The RISKS Digest
Volume 22 Issue 68

Saturday, 12th April 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

IBM's DB2 blamed for Danish banking crisis
Fuzzy Gorilla
Man Gets $12,000 Electric Bill
Fuzzy Gorilla
Missile-defense test failure linked to a single chip
Fuzzy Gorilla
Millennium trains taken off the tracks
John Colville
Stupid Security Awards for 2003
Simon Davies
Radio stations unable to play copy protected CDs
Jeffrey Sunseri
Net fraud complaints triple in 2002
Keith Rhodes
Credit-card theft
sergioch
Re: Friendly Fire
Peter B. Ladkin
Rod Van Meter
David Guaspari
Re: The reality behind these laws
Stanislav Shalunov
Re: POW Social Security numbers revealed
Jaanus Kase
Crispin Cowan
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

IBM's DB2 blamed for Danish banking crisis

<"Fuzzy Gorilla" <fuzzygorilla@euroseek.com>>
Sun, 06 Apr 2003 11:54:03 -0400

Danske Bank is pointing fingers at IBM's DB2 database as the culprit for a
massive outage that caused the Danish bank's trading desks, currency
exchange and communications with other banks to shut down.  The problems
began on 10 Mar 2003, when a defective power unit was replaced in an IBM
Ramac Virtual Array (RVA) storage system.  An electrical outage occurred
during the repairs, which caused operations at one of the bank's two
operating centers to come to a halt.  When operations were finally resumed,
extensive data inconsistencies were discovered throughout a week-long
process of trying to recover data.  Apparently, a flaw had existed in DB2 in
comparable installations since 1997, although it had not been detected prior
to this event.  IBM has issued a fix.  [Source: Ashlee Vance, The Register,
4 Apr 2003; PGN-ed]
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/30095.html


Man Gets $12,000 Electric Bill

<"Fuzzy Gorilla" <fuzzygorilla@euroseek.com>>
Fri, 04 Apr 2003 16:31:11 -0500

On April Fools' Day, Randy Carrol in North Platte, Nebraska, received an
electric bill of $12,344.16 for 33 days' service.  But it was not a joke --
except that the amount was generated by new billing software, showing use of
310,421 kilowatts (instead of the usual 300).  The correct amount due later
turned out to be $26.26.  [Source: AP item, 4 Apr 2003; PGN-ed]
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news
  ?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20030404/ap_on_fe_st/electric_bill


Missile-defense test failure linked to a single chip

<"Fuzzy Gorilla" <fuzzygorilla@euroseek.com>>
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 20:39:09 -0400

According to Jack Kelble, president of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems,
the failure of a U.S. missile-defense test on 11 Dec 2002 was caused by the
malfunction of a single chip that failed to signal an exo-atmospheric kill
vehicle to separate from its booster rocket.  Coming just five days before
Presidential directive on speeding deployment of missile defenses, the test
included the use of Navy Aegis cruisers and a Boeing 747 modified as the
Airborne Laser Lab.  Both were used as trackers for the Minuteman II ICBM
launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, as a target missile.
Each flight test costs an average of $100 million.  [Source: Loring Wirbel,
EE Times, 11 Apr 2003; PGN-ed]
  http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030410S0066


Millennium trains taken off the tracks

<John Colville <colville@it.uts.edu.au>>
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:47:26 +1000

The Millennium trains (so-called because of when they were supposed to start
running, although that was delayed until ten months ago in mid-2002) have
been taken out of service indefinitely, due to electrical problems that were
having a "flow-on effect across the Sydney network."  Train signals were
interfering with the frequency of the underground signalling system resulted
in turning lights red for following trains.  Only four 8-car trains have
been delivered thus far (out of the contracted 81, with a total cost of 232
million Australian dollars).  Transport Services Minister Michael Costa
said, "This is the most complex train that's ever run on a rail system. It
is a piece of equipment that would, in the normal course of events, have
some teething problems."  Other problems were also cited: passenger doors
occasionally refusing to close; loss of the public address system; and loss
of air-conditioning in some units.  [Source: Joseph Kerr and Darren Goodsir,
*Sydney Morning Herald*, 10 Apr 2003; PGN-ed from JC's excerpting]
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/10/1049567807326.html

