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Thursday, March 8, 2007
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Managing Access to Critical Data for Protection and Privacy. (Source: Symantec) One common mistake that organizations make is by using Identity management solutions in isolation. Doing so risks access inflation, workarounds and coverage gaps. This white paper shows how comprehensive access management deploys identity management within a framework that includes disciplines for data protection, integration with hiring and promotion, and especially monitoring. [Computerworld Privacy News]
11:18:13 PM 
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Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations.
The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the project called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement -- was requested by Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
The investigation focuses on whether the program violates privacy laws, and the findings will be released after completion of the Iraq war supplemental spending bill, possibly as early as this week, a panel aide said.
The ADVISE and TIA data-mining projects rely on personal data to track individual behavior and consumer transactions to develop computer algorithms that create a pattern that some behavioral scientists say can predict terrorist behavior.
Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information.
Privacy concerns prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to introduce legislation in January to require that government agencies disclose data-mining practices in regular reports to Congress.
"A serious discussion on the implications of data-mining programs is long overdue," Sen. Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said yesterday. Sen. John E. Sununu, New Hampshire Republican, is also a bill sponsor.
7:21:29 PM
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The Census Bureau accidentally posted personal
information on 302 households on a public server several times since
October 2006, officials said.
The personal information,
including names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, family income
ranges and other demographic data, was contained in a file that was
placed on a public server for the purposes of testing new software
applications. The file included about 250 fake accounts in addition to
the real information. The bureau found out about the mistake when it
found the file on the server in mid-February.
7:04:50 PM
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Possibly as a reaction to heise Security's report that Windows Genuine Advantage Notification sends back data to Redmond even when users choose to terminate its installation, a Microsoft developer using the pseudonym alexkoc has now posted an entry in the WGA blog. There he reveals that every update that flows through Windows Update at the very least informs Microsoft about whether the installation was successful or not. In the Privacy Statement of Windows Update Microsoft grants itself fairly far-reaching rights. Thus the information collected by the Redmond-based behemoth includes the computer make and model, version information for the operating system, browser, and any other Microsoft software for which updates might be available, Plug&Play ID numbers of hardware devices, region and language setting, Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), Product ID and Product Key, BIOS name, revision number, and revision date. By way of justifying Microsoft's approach, alexkoc writes that the EULA, likewise presented by the WGA installer, also covered the relaying of such information. With some updates such as the WGA Notification, the installer transmits data that Microsoft says it merely requires for quality control purposes and to improve the installer itself. The WGA package thus, among other things, sends back an event code. To calm the fears of users, alexkoc presents a graphic explaining the various fields of such a data packet. When the product IDs and product keys found belong to legal software, Microsoft will delete the data right away; only in cases of suspected software piracy will it store the data, the company has said. In the blog, the company once again explicitly states that it does not use the information gathered to identify or contact users.
6:54:34 PM
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Vishing: Dialing for Dollars, Part II. Security Fix received a copy of a new scam e-mail targeting Bank of America customers that is likely to con quite a few folks before it is shut down.
Sure, Bank of America is hit by this sort of thing all the time. It's the fourth most popular target for "phishing" scams that use e-mail to lure people into giving away their data at counterfeit sites, according to stats just released by PhishTank. But this is one of the more convincing voice phishing or "vishing" attacks I've seen yet.
Vishing scams start with an e-mail lure that asks the recipient to call a specific 1-800 number to settle some matter with his or her account. The numbers usually are connected to an automated system that asks the caller to key in data from a credit card -- the 16-digit account number, the expiration date and the three-digit security code on the back.
This new Bank of America scam has the same elements, but its execution is nearly flawless (unlike the majority of previous vishing scams Security Fix has seen, which either bungle the voice mail system or use a lure full of poor spelling and grammar). It informs the recipient that his account has been suspended because it was used to purchase "obscene or certain sexually oriented goods or services." From the e-mail:
"We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of Bank of America's Acceptable Use Policy. Therefore, your account has been temporarily limited for: hotjasmin.com cam shows. In order to remove the limit please call our TOLL FREE number [omitted]." That domain is registered to a guy in the Netherlands, but it's currently inactive.
I recorded a short snippet of the first 45 seconds or so of the automated phone message used in this attack. If the you enter the requested information, the voice then asks for your bank PIN: "Bank of America asks for your PIN in order to verify your identity. This also enables us to assist federal authorities in order to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities."
