The RISKS Digest
Volume 28 Issue 96

Monday, 28th September 2015

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

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

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Contents

Parallel testing for VW-like voting systems?
Zeynep Tufekci
VW Scandal: Premature Evaluations
Jean-Louis Gassée
U.S. and China establish cyber working group with Cold War-esque 'hotline'
Daily Dot
China-US hacking accord is tall on rhetoric, short on substance
David Kravets
Automated voice imitation can fool humans and machines
Science Daily
Cyber Costs Exceed Cyber Benefits Beyond 2019
Zurich Insurance via Tom Gray
TV vs. the Internet: Who Will Win?
Jacob Weisberg
Obama administration on encryption backdoors
WashPo
Smaller, Faster, Cheaper, Over: The Future of Computer Chips
John Markoff
Re: How to make the Internet worse for everyone except the slimeballs
David E. Ross
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Parallel testing for VW-like voting systems? (Zeynep Tufekci)

"Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Fri, 25 Sep 2015 11:05:53 PDT
Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software
Zeynep Tufekci, The New York Times, 23 Sep 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/opinion/volkswagen-and-the-era-of-cheating-software.html?_r=0

  [excerpt related to voting]

Computational devices that are vulnerable to cheating are not limited to
cars. Consider, for example, voting machines. Just a few months ago, the
Virginia State Board of Elections finally decertified the use of a
touch-screen voting machine called AVS WinVote.  It turned out that the
password was hard-wired to admin default password so common that it would be
among the first three terms any hacker would try. There were no controls on
changes that could be made to the database tallying the votes. If the
software fraudulently altered election results, there would be virtually no
way of detecting the fraud since everything, including the evidence of the
tampering, could be erased.

If software is so smart and its traces of tampering are possible to erase,
does this mean that we have no hope of catching cheaters? Not at all. We
simply need to adopt and apply well-known methods for testing computing
devices.

First, smart objects must be tested in the wild and not just in the lab,
under the conditions where they will actually be used and with methods that
don't alert the device that it's being tested. For cars, that means putting
the emissions detector in the tail pipe of a running vehicle out on the
highway. For voting machines that do not have an auditable paper trail, that
means parallel testing randomly selecting some machines on Election Day, and
voting on them under observation to check their tallies. It is otherwise too
easy for the voting machine software to behave perfectly well on all days of
the year except, say, Nov. 8, 2016.  [...]

  [Interesting notion, although most likely still not *good enough*.
  Parallel testing can still fail to detect serious insider misuse,  PGN]

  [John Murray commented to me: It's shameful that casino slot machines have
  better scrutiny of their software than the code running our voting
  machines, cars, and many other vital objects, including medical devices
  and even our infrastructure.  PGN]


VW Scandal: Premature Evaluations (Jean-Louis Gassée)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sun, 27 Sep 2015 17:12:42 -0400
Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note

This week, we were shocked by the revelation that Volkswagen has been
cooking their diesel emissions scores. Is it time to get serious about
electric cars?

As soon as news of the Volkswagen engine management software cheat broke
out, I thought of writing a Monday Note titled The VW Diesel Cockroach,
referring to the Cockroach Theory: If you see one emerging from under the
sink, there must be a lot more whence it came. Specifically, when I saw that
the number of cheating diesel VW vehicles was initially pegged at 500,000 in
the US, I thought there had to be many, many more.

We're now told that 11 million Volkswagens were rigged with software that
figures out if the car is being tested (by measuring the vehicle's speed,
steering wheel position, and so on) and then manipulates the engine in a way
that achieves artificially clean emission scores—manipulations that would
cripple performance out on the road.