John Colville, Dept of Computer Systems, University of Technology, Sydney
Broadway NSW Australia 2007 colville@it.uts.edu.au  +61-2-9514-1854


Stupid Security Awards for 2003

<Simon Davies <s.g.davies@lse.ac.uk>>
Tue, 8 Apr 2003 20:20:30 +0100

Privacy Watchdog announces winners of competition to find the world's most
stupid security measures; Global quest has identified absurd and pointless
security requirements

Privacy International today announced the results of its competition to find
the worlds most pointless, intrusive and egregious security measures. The
competition, launched in February, attracted almost 5,000 nominations from
35 countries. While the air security sector dominated the competition,
nominations arose from almost all areas of private and public sector
activity. The winners include JFK Airport, T-Mobile (UK), Michigan
Correctional facilities and the Australian Government.

The "Stupid Security" award was judged by a distinguished international
panel of security and privacy experts and is intended to highlight the
absurdities of the security industry. Privacy International's director,
Simon Davies, said his group took the initiative because of "innumerable"
security initiatives around the world that had absolutely no genuine
security benefit.

"The extraordinary number of nominations indicates that the situation has
become ridiculous" said Mr Davies. "Security has become the smokescreen for
incompetent and robotic managers the world over.  The situation has become
more than an irritation to the public. It has become an outright danger".

The winners are:

Most Egregiously Stupid Award

* Winner: The Australian Government for a litany of pointless,
irritating and self-serving security measures

* Runner-Up: Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov for the 'Propiska' Identity Papers

Most Inexplicably Stupid Award

* Winner: Philadelphia International Airport for over-reaction to a bottle
of cologne

* Runner-Up: Heathrow Airport for quarantining a quantity of green tea

Most Annoyingly Stupid Award

* Winner: T-Mobile (UK) for pointless and idiotic financial security measures

* Runner-Up: Bay Area Rapid Transport (Bart) for closing its restrooms.

Most Flagrantly Intrusive Award

* Winner: Delta Terminal at JFK Airport for forcing a nursing mother
to drink still-warm bottles of her own breast milk

* Runner-Up: Carson City Correctional Facility, Michigan for forcing
women visitors to wear bras.

Most Stupidly Counter Productive Award

* Winner: San Francisco General Hospital for blind idiocy in its
identity checking procedures

* Runner-Up: San Francisco International Airport for endangering the public

* Dishonourable Mention: The New Yorker Hotel, New York for aggressive,
unnecessary and meaningless security measures.

Full details at http://www.privacyinternational.org/activities/stupidsecurity/
Simon Davies can be reached at simon@privacy.org  Phone (+44) 7958 466 552

[Note 1: Privacy International (PI) http://www.privacyinternational.org is a
human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by
governments and corporations, including wiretapping and national security
activities, ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information
systems, and medical privacy.]

[Note 2: (Disclaimer) PGN was one of the judges.]


Radio stations unable to play copy protected CDs

<"Jeffrey Sunseri" <JSunseri@mtaloy.edu>>
Mon, 07 Apr 2003 15:09:20 -0400

Music companies which use copy protection may be denying the artists under
contract to them legitimate play time on radio stations, if the happenings
at one outfit are any indication.  [First sentence on Declan's Politech]
  [Some radio stations with desktop PCs rather than standalone CD players
  are unable to play the free CDs they get from EMI because of disc copy
  protection.  PGN-ed of the article]
    http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/03/1048962867084.html


Net fraud complaints triple in 2002

<Keith Rhodes <rhodesk@gao.gov>>
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 04:59:58 -0700 (PDT)

