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…
Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service, via ACM TechNews, 22 Jun 2015 Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University have developed a device that can be concealed within pita bread and has the ability to deduce encryption keys by sniffing the electromagnetic leakage from a computer. The device is an example of a side-channel attack, which relies on the tiny bits of information that leak from computers as they perform computations. The device, dubbed PITA (Portable Instrument for Trace Acquisition) by the researchers, was designed to target a laptop encrypted using the GnuPG 1.x encryption tool. The device consists of a copper unshielded loop antenna and a capacitor designed to pick up the frequencies at which encryption key information leaks. PITA sends out multiple ciphertexts to the targeted computer and then monitors the computer's electromagnetic emissions as it decrypts the ciphertexts. The signals are collected on an internal microSD card for offline analysis, which can deduce the key from the data in a matter of seconds. Such side-channel attacks can be very difficult to defend against and hardware solutions are unlikely to appear due to their cost. A more likely method of defending against them would be modifying software so the information leaked when it runs will be of no use to an attacker. http://orange.hosting.lsoft.com/trk/click?ref=znwrbbrs9_5-dd1ex2cf6ex062958&
[ take a deep breath, RISKS readers... and don't forget to say "Me? Surprised?!!? hah!" ] Lucian Constantin. InfoWorld, 25 Jun 2015 Critical flaw in ESET products shows why spy groups are interested in antivirus programs <http://www.infoworld.com/author/Lucian-Constantin/> IDG News Service <http://www.idgnews.net/> | Jun 24, 2015 *The flaw could allow attackers to fully compromise systems via websites, email, USB drives, and other methods* Several antivirus products from security firm ESET had a critical vulnerability that was easy to exploit and could lead to a full system compromise. The discovery of the flaw, which has now been patched, comes on the heels of a report that intelligence agencies from the U.K. and the U.S. are reverse engineering antivirus products in search for vulnerabilities and methods to bypass detection..... The vulnerability in ESET products was discovered by Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy and was located in their emulator, the antivirus component responsible for unpacking and executing potentially malicious code inside a safe environment so that it can be scanned. The ESET products monitor disk input and output operations and when executable code is detected they run it through the emulator to apply the detection signatures.."Because it's so easy for attackers to trigger emulation of untrusted code, it's critically important that the emulator is robust and isolated," Ormandy said in a blog post <http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.ro/2015/06/analysis-and-exploitation-of-eset.html>. ... The vulnerability found by the Google researcher allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the highest system privilege. The flaw is particularly dangerous because it can be exploited in many ways,... Because it's so easy to exploit, the flaw can be used to create a computer worm that spreads from one computer to another, including on "air-gapped" networks though USB thumb drives,.. The vulnerability affects ESET Smart Security for Windows, ESET NOD32 Antivirus for Windows, ESET Cyber Security Pro for OS X, ESET NOD32 For Linux Desktop, ESET Endpoint Security for Windows and OS X and ESET NOD32 Business Edition. The company released a scanning engine update <http://www.virusradar.com/en/update/info/11824> Monday to fix the flaw, so users should make sure they update their products. The vulnerability was located in the emulation routine used by a particular scanner for a specific malware family and didn't affect the core emulation engine, ESET said. ... As a result of code-rewriting efforts to improve product quality, the company had already corrected the flaw, and it didn't exist in ESET's "pre-release" engine, which is available to all customers, the company said. This is not the first time that security researchers have found serious vulnerabilities in antivirus products. In 2012, Ormandy found critical vulnerabilities in Sophos Antivirus <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013580/researcher-finds-critical-vulnerabilities-in-sophos-antivirus-product.html> and last year he found a flaw that could be exploited to remotely disable the protection engine <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365040/maliciously-crafted-files-can-disable-microsofts-antimalware-products.html> used in many Microsoft antimalware products. Also last year, Joxean Koret, a researcher at Coseinc, found dozens of remotely and locally exploitable vulnerabilities in 14 antivirus engines. <http://www.computerworld.com/article/2490527/malware-vulnerabilities/many-antivirus-products-are-riddled-with-security-flaws.html> Unlike some other software applications, antivirus programs have a very large attack surface because they need to inspect many types of files and code written in different languages from various sources, including the Web and email; and file parsing has historically been a source of many vulnerabilities. For the past several years there's been a push to limit the privileges of widely used software applications. Some programs like Google Chrome or Adobe Reader use sandboxing mechanisms, making it significantly harder for attackers to exploit remote code execution vulnerabilities. However, antivirus products need to run with high privileges so they can effectively fight off threats, so it's very important that their code is solid...as this allow attackers to gain full control of a system by exploiting a single vulnerability, without having to worry about bypassing sandboxes or escalating privileges (according to Carsten Eiram, the chief research officer at vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security); 2.5% of the flaws recorded by Risk Based Security in its vulnerability database last year were for security products, including antivirus programs. The historical rate is 2.2% (of 10,000+). The Intercept reported <https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/22/nsa-gchq-targeted-kaspersky/> Monday that in 2008 GCHQ filed requests to renew a warrant that would have allowed the agency to reverse engineer antivirus products from Kaspersky Lab to find weaknesses. The NSA also studied antivirus products to bypass their detection (according to Edward Snowden). Earlier this month, Kaspersky Lab announced that some of its internal systems were infected with a new version of a sophisticated cyberespionage tool called Duqu. The attackers, who the company strongly believes were state-sponsored, were after Kaspersky's intellectual property, including information on its latest technologies and ongoing investigations. "It's neither new nor surprising that intelligence agencies are reverse engineering security products to find vulnerabilities, as well as ways to bypass their intended protection mechanisms," Eiram said. "It is, however, pretty concerning that they are also compromising security companies in order to steal intellectual property."
