The RISKS Digest
Volume 26 Issue 9

Saturday, 3rd July 2010

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

Jumping the Walrus: When Risk Management Goes Bad
Robert Charette
NYC hospital and contractor/shipper lose PII on 130,495
Danny Burstein
Death with Dignity depends on one IC card field
jidanni
Online banking risks
Ellen Messmer via Jeremy Epstein
Software auto--updaters
Mabry Tyson
AT&T e-mail address breach
Rob McCool
Best practices for smart grid privacy
David Magda
Location services: risks of oversharing
Paul F. Roberts via Gene Wirchenko
Previous user's data on my "new" GPS device
George Mannes
Re: Computers and Stupidity
Rob Seaman
GPS humor
Steven Bellovin
Mitchell & Webb Humour Clip on Identity Theft
Gene Wirchenko
Risks of too much emphasis on electronic security
Tony Lima
When you're on vacation, your cruise line knows
Jeremy Epstein
So you thought Linux was safe...
Mike Rechtman
Let Your Phone Do the Walking?
Gene Wirchenko
Re: System failures in offshore drilling processes
Rob Seaman
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Jumping the Walrus: When Risk Management Goes Bad

"Robert Charette" <Charette@itabhi.com>
Fri, 2 Jul 2010 06:42:13 -0400

Back in the 1970s, there was a very popular show called "Happy Days,"
starring Ron Howard and Henry Winkler, who played Arthur "Fonzie"
Fonzarelli. Five years into the series, an episode aired in which Fonzie is
shown improbably water skiing and jumping a shark to show his bravery. A few
years later, the phrase "Jumping the Shark" came to mean that point in a
television series where the program had reached its peak, and it was going
to be all downhill from then on until it got canceled.

I think risk management in the oil industry has reached that moment, except
in this case, I think the appropriate phrase is "Jumping the Walrus."

According to BP PLC's 582-page 2009 spill response plan for the Gulf of
Mexico, walruses along with sea otters, sea lions, and seals are among the
"sensitive biological resources" that could be harmed by an oil discharge
from its operations in the Gulf. The only problem is that walruses, sea
otters, sea lions, and seals don't happen to live in the Gulf of Mexico, and
haven't for a considerable period of time—like millions of years.

The spill plan also lists a Japanese home shopping site as one of BP's
primary providers of equipment for containing a spill, a dead professor as
one of its wildlife experts to consult with in the event of spill, and other
outrageous gaffes.

BP was not alone in worrying about walruses. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and
ExxonMobil's oil discharge response plans in the Gulf of Mexico also listed
those poor walruses as potential victims of a spill.

The US government must have been worried about those walruses, too, since
those in government accountable for reviewing and approving the oil
companies' response plans didn't say a word about them. Maybe the US
government officials at the Minerals Management Service decided that, even
though walruses, sea otters, sea lions, and seals didn't currently live in
the Gulf of Mexico, they might someday. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

Well, the reality, of course, is that the oil companies outsourced the
writing of their oil response plans to a consulting group, and didn't bother
to read the plans to see if they made any sense.

What worries me more is that the possibility that those responsible for risk
management at the oil companies (and US government) did read these plans and
didn't catch any of the errors. If that is the case, then we may have a
deeply disturbing case of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work: the
incompetence of oil company and government risk managers masked their
ability to recognize their own incompetence at managing risk. 1

When drilling oil wells at ocean depths of 5,000 feet or more,
risk-management competence is something I really want those oil companies
and government officials that oversee them to possess.

It is pretty clear that oil spill risk management wasn't taken seriously at
all by BP, or by most of the other major oil companies drilling in the Gulf.
In congressional hearings, oil industry officials admitted that the industry
is poorly equipped to handle oil spills of any size in the Gulf, and that is
why the industry tries to prevent spills from happening. The industry also
viewed its oil-well blowout preventers as foolproof safety mechanisms, even
though they fail regularly. However, the industry officials also admitted
that less than 0.1% of corporate profits are spent on improving offshore
drilling technologies, even as the risks of drilling offshore have increased
significantly over the past decade.

Oil spill risk management was not taken seriously by the US government,
either. Even though the MMS has sponsored many, many studies into the risks
of offshore drilling, no one seems to have bothered to read and then act on
them. Like what used to be said about software reuse libraries, risk
management reports were checked in but never checked out.

We can only hope that risk management will be taken a wee bit more seriously
in the future by both oil companies and the US government when it comes to
drilling in deep water or other sensitive environmental areas, including
those where walruses may actually live.

