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Network Webcurity Wishlist?
breillysf asks: "I am a California-based network security attorney who has been asked by a senior US Senator to compile a list of the most important legal concerns facing network security administrators. He has a good feel for the government security issues (and lack there of), but he is concerned about what is going on in the front lines in the private sector. I thought the Slashdot crowd would have the best feel on the pulse of the current situation. Specifically, if you could ask Congress for help in the area of network and information security, what would you ask for? Or would you tell them to get out of the way?"
"For example, I tried to push for tax incentives for upgrades in network security measures, but the Senator replied that is dead in the water because we are now spending into a deficit. He would rather see insurance companies reward firms with lower premiums for enhanced security. But there are International legal issues, compliance issues, privacy complications, potential negligence liability exposure, lack of federal incident response, FOIA and anti-trust issues with info sharing, conflicting state and federal cybercrime and privacy laws, USA Patriot Act concerns, etc."
To borrow a phrase; if you outlaw nmap, only outlaws will have nmap.
-Peter
How about holding various companies whose products are exploited the most (re: MS) liable for their lack of security?
- Never ever ever use the so-called-word "Webcurity" again.
...- Err
... - Thats it.
(apologies to Private Eye)Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Whaddya think, mr. attorney? Can we make this happen??
The number-one item on my wishlist would be for the government to keep completely out of network security issues -- the government should ensure security on its own networks, of course, but they shouldn't be concerned about anything else.
There's already enough laws to deal with DOS attacks and such -- more laws just means more expense for those who have to deal with them.
Twoflower
--
Twoflower
Well, for starters, don't let Microsoft's Chief Security Advisor work as a security advisor for the White House.
This is a great chance to get our concerns as a community out into the public sector.
Consider this: ONE person/organization has EVERYONE'S personal and financial data online. This goes against all design architectures in both security AND engineering. A single point of failure. Imagine one bank in real life, with Barney Fife guarding it. Would you put your life savings there?
With more and more commerce occurring on the internet, the more important it is that there is some scheme to protect this important market. I am particularly concerned with one private company holding the public trust in their hands -- I am also very concerned about the government, for that matter, also holding this information!
"Coax" all carriers and providers to do egress filtering at the edges of their networks. This should help significantly in reducing DDoS attacks and should help make malicious network activity easier to trace.
the more crypto the better. and don't try to legislate backdoors into it or anything.
people need to reliaze that crypto is available to anyone with the ability to use it...it needs help in getting the average joe to use it.
most people won't use PGP or something b/c it is too complicated. crypto needs to be built into office and internet apps from the ground up. strong crypto. stuff that can't be broken.
people need to feel secure about these things. i think the govt has a lot to offer in promoting pki and such to get this in the hands of everyone.
privacy is important. the govt needs to make a proactive effort to show that they believe in personal privacy and are willing to help make it happen online.
At the very least a free one like Tiny Software. I'm sick of getting DOS attacks looking for IIS from zombies on my subnet.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
First, stay out of the way. don't meddle in things that you know nothing about. Don't place restrictions on security meassures, a la encryption export. Don't mandate government backdoors and don't permit the likes of Carnivore and Magic Lantern.
Second, concentrate on the governments own cyber security problems. Clean up your own house before you start trampling over mine.
If the government would require on all their networks IPv6 and IPSEC, that would go along way toward IPv6 and IPSEC being accepted and would improve network security. Nothing else needs to be done.
The most important and significant problem is not putting the proper resources into getting that security. Upper level management are not technically minded folk, and they don't view computers and true tools. They don't understand the costs when you try to explain it to them. "I'd like to get around $200k so that I can physically seperate out infastructure and give us added security."
Management: "I'll give you 2 un-trained contractors, a spool of thread, and a tin can."
They just don't understand, or appreciate what computers provide, but yet they get irate when something happens. Therefor the largest hurdle to overcome is getting the senior people up to snuff, or willing to to dish out the resources for what needs to be done above and beyond a simply reactionary level. To them, pro-active computer security is like flushing money down the toilet.
I understand everyones concerns with Microsoft and their Passport technology. But what would you have the government do to change it? I think this is more of a case where if you don't want to use it don't. And if a company you deal with requires its use, talk to them.
You can't have the government put a stop to a perfectly legal business practice by Microsoft just because you don't like it. I'm not sure government overcite would be a good thing either. I'm interested to know what you would want the government to do about it.
Dictate that computing environments must employ a free mix of platforms and tools so that a single crack or worm can't be used to exploit the entire company/organization/network.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
...to implement the death penalty for anybody using Outlook or Outlook Express on my internal networks? It would make my life a lot easier.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
A professor at the University of Massachusetts named Brian Levine pointed this out and I wholeheartedly agree:
It should be regulated that every network only allow their alotted IP to leave their network -- aka egress filtering.
For example (using unassigned addresses purely for example), if you have a 192.168.5.0/24 subnet, you should not allow 10.10.5.0/24 addresses to leave it -- aka ONLY allow 192.168.5.0/24 addresses to leave it .
If everyone did this it would solve most of the IP spoofing problems and add a lot of accountability without infringing on people's privacy. Massive DoS attacks could be traced and stopped.
Is there an FOIA equivalent for private companies holding data on people, along with an obligation for speedy correction -- including a good-faith attempt at propagating corrections to other data-holding companies if the misinformation was propagated?
If not, perhaps there should be.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
doesnt' mean they're the least secure.
Exploits are still made against products that Microsoft secured over a year ago. And indeed, microsoft gets exploited the most because they are used by the vast majority of non-technical users. Can you imagine what would happen if 90% of the computer-owning people used linux? Every single hole in the OS would not only be explioted, but you could count on it being a LOT less likely that the average-joe user would *ever* update his software to fix the hole
One of these employees got bored with his coding tasks and, with no previous exposure to a broadband Internet connection, apparently decided to become a script kiddie on company time. From all outward appearances, he got pretty good at it, but one day it caught up with him: U.S. Marshals came into my office and served me with a court order that asked for many, many pieces of information that would tell them who had been cracking systems from our corporate network.
I had no problem turning this information over, as the other choice was to go to jail and let the hacker go free. However, I was appalled with the way the marshals treated me: they knew that I was just the sysadmin, not the perpetrator, but they still treated me like a criminal. When I told them that our NAT setup doesn't keep logs of every single outgoing connection from our network (as had been requested in the court order) they got really pissed off and started threatening me. At that point I told them that I was not going to do anything for them without talking to counsel, and they backed off.
