The RISKS Digest
Volume 27 Issue 5

Monday, 29th October 2012

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

NY Times article on changing voter registration addresses in WA and MD
Jeremy Epstein
Numerous voting machines... that count the wrong candidate
Danny Burstein
Paper prophets: Why e-voting is on the decline in the U.S.
Timothy B. Lee via Monty Solomon
"What's in a vote? Only your entire personal profile"
Cringely via Gene Wirchenko
Nissan steer-by-wire cars set for showrooms by 2013
Martyn Thomas
Mercedes-Benz concerned that car safety laws will crimp in-car apps, Internet connectivity, etc.
Lauren Weinstein
Texas schools punish students refusing to be tracked with microchips
Monty Solomon
Textbook publisher Pearson takes down 1.5M teacher and student blogs With A Single DMCA Notice
Robert Schaefer
Cancel your service? Certainly, ma'am; 11.7 quadrillion euros, please.
Mark Brader
Computer Viruses Are "Rampant" on Medical Devices in Hospitals
David Talbot via Jim Reisert
The Internet isn't the only modern convenience that can get backhoed
Dave Crooke
Credit Card Data Breach at Barnes & Noble Stores
Schmidt/Perlroth via Monty Solomon
"Amazon's DRM drama: Whose Kindle is it anyway?"
R.X.Cringely via Gene Wirchenko
Android apps used by millions vulnerable to password, e-mail theft
Lauren Weinstein
"Legit Android apps rendered unsafe by poor programming, SSL misuse"
Ted Samson via Gene Wirchenko
"Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo fix serious e-mail weakness"
Jeremy Kirk via Gene Wirchenko
How a Google Headhunter's E-Mail Unraveled Massive Net Security Hole
Lauren Weinstein
"What can be learned from the government's cybersecurity bungling"
Christine Wong via Gene Wirchenko
Pakistan to monitor all phone calls, e-mail, other Internet traffic
Lauren Weinstein
Re: "Hackers exploit Skype API to infect Windows PCs"
David Damerell
Re: Hotmail Password Length
Dennis E. Hamilton
Re: ACSAC 2012 early registration deadline is 12 Nov
Robert H'obbes' Zakon
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

NY Times article on changing voter registration addresses in WA and MD

Jeremy Epstein <jeremy.j.epstein@GMAIL.COM>
Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:21:40 -0400
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/us/politics/cracks-in-maryland-and-washington-voter-databases.html

Some of you saw this at EVT/WOTE and at USENIX Security, where Alex
Halderman did live demos of how easy it is.  The NYT article actually
understates how easy this is—the voter registration database for WA is
online for free (or at least it was a few months ago), and you can use that,
given just a person's name, to find their address, DOB, and last date voted.
I demonstrated this at an FBI cybersecurity conference (of course giving
credit to Alex!), and they were pretty surprised.

What the NYT article doesn't note is that because the public voter
registration database shows the last date voted, it's trivial to find
occasional voters, and use that to figure out who to target, especially if
you're trying to swing an off-year election.

This ties into the online voter registration issue for which the ACM has a
working group.


Numerous voting machines... that count the wrong candidate

Danny Burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:11:14 -0400 (EDT)
North Carolina e-machine has voters choosing (they claim [a]) Romney but the
machine records (and reports to them) a vote for Obama.

And as the story continues [b]:

  Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert says the
  problem arises every election. It can be resolved after the machine is
  re-calibrated by poll workers.  "It's not a conspiracy. It's just a
  machine that needs to be corrected," Gilbert said.

[a] have to put that cautionary disclaimer here, of course.

[b]
http://myfox8.com/2012/10/23/guilford-county-voters-say-they-voted-for-the-wrong-candidate/


Paper prophets: Why e-voting is on the decline in the U.S.

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:58:55 -0400
Timothy B. Lee, *Ars Technica*, Oct 22 2012
States see the virtue of paper ballots, but some lack funds to ditch e-voting.

Ernest Zirkle was puzzled. The resident of Fairfield Township in Cumberland
County, NJ, ran for a seat on his local Democratic Executive Committee on
June 7, 2011. The official results showed him earning only nine votes,
compared to 34 votes for the winning candidate.

