The RISKS Digest
Volume 22 Issue 69

Tuesday, 15th 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

NSW forced to hand count poll result
Chris Maltby
Web Site for posting local election results crashes after virus attack
Monty Solomon
UK Demon ISP suffers three-fold power loss
Walter Roberson
Nevada hospital system hack traced to Russia
Monty Solomon
Automated denial-of-service attack using the U.S. Post Office
Bruce Schneier via Monty Solomon
Risks posed by online systems for college and graduate admissions
Matt Hiller
Paypal Meets the Patriot Act
Solveig Singleton via Hanah Metchis
Risks of *not* being lost
David Lesher
Nova Scotia police track suspect with GPS
M Taylor
"Quick Deposit" systems
Gervase Markham
Double-barrelled surname costs disabled mother
Nigel Metheringham
New,comprehensive Federal rules on privacy of medical information
Jack Goldberg
75+ organizations urge FBI NCIC database accuracy
Marc Rotenberg
Re: POW Social Security numbers revealed
Crispin Cowan
Re: The reality behind these laws
Bill Gunshannon
Re: Millennium trains taken off the tracks
Bob Frankston
Re: Friendly Fire
Peter B. Ladkin
Allan Goodall
Changing Domain Registration info without verification
risks@Orwellian.Org
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

NSW forced to hand count poll result

<Chris Maltby <chris@sw.oz.au>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 18:24:16 +1000

  "Computer problems have forced the New South Wales electoral office to
  start manually counting nearly 4 million upper house ballot papers.  NSW
  Electoral Commissioner John Wasson says it will be a mammoth task to have
  all the votes counted and preferences allocated before the declaration of
  the poll at the end of the month.  It is hoped the computer glitches will
  be fixed later this week, but Mr Wasson says he can not afford to delay
  the count any longer.  [...]
  <http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-14apr2003-43.htm>

My (slightly informed) guess is that the NSW Electoral Office acquired and
made changes to the Australian Electoral Commission's election management
software. The changes are to allow for the new NSW Upper House voting system
and they have not been a success. This is probably due to inadequate testing
as the changes to the Electoral Act were made quite some time ago.

To give them some credit, it's quite a challenge to simulate an election
with 4 million voters in a realistic way. My experience with testing the AEC
software in the pre-outsourced mid-1990s was that the stresses imposed by a
real election were always well in excess of anything that could be simulated
-- and some elections were conducted with changes to the counting
requirements made in the last few months before the election...

I'll bet he's hoping the software starts working though. Mind you, it's hard
to be all that confident in the results — even leaving aside that the
requirement for random sampling of papers in NSW upper house elections
(unlike the Senate) makes exact reproduction of results problematic.

The return of the writs is required by 29 Apr 2003 IIRC.


Web Site for posting local election results crashes after virus attack

<Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>>
Sun, 13 Apr 2003 01:30:50 -0400

A Web site designed to tally and publish the results of a local election in
Will County, Illinois was unable to perform as expected because it was
deluged with phony requests.  The Will County Director of Information
Systems has informed the FBI.
  http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/07/1049567599656.html

  [Excerpted from SANS NewsBites April 9, 2003 Vol. 5, Num. 14
    http://www.sans.org/newsletters/newsbites/vol5_14.php
  along with Eugene Schultz's Editor's Note:
    Although this news item might superficially appear to not be all that
    important, it is really quite significant.  There is considerable
    apprehension concerning computerized voting systems, and incidents such
    as this one will only increase the level of concern.  ES]


UK Demon ISP suffers three-fold power loss

<Walter Roberson <roberson@ibd.nrc.ca>>
Tue, 15 Apr 2003 00:24:30 -0500 (CDT)

The UK ISP Demon suffered a multiple-failure power loss that left them with
a backlog to process afterwards. The public grid went down, the backup
generator had a control problem, and the standby batteries ran out before
replacement parts for the generator could be located.
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30194.html


Nevada hospital system hack traced to Russia

<Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>>
Sun, 13 Apr 2003 01:30:52 -0400