So, the moral of the story here is that law enforcement needs to show more respect for sysadmins, and learn the difference between a network admin and a criminal on the admin's network. Treating everybody as though they are all guilty will only build resentment and get in the way of getting their precious case solved.
df
I am thinking specifically of Microsoft, and the Microsoft Outlook Email Viruses, but this could certainly apply to plenty of other companies.
If companies are merely licensing the use of the software to us (and we do not own it), and charging the big bucks, shouldn't they be responsible and/or liable for the consequences - damages from using it? or is this a matter of they get all of the benefits, and we get all of the problems?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Congress doesn't regulate whether individuals or corporations lock their doors, install security alarms, or any of a plethora of physical security measures. Then, why would I want them to step into the fray and regulate security responses and policies in cyberspace?
To begin with, the government doesn't move fast. Given that time scales associated with the IT was becoming smaller and smaller, the iterrations would go through many cycles before Congress knows what hit them. Attempting to regulate the arena would get in the way.
Secondly, Congress obfuscates rather than clarrifies. Look at the DMCA - which causes more problems for the industry than it solves. It's great for the conventional copyright holder but has the effect of stiffling digital advances. Congress moving to mandate information security policies or measures would be the same thing - the paradym they are working under doesn't apply well to this technology or the time scales under which it operates.
Let the industry that's used to the pace of things set the policies. Congress is better suited to time scales where change occurs in years, not days.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
What I'd like to see is forcing mailserver default installs not ever to be open relay configs. One of the biggest pains right now is spam, largely enabled by open relays (besides clueless admins). Spam is theft of resources, can result in DoS, and should be outlawed.
Oh yes, force producers of email clients to use secure default settings. Deny *Script in emails, automatic opening of attachments even in preview mode etc. (thinking of Outlook [Express]). This would massively reduce damages by email worms.
Yet another point: get the ISPs to actually *do* something about abuse complaints [when they are reasonable].
I would say the greatest issue is response by isps and groups who seem to have been a source for an attack. I NEVER hear back from ip address block owners, its rare, In maybe a three or four HUNDRED emails, I have only gotten one response from a person. In all honesty though, no matter of legislation or tax incentives can help that.
I think it would be best if the US Goverment, My Goverment, took a hands-off approch, but while encouraging insurence companies to give incentives to customers who maintain high security networks. Goverment Control of technology, Outlawing of the tools, will only make things worse, because only the crooks, script kiddies, and outlaws will have the tools and technology.
The internet is an international, boundless medium, and only a community effort, with the cooperation of isps and companies who hold massive networks, will keep the net free, and allow net admins to hunt down, and stop people who are doing things that cause net admins trouble in their job. I mean, I would be much happier if one isp out west would email be about one of their customers who have a box that is scanning one of my customers just about every three weeks.
There's an ongoing trend to criminalize the tools and speech used to conduct security research; This is the single most frustrating aspect of the government's involvement in network security. Lists like bugtraq and tools like nessus and nmap are absolutely vital to the health of a network-connected system. Some suggested legislation would make all security discussions criminal, some would allow such work to only be conducted by approved organizations; Both would shatter the ability of the individual administrator to effectively secure his systems. If I could make one and only one request it would be to specifically disallow legislation that attempts to let companies involved with the internet take the security ball to their private court and bounce it around, leaving individual system administrators with no tools and no forums in which to discuss their own defences. In short: keep public, individual security research legal.
Thanks, and good luck.
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
Federalize computer security. Make network admins another part of the executive branch, like the FBI, NSA, or ATF. Assign agents to every buisness with an internet connection (more significant the connection, more agents). Give them the authority to break down the doors of the script kiddie attempting to zombie user's workstations and point a gun at their head.
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
1. Wide deployment of IPSec.
2. Open standards and full disclosure of vulnerabilities.
3. Client diversity in the network ecosphere. A single species (can you say 'outlook') is extremely vulnerable.
Yes, network administrators have to be vigilant about their own security, and put in place whatever measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of their data (and their companies)
My only wish would be specific legislation proposing limited liability in cases where a 3rd party piece of software was used and an exploit found and used against said software before a security warning is made known, or security patch is made available by the vendor.
If the administrators have done their job and have all their software up to the best spec they can, but are subjected to liability against themselves for an error in a piece of software they put their trust in.. it's bad news.
Especially if the client dictates the software to be used for securing the data... man, it's just bad karma.
In the meantime, keep using multiple levels of security. Screw the overhead if you've got sensitive data...
Or would you tell them to get out of the way?
Maybe that's a good idea: let the technologists work it out. Was it a politician who developed the first firewall, IPSec, NIDS, etc.? I don't think so.
While there is a social element to breaking networks, the solutions to these problems should NOT legislation (IMHO). Making something illegal or applying manditory monitoring does nothing to stop those who intend to circumvent/ignore those measures.
Network security should be left in the hands of thoses most capable. If any body or government should look to tackle the 'issues' - real issues - of network security, I think it should be a body of technologists and people who really do have an understanding of what network security really means.
Thank you.
Given Congress's track record of passing laws relating to computing which, in about 100% of cases, clearly demonstrate the fact that the people who wrote the law have no concept of how the Internet works and are responding solely to what corporate lobbyists are telling them, I'd rather if Congress would keep their dirty mitts off of this issue.
Yes, it sucks to essentially have to barricade your computers from the rest of the world and not be able to trust any external entity to help you effectively, but I'd rather have that than more weird laws making more innocuous actions criminal offenses for no apparent reason.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Webcurity? Sounds like one dot-com too many. Among other problems, "curity" feels more like it belongs to *obscurity* than *security*. Besides the famous line separating the two, nobody wants an obscure website :-)
Security-related phrases in the english language are usually combinations of initial syllables. Information Security gets compressed down to InfoSec, "Defense Condition" to DefCon, and "Strategic Forecasting" to StratFor, for example.
WebSec...well, sounds like it'd be a phrase for the specific branch of Infosec dealing with external access to internal data through a tightly controlled interface. Certainly feasible, though you start hitting problems when protocols other than HTTP start getting used. (Is it a website if you don't get it over HTTP/HTTPS?)
Of course, with everything imaginable getting piped over HTTP(as opposed to SSH *grins*), maybe WebSec is appropriate...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
This brings up an interesting point, though: should Congress make it illegal for companies to give up your personal information to law enforcement without your consent (or a court order)?