The FBI's Net fraud unit says it referred 48,000 complaints to law
enforcement last year, with both the number of fraud cases and the dollar
loss associated with them more than tripling.  [Source: Paul Festa,
CNET News.com, 10 Apr 2003]
  http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-996270.html?tag=sas_email


Credit-card theft

<sergioch@ciaoweb.it>
Sat, 12 Apr 2003 11:42:37 +0200

A mailman in Settimo Torinese (a small town in northwestern Italy) has robbed
several credit cards and the relative letters with the PIN. His theft was
found after one of the owners of the cards discovered that 3000 euros were
missing from her account due to shopping made with her card, which she had
never received.  The police searched the home of the thief. It found more
than 100 (a hundred) letters communicating the PIN code to the owners of the
cards, plus for an amount of about 5000 euros in bought arcticles (mainly in
sportswear, we are told).

"The "Servizi Interbancari" (interbanking services), Italian leader in
credit card management, told that it is the first time that such event
occurs in Italy and that <<highest security guidelines>> are followed in the
dispatch of cards and PINs."

Sarcasm is left to the reader as an exercise.

Sources (in Italian):
La Stampa, 11/04/2003, cronaca di Torino (page 41).
  http://www.lastampa.it/search/albicerca/ng_articolo.asp?IDarticolo=782728
Google Translation (not great):
  http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lastampa.it
  %2Fsearch%2Falbicerca%2Fng_articolo.asp%3FIDarticolo%3D782728&langpair=it
  %7Cen&hl=it&ie=ISO-8859-1&prev=%2Flanguage_tools


Re: Friendly Fire (RISKS-22.65 to 22.67)

<"Peter B. Ladkin" <ladkin@rvs.uni-bielefeld.de>>
Mon, 07 Apr 2003 11:22:55 +0200

Recent "friendly fire" incidents (known in the military as fratricide) were
introduced in RISKS-22.65 by Paul, and discussed in RISKS-22.66 by Tyson and
RISKS-22.67 by Eachus, Russ, and Youngman.

Chris Johnson of the Accident Analysis Group at the University of Glasgow
has an review article on the subject [1]. He recently quoted the following
percentages of all reported casualties sustained, from FM100-14, US Army,
1998:
               World War II     Korea     Vietnam     Desert Storm/Shield
                 (1942-45)      (1950-53)  (1965-72)       (1990-1991)
Accidents        56%            44%        54%               75%
Friendly Fire     1%             1%         1%                1%
Enemy Actions    43%            55%        45%               20%

As Russ pointed out, it is important not just to view percentages but also
to know the absolute numbers, as asserted by 100% of the people typing this
note, who doesn't have those numbers available.

A particularly noteworthy fratricide incident occurred in 1994 during
Operation Provide Comfort, which intended to protect certain Kurdish areas
in Northern Iraq. Two F-15s patrolling the no-fly zone shot down two Black
Hawk helicopters ferrying officials and locals within the no-fly zone. This
incident has been analysed by (in temporal order) a USAF Aircraft Accident
Investigation Board, by a US General Accounting Office review of that report
[2], by U.S. military academician Scott Snook [3], by Joan Piper, the mother
of one of the officers killed [4], and by Nancy Leveson, Polly Allen and
Margaret-Anne Storey [5].

During the incident, the major technologies involved were a controlling
AWACS aircraft, and the Air-to-Air Interrogation/Identification Friend or
Foe (AAI/IFF) systems on board the F-15s and the Black Hawks, systems which
send radio interrogation signals (AAI) and elicit responses (IFF) from
friendly aircraft. These systems are similar in function to that of the
combination of Primary Air Traffic Control Radar and on-board transponders
in civil aviation, although I expect the military security design is far
more sophisticated.

During this incident, the technology apparently functioned more or less as
intended, although there was some question as to why certain AAI/IFF
transactions did not occur, which has not been answered.  (Although the
F-15s were interrogating on a different band from that on which the Black
Hawks were responding, at least one performed interrogation should have
elicited a response. No reason for this was identified.)