The security of a small Nevada hospital's computer system was breached by a
hacker who has been traced back to Russia.  The hacker routed the attack
through the al-Jazeera Web site to make it look as if the attack came from
the Middle East.  The hacker may have accessed employees' social security
numbers and bank account information.  A Trojan horse program embedded in a
game some employees had downloaded allowed the attackers access. The
hospital's payroll system has been removed from the network and employees
have been instructed never to install software or sign on to streaming
Internet services.
  [Source: *USA Today*, 7 Apr 2003
    http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/
    2003-04-07-hospital-hack_x.htm
  excerpted from SANS NewsBites April 9, 2003 Vol. 5, Num. 14
    http://www.sans.org/newsletters/newsbites/vol5_14.php
  along with Eugene Schultz's Editor's Note:
    Employees installing software or signing on to streaming Internet
    services may have been a problem, but I wonder whether the hospital's
    failing to set requirements for and failing to enforce a baseline level
    of security may have had a lot to do with what happened here.  ES]


Automated denial-of-service attack using the U.S. Post Office

<Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 03:33:40 -0400

In December 2002, the notorious "spam king" Alan Ralsky gave an interview.
Aside from his usual comments that antagonized spam-hating e-mail users, he
mentioned his new home in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  The interview was
posted on Slashdot, and some enterprising reader found his address in some
database.  Egging each other on, the Slashdot readership subscribed him to
thousands of catalogs, mailing lists, information requests, etc.  The
results were devastating: within weeks he was getting hundreds of pounds of
junk mail per day and was unable to find his real mail amongst the deluge.

Ironic, definitely.  But more interesting is the related paper by security
researchers Simon Byers, Avi Rubin and Dave Kormann, who have demonstrated
how to automate this attack.

  [Source: Bruce Schneier's cryptogram]
    http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0304.html#1


Risks posed by online systems for college and graduate admissions

<Matt Hiller <hiller@panix.com>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 11:28:52 -0700 (PDT)

Late last year, I sent out a number of applications to masters programs in
computer science. Where possible, I submitted my applications by way of
online application systems, and had my recommendation providers submit their
recommendations online. (In fact, a number of programs charge an increased
application fee to applicants who choose to submit their applications on
paper rather than using the online system; paper seems to be deprecated.) I
did not realize that in doing this I was exposing myself to a significant
computer-related risk, as illustrated by my experience with the University
of Virginia.

I applied online to Virginia's MS program in computer science, and had my
recommendations provided online. When I had yet to hear an admissions
decision by early April, I called the department to find out when I could
expect to know. I was informed that my application had not been evaluated
because the paper file on which the admissions committee was basing its
decisions seemed to be incomplete; it was missing one of the three required
recommendations.

I was very confused by this, as I'd been using the online application system
to track and confirm the successful arrival of all of my application
materials. To my knowledge, everything was in order, and had been for quite
some time. The recommendation thought to be missing had been submitted in
mid-November. I pointed this out, and the "missing" recommendation was
promptly found and added to the paper file, but by then the damage was
done. Notices were already out to accepted applicants; the best that could
be done for me was placement on the waitlist.

What are the risks here? Generating paper applications from online may
introduce errors, errors that will not be visible to the applicant. If these
paper files are treated as authoritative — if the online application is not
consulted in the case of seeming incompleteness or inconsistency --
applications may be passed over for no good reason at all.


Paypal Meets the Patriot Act

<"Hanah Metchis" <hmetchis@cei.org>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 14:35:01 -0400

CEI C:\SPIN [Excerpted by PGN]

Paypal Meets the Patriot Act, by Solveig Singleton, Senior Policy Analyst
  <http://www.cei.org/dyn/view_bio.cfm/163> ,
Project on Technology and Innovation, CEI <http://www.cei.org/>  14 Apr 2003.

Paypal has been in the news lately.  In this case, a Missouri prosecutor
sent eBay a letter
  <http://news.findlaw.com/news/s/20030401/techebaypaypaldc.html>
insisting that its recent acquisition, Paypal, was violating the Patriot Act
  <http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html>
by processing payments from Internet gambling operations.  Internet gambling
is illegal in the U.S., but about 5 million Americans use overseas sites;
eBay discontinued Paypal's gambling operations last fall.  This comes on top
of troubles Paypal has had with the New York attorney general
  <http://www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abn/y02/m08/i22/s01> and authorities in
other states. So what's up with Paypal? Is something sinister going on
there? Far from it.  Prosecutors may get paid by the public, but they don't
always serve the public.  [...]