-sting3r
Second, and most importantly, if he does in fact have the ear of a Senator, and if he is able to translate technical concerns into political babble, this is a very good opportunity to present concerns which aren't usually heard by the political class. And all without having to pay $250 for a plate of rubber chicken!
sPh
Thanks, but no thanks. I'd much rather stick to securing my boxes with the understanding that it's a hostile net out there than have my government tell me the One True Way to do so. Passing laws which only apply to less than 5% of the world's population will not make the net secure, and feel good legislation is something I can do without.
Have the goverment set up standards and rateing for security in software (IE what DOD has done.)
Decent suggestion.
Require ALL O/S's, EMail, Firewall, and etc. Meet or exceed the rateing and put on their software package what Security rateing does the software have.
BAD. Bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD. This is what the proposed SSSCA was supposed to do - regulate software design. Regulating software design is a TERRIBLE idea, as it leads to the issues we are just now starting to see - software that's legal in one country is illegal in another. Another issue is the very idea of a logo/rating program - it would favor the commercial sector to an unhealthy degree. With the fact that all OSS has release schedules of NIGHTLY, keeping the software in check with the legislation would be nigh impossible and significantly impinge the ability of open developers to work on a project if they need government approval to release a new stepgap build.
Read. My. ASCII. NO. SOFTWARE. REGULATION.
-Lx?
Maybe they could clear somethings up...
I'd like to have clear guidelines on mail. How long do I need to keep it? Can I just totally delete mail or do I need to maintain backups.
When can I monitor/read someone's email? It's mine (well, it's the companies) but if MGR A wants me to give her access to EMP K mail is that legal? Can I monitor how many times my boss hits his stocks? When is OK to put a key stroke logger on someone's machine (don't ask, we ended up using a modified virus)?
Is it OK to block Accounting from mail
internet? To put a brick wall on their doorway so they are trapped in their damn Accounting offices forever? (OK that's probably not legal.)
PS -- I work for Lawyers' Travel... kinda ironic huh?
This
It is current practice of some US states to sell driver's license pictures and other personal data from their database to private firms, for various reasons. This practice should be illegal, or at the very least carefully monitored at the federal level.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
1: Get out of our way WRT encryption and other secure technologies. We're not terrorists, we just want to keep our personal information secure. Installing "back doors" and other methods may, on the surface, seem like a good idea for national security, but in reality hackers can enter through those as easily as the government.
2: Hold vendors responsible for security holes in their products. Currently, the EULAs prevent someone harmed by a security flaw from seeking liability, even if that security flaw was deliberately programmed into the software as a "feature."
3: Recognize the role of antivirus firms such as McAfee and Symantec in protecting users. They should be unrestricted in their efforts to make and sell software that can protect computer users from harmful files, regardless of the source.
4: Realize that the best way to catch criminals and terrorists is through the use of human intelligence, which history has proven to be much more effective than randomly reading private EMails. Also, human intelligence doesn't involve threatening the liberty of normal, law-abiding Americans like many of the other proposed methods do.
5: This is probably the most important one: Remember the words of Ben Franklin when he said, "They that would give up Essential Liberty in order to obtain Temporary Safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." I would also add that, in these cases, you usually don't get the safety you're seeking in the first place.
Encourage the Senator to remain aware that legislation about the Internet doesn't have crisp borders. Bits don't change color when they cross national boundaries.
When you do that, you might get him to understand that such laws are not easy to enforce and will certainly involve a lot of jurisdictional disputes.
And you might encourage him to realize that it is the lowest common denominator of behavior on the Internet that represents the cutting edge of security needs.
In other words, passing legislation against US Internet users is tantamount to taking their guns away, when they can at any minute be involved in a virtual gun-fight with, for example, Chinese or Indian crackers who have no such laws hampering them.
First: make sure product liability applies to software products. That will, at some point, allow users to sue companies who foist lousy software on us, which in turn creates security headaches. Code Red and NIMDA are the worst examples of this to date. It could have been much worse.
Second: Congress needs to do some serious thinking about common-carrier issues for the internet. It seems reasonable to say a phone or cable company, for instance, cannot preferentially transmit information while blocking traffic from another source. Problem is, this is what we count on to block probes and flood traffic. Please try to keep RIAA, MPAA, and other intellectual property thugs out of these deliberations!
Third: it seems Dubya and his cronies don't have a really good idea how to handle security. Ask them for details on how a redundant govnet will increase security before giving them lots of money to hand out to their favorite contractors.
Fourth: push available technology. NSA with SEU Linux is a great idea. How about pushing IPv6 and IPSEC, for instance by including it in communication RFPs? That would increase the availability (from virtually nil) and help work out the bugs. How about specific funding to increase the security of notoriously insecure government computers hooked up to the net? The GAO will tell you, after they finish laughing, how well secured government nets are.
I also like the idea of computer security scholarships. Are these still around after the change in administration?
In no particular order:
1) The Federal government should encourage, not discourage, the use of encryption, without key escrow or back doors, by not regulating encryption in any way. (The government should also invest heavily in the appropriate technology to break encryption when it needs to do so.) Without the fear of government intervention, application designers will be encouraged to add encryption to email and other software as a business advantage to themselves, thus allowing my business to communicate more securely with ease.
2) The Federal government should encourage open source and open standards by requiring the use of open source software and open standards on all government systems (except possibly military/intelligence systems). This will get more eyes on the code, thus reducing vulnerabilities and fixing them faster, and will ensure that people are unable to take advantage of unpublic holes in uncheckable software.
3) The Federal government should generally *not* regulate the internet, as this can introduce holes that cannot be fixed because of regulatory requirements. In particular, the government should not use either legislation or funding to control the use of the internet by libraries, schools and other non-Federal government institutions, or by private individuals and organizations. There are a few exceptions I would be OK with:
a) requiring "edge filtering" so that networks would not support denial of service attacks;
b) allowing wire fraud charges against people/organizations who deliberately send email without proper and valid headers (or with forged headers), so as to obscure their identity while sending unsolicited commercial email and/or perpetuating scams (note that this should be allowed for the purpose of anonymously propagating a political opinion, for example, just not for commercial use);
c) requiring organizations who control internet naming or numbering to have public accountability, as these organizations were largely granted a monopoly by the US government; opening up these processes to a standards-based system where everyone can participate; or allowing anti-trust legislation against such bodies if they attempt to coercively control internet access.
4) The Federal government should designate ISPs and online communities as common carriers.