However, I don't doubt for one minute that other industries pay other
consulting companies to write their risk management reports as well—and
don't bother to read them until after something goes terribly wrong. I see
it all the time on IT projects, for example.

So, I would like to propose that in the future, whenever risk management is
incompetently performed, done just to meet some requirement, isn't taken
seriously, or is plain lackadaisical, we describe it with the phrase,
"Jumping the Walrus." Maybe that will remind those involved that the
consequences and public ridicule are likely awaiting them next.

1. The Dunning-Kruger Effect basically says that incompetent people are too
   incompetent to realize they are incompetent. See: Kruger, Justin, and
   David Dunning. " Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in
   recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments,"
   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 77(6), Dec 1999,
   1121-1134.

Appeared in the 1 July 2010 Cutter Consortium Enterprise Risk Management &
Governance (ERM&G) E-Mail Advisor - used with permission.  Robert Charette


NYC hospital and contractor/shipper lose PII on 130,495

Danny Burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:34:07 -0400 (EDT)

Event occurred in March, but is only now coming out.
Per the hospital's website [a]:
Notification from Lincoln Hospital

Sometime between March 16 and 24, 2010, a weekly shipment of seven
duplicate compact disks (CDs) in the custody of FedEx, were lost while
being transported to Lincoln Hospital. These CDs were created by Siemens
Medical Solutions USA, Inc. ("Siemens"), a company that performs billing
and claims processing for Lincoln. The missing CDs contained some
protected health and personal information of patients including name,
address, social security number, medical record number, patient number,
health plan information, date of birth, dates of admission and discharge,
diagnostic and procedural codes and descriptions, and possibly a driver's
license number if provided.

  Some more info at the US Dep't of Health and Human Services [b]:

Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center
State:	   New York
Business Associate Involved:	   Siemens Medical Solutions, USA, Inc.
Approx. # of Individuals Affected:	   130,495
Date of Breach:	   3/24/10
Type of Breach:	   Loss

a. http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/lincoln/html/news/public_notice_20100604.shtml

b. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachnotificationrule/postedbreaches.html

  [The hospital website says the CDs were "password protected". This seems
  to be of limited value. The more detailed letter linked to from the main
  website says that "... the CDs are not protected by a form of technology
  that renders them unreadable..."]


Death with Dignity depends on one IC card field

<jidanni@jidanni.org>
Sun, 20 Jun 2010 05:10:58 +0800

Perhaps this field on the card's IC chip is only one bit wide.  In a worst
case scenario, a cosmic ray comes down, flips the bit, and Grandma is a
[Non/]Goner...
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/06/18/2003475777 "If
passed by the [Taiwan] legislature, the law would enable terminally ill
individuals with hospice and palliative medical care indicated on their
health insurance cards[' IC chip] to request that physicians do not provide
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the event of a cardiac arrest, even
if they do not have the actual certification with them."


Online banking risks (Ellen Messmer)

Jeremy Epstein <jeremy.epstein@sri.com>
Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:36:38 -0400

Ellen Messmer, *Network World*, 17 Jun 2010
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/061710-online-banking.html

In online banking and payments, customers' PCs have become the Achilles'
heel of the financial industry as cyber-crooks remotely take control of the
computers to make unauthorized funds transfers, often to faraway places.

That's what happened to the town of Poughkeepsie in New York earlier this
year to the tune of $378,000 carried out in four unauthorized funds
transfers from the town's account at TD Bank. First discovered in January,
the town was able to finally get the full lost amount restored by March,
according to public records, through sometimes tense interaction with the
bank.

Though the town declines to discuss the matter, this high-dollar cyberheist,
along with a slew of other incidents in the past year, has many bank
officials worried. They're concerned that the customer desktop, especially
in business banking where dollar amounts are high, is increasingly the weak
link in the chain of trust.

Other cyberheists that have reached the public eye include Hillary Machinery
of Plano, Texas, for $801,495; Patco Construction for $588,000; Unique
Industrial for $1.2 million; and Ferma Corp. for $447,000. Schools and
churches aren't immune, either. One FBI report from late last year said the
agency gets several new victim complaints each week. [...]

Jeremy Epstein, SRI International, 1100 Wilson Blvd, Suite 2800
Arlington VA  22209  jeremy.epstein@sri.com 703-247-8708


Software auto-updaters

Mabry Tyson <Tyson@ai.sri.com>
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:46:22 -0700

I'd like to see a campaign to change the nature of auto-updaters (such as MS
Word or Adobe).