There's no telling how far the emissions scandal will spread. Heads have
already rolled at the Wolfsburg company; politicians hungry for exposure --
and expiation for having whitewashed past cronyism—are getting into the
act as they demand large-scale, random, real-life emission tests.

http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/09/27/vw-scandal-premature-evaluations/


U.S. and China establish cyber working group with Cold War-esque 'hotline' (Daily Dot)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Fri, 25 Sep 2015 12:36:08 -0700
Daily Dot via NNSquad
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/us-china-cybercrime-working-group-cyber-norms/

  President Barack Obama announced Friday that the United States and China
  have agreed to establish a new working group for combating cybercrime,
  potentially paving the way for more extensive cooperation between two
  countries locked in a fierce and costly digital rivalry.  The working
  group, composed of senior law-enforcement and intelligence officials from
  both nations, will evaluate how the two major powers respond to each
  other's requests for assistance fighting "malicious cyber activity," the
  White House said in a statement. The group will hold its first meeting
  before the end of the year, with subsequent meetings occurring twice per
  year.

The technical term for this is "a hypocritical joke"—from both sides!


China-US hacking accord is tall on rhetoric, short on substance (David Kravets)

*Hendricks Dewayne* <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Sunday, September 27, 2015
David Kravets, Ars Technica, 27 Sep 2015
Hacks like the one on Office of Personnel Management don't run counter to
the deal.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/analysis-china-us-hacking-accord-is-tall-on-rhetoric-short-on-substance/

  But even assuming both sides would follow the pact, the accord is tall on
  rhetoric and short on substance. The deal, for instance, defines the
  method of enforcement as requiring the two nation's to create a
  "high-level joint dialogue mechanism," according to a joint statement from
  Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security chief Jeh
  Johnson. More important, the two superpowers make no commitment not to
  hack one another for intelligence-gathering purposes. That means the
  recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management's background
  investigation data--5.6 million sets of fingerprints from US federal
  employees, contractors and other federal job applicants--doesn't run
  counter to the accord. The OPM hack is believed to have originated in
  China and the data, as Ars has previously reported, is "in the hands of
  the foreign intelligence services of China."


Automated voice imitation can fool humans and machines (Science Daily)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Sun, 27 Sep 2015 18:14:10 -0700
Science Daily via NNSquad
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150926220834.htm

  Researchers have found automated and human verification for voice-based
  user authentication vulnerable, and explore how an attacker in possession
  of voice audio samples could compromise a victim's security, safety and
  privacy.


Cyber Costs Exceed Cyber Benefits Beyond 2019 (Zurich Insurance)

"Tom Gray" <tom_gray_grc@yahoo.com>
Sep 26, 2015 14:33
  [via Dave Farber]

Cyber costs threaten to exceed benefits
<http://knowledge.zurich.com/cyber-risk/cyber-costs-threaten-to-exceed-benefits/?WT.mc_id=z_cp_b2b_ba_4250369_8745264_2086635_122110636_63013356>


Could the Internet cost your business more than it' worth? A new report
offers a surprising answer that you won't want to miss.


TV vs. the Internet: Who Will Win? (Jacob Weisberg)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 26 Sep 2015 10:39:43 -0400
Jacob Weisberg, *The New York Review of Books*
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/oct/08/tv-vs-internet-who-will-win/


Obama administration on encryption backdoors (WashPo)

Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
Thu, 24 Sep 2015 14:23:58 -0700
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-ponders-how-to-seek-access-to-encrypted-data/2015/09/23/107a811c-5b22-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

On 13 Jul 2015, Deputies asked the encryption working group to prepare for
Principals' consideration guidance on

(1) key trade-offs identified through its analysis of possible technical
    approaches; and
(2) the lessons learned from that analysis.

This document provides that assessment and further identifies technical
challenges for which the working group was unable to identify solutions and
potential policy principles that could guide any engagement by the United
States Government with industry on encryption issues.  To facilitate
Principals' analysis and discussion, this document includes the four
technical approaches to implementing accessible encryption developed by the
working group developed.  However, these approaches are intended as
proofs-of-concept and Deputies agree that the approaches should not be
advanced as affirmative Administration proposals or shared outside the
United States Government.

Lessons Learned.  Encryption working group participants have identified four
key lessons that should inform any consideration of technical proposals to
enable targeted lawful access to encrypted data.