5) The Federal government should require cable and telephone companies, as part of their FCC licensing requirements, to offer the option of access to the network for paying subscribers wihtout mandatory membership in an ISP, and in particular an ISP should not be allowed to gain monopoly status by association with a government-granted monopoly such as a cable system. This would have reduced the @Home debacle, for example, to a trivial matter. The potential for AOL/Warner is even worse down the road if something is not done to guarantee choice in broadband access.
OK, I guess I got a little away from security with those last some of that.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
It's all well and good to propose holding Microsoft responsible for security holes in their software, but please keep in mind that this also means that Open Source Software authors will ALSO be held fiscally responsible for holes in THEIR software.
Microsoft will be far more able to pay up for massive holes in IIS than, say, the author of BIND or Sendmail. I would imagine that one successful suit could take out RedHat altogether.
Don't hurt community-oriented authors for making their code public.
-Braddock
I've got a long list of things I do not want the govenment doing, and what they should do instead. They should not be reading my email, they should prosecute those who do as they prosecute those who use the inherently insecure potocal known as US mail. They should not be collecting information they don't need to do the job of infrastucture development, military defense and welfare. They should not be buying insecure propriatory OS such as M$ offers. I'd much rather have information kept on secure servers so that it will stay put. The government should not hand over the publically built communications infrastructure to a cartel of greedy corporate interests. Redundancy should be encouraged and inexpensive anonymous public access assured.
Security should not be an excuse to hand the internet over to either corporate of govenment censors. This is the future of publications and it must remain free. The future freedom and prosperity of our country depends on free information interchange. Business can not funtion without privacy in their plans. Individuals can not be sure what is true if they can not trust the media that brings them their news. Control of the internet by government or corporate censors will eliminate all the blessings of this new form of communications.
How exactly do you do this? Mr. Senator, that is your job. Now get to work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Don't mandate key escrow. Key escrow will inhibit the adoption of encryption, and encryption is vital to both proper and secure authentication and to data privacy. Attempts by various parties to limit the widespread adoption of encryption might make their job easier but is not good for (internet) security. It is frequently said that if you outlaw encryption, only outlaws will use encryption - that is, making it illegal to use it will not stop criminals from actually doing so.
Re-think laws that make it possible to prosecute scientists for publishing the results of their research - i.e. the DMCA or parts of it.
Encourage the adoption of IPv6 - perhaps by allocating budget for adoption of this by government agencies (I mean carrot here, not stick).
Implementing even a few of these should deal with the national deficit, quite nicely. Some of the biggest costs in both public and priate spending are to fix serious problems, after the fact. The burdon should be shifted, as much as can realistically be done, to those responsible. A stitch in time saves nine. But, damn it, the tax payers shouldn't have to pay for someone else's failure to stitch.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cryptography is the strongest weapon we have against cyber-terror.
Whatever is done, don't put limits on cryptography.
I design secure cryptographic-based architectures for a living. I can't design a secure information system without strong cryptography.
It's a shame that in the public eye cryptography became a "tool of terrorism" in the days following 911, when in reality it's our only hope for an attack-resilient Internet infrastructure.
At the same time, it is a merit to Congress that crypto limits have NOT yet emerged in the reactionary aftermath.
-Braddock
Replying at random to one of the many people who say gov't always gets it wrong and the public sector is where all the smart people are. Go read the comments to the article about project failure. Notice how many of them (like, almost *all*) are about private companies are filled with moron managers who couldn't make the right decision if it sprang full from their butt.
People are people. You get idiots in the public sector. You get idiots in the private sector. Where you get people, you get idiots.
Everyone is smarter than his or her boss. That makes the lowest person in the company the smartest.
Make all government-funded development work open-sourced.
However, the goverment can do some things:
1. Deal with Microsoft's monopoly effectively. Microsoft's continued embrace, extend, kill the competition and then screw it up strategy doesn't help security one bit. They have no motivation whatsoever to fix even the simplest problems in Outlook and other swiss-cheese-like products. If there was a viable competitor in that market the two would probably attempt to one up each other on several points, including security.
2. Use more secure and more reliable software inside the government (read Linux, et al). Refuse to use/purchase products where security flaws crop up every time you read slashdot.
3. Use/support open standards and refuse to use/purchase products that rely on embraced and extended technology.
One thing that may help is if there was some independant firm that could give a qualitative and quanitative measurement of a company's security. These independant firms could review patch logs, sys admin proceedures, backup procedures, and employee training materials. They could also perform more intrusive audits, using a standard set of tools (upgraded quarterly) to attempt to infiltrate the organization. At the end, they could then give some sort of ranking, to let a company know what bases have been covered and how they rank with others in the industry.
This service is done by many security firms, but there is no real standard. All the information is propriatary, and usually secret, because a company doesn't want to publicize what holes were found. Even then, there is no real motivation to get ongoing reviews, because, if there are no visible hacker attempts, then it seems like a waste of time and money.
This might be changed by offering computer security insurance. This insurance would cover the cost of recovering after a sucessful cracking attempt, as well as any lost business. An insurance firm would evaluate the current security and ability to recover from a hacking attempt, and find a reasonable insurance rate based on the company's preparedness.
This would help in several ways. First, even though the evaluation would be between the insurance company and the insurance purchaser, the insurance rate would show up on the financial reports. Investors and reporters could compare the rate and the coverage, and make a rough determination of the fitness of the company's security measures. The rate information should be included in the financial report, since this information would help an investor decide how likely a company is to suffer financial loss due to a hacking attempt. It may require a law to get this insurance information into financial reports.
Second, it would give companies a forum to disclose successful hacks. Currently, companies keep all but the most damaging hacking attempts secret, because it makes them look bad in the eyes of investors. If there is a financial incentive to report hacking attempts (they could get some insurance money back), there may be motivation to share this critical information, and other companies may be able to secure their own systems against new methods.
Third, damage claims would be more realistic. When a cracker is caught, many companies let their imagination soar when it comes to damages, assuming fantastical scenarios like, "What if he found our most prized trade secrets, and sold them to our direct competitor, thus making us lose all the profit from that product / service?", or "What is the sum of all the salaries of everyone who ever worked on that machine?". If the company had to actually file a claim, then the insurance company would dictate the terms of that claim, what is fair game for damages and what is not. This will help put the cracker's actions into better perspective.
Fourth, once standards are formed, the government could use the standards for contractors. For instance, a contractor working with "Secret" documents may have to have a score of 90 out of 100 for the general company, and a score of 97 out of 100 for the division working with the secret data. The government may even demand scores of 100 - not unrealistic for a score based on repeatable and auditable tests.