But at least 28 people told Zirkle they voted for him. So he and his
wife-who also ran for an open seat and lost-challenged the result in
court. Eventually, a county election official admitted the result was due to
a programming error. A security expert from Princeton was called in to
examine the machines and make sure no foul play had occurred. Unfortunately,
when he examined the equipment on August 17, 2011, he found someone deleted
key files the previous day, making it impossible to investigate the cause of
the malfunction. A new election was held on September 27, and the Zirkles
won.

A decade ago, there was a great deal of momentum toward paperless electronic
voting. Spooked by the chaos of the 2000 presidential election in Florida,
Congress unleashed a torrent of money to buy new high-tech machines. Today,
momentum is in the opposite direction.  Computer security researchers have
convinced most observers that machines like the ones in Fairfield Township
degrade the security and reliability of elections rather than enhancing
them. Several states passed laws mandating an end to paperless
elections. But bureaucratic inertia and tight budgets have slowed the pace
at which these flawed machines can be retired.

Luckily, no e-voting catastrophes seem to have occurred. The irregularities
that have risen to public attention since 2006 have tended to be small-scale
or low-stakes incidents like the one in Fairfield Township. But lack of
high-profile failure is not an argument for complacency. If an election were
stolen by hackers in a state that used paperless voting machines, we
wouldn't necessarily be able to detect it. Just because a major disaster
hasn't happened in recent elections doesn't mean it can't happen in
2012. ...

http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/paper-prophets-why-e-voting-is-on-the-decline-in-the-united-states/


"What's in a vote? Only your entire personal profile"

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:40:15 -0700
Robert X. Cringely, *InfoWorld*, 17 Oct 2012
`All politics is personal' is truer than ever in the big data era --
especially in the hands of the Obama and Romney campaigns
https://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/whats-in-vote-only-your-entire-personal-profile-205149


Nissan steer-by-wire cars set for showrooms by 2013

Martyn Thomas <martyn@thomas-associates.co.uk>
Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:31:53 +0100
I especially liked this comment

  However, it signaled it hoped to be able to ditch the safety measure in
  the long term.  Masaharu Satou, a Nissan engineer. “Such as in the back
  seat, or it would be possible to steer the car with a joystick.  If we are
  freed from that, we would be able to place the steering wheel wherever we
  like.''  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19979380

I see a new industry opening up, of `e-chauffeurs', who drive your car
remotely (perhaps from a centre in low-cost country) while you read the
papers for your next meeting. Nothing could go wrong, surely?


Mercedes-Benz concerned that car safety laws will crimp in-car apps, Internet connectivity, etc.

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:06:44 -0700
  “Apps are the next phase of evolution for the connected car, yet safety
  laws could still completely remove or significantly limit in-vehicle
  infotainment.'' http://j.mp/OFluyB  (mkt1985 via NNSquad)

This is an area of increasing controversy.  I was a bit perturbed to see new
commercials from a luxury car maker promoting the fact that they had
replaced most physical controls with a touchscreen "like your phone!"  While
in-car control systems that use voice recognition can be seen as generally
safety-enhancing, anything that forces you to look away from driving—like
at a touch screen—rather than using knobs you can control by feel—seem
potentially problematic.


Texas schools punish students refusing to be tracked with microchips

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:51:13 -0400
9 October 2012

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it
announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards
at all times. Now, students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling
the repercussions.

Since 1 Oct, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School
in San Antonio, Texas, have been asked to attend class with photo ID cards
equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to track every
pupil's location. Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in
Texas to stem the rampant truancy devastating the school's funding. If the
program is judged successful, the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools
in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.

Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket
or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are
barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they
were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries. ...

http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/


Textbook publisher Pearson takes down 1.5M teacher and student blogs With A Single DMCA Notice

Robert Schaefer <rps@haystack.mit.edu>
Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:29:30 -0400
* What are the future/scaling implications of automated checking for
  dependencies over copyright?
* How much of the net could realistically be shut down by DMCA action or
  lawsuit?

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=beck's+hopelessness+scale

robert schaefer, Atmospheric Sciences Group, MIT Haystack Observatory
Westford, MA 01886  781-981-5767  http://www.haystack.mit.edu


Cancel your service? Certainly, ma'am; 11.7 quadrillion euros, please.