Jared Newman, PCWorld, 25 Jun 2015 The switch supposedly helps maintain driver compatibility, but raises security concerns in the process http://www.infoworld.com/article/2940634/security/samsung-sneakily-disables-windows-update-on-some-pcs.html opening text: Samsung has allegedly been disabling Windows Update on some computers, so as not to interfere with its own update tool.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/major-internet-providers-slowing-traffic-speeds Major Internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday. The study, conducted by Internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 Internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest Internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US.
FYI—"the OPM breach would cause more damage to national security operations and personnel than the leaks by Edward Snowden" Those at the US NSA, UK GCHQ, Chinese govt, Russian govt, etc., are totally thrilled by this OPM hack, because incidents like these provide the political fuel for far greater govt control over the Internet. Intelligence agencies all over the world, from any and all sides, gain power when govts move in to better "protect" their citizens from spies very like themselves. The fact that the U.S. govt is criminally negligent w.r.t. not protecting its employees own private data will be completely lost in all of the hand-wringing. The press has not been holding politicians' feet to the fire on this issue, either. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/hackers-stole-secrets-of-u-s-government-workers-sex-lives.html Hackers Stole Secrets of U.S. Government Workers' Sex Lives. 24 Jun 2015 Infidelity. Sexual fetishes. Drug abuse. Crushing debt. They;re the most intimate secrets of U.S. government workers. And now they;re in the hands of foreign hackers. It was already being described as the worst hack of the U.S. government in history. And it just got much worse. A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers' haul: information about workers' sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity.
Facebook has clearly forgotten that: "On the Internet, no-one knows you're a dog"!—says the man whose FB Profile picture is a dog, and who uses a pseudonym, albeit, with my given and family names below.
FYI—“If you write an exploit for an anti-virus product you're likely going to get the highest privileges (root, system or even kernel) with just one shot.'' Duh! Who watches the watchers ? (In this case virus-watchers...) "Software makers, fearing piracy, hacking and intellectual property theft, often forbid the practice in licensing agreements and sometimes protect the most sensitive inner workings of their software with encryption. Governments have passed laws, with digital media in mind, that strictly circumscribe tampering with this encryption. Software companies have also sued to block reverse engineering as copyright infringement..." Strange bedfellows: intelligence agencies team with "copyright maximalists" (DMCA, etc.), while reverse engineering like crazy. So much for "protecting the intellectual property of ordinary citizens". Mr. Comey doth protest too much, methinks. Andrew Fishman and Morgan Marquis-Boire, FirstLook, 22 Jun 2015 Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/22/nsa-gchq-targeted-kaspersky/ The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than 270,000 corporate clients, and says it protects more than 400 million people with its products. British spies aimed to thwart Kaspersky software in part through a technique known as software reverse engineering, or SRE, according to a top-secret warrant renewal request. The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab's software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities. The efforts to compromise security software were of particular importance because such software is relied upon to defend against an array of digital threats and is typically more trusted by the operating system than other applications, running with elevated privileges that allow more vectors for surveillance and attack. Spy agencies seem to be engaged in a digital game of cat and mouse with anti-virus software companies; the U.S. and U.K. have aggressively probed for weaknesses in software deployed by the companies, which have themselves exposed sophisticated state-sponsored malware. [Long item truncated for RISKS. PGN]
FYI—"George Orwell wrote this, right?", says Bob Hunter, insurance director for Consumer Federation of America. "The invention also teaches the monitoring and recording of data from onboard cameras and proximity sensors, as well as driver physiological monitoring systems. Also included within the invention is predictive modeling of future behavior as a function of recorded data an individual driver compared with other drivers within a database." "This analysis can allow assessment and comparison of a variety of life style/health factors" We're going to need "driving gloves" and/or a "driving wheel condom" before driving such Allstate-equipped cars. I wonder if capturing your physio data will become a requirement for renting a car? Note that the exact same information may already be available to companies like Fitbit, who can correlate physio data with cellphone data & report to insurance companies like Allstate. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/ct-allstate-patent-data-0618-biz-20150618-story.html Insurer monitoring your heart rate? Allstate's patent makes it possible *Sun Sentinel*, 18 Jun 2015 A new patent secured by insurer Allstate reveals an invention that has the potential to evaluate drivers' physiological data, including heart rate, blood pressure and electrocardiogram signals, which could be recorded from steering wheel sensors. Becky Yerak , *The Chicago Tribune* https://www.google.com/patents/US20140080100 An insurance company monitoring your heart rate through the steering wheel? Allstate's new patent opens door Could your bank or potential employer someday use data from your car? Attention tailgaters: Someday a bank or a potential employer considering your loan or your job application might become privy to your tendencies for aggressive driving. [Anthr lng itm trnctd. P.]
