The RISKS Digest
Volume 22 Issue 92

Monday, 6th October 2003

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

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

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…

Contents

Near-disaster on a French commuter train
Alexandre Kampouris
Nuclear reactor guard asleep on the job
Ken Knowlton
Houston 911 System prone to crashes
Mark H. Johnson
Continental Airlines takes back free miles
Frank
Overlooked security risk: the telephone
NewsScan
Parking chaos in York
David Wj Stringer-Calvert
Torvalds: geeky kids need dates
NewsScan
Computer blamed for bad pictures shown to Mexico's first lady
Mark Lutton
Spam Abounds
Peter G. Neumann
Fighting spam: raise the bridge or lower the water?
NewsScan
VeriSign agrees to suspend Site Finder service
NewsScan
Purveyor of unencrypted service insists it's secure
Alice Silverberg
Another case of electronic vote-tampering?
Farhad Manjoo via Monty Solomon
AntiVirus autoresponders
Rob Slade
REVIEW: "Intrusion Signatures and Analysis", Stephen Northcutt et al.
Rob Slade
Rebuttal of review of my book by Rob Slade
Michael Caloyannides
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Near-disaster on a French commuter train

<Alexandre Kampouris <ak@Radio-BIP.qc.ca>>
Mon, 22 Sep 2003 18:10:46 +0200

On Saturday September 20th, a disaster was miraculously averted when a RER
suburban train stopped around 7:30 PM between stations near
Villeneuve-Triage south of Paris due to equipment failure.  According to the
preliminary reports, the engineer, who is the only staff member on board, is
said to have instructed the passengers over the PA system to alight the
train on the left side, and walk to the next station. However it appears
that the doors where only open on the right side; the passengers simply
started walking on the second track. For a reason yet to be determined the
traffic hadn't been interrupted in the other direction, and an oncoming
train narrowly missed the myriads of passengers in its path, who by sheer
luck escaped death or serious injury by throwing themselves to the ground or
jumping aside.

An enquiry is underway. Even though the exact chain of events is yet to be
established, there seems to be at least two system failures, i.e., (1) the
doors opening on the wrong side, and (2) the non-secured track.  The
frightening event was recorded on video.

http://infos.francetv.fr/semiStatic/64-NIL-NIL-259414.html
http://www.leparisien.com/home/info/faitsdivers/article.htm?articleid=210899112


Nuclear reactor guard asleep on the job

<KCKnowlton@aol.com>
Sun, 28 Sep 2003 14:37:07 EDT

[Quoted from *The New York Times*, Metro Section, 28 Sep 2003, pg 43, by
Matthew L. Wald]

  When two Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials found a security guard
  asleep at his post at the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor last year, the
  agency decided not to issue a notice of violation because there was no
  terrorist attack on the plant during the half-hour or so that the guard
  was sleeping, a Congressional audit has found.  ...  The report also says
  the commission did not treat the incident more seriously because no guards
  had been found sleeping "more than twice during the past year."

There was no comment in the story (or in the NRC report?) about sleeping
behavior of those who deal with knobs, dials, monitors and keyboards.

An interesting general philosophical attitude: post-hoc shrugs for all
infractions that had no catastrophic consequences.


Houston 911 System prone to crashes

<Mark_H_Johnson@raytheon.com>
Fri, 3 Oct 2003 08:39:55 -0500

To summarize - Houston has deployed a new 911 emergency response system
which has had a number of failures since it went "live" a week ago.
Pictures of the new facility look somewhat like Mission Control - large
consoles with multiple displays in front of each operator. It sure looks
nice, but the system does not appear to work reliably.

The latest incident occurred during the day when technicians were working on
the link between the computers and units within the cars. To quote:

  When the system started slowing, technicians reverted to the backup, which
  crashed within minutes. From 9:50 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., dispatchers resorted
  to dispatching by radio instead of by computer. Without the computer's
  locator system, they frequently had to ask emergency workers to volunteer
  for individual assignments rather than assigning them to calls.

Another notable quote is
  But city officials say the only way to test the system was by going "live."

Sorry, but that does not sound reasonable to me.

For reference:
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2133809
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2134381
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2127855
  http://www.click2houston.com/editorials/2522205/detail.html
    [May not all be permanent...]


