Should billionaires have to disclose their political contributions?
The Intercept has a story about a billionaire sneaking into a Jeb Bush fundraiser. It points out:"Bush’s campaign operation has taken steps to conceal the names of certain big-money donors. ... Bush’s Right to Rise also formed a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy wing, which, like a Super PAC, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — but unlike a Super PAC, never has to reveal donor names."This leads me to ask two questions:
- Should billionaires be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money promoting their politics?
- If they can spend unlimited amounts, should they be forced to disclose them?
If you know me, you know that I'm asking a trick question. I'm not referring to venture capitalist Ron Conway, the billionaire mentioned the story. I'm instead referring to Pierre Omidyar the billionaire founder of eBay who funds The Intercept, which blatantly promotes his political views such as those on NSA surveillance. Can Omidyar spend endless amounts on The Intercept? Should he be forced to disclose how much?
This question is at the heart of the Supreme Court decision in Citezen's United. It comes down to this: the Supreme Court was unable to craft rules that could tell Continue reading
Scalability of the Great Cannon
The first question is how much bandwidth China needs to monitor. According to the this website, in early 2015 that's 1.9-terabits/second (1,899,792-mbps).
The second question is how much hardware China needs to buy in order to intercept network traffic, reassemble TCP streams, and insert responses. The answer is about one $1000 desktop computer. In other words, China can deploy the Great Cannon using $200,000 worth of hardware.
This answer is a little controversial. Most people think that a mere desktop computer could not handle 10-gbps of throughput, much less do anything complicated with it like reassembling TCP streams. However, they are wrong. Intel has put an enormous amount of functionality into their hardware to solve precisely this problem. Unfortunately, modern software like Linux or Windows is a decade behind hardware advances, and cannot take advantage of this.
The first step is to bypass the operating system. This sounds a bit odd, but it's not hard to do. Continue reading
Solving the Cloud Security Crisis
Will SDN be a key component?
Cloud Security Alliance: $10K Prize to Hack Our Gibson
Could Zero Cool crack a software-defined perimeter?
Stop making the NSA the bogeyman of privacy
Snowden is my hero, but here's the thing: the NSA is the least of our worries. Firstly, their attention is foreign, not domestic. Secondly, they are relatively uncorrupt. Our attention should be focused on the corrupt domestic law-enforcement agencies, like the ATF, DEA, and FBI.I mention this because a lot of people seem concerned that the "cyber threat sharing" bills in congress (CISA/CISPA) will divulge private information to the NSA. This is nonsense. The issue is private information exposed to the FBI and other domestic agencies. It's the FBI, ATF, or DEA that will come break down your door and arrest you, not the NSA.
We see that recently where the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) has been caught slurping up international phone records going back to the 1990s. This appears as bad as the NSA phone records program that started the Snowden disclosures.
I know the FBI is corrupt because I've experienced it personally, when the threatened me in order to suppress a conference talk. We know they are corrupt in the way they hide cellphone interception devices ("stingray") from public disclosure. We know they are corrupt because their headquarters is named after J Edgar Hoover, the notoriously corrupt Continue reading
No, 75% are not vulnerable to Heartbleed
The issue isn't patches but certificates. Systems are patched, but while they were still vulnerable to Heartbleed, hackers may have stole the certificates. Therefore, the certificates need to be replaced. Not everyone has replaced their certificates, and those that have may have done so incorrectly (using the same keys, not revoking previous).
Thus, what the report is saying is that 75% haven't properly updated their certificates correctly. Naturally, they sell a solution for that problem.
However, even this claim isn't accurate. Only a small percentage of systems were vulnerable to Heartbleed in the first place, and it's hard to say which certificates actually needed to be replaced.
That's why you have the weasely marketing language above. It's not saying 3 out of 4 of all systems, but only those that were vulnerable to begin with (a minority). They aren't saying they are still vulnerable to Heartbleed itself, but only that they are vulnerable to breach -- due to the certificates having been stolen.
The entire report is so full of this Continue reading
Soha Launches Cloud Security Service Backed By Andreessen Horowitz
A Tor for enterprise applications?
The .onion address
One quibble I have with the document is section 2.1, which says:
1. Users: human users are expected to recognize .onion names as having different security properties, and also being only available through software that is aware of onion addresses.
This certain documents current usage, where Tor is a special system run separately from the rest of the Internet. However, it appears to deny a hypothetical future were Tor is more integrated.
