Tag Archives: cyber privacy

Don’t blame the victim; fix the cyber technology

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The perennial excuse for our dismal performance in cyber security keeps showing up again and again. Some “experts” state that 95% of cyber security breaches occur due to human error, i.e. not following the recommended procedures. There’s a sleight of hand in these statements in that many breaches include human error, but do not occur due to that error. While the 95% number might be suspect, the real point is different: even following all the “recommended security procedures” will not protect our systems from cyber attacks.
It’s true that attackers often use users’ mistakes. But the reason is simple and obvious – human errors do make it easier to penetrate a system. In effect they represent a shortcut for an attack, but by no means do they eliminate many other ways to do it. Why would an attacker take a more complicated route if he can use a shortcut?
Of course, users’ awareness of security is not common or comprehensive. This was vividly demonstrated by one very important Government agency not that long ago. Its board, after a thorough (and expensive) “expert” study mandated that employees use a six-letter password instead of the old and “insecure” four-letter one.
This is a pretty pathetic solution, but the much bigger question is: do the users really need to follow or even know complicated procedures? The answer is: no, not at all.
Indeed, cyberspace presents us with a wonderful opportunity to build very user-friendly effective security systems. It’s quite possible to build cyber security systems that would be extremely strong, even mathematically unhackable, that would require the user only to select the party he is going to communicate with, and then to indicate “secure.” No other security-related actions would be needed. This is very different from our current security technology based on concepts of physical space, where the weakest link in the security chain is the human factor. But up until now we have failed to take advantage of this great property of cyberspace.
If, as it is claimed, our cyber security misery is a “people” problem, this is true only in very narrow sense. It’s not the users who are the problem; the problem belongs to the people who design and build our worthless cyber security systems.

The Government wants our encryption keys. Are home keys next?

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The just released report by 13 well known cryptographers opposing the US and British governments’ sweeping demand for encryption keys has directly addressed the increasing threat of government’s insatiable thirst for power. Any government objection to this report is bound to be disingenuous.
However, there’s one more angle that begs for further exposure. The overall issue is not a scientific or technical question; it’s an ideological one. The frequently heard loud claim that inevitably we have to give up our privacy so the government can protect us is flatly untrue and hypocritical. It is indeed technologically feasible today to build a system where everyone of us would wear an irremovable collar equipped with cameras, microphones, and GPS that would communicate our location and immediate surroundings every instant “totally securely” to some highly trusted government agency. The government may argue that a) it would only access this information upon some court order; and b) it would solve a lot of crimes and save a lot of lives. True, such a system would make the police’s job very easy, would solve a lot of crimes, and save a lot of lives. But the real question is: do we want to live in that kind of society? In the American spirit the politest answer would be, “Hell, no!” And as always with this kind of hypothetical system criminals would quickly find a solution to neutralize it, leaving us with the situation that only-law abiding citizens would be subject to this massive electronic prison.
Even as we see deeper and deeper assaults on our civil rights and liberty in the manner described above, the government is more than a little shy talking about other intelligence-gathering techniques that require more skill than a slightly trained operator just pushing a few computer keys. These methods are well known among professionals, they have existed for a long time, and can be applied to any target. The drawback of course is that they are less convenient for the operators, require greater skills, and do not include a global bulk collection of information on everyone.
Well, maybe this is just what we, the people, need and want.

Encryption: panacea or just an expensive “do something”?

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Once in a while we see a common cyber call to arms: “Let’s use data encryption and, voila, our problems will be over.” A typical example of this is the AP article http://cnsnews.com/news/article/no-encryption-standard-raises-health-care-privacy-questions.
This is a very common misconception. Encryption per se does not protect against hacking. Surely, encrypted files look impressive, with their very long strings of seemingly random characters. It must be mindboggling for a casual observer to imagine that anyone can actually decipher that without the secret key.
However, the reality is vastly different.
Strength of encryption is based on two main ingredients – the encryption algorithm and the secret key. Most encryption algorithms, and certainly all commercially available algorithms, are well known. They have been researched, and solutions—the ability to decrypt them without the secret key—have been found for most of them. The only undefeated algorithm so far remains the so-called “one time pad,” where the key is used only once. But even that algorithm’s strength rests on the quality and security of the key — issues that are far from trivial.
However, the main practical problem with encryption is the distribution system for the key. As in the example of a health system cited above, we are talking about a massive database with many millions of records. Sure, it’s not too difficult to encrypt all that data. But then what? The database has many legitimate users, sometimes thousands, and each one of them must have the secret key. It’s not difficult to obtain the key, one way or another, from at least one of them. Such a single breach would defeat the whole encryption scheme. I’ve often heard someone proudly declaring at a party, “I encrypt all data files in my computer.” Sometimes I will casually ask, “But where do you keep your key?” The answer invariably is, “In the computer.” Usually that person doesn’t understand that the key in his computer is also available to anyone who bothers to hack into his computer.
All in all, data encryption is a good concept, but the practicality of its deployment in databases with many users can only protect against middleschoolers. It would have marginal protection against smart highschoolers, and it would certainly be fruitless against professional cyber attackers.
Encryption per se would be just another expensive exercise in wishful thinking. It should be clearly understood: ENCRYPTION PER SE DOESNOT PROTECT AGAINST HACKING.