Fifth, the insurance companies would have an incentive to discover what security measures work, and which don't. If they find that yearly training for employees to deter social engineering attacks work, then they can make that part of the standard. If randomized one-use passwords work, then it goes in. If some widely believed precaution has little effect, it can come out of the standard. In general, we'll have a better idea of what makes a secured network, and more books will be written helping small businesses meet the insurance company's demands.
Sixth, we can develop labs like UL for computer security, which can rate software, operating systems, and hardware, giving them ratings for their out-of-the-box configurations. Vendors will work harded for better ratings, and auditors will have an idea how much patching needs to be done for a particular system to be kept up-to-date. Security will actually become a selling point.
I'm not sure if there is a law that would make this happen. I'm sure you can talk to the insurance lobby, and get a rough idea why this doesn't exist yet.
Frankly, I don't see how network security is any of Congress' business.
And regardless of whether it's a good idea or not, I don't see anything in the Constitution that would grant them authority to take any action in this arena.
Thank you for using Cluetrain express, be seated and enjoy.
...some of you /.'er saying "you want us to do your job for you?" need to board the cluetrain as well...uh, Senator, law making, U.S. of A, Constitution, righting wrongs, fixing bad laws... mean anything to you?
:) .
I realize I am merely echoing what others have said, but to have a 'fellow professional' ask our opinion/advice is always welcomed.
Add to the fact that a US Senator is asking makes it even more necessary to voice out opinion.
(HELLOOOO! McFly!!!
Apologies for the brow beating, someone had to say it)
I realize it has little to do with security, but hear me out:
Consider the eBook, DeCSS, Napster, DRM, Watermarking, DMCA, SSSCA, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, et al.
What do all of these have in common? Bad Laws, legislation, and corporations who are twisting and perverting the legal system to thier own will, and succeeding to implement new forms of Prohibition.
You see the 1920's provided a clue to a generation: You can NOT legislate morality.
What these laws are saying is "Napster Baaad", "Fair use, Baaaad", "Freedom of speech Baaad!"...you get the idea.
Trying to "outlaw computers, fair use, tools of the trade" is a bad idea, but it is one that seems to be advancing at an alarming rate.
What is being ignored in the law making body is:
The tools of the trade (any trade), be it a lock pick, gun, sledge, bolt cutters, or, yes, a computer...these things need to be available reguardless of intent and use.
It seems most corps/senators/congressppl are afraid of "what we might do/think" and are making it illegal.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think a "Digital Boston Tea Party" protesting this "Digital Prohibition and Taxation w/o representation".
But the only thing that comes to mind is lobbing modems and misc computer parts on the Whitehouse/Congressional 'doorsteps' in protest.
Ok, I've gone on long enuf, but I'll leave you with this thought:
The most powerful network security tool is called "a pair of wire cutters", after that is finding the offending wire and pulling as hard as you can
Cheers,
Moose
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
How about holding various companies whose products are exploited the most (re: MS) liable for their lack of security?
There was a recent security seminar sponsored by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center by Gene Spafford who is the director of the Purdue CERIAS (Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security), where he mentioned the problems with security and the software industry. One of his slides in his presentation showed that Windows NT and Windows 2000 (combined), RedHat Linux and Solaris are respectively the first, second and third on the lists of OSes that have had vulnerabilities discovered in the past five years.
Legislation that aims to punish companies for writing insecure software would harm almost every company that writes any software that is aimed at being used in a server/multi-user environment since security is an absolute that most non-trivial software does not reach.
Secondly, who will be forced to pay when it comes to Open Source vulnerabilities? wu-ftp is notoriously broken , as is telnetd , sendmail, BIND and some would consider recent bugs in the Linux kernel as OS vulnerabilities. Opening the door to lawsuits to software developers for writing software would probably kill a number of projects rather quickly.
I'd rather that we let capitalism take its course. If customers want secure products then they should stop buying insecure products or they should communicate to the vendors that security is of importance to them. As long as consumers (both individuals and corporate entities) continue to accept the status quo then no change will be made but I don't believe that lawsuits will solve anything except make some lawyers rich and significantly increase the cost of software as the effects of the lawsuits are passed on to consumers.
thanks to government regulations:
Houses cost more than they need to
Medical Insurance/Proceedures/Drugs cost more than they need to
Automobiles cost more than they need to
we have the DMCA
no I dont think we need any more of their "help"
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Mr. Senator, there is something you can actually do for us.
It even involves you getting to pass a law, which I know is something you Senators greatly enjoy.
It is:
REPEAL THE DMCA SO WE CAN GET SOME DAMN WORK DONE.
Thanks for taking my valuable time (because I pay for your time, too) to listen.
The problem is distinction. Systems administrators are not (and should not be) required to be licensed. This makes having tools which could be used for testing or black hat hacking always open to targeting by unsophisticated law enforcement. We've seen this time and again on Slashdot.
Our current internet is impossible to completely secure and still offer usable services. A big problem with security are ISP's that require you uninstall any firewall software before they will support you. Firewall software on broadband should be required, not by law, but by the ISP being responsible. No firewall, no connection.Same for virus engines and current virus signature data files.
The other big security hole on the internet is the constant bugs found in software such as Outlook and Outlook Express by Microsoft. Other vendors are guilty too, but by far the most problems are with MS products, and they just keep turning up. Part is sloppy code, part is just the way simplistic programs have to be written for the (now) average user. Harry Homeowner doesn't understand a lot about computers, nor does he want to. He wants to get on AOL or MSN, cruse the internet, and get his e-mail. As long as the most common user is of this type, security of all types will be very difficult to implement.
Another part of the problem is that many non-technical people keep looking for the magic bullet to fix all the security problems, and want to pass laws to make it so. They forget that a law in the United States has no effect in China, and vice-versa.
We will always have rogues with us. That will never change. There are some simple things we can do to improve security, one being that outbound filtering be emplaced. This doesn't require a law, but a bit of effort on the part of a router owner.
As simple as it is to use, the internet is far from simple. Most people that use telephones don't understand how they work, and the same is true for computer users. Any law requiring one thing for forbidding another will have very little long term effect on computer security for the mid-level black hat. At most, you will make life a bit harder for script kiddies, but not for long and not very much. Conversely, you will be making our (honest administrators) life difficult.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
If you really believe that, I've got some land in Florida I'd like to sell you ...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I agree with you because I find the original poster's statement to be incomplete. I would reword it, "Making something illegal or applying mandatory monitoring by non-technologists does nothing...." In response to your rebuttal, the punishments you described were (for the most part) established by those with experience, if not expertise, in social psychology. If punishments and deterrents are developed by those with a knowledge of network secutiry, they're much more likely to be effective (and not overreaching) than those developed by politicians without the background necessary to make intelligent decisions about technology.