C:\SPIN is produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.


Risks of *not* being lost

<David Lesher <wb8foz@nrk.com>>
Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:59:17 -0500 (EST)

Seems many of the ""embedded"" media procured Thuraya brand sat/cell phones
before departing. These are controlled by a ground station in Abu Dhabi, and
to optimize performance, the phone locates itself with an on-board GPS and
reports back that position to the ground station.

Ooops, current exact location is one thing the US does NOT want the Other
Guys to know. While you could in theory use triangulation or other schemes
to locate any EM emitter, including a phone, making it easy for Them is
hardly ever a good idea. The military has confiscated the phones.

The competitor, Iridium, may well also do this too, but allegedly the GPS
reporting can be turned off [how? hardware or ....software?]  and in any
case, that ground station is in the US. Given that Iridium is running at all
only because Uncle Sam bought a govt-wide license, one could hope that
someone has considered the integrity of that aspect beforehand.

Note that the FBI is mandating tracking of all domestic cell phones as well,
with the already past due-date being slipped back time and again. Security
at our myriad providers can not help but be worse than at that single
Iridium ground station.

And in both TV and real life, cops and FBI agents carry cell phones.  In the
future will oh, Willy Sutton | John Brown | Jonathan Pollard | Paul Reubens
be able to track the FBI agents tracking them?

Risk: Be careful what you wish for; most swords do have two sides.


Nova Scotia police track suspect with GPS

<M Taylor <mctaylor@privacy.nb.ca>>
Tue, 15 Apr 2003 18:36:04 +0100

Police in Nova Scotia use the On Star system, a GPS based service included
in the car to locate the car within minutes of contacting On Star operators
in United States.  [Source: *Globe and Mail*, 15 Apr 2003]
  http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate
  ?tf=RT/fullstory_print.html&slug=gtbeatapr15&date=20030415

  It is nice to know that occasionally technology increases risk of getting
  caught to criminals.  M Taylor  http://www.mctaylor.com/


"Quick Deposit" systems

<Gervase Markham <gerv@gerv.net>>
Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:13:00 +0100

I wandered into my branch of Barclays Bank in Enfield, UK, this
afternoon in order to deposit a couple of cheques. For quite a while,
Barclays has had a "Quick Deposit" machine - obviously old tech, green
text on a character-mapped screen, no buttons; you just insert your
envelope with the cheques and a deposit slip, and it prints a receipt.

Recently, an additional machine of a newer design has been installed.
This one looks much more like a cashpoint - number keypad, buttons on
the side of the screen - and has card slots, cheque slots, and all sorts
of attachments. It's far harder to use and takes much more time than the
original. But its UI flaws are for another mailing list.

This afternoon I walked up to it, and noticed that the screen said
"NTDetect 4.00". I watched in amazement as the NT 4 boot sequence
proceeded, via the "Press Space for Last Known Good menu"
(unfortunately, pressing of keys only revealed that none were mapped to
Space), the Blue Screen of Bootup (NT4 SP6, 128MB RAM), and the splash
screen ("with Internet Explorer"), to an NT 4 desktop, complete with
"Outlook Express" icon!

Some startup scripts ran, which showed me that I was logged in as
Administrator, and then some sort of debugging application popped up.
Because it left me in a text input window in this debugging app, I was
able to work out the key mappings of the built-in keypad. The number
keys produced numbers, Cancel was Backspace and Enter was return. The
other keypad keys seemed to have little effect.

Pressing the keys on the side of the monitor seemed to trigger
something, because several bits of attached machinery began whirring.
Shame it's not a cashpoint, I thought. I didn't try feeding bits of
paper into it. Other sundry error dialogs and DOS boxes gave me some
idea of the filesystem layout, running software and so on.

After a couple of minutes, the scripts must have finished, because the
desktop disappeared to be replaced with "This Terminal is not in use" in
Barclays livery.