When the F15 pilots failed to get suitable responses from AAI/IFF
transactions, they performed a visual intercept, mistakenly identified the
Black Hawks as Iraqi Hind helicopters, and shot them down. The reports
focused on procedural irregularities (problems in the chain of command
during the intercept), on coordination on board the AWACS, and the apparent
haste, inaccuracy, and lack of procedural care with which the F15s performed
the visual identification and shootdown.  The GAO also investigated mission
discipline issues with the squadron to which the interceptors belonged.

According to the GAO, the USAF report "focused on, among other things,
command and control problems, including individuals' lack of knowledge of
specific procedures." The GAO report pointed out that the USAF report did
not discuss the F-15 pilots' responsibility to report to the Airborne
Command Element (ACE, the chief of the AWACS operation staff) when they
encountered unknown aircraft in the no-fly zone; that it failed to note that
the ACE had authority to stop the intercept (especially significant given
that his staff had been dealing with those same helicopters a short while
before); and that it erroneously concluded that use of an incorrect "squawk"
code by the Black Hawks resulted in the F15s not receiving an IFF response
(the F15s should have seen a response in any case on at least one of their
required interrogation modes).

These seem to me to be problems largely concerning organisational behavior
rather than the technology itself, although this behavior is of course
conditioned by that technology. One could expect this to be so in general
for fratricide incidents, since, except for intentional incidents such as
"fragging", they are cases of mistaken identity and are thus likely to
contravene the rather elaborate procedures that have evolved for avoiding
it.

Another case, investigated by the organisational behavior researcher Gene
Rochlin [6], was the shootdown of a commercial aircraft, an Iran Air Airbus
Flight 655, over the Persian Gulf by an Aegis cruiser, the USS Vincennes,
who was engaged in a firefight at the time with small Iranian patrol
boats. The aircraft was initially misidentified as an F14, and its
subsequent behavior was misinterpreted as threatening, despite the wealth of
electronic information available to the Aegis crew which showed otherwise -
a case of seeing what one expects (or fears) to see, it seems. Again,
organisational behavior, conditioned by the available technology.

The recent Patriot shootdown of a RAF Tornado may be different, in that it
may have been initiated by technological misfunction.  According to Flight
International [7], "the aircraft was approaching the Kuwaiti border as
number two in a two-ship formation when it was identified by the Patriot as
an anti-radiation missile. An operator then initiated the engagement, before
realising that other sensor data did not corroborate the target
classification. ..... Initial indications are that the Tornado was in the
"safe-lane" at the right speed and height when it was hit. If it had an IFF
problem, even not functioning or broadcasting the wrong identification tag,
it would probably still have been spotted by the airborne control post."

The report continues: "Further doubts were raised about Patriot's IFF system
when a day later a second SAM battery, 55km (35 miles) south of An Najaf,
locked on to a US Air Force .... F-16. The fighter fired a [anti-radiation
missile], destroying the battery's radar without killing anyone.

References

[1] Chris Johnson, Risk and Decision-Making in Military Accident and
Incident Reporting Systems, available at
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/Military.pdf

[2] General Accounting Office, USG, Operation Provide Comfort: Review of
U.S. Air Force Investigation of Black Hawk Fratricide Incident, Report to
Congressional Requestors, Report GAO/OSI-98-4, November 1997, available
through search from http://www.gao.gov

[3] Scott A. Snook, Friendly Fire: The Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Black
Hawks over Northern Iraq, Princeton University Press, 2000. Details at
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/6847.html

[4] Joan L. Piper, A Chain of Events: The Government Cover-Up of the Black
Hawk Incident and the Friendly-Fire Death of Lt. Laura Piper, Brassey's Inc,
2001.