Virg
My biggest concern is the woeful state of computer security research in the U.S. Due to crypto restrictions in the U.S., foreign firms offering commercial cryptographic products have gained a major competitive advantage. This has translated into more R&D money for these firms. The crypto regulations were repealed. But now history is repeating itself, due to congressional meddling with Intellectual Property laws (DMCA, and it's ilk). It's had a chilling effect on security research in this country. Similarly, the Sklyarov arrest resulted in foreign security experts being very wary of even attending conferences in the U.S.
At a time when the U.S. needs to strengthen our computer security infrastructure, congress has managed to handicap the very people needed to accomplish this goal.
So, bottom line, change the laws (starting with the DMCA), before all computer security research moves offshore.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Quite simply, when it comes to technical implementations the government needs to butt out and scale back. Someone has already posted that he thinks government is too slow to react to the tech sector well, imo, government is too reactionary to regulate it well.
Take one of /.'s favorite whipping boys - the DMCA. When Clinton signed it even he commented that the law would be hashed out in the courts. By most legal analysts accounts it went far beyond what the WIPO treaty called for. IMO, it's simply a bad law.
But it's not just a bad law because of what it does with Fair Use, the 1st Amendment, etc. It's bad law because it allows a vendor to obfuscate their product and stifle commentary on it.
For example, I work for a newspaper. We want to start charging for some content we host on our website. A vendor that provides such a solution would charge us a ton of money to use their product which they claim is secure and has DRM built-in. Well, it uses pdfs.
Now there is a great little tool out there that I could use to evaluate this vendor's product called the Advanced E-book processor. I know from the research a certain Russian programmer did that pdf security sucks but as he's in jail for helping to create AEP I'm loathe to use the program. Even worse, I'm loathe to use any program to test this solution. What happens when I reveal my results and the vendor finds out?
The funny thing is, I work in an industry the DMCA was designed to protect but can't use certain tools to make informed business decisions because the same law makes useful tools illegal. Now where is my ability to say "I cracked your product in 10 seconds using a tool available over the Internet. We're willing to accept that but not at the price you want to charge us for your solution because, obviously, your product doesn't work as advertised. How about we knock a hundred thousand off?"
Yes, I want something better than Windows Update too but not because the government intervened to make it so. I simpy have no faith that they could do so in a timely and thoughtful fashion.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
That would be jobcurity .
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
This would be my NUMBER ONE suggestion for reducing DDOSes and improving internet security in general. Egress filtering (Removing packets originating from inside your network if their source address doesn't correspond to your IP range) would go a long way towards shutting down the skript kiddies.
There is no magic bullet but this would be a big help.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Both are considered "weapons" that can be used to "attack" others (or, in the case of crypto, facilitate attacks, although strong crypto is still considered a "weapon" by the government, right?)
Both are also tools that can (and mostly are) be used for legitimate purposes
Both suffer from attacks from their critics who can't differentiate between the inherent goodness/badness of a tool and the goodness/badness of the intent behind the use of the tool.
Both suffer from the radical polarization of viewpoints on both sides of the issue.
The only difference that I see is that we don't have a Constitutional Amendment that says "the right of the people to use BackOrifice shall not be infringed..." Perhaps that's what we need?
I know many people who are pro-"gun rights", and by making these parallels, I've started turning them into pro-"Crypto and Internet Security" people as well. After all, if they passionately believe in the right to defend themselves from the threat that may come through their front door, they will believe in making all the information available for defending from the threat that may come through their cable box!
(I might add that while examining these isues, I've come to understand and sympathise with the pro-"Gun Rights" people a bit more. I still don't agree with all their points, but at least I understand their basic beliefs.)
Decriminalize the publication of information. Throwing someone in jail because they talk about an encryption system or they reverse engineer a protocol, is stupid.
Criminals, by definition, will not obey they law. Criminalizing research and information sharing hinders only the legitimate researchers and security professionals.
If a product/services is secure, it has nothing to fear from scrutiny.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Security needs to focus on the system administration. Most security problems can be prevented by proper SA practices, which include selecting appropriate software for the particular environment, keeping that software properly upgraded, and configuring it correctly. But it is not just the lowly system administrator; the problem includes the management overseeing the system administration as well. Management needs to not just dictate that security is a requirement, but also make the decisions that do not hinder it (for example, management should not mandate a particular software program, but rather, set requirements that need to be accomplished). And network administration is also a big part of this. Both system administration and network administration need to work closely together, or even be the very same unit (or the same person in smaller businesses or business units).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Should they offer discounts for external audits of corporate security? How far should those audits go? Who makes sure the auditors know what they're doing?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A key component of enhancing network security is to maintain (or improve) the pathways in place for vulnerability reporting. CERT, BUGTRAQ, the NYTimes, etc, are frequently responsible for encouraging vendors to respond rapidly to holes in their systems, and are undoubtedly responsible for getting many people to install those patches.
Recently, at least one large unnamed software company which has had a security PR problem apparently has raised again the ugly suggestion that reporting bugs publicly is irresponsible. (Bad software doesn't cause people to break into systems -- it's people saying that the software is bad that causes people to break into systems.) Other people have suggested closed lists so only "appropriate" people hear about vulnerabilities. It is very important that the government not get boondoggled into restricting access to information about security vulnerabilities.
There are those who argue that making available exploit code as part of a description of an attack is a large part of the problem (somehow they think there is some magic involved in turning words into code and almost no one can do it). It's unfortunate that public demonstration of an exploit, not mere description, is frequently needed to actually get a vendor to acknowledge a vulnerability.
Instead of limiting information, why not pressure vendors to write better code in the first place (c'mon, who thought that having your email client execute arbitrary script code in an email was a *good* idea?), and to respond rapidly to problems without having to be splattered over the NY times.
1. Retain the freedom to publish details about security holes.
We've already seen the chilling effect on free speech here in America. Many security conferences are moving outside the borders of the USA, worried that many of their experts could be imprisoned under the DMCA.
More importantly, the congress is going to have to make some tough choices -- one of them will be whether or not code is free speech.
You can tell your Senator friend that if the act of publishing a security hole is banned, that won't stop the black hat hackers from publishing the information.