The RISKS are many:

- Using a general-purpose OS for an embedded application
- Having the input and output devices connected before the embedded app
   is ready to accept input
- Using an Administrator account to run your app
- Mapping keys to their obvious equivalents (Return is dangerous;
   mapping "Enter" to e.g. "G" would have been safer)
- Keeping debugging applications installed on production machines, and
   having them automatically invoked


Double-barrelled surname costs disabled mother

<Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham@pobox.com>>
14 Apr 2003 10:54:08 +0100

  A disabled mother of three has been barred from receiving tax credits
  worth 190 pounds a week because she is among hundreds of claimants whose
  double-barrel surnames are not recognised by Government computers.  Sue
  Evan-Jones has fought for more than three months to persuade the Inland
  Revenue that her surname has two parts after she was told the system was
  confused by hyphens.

The fact that obvious input validation problems, and properly specifying the
valid forms of input in the original design are still being got horribly
wrong in 2003 fills me with despair.

Source:
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/14/ncred14.xml


New comprehensive Federal rules on privacy of medical information

<Jack Goldberg <jackgoldberg@earthlink.net>>
Sat, 12 Apr 2003 22:59:51 -0700

The article in the 12 Apr 2003 *San Jose Mercury News*
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5614657.htm
is an easy to read summary of the new Federal rules on privacy of medical
information privacy, just being put into effect.  There is a very large body
of literature on the general subject and on the development of the
standards, and the set of rules itself is a huge body of text.  This reader
sees lots of good intentions, but also lots of problems, such as how medical
and computer personnel — and citizens, can understand the complex rules to
determine what is allowed and what is not, how to help a client know whether
exercising an option is a good idea or not, whether implementation of the
rules will be an intolerable burden on health care practice, and how the
integrity of a given implementation can be verified and preserved.  On the
last point, there seems to be no provision in the law for certification;
rather it seems that it will be up to the courts to decide if the rules were
violated in a particular case.  This development deserves attention.


75+ Organizations urge FBI NCIC database accuracy

<Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org>>
Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:34:55 -0400

A broad coalition of organizations across the United States has endorsed a
letter urging the reestablishment of accuracy requirements for the FBI's
National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the nation's largest criminal
justice database.

More than 3,000 individuals from 47 states and the District of Columbia have
signed an online petition to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also
supporting the Privacy Act accuracy requirements.

The petition drive will continue until the OMB acts on the request.
Individuals may sign the petition online at:

  http://www.petitiononline.com/ncic/petition.html

    [Excerpted for RISKS.  See RISKS-22.65 and 22.67 for items on the
    termination of the NCIC accuracy requirements.  PGN]


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

<Crispin Cowan <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  http://wirex.com/~crispin/


Re: The reality behind these laws (Re: Shalunov, RISKS-22.68)

<Bill Gunshannon <bill@cs.scranton.edu>>
Sun, 13 Apr 2003 09:21:39 -0400 (EDT)

Assuming that the failure of one of the postulates results in the failure
of the premise, we can put this one to bed.

Since when is a NAT box "intended to conceal the actual origin of IP
traffic"?  The intended purpose of NAT and the use it is put to in every
case I am aware of is to allow persons with a single IP Address to have more
than one host on their network that can all access the INTERNET and I am
certain that is the reason LinkSYS gives for selling the products that have
NAT built in.  On top of that, NAT hides nothing.  You still need at least
one valid routable IP address and that address is traceable to a fixed
location and person responsible.

If the purpose of NAT were to "conceal the actual origin of IP traffic",
what then of DHCP?

The RISK here is that we start chasing after demons that don't exist while
missing the ones that really do.

Bill Gunshannon, University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania


Re: Millennium trains taken off the tracks (Colville, RISKS-22.68)

<"Bob Frankston" <bob2@bobf.frankston.com>>
Sat, 12 Apr 2003 23:31:09 -0400

  "Train signals interfering with the frequency of the underground
  signalling system ... turning lights red for all following trains."

I can't help but wonder what kind of signaling system was being used.  This
seems to be an ancient analog system that uses the frequency as part of the
message rather than a digital signal that has some independence from the
path and would have some resilience. Turning a signal red in the absence of
other information is understandable but why is the signal so fragile?

I might not have commented were it not for the name "Millennium" train which
would indicate a design that reflects today's understanding of
signaling. Instead this seems to rely on old techniques such as the use of
pristine frequencies because that's the only technique we knew a century
ago.