Continental Airlines takes back free miles

<frank099@earthlink.net>
Thu, 18 Sep 2003 22:28:45 -0500 (GMT-05:00)

Last week, I checked my Continental Airlines OnePass frequent flyer account
and discovered that my account had been credited with 500,000 bonus miles,
allegedly because I won a contest.  It turns out that thousands of other
people were "winners" as well, with some having a million or more frequent
flyer miles added to their accounts.  The miles didn't last long and were
removed a few days later.  However, many people had booked trips with those
free miles, which Continental quickly canceled.
  http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2003/09/15-airmiles.htm


Overlooked security risk: the telephone

<"NewsScan" <newsscan@newsscan.com>>
Thu, 02 Oct 2003 09:28:34 -0700

As corporate phone systems become increasingly complex and computerized,
criminals are finding new ways to infiltrate company networks, and the
problem becomes magnified as businesses turn to IP-based phone systems.
"This is the first time that a computer virus can stop your telephones from
working," says PricewaterhouseCoopers senior manager Mark Lobel. "There is a
whole new class of attacks that can occur. The essence of the problem is
that everyone is looking at this as a new technology for voice — the way
we're sending voice communications is absolutely new. But the data is still
riding on the same infrastructure that was pounded by recent problems like
SoBig." To counteract the threats, phone system administrators need to be
much more vigilant about password management and may even consider locking
out certain country codes. "In fact, you should probably consider the risk
associated with VoIP systems to be as high as the threats to your
organization's most sensitive data. If someone in your IT department gets
paged when your firewall goes down, they should also be paged when 40 new
voicemail boxes mysteriously appear on your IP system," says Lobel.
[*E-Commerce Times*, 2 Oct 2003; NewsScan Daily, 2 Oct 2003]
  http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31731.html


Parking chaos in York

<"David Wj Stringer-Calvert" <david.stringer-calvert@sri.com>>
Mon, 06 Oct 2003 11:41:08 -0700

The system controlling York's newly installed intelligent traffic
variable-message signs (VMS) were hit by a computer virus on 4 Oct 2003,
freezing 21 VMS displays at car parks that were intended to show the number
of available parking space.  Motorists thus went into full car parks
expecting to find space.  One VMS at St George's Field showed 349 spaces
when there were *none*, causing an enormous traffic tie-up.  [And no one was
around to slay St George's draggin' congestion.]  A similar problem had
occurred in August.  (The system, costing 1.5 million pounds, began
operation in July 2003.  The software is provided by Tennet and the hardware
by Variable Message.  A temporary fix is sought to enable the VMSs to be
blanked out if this happens again.  [Source: `Frozen' signs lead to car park
chaos, by Rosslyn Snow, *Yorkshire Evening Press*, 6 Oct 2003; PGN-ed]


Torvalds: geeky kids need dates

<"NewsScan" <newsscan@newsscan.com>>
Mon, 29 Sep 2003 14:17:45 -0700

Asked how to end virus and worm attacks, Linux creator Linus Torvalds told
an interviewer: "When you have people who hook up these machines that
weren't designed for the Internet, and they don't even want to know about
all the intricacies of network security, what can you expect? We get what we
have now: a system that can be brought down by a teenager with too much time
on his hands. Should we blame the teenager? Sure, we can point the finger at
him and say, 'Bad boy!' and slap him for it. Will that actually fix
anything? No. The next geeky kid frustrated about not getting a date on
Saturday night will come along and do the same thing without really
understanding the consequences. So either we should make it a law that all
geeks have dates — I'd have supported such a law when I was a teenager --
or the blame is really on the companies who sell and install the systems
that are quite that fragile."  [*The New York Times Magazine*, 28 Sep 2003;
NewsScan Daily, 29 Sep 2003]
  http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/magazine/WLN104109.html


Computer blamed for bad pictures shown to Mexico's first lady

<"Mark Lutton" <Mark.Lutton@dialog.com>>
Wed, 1 Oct 2003 10:18:00 -0400

The wife of Mexican President Vicente Fox is a staunch defender of family
values.  Attending a charity presentation dedicated to helping children with
cancer, she viewed a picture of a naked man and woman together that was
somehow inadvertently included among the slides.  A "technical error" is
blamed.

[Source: Mexico's prim first lady gets eyeful of nudes, Reuters, 1 Oct 2003]
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=3536434

  [Let's see if this issue gets spam-filtered.  PGN]


Spam Abounds

<"Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>>
Fri, 3 Oct 2003 10:34:42 PDT

Unfiltered spam has once again taken a quantum leap.  The latest version of
SpamAssassin catches about 1000 spams per day on e-mail to Neumann and
RISKS.  However, even after SpamAssassin does its job, RISKS is still
getting about 90% spam from the residual mail.  In other words, I have to
delete almost all of the incoming mail to RISKS.  My own mail is only
somewhat less offensive.  (And I have been away, which makes it ever more
difficult to keep up.  I regret the long gap between issues, and my
inability to cope with the backlog in the past weeks.  PLEASE resubmit any
really salient items that you felt I might have missed.  I need a salient
solution to help overcoming being as-salted.)