2. Encourage insurance companies to offer "hacking" insurance.
The current model for security reporting is bad. Software vendors don't want to announce security holes for fear of bad press. Web stores running on insecure servers don't want to admit they were hacked or they'd lose their customer base. But even though you paid $10,000 for this software, it comes with no warranty -- the company assumes no liability for it whatsoever.
Hacking insurance solves this by setting rates for companies based on the software they're using. Higher rates would be asessed for insecure software running a e-commerce webserver. It protects e-commerce sites against losses they might incur from hacking.
More importantly, over time insurance companies will act like a industry force, publishing ratings on the relative security of software, and thereby forcing software vendors to react in the first place.
3. Don't reward software companies who release insecure code with the power of the FBI and the Justice Department.
The FBI has become the enforcement wing for Microsoft. It's sad that the real issue of Melissa and IL0VEY0U were that Outlook had security holes so big you could drive a truck through them. Unfortunately, Microsoft used the FBI as a PR cro-bar to turn public opinion away from their software insecurities to those that took advantage of them.
It's like Ford releasing a car with locks that didn't work and then using the police investigations to spin the media focus to concentrate on the perpetrators, not the defect.
4. Privacy Privacy Privacy
The industry failed to come up with a working privacy protection plan for the consumer who does web browsing. They came up with a lite protocol that will appear in IE6. If websites are compliant to the new standard (which many of them aren't), websites will break under IE6, and users will find themselves shutting those features off the web browser in order to access their favorite web sites.
Senators, if anybody, should be completely aware of all the issues surrounding privacy. They, themselves made it illegal for cops to obtain video rental records without a warrant, while allowing medical records and social security numbers to fly through the ether completely unrestricted.
I recommend the following for starters:
1) Websites should NEVER be allowed to store a credit card number or an SSN on a hard drive after the transaction as completed.
2) Credit Bureaus must allow people access to their own credit history -- for free -- and must tell people when a credit report was sent and to whom it was sent to. This is the fastest way to stop the number of growing identity fraud cases.
3) SSN's and other personal information such as medical records should be treated like copyrighted works. Organizations must ask the owner's permission before it is given out to others.
4) Limit the collection of personal infomation online. This is in essence, so called, "cyberstalking." If I were to do it, it's probably illegal. If companies do it, it's okay.
5. Back Doors and click-through licenses
Software companies should not be allowed to introduce back doors for the purpose of disabling software. Often these are announced in the EULA. For example, after installing Microsoft Media Player the user has given approval to Microsoft to disable *any* software on the computer.
You can be sure that hackers are well on their way to figuring out how to exploit Media Player for illegal purposes.
;^)
>Don't you think that if Bill Gates could become what he is today, that any of you are capable of the very same thing?
...
.com thing. People even /knew/, at the time, that consumers were asking for useless things, and companies kept fueling money into it. Consumers are, by definition, looking for gratification and/or solutions, for the individual (or small group). Solutions that benifit a broader population, including market 'comprimises', rarely occur in a free-market scenario.
...
.. you may not like them now, but one day, they may just save the life or provide affordable housing to someone you love (although its unfortunate we dont value this help when it goes to people we do not know/love/understand.)
Ever heard of morals? Capitalism discounts (or ignores, in the very least) the reality that people disagree with the very action of exploiting free markets and advertising dollar, not that they are just 'too lazy to do what Bill did.' Participants of this society think that he shouldn't have even been ALLOWed to do what he did. Reductionists like you will forever call 'JEALOUSY!' or 'ENVY!', but you're only doing yourself a disservice by not attempting to understand different mindsets and perspectives.
Also
Consumers may dictate the needs of the market, but those needs are often wrong, shortsighted, etc. Shit, look at the
And then
Do you truely advocate that consumers SHOULD dictate the needs of the market? If that were true, drunk driving might actually be legal, and we'd be losing twice the amount of people to accidents. Nike and Gap et al would depend on FAR more child labour if the government did not impose certain levels of audits, etc, cause the consumers sure aint gunna stop buying so long as they dont have to look into the eyes of the kids making the clothing. There are additional examples abound. At some point, the government's job is to protect its citizens from their own short-sightedness and lack of ability to have a broad view of their environment. The government should monitor and analyse its popultion, in order to provide common-demoninator regulations to strike the best balance between technology adoption and standardization to promote equality in market participation. We don't trust the government these days, but thats because we send so many of the smart people into the private sector!
You have to understand that doing what you want to do is not neccessarily the best thing for you. This is what taxes are
Unfortuntely, as long as people like you exist, 'lazy' people will always have a justifiable ground from which to bitch, moan, etc. And hey, no one forced you to bitch about their bitching, know what I mean? If it aint your scene, keep to yourself; after all, you can be confident in your mindset that the market will always dictate the correct needs (including governing needs as the intigration with the private sector continues, I assume), so you've very little to worry about, don't you?
"Old man yells at systemd"
In some areas, particularly National Security areas, we should give the SAs the ability to take well-defined countermeasures to counteract attacks, including tracing DoS attacks and making contact with their sources.
This is what Cliff Stoll did when nobody gave a damn during the German Hacker incident. Except, of course, they weren't DoS attacks, there were r00ting.
I wonder what would have happened with that investigation in today's climate? Would he have been sued for allowing the hacker to run free? What would law enforcement have done? IIRC, the only TLA that paid attention to him was the CIA.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
1) Criminalize the intentional falsification of header information - primary target is Spam senders and IP address spoofing.
2) Make it absolutely legal to defend my property (servers, IP address space, etc) through any means available (NULL routing, reverse hacking, packet amplifiers, RBL, etc...)
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Secondly (and I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere) TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. Put the resources in: hire people, or train the people you have (or BOTH!) Almost every place I've ever worked in my professional IT career has taken a slapdash, it'll-never-happen-here, why would anyone hack us? -type approach to security. Some well known institutions have an absolutely scandalous disregard for the basic principles of info-sec. Perhaps it's time to put some pointy-haired bosses on the stand and ask them to justify their pigheaded disregard for stuff that we all know is common sense. (I've a personal interest here; I've been trying to get a job in fulltime info-sec for the past
Finally, don't listen to the zealots on this thread who will be saying "ban Microsoft!" Properly secured MS boxes can be as secure as a good Unix. (That means: don't run IIS; don't run IE or Outlook; use *nix for your network infrastructure; educate your end-users; make sure you have management buy-in to what you're doing.)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I would ask congress to leave it alone. It's not their problem to fix. The networks belong to who they belong to, and it's up to them to decide how to use it.
90% of computers run M$ products.
