antiworm

There has been a great deal of discussion about voting systems in the security community following the well documented problems with electronic voting systems in recent American elections, notably those of 2000 and 2004. A new system promises dramatic improvements in the security of voting systems. The Punchscan voting system looks like a big step in the right direction. For background information, see this primer by Bruce Schneier on The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines . To strike an even bigger blow for democracy, the Punchscan system should be extended so that it can support Instant Runoff Voting (aka Ranked Choice Voting) . Technorati Tags: democracy , election , encryption , punchscan , voting

Recently there have been a spate of incidents in which U.S. federal government agencies reported data theft or loss, particularly data which could result in identity theft. The losses include the contact information and social security numbers of, literally, millions of federal employees and contractors. Most of these recent incidents were the result of stolen laptop hardware, USB Key fobs, or other computer hardware, although at least two involved unspecified intrusions (electronic theft of the data following a break-in to an online system). In the past several months, as the reports of stolen servers, hard drives, laptops, and USB key fobs have mounted, I've only seen two disclosed instance of an intrusion (in one case apparently targeted) which resulted in the theft of identity data concerning 1,502 people at the Department of Energy: Energy ups security efforts after loss of employee data and 26,000 people at the Department of Agriculture: U.S. Department of Agriculture h...

Within a few years it's possible that encryption will be the norm in government data storage, and probably large organizations, too. The historical inevitability of this process was given a boost recently. The OMB has provided guidance requiring Federal agencies to take the security of desktop and laptop systems more seriously (see: OMB Sets Guidelines for Federal Employee Laptop Security )in the wake of recent disclosure of several massive losses of data which could lead to identity identity theft . Here are a few stories describing recent incidents which have prompted the concern and gained the attention of the OMB: Navy Finds Data on Thousands of Sailors on Web Site Afghan market sells US military flash drives FTC Loses Personal Data on Identity-Theft Suspects US veterans' data exposed after burglary Veterans Affairs warns of massive privacy breach Officials: Veterans Affairs Department Ignored Repeated Warnings on Data Security Latest Information on Veterans Affai...

A new zero-day exploit of Microsoft Excel has me pondering a standard bit of security advice, "be careful what you click." This meme survives to be repeated at nearly every outbreak, yet it simply isn't very effective. You've probably seen a story or blog post about this already, but in case you haven't here's the alert from the Microsoft technet blog which got me thinking: Reports of new vulnerability in Microsoft Excel " In order for this attack to be carried out, a user must first open a malicious Excel document that is sent as an email attachment or otherwise provided to them by an attacker. (note that opening it out of email will prompt you to be careful about opening the attachment) So remember to be very careful opening unsolicited attachments from both known and unknown sources." Many online article and blog postings repeated this advice, unquestioningly. Some folks even praised it, including the respected security professional Bria...

Security Auditors can be a clever lot, sometimes a bit too clever. You really need to have someone on staff looking over their shoulder throughout the entire audit, from planning through probing, and reporting. If you don't have someone on staff qualified to watch them, you need an independent consultant. A very sharp generalist would do, but someone experienced in security would be better. Basically you need a check and balance system in place, to keep stories like the following from happening to your organization. First the context. The auditors created a custom Trojan, planted it in amidst various other files on USB drives, and seeded them in parking lots and areas of the client's work area where they would likely be discovered by customers. Which, of course, they were. Here's what they say about the experience: Social Engineering, the USB Way I had one of my guys write a Trojan that, when run, would collect passwords, logins and machine-specific information fr...

The recent article Does open source encourage rootkits? [NetworkWorld] discusses a McAfee report, "Rootkits", in which McAfee lays the blame for rootkits at the door of the open source community by name, security researchers by implication, and unwittingly at the very doorstep of information sharing -- books, libraries, and printed material. The report was issued due to a large jump in the number of rootkits they detected (nine times as many this quarter as the year ago quarter - a dramatic increase). They specifically blame rootkit.com . The unstated basis for their argument is a classic tension between open sharing of information about security vulnerabilities on the one hand and secret cabals of security research on the other. McAfee is clearly coming down for the "keep it secret to be safe" camp. Most independent security researchers reject this argument, because industry has a very long track record of totally ignoring security issues until they are made p...

The New York Times today features an interesting article today, " A Sinister Web Entraps Victims of Cybrerstalking " [annoying but free registration probably required]. The article does a nice job of describing the problem, but it doesn't say much about how to protect yourself. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult.