There is no one-size-fits-all technical approach.  No single approach can
enable access to encrypted information across all media and providers.  Each
type of encryption will require unique technical approaches, and each
particular company would need to implement approaches specific to their
implementation of encryption in the products and services it offers.
Further, enabling lawful access to some forms of encrypted data, should
companies be willing to do so, will be easier with some implementations than
others.

Different encryption implementations require different approaches.  From a
technical perspective, encryption can be divided into three categories: the
encryption of data stored on devices held by consumers; the encryption of
communications in transit between parties; and the encryption of data stored
in remote locations (e.g., cloud-based storage of backups).  Each type of
encryption carries different security risks, policy implications, and
technical challenges - and maintaining clarity in technical and policy
discussions is essential to identifying potential options.  For example, one
approach to enabling access to data on devices could be through limiting to
only those with physical access to the device, which reduces the security
risks of such access and limits the ability for abuse.  Similarly, the
nature of communications encryption poses particular challenges to law
enforcement access solutions that do not exist for stored data (whether in
the cloud or on devices)

Intended use cases should drive proposed technical approaches.  Law
enforcement may seek access to encrypted data in a variety of scenarios, and
the particular circumstances will substantially change the requirements of
how a provider might enable that access.  For example, law enforcement
seeking to use encrypted data to stop an impending attack or crime needs
rapid access while law enforcement seeking to use data on a seized device to
make a case against a defendant could accept a slower solution.  Similarly,
efforts to compel access to encrypted data held by sophisticated criminals
like terrorists and organized crime may be unsuccessful if the fact that
such compulsion is possible is widely known because such criminals will
choose to use inaccessible alternatives.  On the other hand, unsophisticated
criminals or individuals responsible for crimes of passion, may be less
likely to switch to technology products and services that are inaccessible
to law enforcement.

Technical approaches can be enforced in multiple ways.  The technical
requirements of a particular proposed solution (for instance, that law
enforcement may only access data on a single device as part of each request)
could be enforced in multiple ways.  It could be enforced through a law,
through Executive branch policy, or through technological limitations built
into the device or service itself.  However, some technologists, civil
society, and companies may perceive any government access as an attempt to
obtain widespread, non-targeted access for bulk collection purposes.
Accordingly, those communities almost certainly will be unlikely to trust
limitations enforced through policy or law, and will be more likely to be
satisfied by those enforced through technology.

Technical Challenges.  The working group also identified several technical
challenges for which there is no clear solution.  Although technical
approaches to enable lawful access to encrypted data may be able to mitigate
some of the public safety challenges posed by encryption, these challenges
mean that inaccessible encryption will always be available to malicious
actors.

Strong encryption is increasingly available in global technology products
and services.  Unlike the crypto wars of the 1990s, encryption is no longer
solely available to governments.  Established companies and independent
developers in many countries around the world are developing encrypted
products and services.  Further, encryption can be implemented purely
through software and effective encryption implementations are increasingly
available in the public domain.  As a result, encrypted products and
services will always be available to malicious actors, including in
countries that do not adopt an accessibility regime.

Encrypted products and services often use open source software for
implementation.  Many encryption solutions are open-source projects
developed by communities of volunteers that are based in multiple countries.
For example, the predominant implementation of the encryption protocol used
to secure web sites for e-commerce transactions is open source.  Most of
these solutions are made available free of cost, and are not distributed by
any single institution, but shared on a peer-to-peer basis.  As a result,
there may be no central authority that can update these solutions to comply
with any requirements for implementing encryption in a manner that would
support law enforcement access.

Inaccessible encryption can be layered on top of accessible encryption.
Because encryption solutions are often implemented through software,
individuals using a device with accessible encryption can easily install an
inaccessible software encryption solution on the device.  For example, if
Apple or Google were to change their mobile phones to allow for decryption
of the device pursuant to lawful process, a user could still download a
mobile application that could allow for encrypted communications (e.g.,
Skype).  Layered encryption means that, even if all core U.S. services and
devices have accessible encryption, individuals will be able to defeat
attempts to access their information.

