weeks...
I finally caught them, read the organization from the top of the fax,
and called. They were profusely sorry but...
I wonder tho, most of the failure here was purely human - mis-setting the
number and then failing to notice that the fax never got sent to its
intended recipient. I'd assume the machine would somehow tell the operator
that an automatic retry had failed after <x> attempts. But then again, when
I called it took a bit to explain what the problem was to them....
Bob Rahe, Delaware Tech&Comm College, Computer Center, Dover, Delaware
Internet: bob@hobbes.dtcc.edu
Bill Donahue's experience at least happened "all at once." We had the misfortune to get a new phone number which had once been that of a genealogy BBS — it took us a few weeks to realize that this number was being shared by genealogy buffs all over the world! For several reasons, we could not change our number. The calls continued at the rate of 2 to 3 a week for over a year! I put appeals on a number of FORUMS in PRODIGY & Compuserve (DO NOT CALL 512-250-xxxx) and after 18 months the calls are down to about one or two a month. My TAD response, you might believe, is just a trifle surly! John W. Burgeson, 73531,1501 on Compuserve
Thanks to Mr. Donahue for posting the interesting anecdote about the heavy-breathing modem. Periodically over the years, people have set their fax machine to dialing my voice line instead of my fax line. Some of the fax machines have been quite persistent; usually the fax operator will notice the repeated failures and call up to complain that my fax machine isn't responding. However, in one case, the maddening thing dialed me up every ten minutes for over two hours. I fixed _that_ one by hooking my fax machine to my voice line just before the next scheduled interruption and actually receiving the fax. It would make sense for fax and modem manufacturers to distinguish between a non-responding telephone line (no answer or busy) and a non-responding _device_. Most modems can generate an error message (e.g., "VOICE") when appropriately programmed; it would be helpful if both fax machines and modems treated an answer-but-no-tone event by alerting the operator immediately instead of mindlessly redialing. Michel E. Kabay, Ph.D. / Dir Education / Natl Computer Security Assn P.S. Two minor matters.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Modems and fax machines should be programmed that on an outgoing call, until
they establish a connection, they play a digitized recording along the lines
of "This is a modem call" — and there should be an AT command to append
"from xxx-xxx-xxxx" Of course, this isn't the kind of feature that will cause
many potential customers to choose your line over someone else's.
- Andrew Greene
[Bob Frankston suggested once again that we should have some redundant
check digits on phone numbers as well, to minimize wrong numbers.
Our subsequent off-line discussion went into how knowledge of the
algorithm would not prevent people from fabricating consistent but
incorrect numbers. I just thought I'd mention it... PGN]
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