I just had a piece of software run that claimed it was Adobe and wanted to
do an update.  I saw no way of confirming it really was from Adobe or that
it updated the Adobe software with stuff it got from Adobe.  It seems so
ripe for abusers to spoof such programs.

I would suggest that these features should only run from within the programs
they intend to update.  So, if I start up Adobe Acrobat, it will check for
an update and allow me to do it now, or when the app is quit, etc.  If my
Adobe Acrobat is not yet compromised, then I can trust it (maybe!) to get a
valid update and install it.  But I don't want some other random program
claiming to do an Adobe Acrobat update, but actually does other things it
shouldn't.

Lots of software already allows for updates from within the application.
Let's get rid of separate updaters and update from within.

  [And I get skype messages claiming there's malware on my system
  and please click to upgrade.  PGN]


AT&T e-mail address breach

Rob McCool <robm@robm.com>
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:19:56 -0700 (PDT)

http://www.dailytech.com/ATT+Accidentally+Shares+114000+iPad+3G+Buyers+Email+Addresses/article18670.htm

Via the article:

In what is one of the biggest leaks of e-mail addresses in recent history, a
group called Goatse Security has published the personal e-mail addresses of
114,067 iPad 3G purchasers according to Gawker.  The e-mail addresses were
obtained in what appears to be a legal fashion by querying a public
interface that AT&T accidentally left exposed.

The names of victims immediately draw attention to the story.  Among them
are New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, film
mogul Harvey Weinstein, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and even
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.  A number of CEOs, CFOs, and CTOs
also had their e-mail addresses exposed by the leak.


Best practices for smart grid privacy

David Magda <dmagda@ee.ryerson.ca>
Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:31:11 -0400

The Ontario Privacy Commissioner has released a document detailing the
best practices for protecting data:

http://tinyurl.com/24q42qk
http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/Resources/News-Releases/News-Releases-Summary/?id=968

Via:

http://tinyurl.com/2a3kve4
http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/2010/06/16/you-might-be-interested-in-32/


Location services: risks of oversharing (Paul F. Roberts)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:07:35 -0700

Paul F. Roberts, Location services: The security risks of oversharing
The vulnerability of Web applications and the sensitive nature of
personal location information will prove a disastrous combination
InfoWorld Home / *InfoWorld Tech Watch*, 17 Jun 2010
http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-security/location-services-the-security-risks-oversharing-457

Selected text:

As soon as a new technology gets traction, smart criminals figure out a way
to misapply it. And one of the hottest features in the mobile world,
location awareness, is next in line for exploitation.

Services like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla, which combine user-generated
reviews with social networking, provide particularly attractive targets. The
idea is to use your mobile device to let your followers know in real time
what cool places you're patronizing and the excellent food you're
eating. Stores and shop owners love it—it's no-cost marketing in line
with the current zeitgeist of user-driven info from people you trust.

Targeted social engineering attacks that employ real-time or historical
geolocation data. For example, an employee at a leading tech/pharma/defense
contractor reveals, via Foursquare, his or her regular visits to the local
coffee shop, where s/he is targeted by social engineers looking to gain
access to the corporate network, or the victim of a real-world theft
(laptop, mobile device) that yields sensitive data.


Previous user's data on my "new" GPS device

George Mannes <gmannes@gmail.com>
Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:46:25 -0400

On Sunday afternoon I was setting up my new Father's Day present: a Garmin
GPS-equipped wristwatch-type heart rate monitor. One of its neat features is
that it can record all sorts of data about my runs: Distance, pace, heart
rate, and even a map showing the route run during each workout. After I
established the links for the Garmin to my PC--the company lets you save the
data on your computer and/or on its Garmin Connect website--I found that
records of five workouts from my watch had been uploaded into my new Garmin
Connect account.

This seemed odd to me, since I'd only used the watch once and I had erased
that workout before connecting the heart-rate monitor to my PC. My first
thought: This was dummy information pre-filled at the factory, or maybe the
monitor had been tested before shipping. Upon closer inspection, I figured
out that I had a slightly-used unit: Judging from the date and Google map
that were part of each workout record, someone in Escondido, California had
played with it briefly on Saturday, May 23, and then on May 24 had used it
to monitor two separate 35-minute walks. My guess is that the person then
decided he/she didn't like the Garmin and later sent it back to the online
retailer from which my family ended up buying the unit for me.

The really creepy part for me (and likely creepier for the previous user of
the Garmin if he/she knew) is that I know exactly where that user lives.
After I switched the Google Maps view to the aerial photo option, I could
zoom in and see exactly which house on which street in Escondido the user
walked out of before starting the timer. I could even see that the person
exited the house through the back yard, not the front door.