Spam is evermore not your friend.

  [Minor change in archive copy removing ambiguity.  PGN]


Fighting spam: raise the bridge or lower the water?

<"NewsScan" <newsscan@newsscan.com>>
Mon, 06 Oct 2003 09:46:36 -0700

Many software experts now believe that the best way to fight spam is not by
targeting it directly but instead by concentrating on the identification of
legitimate mail.  VeriSign executive Nico Popp explains, "People have been
spending all their time creating filters to find the bad guys.  We want to
turn that on its head and find ways to identify the good guys and let them
in."  The idea would be to develop the Internet equivalent of caller ID,
with a technology that identifies senders and lets receivers presume that
unidentified senders are sending junk mail.  Richard Reichgut of
AuthentiDate says, "It's not easy to change something as successful and
widely used as e-mail.  But the only way to fix e-mail is to have a strong
way to know who is sending you mail."  [*The New York Times*, 6 Oct 2003;
NewsScan Daily, 6 Oct 2003]
  http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/10/06/technology/06SPAM.html

  [Once again, see Lauren Weinstein's Tripoli proposal --
    http://www.pfir.org/tripoli-overview
  — which is a sensible approach to giving users control over how to
  confront the e-mail dilemma.  BEWARE of ceding this authority to ISPs!
  PGN]

  [Also, see "Four Internet pioneers discuss the sorry state of online
  communication today. The consensus: It's a real mess." by
  Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com:
    http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/10/02/e_mail/
  She quotes Dave Farber, Dave Crocker, Brad Templeton, and Jakob Nielsen.
  PGN]


VeriSign agrees to suspend Site Finder service

<"NewsScan" <newsscan@newsscan.com>>
Mon, 06 Oct 2003 09:46:36 -0700

VeriSign and ICANN reached a temporary truce Friday, with VeriSign
acquiescing to ICANN's demand that it suspend its controversial Site Finder
service pending further technical review.  ICANN could have fined VeriSign
as much as $100,000 or even revoked its contract to manage the master list
of .com and .net Internet domain names.  Critics have charged VeriSign with
undermining the collectivist culture of the Internet with the preemptive
launch of its service, which redirects Web users who mistype a URL to the
VeriSign Web site.  "In the past when you made a dramatic change to the
network structure that was the least bit potentially damaging, you went out
through the community and you exposed what you were going to do and got
reaction," says Carnegie Mellon computer science professor David Farber.
VeriSign "just broke the whole process."  In its defense, VeriSign
executives say they notified ICANN of their plans ahead of time, but
admitted that they sidestepped ICANN's lengthy approval process because it's
too slow.  In response, ICANN says it's "sympathetic to concerns" about its
process and has proposed a more streamlined procedure for reviewing new
services such as Site Finder.  [*Wall Street Journal*, 6 Oct 2003; NewsScan
Daily, 6 Oct 2003]
  http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106519977252395300,00.html (sub req'd)

  [This is after VeriSign told ICANN to drop dead:  See the correspondence
    http://www.icann.org/correspondence/lewis-to-twomey-21sep03.htm
  and Dan Gillmor's column in response:
    http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001361.shtml
  noted courtesy of Dave Farber's IP.  PGN]


Purveyor of unencrypted service insists it's secure

<Alice Silverberg <alice.silverberg@cs.stanford.edu>>
Fri, 3 Oct 2003 15:21:02 -0700

Here's a hotel reservation url that expects you to send your credit-card
information unencrypted (though when you phone the associated number to ask
about it, they insist that it's secure):
  http://www.innsuites.com/


Another case of electronic vote-tampering? (Farhad Manjoo)

<Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>>
Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:20:43 -0400

Another case of electronic vote-tampering?
Representatives of the computer vote-counting industry are unfairly
dominating the standard-setting process, say critics.

By Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com, 29 Sep 2003

When the IEEE, the world's leading professional society of engineeers,
decided in the summer of 2001 to create a technical standard for electronic
voting machines, most everyone concerned with the elections business thought
it was a grand idea.