Mark Brader
Fri, 12 Oct 2012 01:39:53 -0400 (EDT)
We've seen cases of computerized overbilling before, but by a factor
of 10^14?

In Pessac, near Bordeaux, a newly unemployed young woman named Solenne San
Jose tried to terminate her account with Bouygues Telecom.  The phone
company sent her a final bill for 11,721,000,000,000,000 euros—“so many
zeroes that I didn't know how much it came out to.''  In fact it was 5,872
times last year's GDP for the whole country.

When she complained, the company first missed the point and offered her a
time-payment plan.  (It would have been interesting to know the details of
this.)  Then they said it should have been 117.21 euros, but there had been
a "printing error, not a billing error".  And they canceled the 117.21 euros
as well.

In English:
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19908095
In French:
  http://www.sudouest.fr/2012/10/10/la-facture-du-siecle-845407-2780.php
  http://www.leparisien.fr/high-tech/bouygues-telecom-reclame-a-une-cliente-des-centaines-de-milliards-d-euros-10-10-2012-2220287.php

  [Also noted by Richard Irvin Cook, noting that this amount is nearly
  6,000 times France's annual economic output.  PGN]


Computer Viruses Are "Rampant" on Medical Devices in Hospitals (David Talbot)

Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:45:32 -0600
David Talbot, *Technology Review*, 17 Oct 2012

A meeting of government officials reveals that medical equipment is becoming
riddled with malware.

Computerized hospital equipment is increasingly vulnerable to malware
infections, according to participants in a recent government panel.  These
infections can clog patient-monitoring equipment and other software systems,
at times rendering the devices temporarily inoperable.

While no injuries have been reported, the malware problem at hospitals is
clearly rising nationwide, says Kevin Fu, a leading expert on medical-device
security and a computer scientist at the University of Michigan and the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who took part in the panel discussion.

Software-controlled medical equipment has become increasingly interconnected
in recent years, and many systems run on variants of Windows, a common
target for hackers elsewhere. The devices are usually connected to an
internal network that is itself connected to the Internet, and they are also
vulnerable to infections from laptops or other device brought into
hospitals. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manufacturers often
will not allow their equipment to be modified, even to add security
features.

In a typical example, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, 664
pieces of medical equipment are running on older Windows operating systems
that manufactures will not modify or allow the hospital to change—even to
add antivirus software—because of disagreements over whether
modifications could run afoul of U.S. Food and Drug Administration
regulatory reviews, Fu says.

As a result, these computers are frequently infected with malware, and one
or two have to be taken offline each week for cleaning, says Mark Olson,
chief information security officer at Beth Israel.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429616/computer-viruses-are-rampant-on-medical-devices/

Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us


The Internet isn't the only modern convenience that can get backhoed

Dave Crooke <dcrooke@gmail.com>
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:31:13 -0500
The power just went out in a neighbouring building in the office park, but
ours is still on .... RISKS readers would expect some unnecessary service
disruption due to lack of backup power, perhaps telecoms, but the one thing
that isn't working was new to me: the sensor based flush and faucet
systems. I would have assumed these were standalone devices, but apparently
not - there are no manual override buttons, and you guessed it, automated
activation of the water valves by infrared sensor is apparently routed
through a computer in the other building with no backup power.

  [Dave, You think YOU had a bad day.  Check out the following outages.  PGN]

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/26/major-sites-and-platforms-experiencing-outages-today-including-dropbox-and-google-app-engine/
http://internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/26/google-app-engine-down-with-major-service-disruption-as-dropbox-and-tumblr-also-suffer/

  [and Hurricane Sandy is expected to leave millions without power.  PGN]


Credit Card Data Breach at Barnes & Noble Stores

"Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com>
Oct 24, 2012 8:46 AM
Michael S. Schmidt and Nicole Perlroth, *The New York Times*, 23 Oct 2012