Proposed Policy Principles

Deputies agreed that attempts to build cooperation with industry, vice
proposing specific technical solutions, will offer the most successful
option for making progress on this issue.  In particular, given industry and
civil society's combative reaction to government statements to date, any
proposed solution almost certainly would quickly become a focal point for
attacks and the basis of further entrenchment by opposed parties.  Rather
than sparking more discussion, government-proposed technical approaches
would almost certainly be perceived as proposals to introduce backdoors or
vulnerabilities in technology products and services and increase tensions
rather build cooperation.

However, if the United States Government were to provide a set of principles
it intends to adhere to in developing its encryption policy, such a document
could spark public debate.  Proposing such principles would not be without
risk, as some constituencies may not distinguish between principles and
specific technical approaches.  As a result, these principles could come
under attack, but could also serve to focus public or private conversation
on practicalities and policy trade-offs rather than whether the government
is seeking to weaken encryption or introduce vulnerabilities into technology
products and services.

Based on the lessons learned from the initial technical review, the
encryption working group has developed a set of principles that could guide
the United States Government's engagement with the private sector on
encryption.  While all of the principles should inform private discussions
with industry, some, all, or none of them could be incorporated into any
public debate.

1.  No bulk collection.  Any approach to enable lawful access should focus
    on enabling targeted - as opposed to bulk—access to decrypted
    information.

2.  No unilateral government access.  Approaches should not provide golden
    keys to government or allow government to access decrypted information
    without the assistance of a third party.

3.  Technologically-enforced limits.  To the extent possible, approaches
    should rely on technology, rather than procedural protections, to
    enforce constraints on government access.

4.  International adoption.  The United States Government will accept that
    any U.S.-proposed solution will be adopted by other countries.

5.  Maximize security and minimize complexity.  Any accessibility regime
    carries the inherent risk that a malicious actor could exploit that
    accessibility for malicious ends.  As a result, any accessibility regime
    should be designed to minimize complexity (a key factor that increases
    risk of vulnerability) and maximize security.

6.  Minimize impact of malicious exploitation.  No technical approach can be
    implemented in a manner that guarantees perfect security.  Accordingly,
    any accessibility regime must be designed to limit the impact of a
    successful exploit by a malicious actor.  For instance, a device access
    regime that requires physical access to the device would limit the
    impact of an exploit because a malicious actor would have to have
    physical possession of a targeted device.

7.  Minimize negative impact on innovation.  Certain access regimes could
    limit technical innovation by closing the door to certain types of
    encryption solutions.  For example, current best practices for
    communications encryption requires that each new message be encrypted
    using a distinct key—a principle called forward secrecy that
    mitigates the consequences of an exploit by ensuring that any single key
    only exposes a single communication.  A technical approach that
    implemented accessible encryption in a manner that makes forward secrecy
    impossible would limit innovation and hamper efforts to better secure
    communications.  In this vein, any accessibility requirement should be
    designed in such a way that it minimizes any negative impact on
    innovation.

8.  No one-size-fits-all approach.  No single accessible solution that could
    work for all types of encryption or all developers.  Providers, not the
    government should be responsible for determining how to design any
    feasible approaches into their products and services.

    Avoid undermining trust in security.  The modern Internet ecosystem
    relies on all participants trusting the security of their communications
    and data.  Any technical approach should be tailored to avoid
    undermining this trust.

9.  [empty]

Technical Proofs of Concept

Technical experts in the working group developed several proof-of-concept
technical approaches that could theoretically enable access to some types of
encrypted data.  Working group participants agreed that all of these
proposals were technically feasible, although they disagreed as to the value
and viability of each of the solutions.  Further, working group participants
agreed that these proposals should be seen as only examples, and would need
to go through substantial revision and refinement if they were to be further
pursued.