For the most part, the IEEE operates just as you'd expect a bunch of
engineers to behave — the group is rigorous, open-minded, dispassionate,
and reluctant to embark upon any major endeavor unless everyone with an
opinion has had an opportunity to hold forth.  "Consensus" is the IEEE's
main buzzword; and while that ethic can lead to some frustration, it also
explains why so many industries and government agencies ask the IEEE to draw
up technical standards for new technologies. People trust the IEEE's open
process, and when it sets down certain specifications — governing
everything from aircraft gyros to wireless networks — the specs are widely
respected by technologists.

And by the summer of 2001, a standard for voting machines was clearly
needed. After the hobbled 2000 presidential election, officials across the
nation were rushing to purchase new equipment to replace their maligned
punch-card systems. Elections vendors were heavily promoting fully
electronic, ATM-style touch-screen voting machines, but many computer
scientists warned — and are warning still — of critical security flaws in
such systems. The key players in the debate over electronic voting saw the
IEEE as a good place to resolve concerns people had with the new systems;
they hoped that after hearing all sides, the vaunted body could create
respected technical guidelines for the machinery of modern democracy.

Two years later, however, the IEEE group charged with drafting a voting
machine standard is paralyzed by bitter in-fighting. Members of the body
can't agree on the substance of a proposed standard for voting machines, nor
can they even come to a consensus on a fair process for determining such a
standard.

The parties involved are arguing about big things — about whether, for
instance, electronic voting machines should be required to produce a
"voter-verifiable" audit trail, which many security experts say is the only
way to guarantee security in electronic systems — and tiny things, such as
the order in which topics are discussed in the meetings they hold. To hear
members of the committee tell it, the whole process has become a circus — a
circus that illustrates how difficult it might be to eventually create a
national standard for voting systems.  [...]
  http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/09/29/voting_machine_standards/


AntiVirus autoresponders

<Rob Slade <rslade@sprint.ca>>
Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:35:27 -0800

I notice the NTBUGTRAQ seems to have added to following as a sigblock to all
messages:

  "Most viruses these days use spoofed e-mail addresses. As such, using an
  AntiVirus product which automatically notifies the perceived sender of a
  message it believes is infected may well cause more harm than
  good. Someone who did not actually send you a virus may receive the
  notification and scramble their support staff to find an infection which
  never existed in the first place. Suggest such notifications be disabled
  by whomever is responsible for your AV, or at least that the idea is
  considered."

Note once again that variations may occur.  The infected user may be
identified in Swen infected messages by the Return-Path header.  Frequently
the infected user's mailbox has been filled and is over quota, so the
postmaster, abuse, and possibly support accounts should be notified as well.
(The abuse and support I accounts that I have contacted who have taken the
time to investigate have confirmed that users identified in the Return=Path
headers are infected.)

rslade@vcn.bc.ca      slade@victoria.tc.ca      rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade


REVIEW: "Intrusion Signatures and Analysis", Stephen Northcutt et al.

<Rob Slade <rslade@sprint.ca>>
Wed, 1 Oct 2003 07:54:59 -0800

BKINSIAN.RVW   20030831

"Intrusion Signatures and Analysis", Stephen Northcutt et al, 2001,
0-7357-1063-5, U$39.99/C$59.95/UK#30.99
%A   Stephen Northcutt stephen@sans.org
%A   Mark Cooper
%A   Matt Fearnow
%A   Karen Frederick
%C   201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN   46290
%D   2001
%G   0-7357-1063-5
%I   Macmillan Computer Publishing (MCP)
%O   U$39.99/C$59.95/UK#30.99 800-858-7674 info@mcp.com
%O  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735710635/robsladesinterne
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735710635/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735710635/robsladesin03-20
%P   408 p.
%T   "Intrusion Signatures and Analysis"

Intrusion detection and network forensics are now vitally important
topics in the security arena.  An explanation of how to identify
dangerous signatures, and extract evidence of an intrusion or attack
from network logs, is something that most network administrators
require.  Unfortunately, while the idea is good, and badly needed, the
execution, in the case of the current work, is seriously flawed.

The introduction doesn't really specify a purpose or audience for this
book.  Mention is made of the GIAC (Global Incident Analysis Center,
also seemingly referred to at times as the GCIA) certification, but no
definition is given as to what this actually is.  Chapter one presents
a number of examples of network log entries and formats.  The
interpretation, though, concentrates on easily identifiable items such
as IP addresses, and neglects components that are less well known.
There seems to be some attempt to structure the descriptions, but it
is unclear and confusing, as are a number of the illustrations and
figures.