You should never throw out any piece of paper with any contact information on it. Any such papers should be shredded, rather than tossed out. In particular, never throw out credit card statements, always shred them, preferably in a cross-cut shredder. If you are not taking the risk of identity theft seriously, this article on " The Torn Up Credit Card Application " should strike an appropriate amount of fear, just enough to convince you to buy a small home-office shredder. Technorati Tags: identity theft

The breeding ground for the computer virus will be expanding continually and rapidly over the next decade as appliances, automobiles, and all manner of other things become equipped with wireless networking and miniature computers. Cell phone and similar networks may enable worms to leap between devices over long distances and other networks over short distances. Researchers have recently demonstrated that RFID tags may be vulnerable next. Articles on the topic: RFID worm created in the lab [NewScientist.com] Viruses leap to smart radio tags [BBC.co.uk] RFID tags could carry computer viruses [SecurityFocus.com] The details for the curious: RFID Viruses and Worms The AntiVirus paradigm that we [the IT community and industry] have foisted upon PC users is already breaking down under the strain of too many virus variants and too many non-technical PC users. The paradigm probably won't work at all for cell phones and the paradigm is completely broken for the typical RFID devic...

False positives are the bane of AntiVirus and IDS/IPS systems. On the one hand, hundreds and even thousands of new threats are released each week, where they must be discovered, submitted to vendors, analyzed by vendors, definitions, signature files or heuristic algorithms must be tweaked, tested, released to customers, and finally deployed to customer systems. All of this must be done in as short a time as possible, since the threats often spread in minutes and hours. AntiVirus signatures are often available within two days from the first appearance of a threat on the network. Polymorphic techniques, even simple ones like automatically generating dozens or more variants at the threat's compile time, are becoming more common making it more difficult for AntiVirus vendors to keep up with the expanding threat pool every year. Today we learned that an error in a signature file caused the McAfee AntiVirus system to delete good files from production systems. This unfortunate acciden...

I noticed this tidbit from a Gartner researcher quoted in a story about the recently disclosed PIN theft. PIN Scandal "Worst Hack Ever;" Citibank Only The Start "That's the irony, the PIN was supposed to make debit cards secure," Litan said. "Up until this breach, everyone thought ATMS and PINs could never be compromised."    - Avivah Litan, Gartner I wish the reporter or Gartner researchers would have checked with me or someone else who has direct experience auditing software systems. I've been warning my clients for years about the security exposure from data retention for e-commerce and credit card transaction systems and I know a number of other security professionals who've been doing the same. In fact, given the number of thefts of credit card data stolen from 3rd party web sites that have occurred in recent years it's unlikely that this is the first PIN number theft to have occurred, counter to the implication in this story. I...

This whitepaper spoof was written a couple years ago. I tripped over it by accident, and was rewarded with health boosting laughter. Microsoft Windows: A lower Total Cost of 0wnership

Botnets are the big guns in the Identity Theft world, ripping millions of identities from hard drives around the world -- not just home users, but web servers and database servers getting thousands or tens of thousands or millions pieces of data at once. However, low tech methods of data harvesting are still used. Low tech methods, too, appear to be evolving as increasingly organized, larger scale efforts are being uncovered, paralleling what we see in the internet security world. The canonical examples of organized crime driving spyware, worms and botnets has been shady advertising schemes. However, it's clear that identity theft is also a driver. But what drives the identity theft? Well, money obviously, but apparently drugs are behind some of it, too. The North County Times (San Diego) has an interesting story with quite a few details about one gang of Meth users turning to identity theft to pay for their habit . Apparently 14,000 credit card numbers were gathered by t...

This phishing scam, targeted at customers of Chase bank, is simple and direct. Fear it. Well, at least be aware of the general tendency of phishing scams to exploit basic human trust relationships with increasing sophistication. They get better and better every day, and they are building up quite a library of clever tricks. It looks like it came from your bank. The text is simple, direct, clear, and free from glaring grammatical errors. It appears to be a simple request. The apparent source of the email is obscured. It appears to be from: Chase Online Services Team It exploits the HTML processing ability of most modern email clients to obscure the actual target of the "click here" link (which I've removed, but which was obviously something other than chase.com.) Here's the simplest, most direct, most likely to succeed phishing scam email I've seen to date: Dear Chase Member: We have processed your request to change your e-mail address, based upon...