For example, imagine a world where Chrome simply integrates Tor libraries, and that whenever anybody clicks on an .onion link, that it automatically activates the Tor software, establishes a circuit, and grabs the indicated page -- all without the user having to be aware of Tor. This could do much to increase the usability of the Continue reading
Pin-pointing China’s attack against GitHub
For the past week, the website "GitHub" has been under attack by China. In this post, I pin-point where the attack is coming from by doing an http-traceroute.GitHub is a key infrastructure website for the Internet, being the largest host of open-source projects, most famously Linux. (I host my code there). It's also a popular blogging platform.
Among the zillions of projects are https://github.com/greatfire and https://github.com/cn-nytimes. These are mirrors (copies) of the websites http://greatfire.com and http://cn.nytimes.com. GreatFire provides tools for circumventing China's Internet censorship, the NYTimes contains news stories China wants censored.
China blocks the offending websites, but it cannot easily block the GitHub mirrors. It's choices are either to block or allow everything on GitHub. Since GitHub is key infrastructure for open-source, blocking GitHub is not really a viable option.
Therefore, China chose another option, to flood those specific GitHub URLs with traffic in order to pressure GitHub into removing those pages. This is a stupid policy decision, of course, since Americans are quite touchy on the subject and are unlikely to comply with such pressure. It's likely GitHub itself can resolve the issue, as there are a zillion ways to respond. If Continue reading
War on Hackers: a Clear and Present Danger
President Obama has upped his war on hackers by declaring a "state of emergency". This triggers several laws that grant him expanded powers, such as seizing the assets of those suspected of hacking, or taking control of the Internet.One one hand, this seems reasonable. Hackers from China and Russia are indeed a threat, causing billions in economic damage every year, by stealing money and intellectual property. This declaration specifically targets these issues. Presumably, in the next few weeks, we'll see announcements from the Treasure Department seizing assets from Chinese companies known to have stolen intellectual property via hacking.
But on the other hand, it's problematic. Declarations of emergency tend to be permanent. We already operate under 30 declarations of emergencies dating back to the Korean war. Once government grabs new powers, it tends not to give them back. Also, this really isn't an "emergency", the hacking it addresses goes back a decade. It's obvious corruption of the "emergency" provisions in the law for the President to bypass congress and rule by decree.
Moreover, while tailored specifically to the threats of foreign hackers, it ultimately affects everyone everywhere. It allows the government to bypass due process and seize Continue reading
Edgewater Networks Featured Video: Mobility and Secure Video Conferencing
Mobility has made business more convenient for us, but is it opening us up to potential data theft? Watch Edgewater Networks’ featured video on the security challenges of mobile video conferencing to learn more.
Cisco to Acquire Embrane, Adding Layer 4-7 to ACI
Having helped fund Embrane, Cisco is ready to acquire the Layer 4-7 startup.
Video: Automating Network Security
The video of my Automating Network Security talk @ Troopers 15 has been published on YouTube. They used fixed camera and the slides are a bit hard to read; you’ll find a better copy of the slide deck on my content web site.
For a bit of fun, turn on closed captions (CC) – public cloud became public lout.
Edgewater Networks Featured White Paper: SaaS Model Gives an Enterprise Feel to SMB Security
In this featured white paper from Edgewater Networks, we learn how an SaaS model gives an enterprise feel to SMB security. Download the white paper now to read more.
Check Point – Upgrade Without Dropping Connections
Check Point firewall upgrades have always been painful. The loss of connection state is a big part of this. Existing connections stop working, and many applications need restart. It looks like there is a way of minimising this pain on upgrade.
Stateful firewalls record the current ‘state’ of traffic passing through, so they can recognise and allow reply or related traffic. If you have a firewall cluster, they need to synchronise state between the cluster members. This is so that if there is a failover, the new Active node will be aware of all connections currently in flight.
If you have a failover, and the standby member is NOT aware of current connection state, it will drop all currently open sessions. Any packet that isn’t a SYN packet will get dropped, and the applications need to establish new connections. Some applications handle this well – especially those that use many short-lived connections such as HTTP or DNS. But other applications that have long-running connections – e.g. DB connections – may struggle with this. They think the connection is still open, and take a long time to figure out it’s broken. They may eventually recover on their own, or they may Continue reading
How to boot an encrypted system safely
These are my notes on how to set up a system securely, in a way that would prevent attackers from being capable of performing an “evil maid attack”.