[5] Nancy G. Leveson, Polly Allen, Margaret-Annd Storey, The Analysis of a
Friendly Fire Accident using a Systems Model of Accidents, available from
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/

[6] Gene I. Rochlin, Iran Air Flight 655: Complex, Large-Scale Military
Systems and the Failure of Control. In Responding to Large Technical
Systems: Control or Anticipation, Renate Mayntz and Todd R. La Porte, eds.,
Kluwer, 1991. A version is also to be found as Chapter 9 of Rochlin, Trapped
in the Net, Princeton University Press, 1997, which chapter is available at
http://pup.princeton.edu/books/rochlin/chapter_09.html

[7] Accidents Take Their Toll, Flight International, 1-7 April 2003, p6.

Peter B. Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld,
33594 Bielefeld, Germany  +49 (0)521 880 7319 http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de


Re: Friendly Fire ... (Russ, RISKS-22.67)

<Rod Van Meter <Rod.VanMeter@nokia.com>>
04 Apr 2003 14:55:01 -0800

I'm not certain where Mr. Russ got his data, but as of 14:30 PST on 4 Apr,
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html lists 84
coalition deaths and another couple of dozen POW/MIAs.  It also seems
unlikely that we have already killed a full four tenths of a percent of the
population of Iraq.  I don't see numbers for injured at a glance.

The problem likely stems from confusion over the term "casualty".  It
actually refers to persons killed OR INJURED, although many people seem to
believe it refers to deaths.

The same issue has caused over fifty years of misinformation about the
atomic bombing of Japan and the planned Operation Olympic invasion of
Japan's home islands, due to confusion over casualties on Okinawa and Iwo
Jima.


Re: Friendly fire ... (PGN, RISKS-22.65)

<David Guaspari <davidg@atc-nycorp.com>>
Mon, 7 Apr 2003 16:21:48 -0400

It would take some hard work to decide whether [a high friendly fire rate]
is astounding or is a simple statistical necessity.  If side A so
overmatches side B that B can do A no damage at all, then 100% of A's
casualties will be the result of friendly fire (or self-inflicted by other
kinds of accident).

David Guaspari, ATC-NY, 33 Thornwood Drive, Suite 500, Ithaca NY 14850-1250
voice: (607) 266-7114  davidg@atc-nycorp.com


Re: The reality behind these laws (Re: Cohen, RISKS-22.67)

<stanislav shalunov <shalunov@internet2.edu>>
04 Apr 2003 15:30:20 -0500

> Nothing in these bills in any way prevents firewalling, encryption,
> etc. UNLESS it is being used to defraud.

I certainly hope that this was the intent.  However, the law says:

> Sec. 540c (1) A person shall not [...] assemble,
>               develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to
>               deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device
>               intending to use those devices or to allow the devices
>               to be used to do any of the following or knowing or
>               having reason to know that the devices are intended to
>               be used to do any of the following:  [...]

>               (b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or
>                   destination of any telecommunications service.

A NAT box is a telecommunications device.  Some common home WiFi access
points can *only* be used in NAT mode, such as a few Linksys boxes.  A NAT
box is intended to conceal the actual origin of IP traffic.  IP traffic
seems to fit their definition of a telecommunications service.  It would
seem that the possession of a NAT box is made a felony in Michigan,
punishable by up to four years in prison and/or up to $2000 fine per device.
Please explain where you are reading this ``intent to defraud'' stuff?  (Sec
219a does use ``with the intent to defraud'' language carefully, but we're
talking about a different section here.  Are we reading different texts?
I'm talking about
<URL:http://www.michiganlegislature.org/printDocument.asp?objName=mcl-750-540c-amended&version=txt>.)

My reading of this is that it outlaws (both sale and possession) of NAT and
VPN boxes and perhaps more (steganography?).  Note that there does not need
to be any malicious intent in order for the possession to be illegal.

In addition, the item (c) that immediately follows is written quite vaguely
(it was probably meant to outlaw cable descramblers), but it written --
probably unintentionally — so that it might be interpreted as outlawing
(the decryption side of) any use of encryption without prior permission from
the service provider (all of them on the path, I guess?).