Microsoft's regularly scheduled (once a month) security updates have received a great deal of criticism in the security community. The practice delays (in theory up to a month) the rollout of vital Windows patches and leaves customers exposed to worms, viruses, adware, spyware and outright hacking for more calendar days than the previous ad-hoc rollout of patches (e.g. as soon as they were ready). In today's world, where exploit code and worms show up within hours or days, these delays can be devastating. The monthly patch strategy has probably helped Microsoft with one key metric -- reducing the number of headlines per month about the latest vulnerability. In the months before Microsoft changed from ad-hoc security patch releases to a monthly schedule, negative security headlines were appearing almost daily. These headlines had begun percolating into the public unconscious, contributing generally to a vague but increasingly common perception that Windows is "insecure...

What can the botmaster 0x80's impending misfortune [1] teach us about information security? Quite a bit. What the botmaster and the reporter didn't count on is a security risk known as "the aggregation problem" or "point and click aggregation". It's not surprising, as even practicing security professionals are often unaware of this problem, or vaguely aware of the concept but not the name. Information Security dictionaries online generally lack the terms, and don't mention them in their discussion of "disclosure" either. The aggregation problem happens when a series of small facts, any one of which if disclosed present a minimal security risk, combine to present a greater security risk when disclosed together. When aggregated, information from publicly available sources may accidentally disclose information that was intended to remain confidential. As it happens, an IETF glossary contains a definition of the basic term. RFC 282...

Announced in the batch of new Valentine's Day vulnerabilities from Microsoft today, Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-007 is an exposure to a remote Denial of Service attack. The bulletin states: A denial of service vulnerability exists that could allow an attacker to send a specially crafted IGMP packet to an affected system. An attacker could cause the affected system to stop responding. This is rated "important" rather than critical by Microsoft. (See the Microsoft Security Response Center Security Bulletin Severity Rating System for a description of their rating system and the criteria for each category). As a consequence of a couple "critical" defects in this monthly batch, this particular defect doesn't seem to be getting the attention it probably deserves. These types of DoS vulnerabilities are sometimes used by botnets and worms, which are frequently under control of an attacker once they have penetrated a network and spread inside it. If...

Recent phishing scams have been noted to employ an SSL certificate as part of the scam web site. In combination with one of many patchable but unpatched and other unpatchable browser defects, these scam sites are now giving the end user the full appearance that they are engaging in a secure transaction with their bank. As reported by Brian Krebs today (see: The New Face of Phishing ) as well as predicted here a couple weeks ago (see: Verified by Visa (Veriphied Phishing?) ) the latest such phishing scams have begun to exploit the Verified by Visa program by using the name recognition of the campaign as part of their social engineering. Mr. Krebs mentions a few key facts about this latest scam in his article. the scam targets a small bank the scam exploits the brand awareness campaign surrounding the "Verified by Visa" program the scam employs the use of an SSL certificate which appears to have been obtained specifically to set up the scam web site niche market...

Should cookies that track your web surfing be considered spyware ? What Would Dilbert Say? (WWDS). To the many millions of people trying desperately to keep their home Windows PC from collapsing under the load of adware, spyware, bots, worms and virii, and looking on the internet for help , it might seem like there is a raging (or at least simmering) debate about cookies -- are they spyware or not? This debate is mainly fueled mainly by the tension between adware vendors (typically shady or at least shadowy new media advertising outfits that match ads to web surfing habits) and anti-spyware vendors. The former need cookies to provide value added advertising, while the latter want to make the malware situation seem as bad as possible by releasing reports periodically about how much worse it's getting. Even if cookies are discounted entirely, the malware situation is indeed getting worse every year, and is very bad here in 2006. There really shouldn't be much debate about ...

If you have used a Visa card to make a purchase online lately you may have encountered a relatively new program, Verified by Visa . I've encountered it twice. The system is an interesting attempt by Visa to reduce online fraud and identity theft. It's a noble effort, but the user experience is unsettling, and the security implications are not exactly crystal clear. Here's what happened to me, both times the Verified by Visa system was activated. I was redirected away from the domain at which I was shopping, to a URL which was: not the domain where I was shopping, not the domain of the bank that issued my card not visa.com I've been telling people for years that if anything like that happens to you, close your web browser immediately and do not under any circumstances enter any personal information into the form, because this is a sure sign of a man in the middle or phishing scam. (Never mind that all the best phishing scams now-a-days look like the actual dom...