Re: Friendly Fire (RISKS-22.65 to 22.68)

<"Peter B. Ladkin" <ladkin@rvs.uni-bielefeld.de>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 13:52:48 +0200

In RISKS-22.68, I gave some figures from [1, Figure 1.1, p1-2] suggesting
that the number of fratricide incidents in recent conflicts (from WW II) lay
around 1% of casualties. The figure for Desert Storm/Shield that I gave was
mistaken. The figures from FM 100-14 Figure 1.1 are:

                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%                5%
Enemy Actions    43%            55%        45%               20%

Paul Marks of the *New Scientist* pointed out to me that the UK National
Audit Office takes a different view. It says that "American research shows
that, historically, fratricide accounts for between ten and 15 per cent of
friendly casualties during operations." [2, paragraph 1.5]

FM 100-14 speaks simply of "losses". The UK NAO defines fratricide as
"destruction of friendly or allied forces". It is possible that these are
two different concepts. But it is also possible that people aren't counting
very precisely. It's a shame that one cannot tell from either of these
documents what the figures actually represent.

[1] U.S. Army Field Manual 100-14, Risk Management, 23 April 1998,
available from http://www.irwin.army.mil/g3/tacticalsafety.html

[2] National Audit Office, UK, Combat Identification,
Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,
HC661 Session 2001-2002: 7 March 2002, available from
http://www.nao.gov.uk/pn/01-02/0102661.htm

Peter Ladkin, University of Bielefeld, Germany http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de


Re: Friendly Fire (Van Meter, RISKS-22.68)

<Allan Goodall <agoodall@att.net>>
Mon, 14 Apr 2003 14:50:41 -0500

Mr. Van Meter explains that the term "casualty" refers to persons "killed or
injured". This is not correct. Casualties refer to persons killed, injured,
or *missing*.

"Missing" includes anyone whose whereabouts are unknown. The soldier may have
been captured by the enemy, or they may have run away to — possibly — turn
up later, or they may have been killed but their remains hadn't been
identified or their remains were unidentifiable.

I agree with Mr. Van Meter that confusion over the term "casualty" has
caused much misinformation. In September 2002, on the 140th anniversary of
the American Civil War battle of Antietam (the single bloodiest day in
American history), CNN Headline News mentioned that there were 23,000 men
killed in the battle. The total casualties were just less than 23,000, 3600
of whom were killed (though many of the 1700 missing men were likely dead
and buried in unmarked graves, and many of the wounded would die sometime
later). This error is particularly ironic as Ted Turner is a Civil War buff.

Allan Goodall  agoodall@hyperbear.com  http://www.hyperbear.com


Changing Domain Registration info without verification

<risks@Orwellian.Org>
Sun, 30 Mar 2003 16:41:51 -0500

I found a reference to a USPS Web site allowing anyone to issue a change of
address via the web in a 1997 issue of RISKS.
  [Actually, it allowed you to print a form that you could mail in.
  See RISKS-19.18 to 19.20.  PGN]

Here's a twist I recently noticed, as conveyed in a message I just sent
Network Solutions:

  I just tried to login to my ******** account for the first time in a long
  time, and it is trying to force me to accept a service agreement before I
  can access my account.

  I don't know if it was in the previous service agreement, but this
  provision is UNACCEPTABLE:

  #  4) You agree that VeriSign is authorized, but not obligated,
  #  to use Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) certified software
  #  and/or the National Change of Address program (and/or such other
  #  systems or programs as may be recognized by the United States
  #  Postal Service or other international postal authority for
  #  updating and/or standardizing address information) to change
  #  any address information associated with your account (e.g.,
  #  registrant address, billing contact address, etc.), and you agree
  #  that VeriSign may use and rely upon any such changed address
  #  information for all purposes in connection with your account
  #  (including the sending of invoices and other important account
  #  information) as though such changes had been made directly by you.

  This USPS change-of-address can be done BY ANYBODY WITHOUT VERIFICATION at
  https://moversguide.usps.com/

  I DO NOT authorize that my contact information be changeable by anyone via
  this process. (The USPS site even lets the e-mail address be changed.)

  If you cannot remove this clause from my agreement to service, I will
  transfer my registration to Register.com, which does not have this
  provision.

Please report problems with the web pages to the maintainer

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