The threat model
You have a Linux server that you want to protect against data theft and other backdoors. The attacker can get physical access to your hardware, for example by having access to the server room that houses your rack.
Your attacker is funded, but not super well funded. This will not protect you against intelligence agencies.
The attacker can buy a new server that looks just like the one you have. You will not be able to tell the difference from physical inspection.
You want to know that it’s safe to log in to your server after a suspicious power outage or reboot.
This solution assumes that once the system is booted and you log in, you have access to the secret data. In other words, this is not a protection for gaming consoles or kiosks.
Overview of the solution
First of all, full disk encryption using dm-crypt. Obviously. (other FDE also acceptable, of course)
Walking up to the server and typing the passphrase every reboot is not only tedious Continue reading
Message to Errata employees
Dear employees,Starting next week, Errata Security will be following RSA Conference's lead and institute a "Morality Dress Code" in order to deal with the problem of loose women on the premises.
Attire of an overly revealing or suggestive nature is not permitted. Examples of such attire may include but are not restricted to:
- Tops displaying excessive cleavage;
- Tank tops, halter tops, camisole tops or tube tops;
- Miniskirts or minidresses;
- Shorts;
- Lycra (or other Second-Skin) bodysuits;
- Objectionable or offensive costumes.
These guidelines are applicable to all staff, regardless of gender, and will be strictly enforced. Therefore, Dave's practice of showing up on casual Friday's in a miniskirt and push-up bra will no longer be tolerated. We have burkas on hand of varying sizes for those who fail to comply.
If you have any questions, please consult the Morality Officer for your department.
Regards,
Robert Graham
CEO, Errata Security
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| "Shalim" by Zivya - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shalim.JPG#/media/File:Shalim.JPG |
PS: This is satire, of course. We don't support RSA's morality code.
MLD Considered Harmful
Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) protocol is well hidden deep in the bowels of IPv6 protocol stack and most of us tend to gloss over it when we discuss IPv6 neighbor discovery process… until MLD raises its ugly head to bite an unsuspecting network administrator.
The problems with MLD are not new (and I wrote exhaustively about them a while ago), but it’s always nice to see other people raise awareness of broken IPv6 features like Enno Rey and his security team did during the IPv6 Security Summit (part of Troopers 15 conference).
Read more ...x86 is a high-level language
Just so you know, x86 machine-code is now a "high-level" language. What instructions say, and what they do, are very different things.I mention this because of those commenting on this post on OpenSSL's "constant-time" calculations, designed to avoid revealing secrets due to variations in compute time. The major comment is that it's hard to do this perfectly in C. My response is that it's hard to do this even in x86 machine code.
Consider registers, for example. Everyone knows that the 32-bit x86 was limited to 8 registers, while 64-bit expanded that to 16 registers. This isn't actually true. The latest Intel processors have 168 registers. The name of the register in x86 code is really just a variable name, similar to how variables work in high-level languages.
So many registers are needed because the processor has 300 instructions "in flight" at any point in time in various stages of execution. It rearranges these instructions, executing them out-of-order. Everyone knows that processors can execute things slightly out-of-order, but that's understated. Today's processors are massively out-of-order.
Consider the traditional branch pair of a CMP (compare) followed by a JMPcc (conditional jump). While this is defined as two separate instructions as Continue reading
DNSSEC – Moving the Needle
The New Zealand ISP market is dominated by Spark, Vodafone & CallPus/Orcon. A side effect of this is that if one player does the Right Thing™, it really moves the needle. Recently, Spark has done the Right Thing with DNSSEC.
DNSSEC takeup has been low with New Zealand ISPs. The APNIC stats indicated that around 5% of users were using DNS resolvers that had DNSSEC validation capabilities. But in December 2014, that number jumped to ~15%:
It turns out this is because Spark has enabled DNSSEC validation on some of their resolvers. NZRS have done some analysis, and found that Spark turned on 4 new resolvers that do DNSSEC validation:
They’re still running their old resolvers, so right now it’s hit & miss for their customers. But it’s a great start, and presumably they’ll upgrade the remaining systems soon.
So Vodafone, CallPlus, Snap, Trustpower…when are you going to take customer security seriously too? And Spark…how long until DNSSEC is enabled for all your resolvers?
And please, no arguments about “we’re not sure if it will work.” Google has been doing it since March 2013…who do you think processes more DNS requests per day? Google, or your ISP?