Stanislav Shalunov		http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/


Re: POW Social Security numbers revealed (Hirose, RISKS-22.67)

<"Jaanus Kase" <terminus@local.ee>>
Sat, 5 Apr 2003 01:45:07 +0300

Foreign readers, like myself, are well aware of America's problems with SSN.
To my view, the problem is very simple: identification and authentication
are two very different issues, but SSN is used for both.

Let's face it: to have efficient public services and efficient means of
communications in current Internet age and information society, it is vital
to have a sort of universal "national identity number", whatever it is
called - ID code, SSN, "medical insurance code" or whatever. They are often
used in medical or social insurance, but not necessarily always - it can be
used when providing any service or just wanting to talk to someone to be
sure of his identity.

I myself live in Estonia and I think we have a good national ID code system
in place. Every person has a unique code - for example, mine is 38006270262.
I can tell it to you freely, because it is available online anyway in a lot
of places. It is widely accepted here that the ID code is public data. Think
of it as your middle name. It is even helpful in daily electronic
communications - if you have two persons with the same name, you can
distinguish them by the code. It is also obvious that all sorts of
electronic registers are easy to construct using the code. In itself, the ID
code also encodes some key personal data, like your birth date and sex, but
nothing else.

A direct result of the above is that the code must NOT be used for
authentication purposes. If I know someone's name and ID code, I should NOT
be able to impersonate as that person. Indeed, all services in Estonia,
public or private, consider this and knowing only someone else's name and/or
ID code gets you nowhere - additional authentication is always used.

As I view it, the core of US problems with SSN is very simple - it is used
widely as a unique identifier as it is very easy to do so (as, I understand,
it is the only numeric identifier that all US residents can be assumed to
have). And then, you play hide-and-seek and say, "okay, the number is
everywhere all over the place anyway, but now let's play it's secret and
start authenticating people using it."

I of course understand that the US system is in its current state due to its
historic legacy, but in the long run, some changes will probably need to be
made, although I wouldn't want to imagine the costs. You may say that there
are valid arguments against having a universal public national ID code, but
so far, I have not seen any, either in talk or in practice, that I would
take seriously.


Re: POW Social Security numbers revealed (Hirose, RISKS-22.67)

<<crispin@wirex.com>>
Fri, 04 Apr 2003 19:32:26 -0800

It is often suggested that disclosure of SSN's is a great risk. In the
current climate, where SSN's are used to *authenticate* an individual ("tell
us your SSN so we know it is you") that certainly is true.

However, I suggest an alternate approach to solving the problem of identity
theft.  SSN's are hopelessly easy to obtain; attempting to curtail the
broadcast of these numbers (e.g. hoping the Iraqi state television will
control the release) is futile. Instead, I suggest that the US Government
*prohibit* the use of SSN's as authenticators. If all of the US
organizations that currently authenticate with SSN's were forced to use
something else (anything else) the state of the identity theft crisis would
improve drastically.

The "*anything* else" part is important to this proposal. It is tempting to
propose something prescriptive, specifying how organizations should
authenticate people. However, I suspect that such prescriptions would make
the law founder on impracticality, as organizations find high quality
authentication difficult to implement for one reason or anther.

In contrast, simply forcing organizations to choose something else at least
has the scattershot effect that they are unlikely to choose all the same
attributes, making wholesale identity theft much more difficult.

Just me proposing this idea here and getting a few folks to agree that it
would be beneficial is fun & all :-) but won't actually change
anything. More constructive would be if those who do agree with the idea,
and have more influence in the financial regulation space than I do, would
take up the idea and start spreading it around.

Crispin Cowan, Chief Scientist, WireX  http://wirex.com/~crispin/
http://wirex.com http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/solutions/iis/

Please report problems with the web pages to the maintainer

x
Top