A Hack Is Forever

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Announcements by major companies and Government organizations that they’ve been hacked and have lost millions of private records that we entrusted to them are now as routine as the morning weather forecast on TV news. These announcements are usually followed by an assurance that from now on everything will be just fine, along with an urgent request that everyone change their passwords. Requirements for the passwords are getting more sophisticated – instead of a plain four-letter word they are supposed to be a little longer and include some characters requiring the shift key.

This is totally useless advice for two reasons: one is that these “sophisticated” passwords are in practice just as easy prey for a modern computer as the proverbial four-letter word, and the second is that no real hacker is going after your individual account unless he happens to be your curious next-door teenager or your nosy grandmother. In the real world hackers aren’t dumb. Why would they go after a few million accounts one-by-one if they can simply hack the organization’s server at the root or Administrator level and get all the data in every account with just a single hack? Any hacker worth his salt knows this, and this is exactly what hackers do – they hack the server, and  that makes our individual passwords irrelevant.

These “change-your-password-for-a better-one” announcements likely have some other subliminal agenda. It looks like the real reason for asking you to change your password is to make you feel responsible for your data security. In other words, to blame the victim.

Furthermore, victims are majorly misled in a couple of other ways too. First of all, after a hack all your private personal data are gone, and they’re available to any criminal is cyberspace for a nominal fee. You cannot take them back. You can change your password, but you cannot change your name, date of birth, social security number, address, phone number; even changing your mother’s maiden name is difficult. All these are available to identity thieves.

And there’s another aspect that your favorite bank won’t tell you about: every competent hacker will leave a dormant cyber mole deep inside the hacked system. These are practically impossible to detect despite all political and marketing claims to the contrary. So even if the entire security program of a system is changed the cyber mole will report all the changes to its master. Including your new sophisticated password.

So a hack is forever.

Kaspersky’s Intelligent Move

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The latest move by Kaspersky Lab is definitely intelligent, perhaps a little too intelligent.

Computer security vendors are beginning to offer integrated cross-platform security for Windows, Mac and Android devices, with Kaspersky Lab leading the pack with its Internet Security—Multi Device 2015. At first glance it looks like déjà vu, as good or as bad malware protection as any other on the market. However, Kaspersky’s has a new feature — it protects all the devices you own, up to five of them. Convenient.

Initial reviews are good: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2459156/kaspersky-internet-security-2015-multi-device-review-new-interface-same-excellent-protection.html

From a business standpoint this makes perfect sense – uncluttering  the security arrangements of your devices and bringing security to one simple point. This should upend the competition that is selling long lines of unrelated programs.

However, there‘s another angle here. The simple truth is that a security system for your computer takes over your computer, whether you like it or not. So when you have a bunch of different security products, each one of them controls only the device for which it is intended.

One of the most reliable means of accessing all data in a computer is via its security system. But, with some technical exceptions, the ultimate targets of most security or intelligence organizations are people, not their computers per se. This means that if someone wants all your data on all your devices, and chooses to do so via your security system, he has to have control of all your security systems. Not too difficult, but certainly cumbersome in a large-scale outfit. Inconvenient.

Here comes a great innovation: one-stop shopping for  all your data – an integrated security system for all your devices. All your data can be obtained via a single security system. Convenient.

It’s not a big secret that Kaspersky Lab has cozy relations with the Russian Government and thus is a valuable resource for the latter. There was a lot of debate related to Kaspersky Lab and their relations to the Russian Government, someone even suggested once that they have a lot of customers and just one client.

I’d prefer to leave that to the reader’s judgment, but simply caution that in any case integrating all your devices via one security system makes you an easier cyber prey, and may be unwise, Kaspersky or not.

 

Privacy Posturing in the Great Cyber Triangle

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The recent New York Times article, “Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies,” reflects the current political rhetoric over privacy, but it also misrepresents the reality of the situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/technology/internet-giants-erect-barriers-to-spy-agencies.html

The companies cited– Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and the like– are taking steps to make NSA interception of their data more difficult. But this is a basically political move. They are merely reducing levels of voluntary cooperation with the government. The simple truth is that with the cybersecurity technology currently available and deployed these companies are not capable of protecting themselves, and ultimately their customers, from cyber attacks.

In the great US-Russia-China Cyber Triangle each government has enjoyed the quasi-voluntary cooperation of its cyber-based large companies. The other two governments were simply attacking the companies at will, and with full success. Of course, the companies’ cooperation was helpful to their host government, but it should be clearly understood that this was merely a matter of convenience and efficiency, and had little bearing on the actual result.

So the only change this new US cyber company fad  is that it will take a little more effort by the US Government to get the same results. The other two sides of the great triangle aren’t affected (nor, for that matter, are several  other governments).

This might suggest that the only way to protect people’s privacy is a legislative approach that would prohibit the Government from spying on its own citizens. But then we have to clearly understand that while we can prohibit NSA collecting Americans’ personal and private data, we cannot prevent Russia or China from doing the same. This is a symmetrical situation: Russia and China, and any other country, cannot prohibit the US collecting whatever they want. The situation would be awkward indeed if only American Government cannot collect unrestricted information on Americans. Spying is the oldest profession, and it’s going to prosper for the foreseeable future.

There’s a simple conclusion to be drawn: until and unless we develop new and truly effective cybersecurity technologies all the discussions about our privacy are just exercises in political rhetoric.