Hackers have stolen credit card information for customers who shopped as
recently as last month at 63 Barnes & Noble stores across the country,
including stores in New York City, San Diego, Miami and Chicago, according
to people briefed on the investigation.  The company discovered around 14
Sep 2012 that the information had been stolen but kept the matter quiet at
the Justice Department's request so the F.B.I. could determine who was
behind the attacks, according to these people.  The information was stolen
by hackers who broke into the keypads in front of registers where customers
swipe their credit cards and enter their personal identification numbers, or
PINs. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/hackers-get-credit-data-at-barnes-noble.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/24/business/24barnes-and-noble-store-list.html
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/481338/barnes-and-noble-store-list.pdf


"Amazon's DRM drama: Whose Kindle is it anyway?" (R.X.Cringely)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:38:37 -0700
Robert X. Cringely, *InfoWorld*, 24 Oct 2012
A Kindle customer thought she owned her e-books—until she found that
Amazon erased them overnight.
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/amazons-drm-drama-whose-kindle-it-anyway-205634


Android apps used by millions vulnerable to password, e-mail theft

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:04:17 -0700
http://j.mp/RRuwGa  (This message on Google+)
http://j.mp/WE5nol  (ars technica via NNSquad)

  “Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can
  expose end users' online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail
  and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate
  encryption protections, computer scientists have found.''

This rather alarming looking headline refers to this research paper:
  http://j.mp/RRuTAn  (University of Hannover [PDF])

By and large, the paper describes issues related to known SSL/TLS/PKI
vulnerabilities and implementation/arguable user interface weaknesses that
are rather commonly present across most platforms, not just Android.  Some
of these could be avoided to some extent via automated code scanners (a
technology set that is gradually coming to various environments), but the
reality is that without severely restricting developer and site flexibility,
there is only so far we can go toward making these systems more (but still
not perfectly) bulletproof.  The paper also notes a number of methodological
limitations that make a full analysis somewhat problematic.  There are
really no big surprises here for anyone who studies crypto systems in the
Web environment, but obviously we must work to do better.  I'll be popping
back up for a couple of minutes on Coast to Coast AM radio tonight a bit
after 10 PDT to discuss this.  Lauren Weinstein


"Legit Android apps rendered unsafe by poor programming, SSL misuse" (Ted Samson)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:16:33 -0700
Ted Samson, *InfoWorld*, 22 Oct 2012
Researchers find Android shortcomings, combined with lazy
programming, expose otherwise malware-free Android apps to data theft
http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-security/legit-android-apps-rendered-unsafe-poor-programming-ssl-misuse-205418


"Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo fix serious e-mail weakness" (Jeremy Kirk)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:11:35 -0700
Jeremy Kirk, *InfoWorld*, 25 Oct 2012, Use of weak DKIM signing keys could
allow spoofed e-mail messages to look legitimate, US-CERT warned
https://www.infoworld.com/d/security/google-microsoft-and-yahoo-fix-serious-email-weakness-205683

interesting bit:

The issue came to light after Florida-based mathematician Zachary Harris was
sent an e-mail from a Google recruiter that used only a 512-bit key,
according to a report published Wednesday by Wired magazine.  Thinking it
might be some clever test by Google, he factored the key, then used it to
send a spoofed message from Sergey Brin to Larry Page, Google's founders.


"How a Google Headhunter's E-Mail Unraveled Massive Net Security Hole

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:56:52 -0700
http://j.mp/QXeppK  (Wired via NNSquad)
http://j.mp/QXdOnZ  (This message on Google+)

  “The problem lay with the DKIM key (DomainKeys Identified Mail) Google
  used for its google.com e-mails. DKIM involves a cryptographic key that
  domains use to sign e-mail originating from them - or passing through them
  - to validate to a recipient that the header information on an e-mail is
  correct and that the correspondence indeed came from the stated
  domain. When e-mail arrives at its destination, the receiving server can
  look up the public key through the sender's DNS records and verify the
  validity of the signature.''