Provider-enabled access to encrypted devices based on physical control of
the device.  For this approach, providers would modify the hardware of their
devices to include an independent, physical, encrypted port.  The provider
would maintain a separate set of keys for its customers' devices that would
enable it to decrypt those devices, but only if it had physical access to
the device itself.  If law enforcement seized an encrypted device that it
could not access, it would secure lawful process from a U.S. court and
submit the device itself, along with the lawful process, to the provider.
The provider would use its secondary key to unlock the device, and provide
the resulting data back to law enforcement.  Making a hardware modification
would impose significant cost on U.S. manufacturers, but requiring physical
access to enable decryption substantially reduces the cybersecurity risk of
a secondary access point, and limits the risk of abuse by malicious actors
and foreign government entities.  This solution would provide access only to
devices (although some communications stored on the device could be
accessible as well), and would not prevent a customer from installing a
secondary layer of encryption on top of the device encryption.

Provider-enabled remote access to encrypted devices through current update
 procedures.  Virtually all consumer devices include the capability to
 remotely download and install updates to their operating system and
 applications.  For this approach, law enforcement would use lawful process
 to compel providers to use their remote update capability to insert law
 enforcement software into a targeted device.  Once inserted, such software
 could enable far-reaching access to and control of the targeted device.
 This proposal would not require physical modification of devices, and so
 would likely be less costly for providers to implement.  It would also
 enable remote access, and make surreptitious access much less costly.
 However, its use could call into question the trustworthiness of
 established software update channels.  Individual users, concerned about
 remote access to their devices, could choose to turn off software updates,
 rendering their devices significantly less secure as time passed and
 vulnerabilities were discovered by not patched.

Remote access enabled only when multiple parties, each of which holds a
partial key, participate.  In this approach, a secondary decryption key is
divided across multiple recovery parties.

These parties would provide their sub-keys either to the provider or to law
enforcement under court order to enable reconstruction of the encryption key
and decryption of the data.  This approach would enable remote and
surreptitious access to data stored both in devices and remote databases.
it would also limit the risk of exploit by requiring any attacker to
infiltrate multiple recovery entities to secure a complete recovery key.
However, it is important to note that this approach would be complex to
implement and maintain, as it would require a network of independent
recovery parties which could then be validated by trusted third parties.

Remote access to data stored on encrypted devices enabled by providers
implementing a forced backup of the data to an alternate, accessible
location.  The approach relies on providers being able to remotely backup
information stored in an encrypted location to a different location that is
not encrypted.  Pursuant to lawful process, the provider would turn on
remote backup, and provide the resulting backed-up information to law
enforcement.  This solution could be implemented with notice to the customer
(for instance, a dialog box on their device could indicate that remote
backup is being enabled, and could indicate that it is happening in response
to a law enforcement request or not) / or could be done surreptitiously.
For many providers, enabling this proposal would require designing a new
backup channel, or substantially modifying an existing channel.


Smaller, Faster, Cheaper, Over: The Future of Computer Chips (John Markoff)

*Hendricks Dewayne* <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Sunday, September 27, 2015
  [via Dave Farber]

John Markoff, *The New York Times*, 27 Sep 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/technology/smaller-faster-cheaper-over-the-future-of-computer-chips.html


Re: How to make the Internet worse for everyone except the slimeballs (Risks 28.94)

"David E. Ross" <david@rossde.com>
Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:57:28 -0700
Advertisements also appear on television and radio, in newspapers and
magazines, and on billboards along our highways.  Those who decry the use of
ad-blockers on the Internet need to consider where the logical path of their
position leads.

Action to prevent ad-blockers must therefore have a very broad scope.  Mute
buttons on TV remotes should be prohibited, and I should not be allowed to
run to the bathroom during long commercial breaks on TV.  I should be
blocked from switching radio stations or turning off the radio while
driving.  If ad-blocking is prohitibed for the Internet, I must also be
forced to read every ad in my morning newspaper and stop my car to carefully
read every billboard.

No. I can choose to be deaf and blind to advertisements in other media.  Why
can I not choose to block advertisements on the Internet?  What is it about
the Internet that mandates its advertisements on me, something other media
cannot do?

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