Generally, it's a good idea not to even dial these bogus 1-800 numbers, as you're essentially giving the scammers your phone number, a key piece of your personal data. It's also a good idea to be very suspicious of e-mails that ask you to call any number. When in doubt, open up a browser Window and find the official Web site of your financial institution, then look up the customer-service number listed there. [Security Fix]
6:41:03 PM
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Patch Reprieve for March's Black Tuesday. Windows PC users and corporate system administrators worldwide will earn a reprieve from Redmond next week. Microsoft said today it has no plans to release new software security updates this month.
It's not as if there aren't any outstanding security flaws that Microsoft could fix this month, but the situation could be a lot worse.
Perhaps Redmond is simply being kind to corporate IT folk, many of whom are working hard to update their companies' software and hardware for the early daylight saving switch this weekend: For the first time in 20 years, daylight saving time will not start on the first Sunday in April. Instead, it will begin three weeks earlier, at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March, the 11th. Our IT staff has sent numerous e-mails to laptop users to drop by and make sure the Macs and PCs are all up to date. (Apple and Microsoft have already pushed out patches to address this issue, and if you've been keeping up to date with them, you should be fine, but Windows users can consult this page to be sure.) By the way, updates are available to fix this shift for Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs.
Normally, Microsoft plugs security holes in its software on the second Tuesday of every month, also known as "Patch Tuesday." Microsoft moved to a regular patch cycle a few years ago to make it more predictable for companies who need to staff or schedule extra IT personnel to test and deploy the updates to what could be thousands of systems. The system administrators to whom that task falls typically dread the monthly chore and have a different name for it: "Black Tuesday."
It's been a while since Windows users have been given a pass on patches. By my count, the last time Microsoft skipped a cycle was back in September 2005. [Security Fix]
6:03:31 PM
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How Computers Can Make Voting More Secure. By now there is overwhelming evidence that today[base ']s paperless computer-based voting technologies have such serious security and reliability problems that we should not be using them. Computers can[base ']t do the job by themselves; but what role should they play in voting?
It[base ']s tempting to eliminate computers entirely, returning to old-fashioned paper voting, but I think this is a mistake. Paper has an important role, as I[base ']ll describe below, but paper systems are subject to well-known problems such as ballot-box stuffing and chain voting, as well as other user-interface and logistical challenges.
Security does require some role for paper. Each vote must be recorded in a manner that is directly verified by the voter. And the system must be software-independent, meaning that its accuracy cannot rely on the correct functioning of any software system. Today[base ']s paperless e-voting systems satisfy neither requirement, and the only practical way to meet the requirements is to use paper.
The proper role for computers, then, is to backstop the paper system, to improve it. What we want is not a computerized voting system, but a computer-augmented one.
This mindset changes how we think about the role of computers. Instead of trying to make computers do everything, we will look instead for weaknesses and gaps in the paper system, and ask how computers can plug them.
There are two main ways computers can help. The first is in helping voters cast their votes. Computers can check for errors in ballots, for example by detecting an invalid ballot while the voter is still in a position to fix it. Computers can present the ballot in audio format for the blind or illiterate, or in multiple languages. (Of course, badly designed computer interfaces can do harm, so we have to be careful.) There must be a voter-verified paper record at the end of the vote-casting process, but computers, used correctly, can help voters create and validate that record, by acting as ballot-marking devices or as scanners to help voters spot mismarked ballots.
The second way computers can help is by improving security. Usually the e-voting security debate is about how to keep computers from making security too much worse than it was before. Given the design of today[base ']s e-voting systems, this is appropriate [~] just bringing these systems up to the level of security and reliability in (say) the Xbox and Wii game consoles would be nice. Even in a computer-augmented system, we[base ']ll need to do a better job of vetting the computers[base '] design [~] if a job is worth doing with a computer, it[base ']s worth doing correctly.
But once we adopt the mindset of augmenting a paper-based system, security looks less like a problem and more like an opportunity. We can look for the security weaknesses of paper-based systems, and ask how computers can help to address them. For example, paper-based systems are subject to ballot-box stuffing [~] how can computers reduce this risk?
Surprisingly, the designs of current e-voting technologies, even the ones with paper trails, don[base ']t do all they can to compensate for the weaknesses of paper. For example, the current systems I[base ']ve seen keep electronic records that are subject to straightforward post-election tampering. Researchers have studied approaches to this problem, but as far as I know none are used in practice.
In future posts, we[base ']ll discuss design ideas for computer-augmented voting.
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5:35:06 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 3/18/07; 10:46:47 PM.
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