Chapters three and four list a "top ten" of specific attacks,
described down to a byte level, but not always in clear detail.
Perimeter logs, such as those from firewalls and routers, are
discussed in chapter six.  Restraint in reaction to odd traffic is
urged in chapter seven, particularly in light of the probability of
address spoofing.  Chapter eight outlines packets that indicate
mapping scans, while nine does the same with searches that might be
gathering system information.  Denial of services attacks are reviewed
in chapters ten and eleven, first with respect to attacks that attempt
to exhaust specific resources, and then in regard to bandwidth
consumption.  Chapter twelve discusses trojan programs, concentrating
on detection of unusual open ports.  Miscellaneous exploits are listed
in chapter thirteen, but since exploits are listed throughout the
previous three chapters it is difficult to find a distinctive for this
section.  Fragmentation attacks are described in chapter fifteen.
Chapter sixteen reports on some odd looking non-malicious packets, in
warning against reacting to false positives.  A grab bag of odd
packets is listed in chapter seventeen.

As should be evident from the description above, there is a good deal
of valuable material in this book.  Unfortunately, it is not easy to
extract the useful bits.  The book as a whole could use serious
reorganization.  While chapter one appears to be an introduction to
the technical details, a far better explanation of packets and the
import of various fields is given in chapter five, ostensibly on non-
malicious or normal traffic, and this material should probably have
been placed at the beginning of the manual.  Chapter fourteen, almost
at the end of the text, reviews buffer overflows, which are seen
throughout the chapters preceding it.  There is a slight attempt to
explain the book in chapter two, but the content and organization is
perplexing, there is heavy use of unilluminated insider jargon, and
the presentation of example packets and subsequent conclusions without
the middle step of identifying the items that make these data
suspicious could be quite frustrating to the student.  The new system
administrator will not find the explanations clear or illuminating.
The experienced professional will not find particular attacks or
traffic types easy to find for reference.  Both groups will find
themselves flipping back and forth between sections of the book, or
even between sections of the exegesis of one particular attack.

However, both groups will likely be interested in the book anyway,
simply because of the lack of other sources.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003   BKINSIAN.RVW   20030831
rslade@vcn.bc.ca      slade@victoria.tc.ca      rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade


Rebuttal of review of my book by Rob Slade (RISKS-22.90)

<Michael Caloyannides <Michael.Caloyannides@mitretek.org>>
Wed, 01 Oct 2003 16:00:23 -0400

In his 9 Sep 2003 review of the book "Desktop Witness", 0-471-48657-4, Rob
Slade made numerous factually incorrect statements that your readers are
likely to be mislead by.

A careful reading of the book would have shown that reviewer that
steganography using conventional software is explicitly discouraged (rather
than encouraged as he incorrectly claims) in the book precisely because it
is detectable through steganalysis tools that look for statistical
irregularities in the composite file; a careful reading of that same section
would have shown the reviewer — and anyone else — that the book then
proceeds to show that unconventional steganography is inherently
undetectable because there is a multiple infinity of ways to imbed a hidden
meaning in an overt act, especially if it used rarely and if the ratio of
covert to overt message is low. Who can credibly detect a steganographic
content in a recipe for lasagna posted in some Usent newsgroup, or in the
presence of an occasional spelling error or in a graphic included in an
otherwise professional document?

As with the steganography example, so with the rest of the points he raises;
his objections are based on a superficial reading of the book he reviewed
that missed the points discussed in that book.  For example, he sets the
biased tone of his review by postulating an inconsistency in the title and
subtitle of the book ("Desktop Witness". The Dos and Don'ts of Personal
Computer Security), when it is quite clear that there is no such
inconsistency because the book provides "the dos and dont's of personal
computer security" so that one's desktop computer will not end up being used
as a witness against one.

Worse yet, his review is repeatedly tainted with his religious objection to
the fundamental premise of the book which is that honorable civilized people
have a right to their privacy. While Mr. Slade's religious background, which
includes a degree in Christian Science, is his own business, it is allowed
to distort what should have been a factual review with his own value
judgments. One reads, for example, in his review his assertion that the
book's reasoned arguments in support of individual privacy are "shrill",
"extreme" or "paranoid". These oddly emotional words in a supposedly
detached review are at best suspect, given the fact that: a) According to
the FBI, roughly 1 in 20 Americans has been the victim of identity theft,
and the trend is increasing at an alarming rate.  b) There is a huge and
healthy debate today about the extent to which individual privacy and the
Bill of Rights should be sacrificed in the post 9/11 world.

For a balanced review of the same book by a University professor in the UK,
your readers may also wish to read
  http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opbooks.jsp?id=ns23486

This book, by the way, is used in a number of Universities for training
students in computer science as well as in law.

Please report problems with the web pages to the maintainer

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