Well, what appeared to be e-mail from a headhunter anyway.  But the irony
here is that DKIM is much less useful in preventing these kinds of
(spam-related, human engineering) attacks than might be thought, since (a)
most sites—including legit ones—don't routinely support it, and (b)
most email recipients are largely oblivious to any associated warnings.  So,
while DKIM indicating a problem with mail from the citi.com domain might be
noticed by some users running compatible MUAs (Message User Agents), mail
coming from a forged, non-DKIM supporting domain like citi-banking.com would
probably be accepted as reasonable by many or most recipients.  Lauren
Weinstein


"What can be learned from the government's cybersecurity bungling" (Christine Wong)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:07:23 -0700
One expert says whether you're the feds or an small business, a few basic
security principles are key. He lays them out for us here.
*IT Business, 24 Oct 2012
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=69172

redacted opening text:

Would you sleep at night knowing your business is only protected from
cybercriminals during regular banker's hours?  ... the recent
auditor-general's report ...  pointing out that the Canadian Cyber Incident
Response Centre (CIRC) only monitors suspicious stuff from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Coincidentally, Ottawa announced shortly before the A-G's report came out
that CIRC's hours will be extended to 15 hours per day. So if you're a
hacker, now you only have a daily nine-hour window when no one's really
minding the store.

In fact, Liberal safety critic Francis Scarpaleggia even wondered aloud why
CIRC isn't held to the same operating standards as, well—a store: “If
7-Eleven and Couche-Tard can stay open all night, why can't the Incident
Response Centre?''


Pakistan to monitor all phone calls, e-mail, other Internet traffic

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:00:44 -0700
  (so they claim)

  ISLAMABAD: All e-mail, telephone calls and other communications with the
  rest of the world will begin to be monitored within 90 days at a cost of
  million of dollars, according to a deadline given by the government to
  operators including PTCL.  The government has assigned PTCL and other
  operators to install monitoring equipment by the end of this year for
  checking voice and e-mail communications from abroad and the services of
  the country's spy agency will be used basically to check and curb
  blasphemous and obscene websites on the Internet.  “The regulator, the
  Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), has assigned 14 LDIs,
  including PTCL, to install this monitoring equipment,'' senior executive
  vice president of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL)
  Sikandar Naqi told *The News* on Thursday.  http://j.mp/RYUDLB
  (thenews.com.pk via NNSquad)


Re: "Hackers exploit Skype API to infect Windows PCs" (Samson, R 27 04)

David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:39:23 +0100
On closer examination, all Ted Samson's story seems to say is that if a
machine with Skype installed is compromised, the black hats can send URLs to
malware via Skype to other people. Obviously, any program that can
communicate a URL to another person has exactly the same "issue" - and would
be useless if it did not - so I'm unclear on how this reflects badly on
Skype's security, rather than on the wariness of Skype users.


Re: Hotmail Password Length (McKellar, RISKS-27.04)

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:01:41 -0700
I agree that good random 16 character passwords not reused elsewhere are
probably sufficient so long as the digests are never revealed.

Concerning the fact that characters beyond 16 were being ignored:

If the desire is to extend the usable length at some point, the first
problem is to have folks first revert to using only the currently accepted
16 characters and not entering discarded characters.  The change to disallow
longer passwords will accomplish that without forcing those with longer
passwords into a password reset ceremony.  After that, the door is open for
extending the limit in the future, also without invalidating anyone's
already-used password.


Re: ACSAC 2012 early registration deadline is 12 Nov

"Robert H'obbes' Zakon" <Robert@zakongroup.com>
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:47:47 -0400
How would you like to spend 3-5 days in a sunny location, learning and
networking with fellow security colleagues, while earning continuing
education credits?  Come join the 28th Annual Computer Security Applications
Conference (ACSAC) and hear keynotes from NIST, Google, University of
Cambridge (UK), and IARPA, along with 100 other presenters and trainers!

Whether your interest is web security, virtualization, cryptography,
botnets, usability, protection, privacy, or another security-related
specialty, you are sure to find plenty to learn about and discuss with your
colleagues at ACSAC 2012.

New for this year is the Cloud Computing Workshop, and a revamped Tracer
FIRE forensic and incident response exercise and competition.  Perennial
favorites such as the Layered Assurance Workshop, the FISMA training track,
and the NSPW Experience panel will also be back.  And you won't want to miss
your RISKS mailing list moderator's own panel on the Future of Application
Trustworthiness.

Program and Registration are available at www.acsac.org.  Early registration deadline is November 12th.

  [ACSAC continues to provide superb opportunities to share diverse
  knowledge, experiences, and fundamental perspectives relating to
  application security.  PGN]

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