The RISKS? Well, the previous user of the Garmin, in a worst-case scenario,
has just enabled a potential stalker. I remember reading somewhere (maybe it
was on COMP.RISKS) about the potential dangers of entering your home
address, rather than a nearby intersection, in the "Home" slot of GPS
devices used for automobile navigation: Should someone steal a car with a
GPS in it off the street or from a parking lot, the thief not only knows
exactly where the owner lives, but also has reason to believe that the home
is empty and unguarded.

A more immediate (but less sinister) RISK, however, is to careless retailers
who can't quite so easily get away with representing nearly new merchandise
as absolutely new. When we called the seller to explain the situation, the
company gave us the option of returning the unit for a brand-new one or
keeping the current unit and taking a 20% refund. The unit seems to be
working properly and looks new, so we took the refund. One reads a lot about
how GPS can pose various RISKS to the user; in this case, it saved one
user's family 30 bucks.


Re: Computers and Stupidity (RISKS-26.08)

Rob Seaman <seaman@noao.edu>
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:36:28 -0700

The GPS-while-walking story came up as a FB thread, with a consensus
unfriendly to the walker.  Here is my response, edited for brevity:

"Unintended consequences are almost by definition not clear cut. Just a few
of the mitigating issues here:

1) Following walking directions is not the same as simply going for a walk -
   one can start out along a path that is appropriate to one's competence
   and incrementally get further and further into trouble, perhaps well past
   a point of no return that makes it extremely unattractive to turn
   back. In this case the walker likely did not know that "Dear Valley
   Drive" was a highway until she reached that point.

2) One might be skeptical of the route depicted in the article - but could
   find other paths in city and countryside from coast-to-coast with much
   more subtle dangers for walkers. A service for drivers on roadways
   benefits from assumptions (of maintenance and standard signage, for
   instance) that don't apply for pedestrians.

3) Motor vehicles share a minimum level of competence (or are rendered
   illegal for public thoroughfares). Drivers must be licensed, as imperfect
   as that process is. The class "walkers" covers a vast range of physical
   capabilities. Perhaps we should know our own limits - but the only way to
   calibrate this against such a service (or against a map or a friend's
   directions) is trial and error. Each newly proffered path is a new
   adventure.

4) Given such factors, consider the implications of Leslie Lamport's classic
   white paper, "Buridan's Principle" (http://bit.ly/6KaFJi). Given a
   choice, a person can reach a point - must reach a point given the mean
   value theorem - in which either of two choices is acceptable, but
   dithering produces a catastrophe.

I am positive that this one will show up on the ACM's RISKS Digest."

Rob Seaman, National Optical Astronomy Observatory


GPS humor

Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
Fri, 2 Jul 2010 06:47:05 -0400

http://www.gocomics.com/closetohome/2010/07/02/
		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

  [Steve thought I might be amused by this seeming summary of many
  past GPS RISKS items.  I thought our readers might also.  PGN]


Mitchell & Webb Humour Clip on Identity Theft

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:52:02 -0700

This makes more sense than some security measures:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

  [Somewhat regressive?  But perhaps typical of popular misunderstanding
  of the risks by RISKS non-readers.  PGN]


Risks of too much emphasis on electronic security

Tony Lima <tony.lima@csueastbay.edu>
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:33:49 -0700

Today I received a small order from Amazon.com.  I was happy with the item,
but later my wife glanced at the packing slip and asked, "What IS all this
stuff?"  A quick look proved that there was no resemblance between what was
actually in the box and the packing slip.  Further, the packing slip
contained the full name and address of the intended recipient. I got the
wrong packing slip but the correct item. Without much work (whitepages.com
and Facebook) I was able to find out the intended recipient's home phone
number and full middle name.  I imagine a little additional work would have
revealed even more, but somehow having the word "stalker" attached to my
name is not appealing.

The RISK?  Something we've heard all too often before.  Emphasizing
electronic security at the expense of physical security is not a good
tradeoff.

Oh, yes, when I tried to find a link on the Amazon web site to report this
issue, I was confronted with thousands of links, mainly to FAQ pages.  If I
can figure out a way to contact the intended recipient of the packing slip
without scaring them half to death, I plan to do so.

