Random bits

1 June 2010

There’s been some buzz (see here and here) over the deputy SECDEF’s comments last week:

“Individual users who do not want to enroll could stay in the ‘wild, wild west’ of the unprotected internet…I think it’s gonna have to be voluntary…People could opt into protection – or choose to stay out. Individual users may well choose to stay out…But it’s the vulnerability of certain critical infrastructure – power, transportation, finance. This starts to give you an angle at doing that.”

The idea that deploying Einstein more widely is anything more than a step towards a government-sponsored security monoculture escapes me. There is no way that this will get any real traction because it’s not like the USG can credibly claim that its own networks are secure. If Einstein is free, then companies might use it. But that’s about as far as that goes.

Other stuff:

“the vast majority of vulnerabilities, both client-side and server-side, are being sold for less than $5,000″

Point: “some of the most alluring approaches to assuring information security [and] why they fail to make a difference to regular users and businesses alike”

Counterpoint: “blaming security engineering for the impact of targeted attacks is a herring as red as they come”

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Random bits

19 May 2010

“like-sign dimuon charge asymmetry…in disagreement with the prediction of the standard model by 3.2 standard deviations”

OK, now VMs are totally safe! No need to worry about escape attacks or rootkits…but seriously, it’s good that not everyone takes hypervisor security for granted.

“there is now a significant body of work showing how to break conventional quantum cryptography systems based on various practical weaknesses in the way they are set up…while the known loopholes can be papered over, it’s the unknown ones that represent threats in the future…[researchers have shown that it's easy] with a little malicious intent to bend the assumptions behind perfect quantum cryptography.”

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Random bits

7 May 2010

Principles of Robust Timing Over the Internet

“[An IPv4 address space] black market already exists, albeit on a small scale…[currently] IPv4 addresses are still relatively easy to get…[some believe] that regional registries such as ARIN should head off a potentially deleterious black market by creating a “white market” with established rules for trading IPv4 addresses at market-established costs…But the opportunity to cleanly switch from IPv4 to IPv6 passed many years ago. The current transition strategy, called “dual stack,” requires businesses to remain connected to both IPv4 and IPv6 networks until most of the Internet gets to “the other side” — a process expected to take at least five years.”

“Frosted windows may never be private again”

“a fundamental limit to the level of privacy that is possible when social networks are mined for recommendations”

“The 605-page [NSA IAD] PDF document reads like a listing of the pros and cons for a huge array of defensive and counterintelligence approaches and technologies that an entity might adopt in defending its networks…[one] section delves into the challenges of attributing the true origin(s) of a computer network attack”

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Random bits

30 April 2010

“Who can do a better job of protecting us from cyberthreats: private companies like Google, or Uncle Sam?”

Cyberwings. That’ll raise morale. Or not.

Computer security on the Death Star was a joke

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Random bits

23 April 2010

“in [Richard Clarke's] Cyberwar, like in real war, truth is the first casualty”

Cyberdeterrence through tattlling? This is ridiculous. Not bloody likely that will work against serious hackers. And not bloody likely that it would be done in cases where potentially state-sponsored hackers were caught.

Cybersecurity and National Policy

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Random bits

5 April 2010

“A low-complexity approach for reconstructing average packet arrival rates and instantaneous packet counts at a router in a communication network, where the arrivals of packets in each flow follow a Poisson process”

“It’s safe to say that when someone pays that much for a bug, they’re not going to tell the vendor to patch it.”

“Regulation is not the primary driver for new technology, new investment, or new training; the threats are”

Protecting Europe against large-scale cyber attacks

Would you have spotted this ATM skimmer?

DoE and power grid security

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Random bits

15 March 2010

“I do believe NSA is still ahead, but not by much — a handful of years”

“[A researcher] gave a talk on his then current project to prove a certain OS kernel was secure…they hoped in two years to have a proof of the OS’s correctness. What struck me during his talk was he could write down on the board, a [formula that] captured the notion of data security: if a certain function f had this property, then he would be able to assert his OS could not leak any information…At the end of his talk I asked him if he wanted a proof now that his function f satisfied the formula. He looked at me puzzled, as did everyone else. He pointed out his f was defined by his OS, so how could I possibly prove it satisfied his formula—the f was thousands of lines of code. He added they were working hard on proving this formula, and hoped to have a full proof in the next 24 months…I walked to the board and wrote out a short set theory proof to back up my claim—any f had his property…I thought he would be shocked. I thought he might be upset, or even embarrassed his formula was meaningless. He was not at all. [He] just said they would have to find another formula to prove.”

“it’s possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material”

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Random bits

4 March 2010

Narus develops a scary sleuth for social media

An invisible quantum tripwire

Aspects of CNCI declassified

IPv6 thoughts from Arbor

“Hackers who breached Google and other companies in January targeted source-code management systems”

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Random bits

2 March 2010

Ryan Singel’s cri de coeur about cyberwar hype is too juicy to merely provide a link. A few choice excerpts:

The Washington Post gave [former DIRNSA and DNI] McConnell free space to declare that we are losing some sort of cyberwar…But that’s not warfare. That’s espionage…Those enamored with the idea of “cyberwar” aren’t dissuaded by fact-checking…[if the DoS attack on Estonia] was cyberwar, it’s pretty clear the net will be just fine. In fact, none of [the commonly cited examples] demonstrate the existence of a cyberwar, let alone that we are losing it. But this battle isn’t about truth. It’s about power…

the problem with developing cyberweapons…is that you need to know where to point them…The military needs targets…Never shy of extending its power, the military industrial complex wants to turn the internet into yet another venue for an arms race. And it’s waging a psychological warfare campaign on the American people to make that so. The military industrial complex is backed by sensationalism, and a gullible and pageview-hungry media…

There is no cyberwar and we are not losing it. The only war going on is one for the soul of the internet. But if…self-interested exaggerators dominate our nation’s discourse about online security, we will lose that war — and the open internet will be its biggest casualty.

On the opposite end of the nuance spectrum: more than 41% of the zeros of the zeta function are on the critical line.

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Random bits

1 March 2010

“We must break one fundamental assumption that [the malware creator] relies on: Malware uses replay attacks. In cryptography a replay attack is the re-use of a message to fool an encryption system. No one, today, would forget to add time stamps to their messages; otherwise, an attacker could simpler resend a message and defeat their security…[the malware creator] relies on this very type of attack everyday. If [he or she] has malware code capable of getting control of one machine, then it will also be able to get control of millions of other machines. This is a replay attack on a grand scale. …In order to stop replay attacks, I propose that we change the hardware so they are impossible.”

“Instead of running your websites through the gauntlet, risking downtime from intrusive scans, only to discover you have vulnerabilities just like everyone else — how about making the vendor eat their own dog food. Ask the sales rep for a trial license and permission to scan THEIR production commerce website(s).”

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