I respectfully disagree with Lauren's assessment of LA's Dean Logan's plans for future voting systems. First, let me agree on a couple points: 1) There are several privacy and integrity issues to be addressed, and the devil is in the details. 2) Whether or not the software involved is open-source does not, by itself, impart any amount of security, privacy, etc. for the system built from that source code. 3) Internet voting is still crazy, and there is nothing, nothing at all about Internet voting in the plans of the LA CC-RR for electronic voting. Then, in the "however" part: 3) LA's plans, as described in this article, are about in-person voting 2) Open source would however help with independent assessment of whether those devilish details have been handled well. 1) I myself prefer not to leap to judgment with "they never learn" but instead closely follow the development. My personal experience with the LA CC-RR organization is that they are well aware of these issues and quite diligent. Secondly, let me provide an explanation of why the QR-code idea is not by itself anything to worry about from an Internet voting perspective. Let's take this by steps from current practice (step 0). 0) Ballot-marking devices (BMDs) in polling places, that present a voter's ballot in that precinct, visually, collecting voter choices, then presenting all the choices for voter approval (or modification) and producing a paper ballot of record that is: reviewed by the voter, opscanned, and later part of a risk-limiting audit. 1) A similar BMD that operates in "vote center" mode capable of presenting any ballot style in the county to a voter. Just as in a precinct polling place there must be measures to ensure that each voter gets the proper ballot style, there must be similar measures in vote centers. 2) A similar BMD where the "collect the voter's choices" step is a pre-load of voter choices done by scanning a voter-presented paper item or screen content item. The same steps of presenting all the choices for review, etc., is followed as in (0). Local election officials might even choose to make the voter step through the ballot items sequentially with the pre-loaded choices, rather than skip to the "present all choices for approval or correction" step. There's nothing inherently Internet-voting-risky about this progression. That applies whether the paper item or screen content item is a QR code, bar code, or mass of human readable text that's OCR'd in the "pre load" step. There are, however, a separate set of issues about the process of a voter producing that paper item or screen content item, as a result of interacting with an "interactive sample ballot (ISB)" application that does a similar ballot presentation as a BMD, but produces that paper item or screen content item as a result. The ISB could be a native application like the Oregon "Alternative Format Ballot" tool that doesn't require a network connection. Or it could be a, ISB web application that's carefully constructed to deal with personal privacy and ballot anonymity issues. For a proposal of the latter system (which I contributed to) please see: http://ballot.ly and http://kng.ht/1Iz96Za That's intended to be in stark contrast to the existing online ballot marking tools that have some significant problems that some RISKS readers will be familiar with. Final point: it is possible to do this right, and I personally am confident that LA RR-CC will have the opportunity to do so. John Sebes CTO, OSET Foundation
"... very few employers seem interested in factoring [IT certifications] into their hiring process." With respect, Michael, your argument doesn't hold water. While I agree that real-world experience often trumps theoretical study, to disregard anyone out of hand merely because they possess a certificate (as you imply) is crazy. What about those of us who have both? Do you not even accept that someone making the effort to study and improve their knowledge, understanding and competence is a good thing? The certificate itself is just a piece of paper, but it represents something worthwhile. Given the choice, I'd personally be more confident about taking on a candidate with relevant certifications than one without - all else being equal. Dr Gary Hinson PhD MBA CISSP CEO of IsecT Ltd., New Zealand www.isect.com
FYI—The Cassandra Files, Part Whatever. Watch this hour-long video from 1998 and weep (again). Hackers Testifying at the United States Senate, May 19, 1998 (L0pht Heavy Industries) L0pht Heavy Industries testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Live feed from CSPAN, May 19, 1998. Starring Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Tan, Space Rogue, Weld Pond, Mudge, and Stefan von Neumann. This is the infamous testimony where Mudge stated we could take down the Internet in 30 minutes. Although that's all the media took from it, much more was discussed. See for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJldn_MmMY [PGN testified in the same session, with similar conclusions!]
Do you know of someone who should be nominated for the Cyber Security Hall of Fame? You have until the end of the day July 5 to submit a nomination! https://www.cybersecurityhof.org/> Please spread the word. Hall of Fame Inductees 2012 F. Lynn McNulty Martin Hellman Ralph Merkle Whit Diffie Dorothy Denning Roger Schell Peter Neumann Carl Landwehr Ron Rivest Adi Shamir Len Adleman Hall of Fame Inductees 2013 David E. Bell Jim Bidzos Eugene Spafford James Anderson Willis H. Ware Hall of Fame Inductees 2014 Paul Kocher Vint Cerf Phil Zimmerman Steve Bellovin Richard A. Clarke
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