Prof. Tony Lima, Dept. of Economics, CSU, East Bay, tony.lima@csueastbay.edu
http://www.cbe.csueastbay.edu/~alima (510) 885-3889


When you're on vacation, your cruise line knows

Jeremy Epstein <jeremy.j.epstein@gmail.com>
Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:37:49 -0400

Burglars have always taken advantage of when people are away to perform
breakins.  A cruise line employee is charged with doing it using high tech
assistance—looking through cruise line reservations to find empty houses.
The string of burglaries was identified because all of the victims were on
Royal Caribbean cruises at the time of the breakins.  It was somewhat easier
to identify her because she had used her access card to get into the cruise
line's building and computers at odd hours.

Of course the same technique is feasible with airline or hotel reservations,
but I'm guessing it would be more work since people are more likely to leave
an empty house when they go on a cruise than simply flying somewhere (which
is less likely to be a whole family).

Nothing really new - just updating an old criminal technique using new
information gathering to "improve" the odds of success.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/06/11/vacationers.burglarized/index.html?hpt=T2


So you thought Linux was safe...

Mike Rechtman <mike@rechtman.com>
Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:02:53 +0300

The perception that Linux is impervious to security attacks has taken a knock
with the revelation that a popular open source version of IRC Server has been
left open to attack for more than six months.

http://news.techworld.com/security/3226723/linux-trojan-hits-unreal-irc-raises-malware-concerns/?olo=rss
(Watch out for line breaks)

and
http://forums.unrealircd.com/viewtopic.php?t=6562

Mike R. Home: http://alpha.mike-r.com/
QOTD: http://alpha.mike-r.com/php/qotd.php


Let Your Phone Do the Walking?

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:43:34 -0700

InfoWorld Home / Security Central / Security Adviser / Unintended
cell phone calls put privacy at risk
June 15, 2010
Unintended cell phone calls put privacy at risk
Supersensitive touchscreens can lead to accidentally sharing
conversations with the wrong people
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/unintended-cell-phone-calls-put-privacy-risk-158?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2010-06-15

Selected Paragraphs:

I called my brother last week, and we had a 30-minute phone
conversation. Over the next four days, and unbeknownst to him, his cell
phone called me back five additional times.

Once I could hear him talking work with a coworker. Another time he was
talking with our mother. Two other times, it sounded like his wife and young
kids were chatting. The most recent time was notable in that he was having a
private interaction that I am pretty certain neither he nor his wife meant
to be public.

I wonder how many company conversations, work secrets, and personal affairs
have been revealed by unintended dialing? Even more thought provoking: What
type of feature would be needed to prevent it? I say this because my last
two cell phones had features meant to prevent unwanted dialing, but they
haven't proven to be 100 percent effective.


Re: System failures in offshore drilling processes (RISKS-26.08)

Rob Seaman <seaman@noao.edu>
Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:03:14 -0700

I strongly agree with the spirit of Steve Loughran's observation regarding
the responsibilities of software engineering:

There was also one incident triggered by corrupted data transfer between
"terminals", causing the drilling rig getting invalid information about
where it should be, causing it to move. That is something where the blame
can be laid direct the door at we software developers.  Checksums: they are
there for a reason.

But I take exception to the implication that additional bit length is always
better for a specific application:

Even basic CRC32 checks catch most problems, and while MD5 and SHA-1
checksums are starting to look cryptographically weak, they certainly catch
data corruption.

A cyclic redundancy check is more sensitive to certain bit errors than a 2's
complement checksum - but is therefore rendered less sensitive to other bit
pattern errors.  Hashing is hashing, however.  Even a 16-bit hash,
appropriately used, will catch all but 1 in 65,000 errors (significantly
more than "most").  A 32-bit hash can detect 1 in 4 billion errors.  But how
many errors any hash will *miss* depends on the likely frequency of errors.

More frequent but shorter checksums may well be better than infrequent
longer checksums.  The resulting design questions key more on the logistics
of implementing a checksum (or other error detection/correction coding
technique) than on simply asserting that SHA-1 > MD5 > CRC > sum.  In
particular, cryptographic hashes are much more resource intensive than
checksums.

The 16-bit 1's complement checksum used by TCP/IP is surely the most widely
deployed checksum on the planet.  Its shortcomings are primarily a question
of enforcing compliance.  Brevity is appropriate for efficient handling of
similarly brief messages.  The 1's complement checksum also has the nifty
feature of being embeddable in the protected packet.

Whatever the hash functions, the engineering question they share in common
is having detected corruption, what should the system do about it?  A
corrupted data transfer is either the result of a noisy channel or often of
some more fundamental communications error.  Checksums are a great tool for
detecting problems - cleaning up those problems may require manual
intervention.

Rob Seaman, National Optical Astronomy Observatory

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