90% of hack attempts, Worms and Viruses target M$ products.
String Up Bill!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The same thing happened to the auto industry as it matured. Today we have strong warranties on cars, strong liability laws, and cars work very reliably. The auto industry kicked and screamed about regulation for decades. But in the end, they built better cars. It's time to do the same for software.
I'd suggest, as a start, that software which will open "executable content" (which can contain viruses, etc.) without the user's explicit permission for each opening make the vendor of said software liable for negligence should any harm result from said action. This liability must not be waiveable. That puts the burden on mail readers and web browsers to protect the user against incoming attacks. Don't accept any arguments that this is technically infeasible; it's not.
In a competitive OS environment, security would be a selling point in today's new world. But it isn't. All these Word and Outlook viruses are Microsoft-specific.
Microsoft products are regularly cracked for two reasons. The first is that, being a monopoly, they are ubiquitous. If Yale was the only company in the nation making padlocks, criminals would only study Yale padlocks and learn to crack them, no matter how well they were built.
The second is that Microsoft is not particularly security-conscious. The road to Windows started in DOS, which needed no security--it couldn't be networked! All the DOS-based Windows--3.1, 95, 98, ME--either have no security or had security put in after the fact. Only Windows NT, 2000, and (perhaps, I don't know) XP were built with security in mind at the beginning.
Even with that, Microsoft has made a conscious decision to promote ease of use over security. It's always a trade off: security is obnoxious. If you don't believe me, think back to the last time you misplaced your car keys. Microsoft's decision has been wonderful in giving the average user unprecedented access to information, but just as wonderful in giving the average computer criminal unprecedented access to everyone else's information.
DoJ vs. Microsoft is still going on, last I checked. Anything that creates competition in the OS market will help secure the Internet. Vendors are likely to make security a selling point, and criminals will have to learn to crack multiple platforms to commit their crimes.
--The basis of all love is respect
Another slashdot poster has noted the real problem with network security -- being able to contact the administrator of a network when you see malicious attacks coming from it.
I'd hate to see something like this being legislated, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if the goverment would try to spearhead an effort to provide a canonical location to get contact information.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Don't protect private companies and individuals from anyone but the government. We can take care of ourselves.
Don't protect the government from law-abiding citizens. We're at sufficient disadvantage already.
Don't protect the privacy of convicted criminals.
Don't create laws that favour any one kind of entity over any other, except law-abiding citizens and corporations over convicted criminals.
Don't legislate exclusions of liability for security breaches. Let the civil courts decide who, if anyone, is responsible for damages due to security breaches.
Don't restrict or attempt to restrict cryptography, and strictly prohibit the three letter agencies from planting or distributing intentionally weakened or defective cryptographic tools.
Don't allow the three letter agencies to wiretap data connections without meeting constitutional requirements - it does nothing to improve security and most likely decreases it by creating additional copies of sensitive information.
Most importantly of all - *DO* build trust in the security community by passing and strictly enforcing JUST, FAIR LAWS in all matters concerning digital security, copyright law, privacy, and civil liberties. In other words, do your job as statesmen and earn the respect and trust of all the citizens you supposedly represent. Your job is MUCH easier to do when we can trust you, and sadly, your record makes that outright impossible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"The Objective is to punish verndors that are purposefully or recklessly insecure."
You obviously missed the point. Sun and RedHat are just as reckless at releasing insecure software as Microsoft. Perhaps even moreso in the case of RedHat as they are just blindly redistributing stuff others wrote and have no input in the design.
You might get what you wish for, but you may not like it.
Paraphrasing Bruce Schneirer; We already have laws in place for stealing, copyright, etc. Just because someone is using a new technology to commit the same old crimes doesn't mean new laws are needed.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
One problem adminstrators of Educational and nonprofit organizations often face is that they don't get help from law enforcement as long as they can't prove or argue damages. Law enforcements these days only seems to care for businesses and Goverment institutions.
.org's Web Site).
A good Example here is the DOSed University. Universities or others that run a free community service (like IRC servers) get virtually zero help when their system (or even their whole networks) get blasted off the net by some DOS script kiddy, while OTOH armies of FBI agents start running when Yahoo or Amazon is in trouble.
Law enforcement should
- consider gangs of electronic vandals (like IRC war clans) organized crime and prosecute them accordingly
- consider attacks and damage against public and community institutions a heavily aggravating element during sentencing (so the yahoo hacker will have to serve less or equal time as the guy who DOSes a university IRC or some poor
- allocate prosectution resources in a way that they can give equal priority to the finding of a script kiddy regardless if he DOSes Boeing or the Younameit Community College Web Site.
f. (who thinks that script kiddies who 'packet' IRC servers (and such, whole Networks) for such childish reasons as to take over a competing clan's channel are one of the lowest forms of life, somwhere between the cholera germ and the common spammer).
The problem with that attitude is that, to get real security, you have to do things in a secure way everywhere. That means that everybody has to be thinking in terms of security... and not only that, but thinking in terms of things that will actually help, rather than just giving a false sense of security. That takes a certain mindset, and the only way to develop that mindset is to think about ways to break security, to see examples of how security is broken, and to see how existing security measures work, both so you can improve them and so you can avoid screwing them up.
If you restrict access to information, you end up with only two sets of people who have a clue:
-
-
Security is everybody's problem, and that means everybody has to understand it. When you release information widely, you educate 100 good guys for every bad guy. When you try to keep everything secret, you hold the good guys back more than the bad guys.A small group of overworked security specialists. These people can't do it all, and, if the rest of the world is poorly informed, they won't be listened to. In addition, in an environment where information is tightly restricted, it's very difficult to recruit and educate new security specialists.
The bad guys. Being more motivated than the general population, the bad guys will get most or all of the "restricted" information through their own networks.
I'm not saying that there's never a reason to keep anything secret, but there should be a presumption in favor of openness. You should try to keep something secret only when:
It describes the details of an actual vulnerability that hasn't been fixed, and provides information useful in exploiting that vulnerability, AND
Having information about the vulnerability would not, in itself, permit people to protect themselves, AND
You're reasonably sure that large numbers of bad guys don't already know about it. In network security, large number of bad guys will definitely find out about it within a few months, if they haven't already found it independently. That means that keeping anything secret for a long time will never work.
In government, the sorts of things we need to watch out for are:
Excessive classification. It would be nice to see more legislative sunsets on classification, and more requirements for review of the decision to classify something. Patent secrecy orders are especially suspect.
Programs where government information is shared only with "trusted private sector partners". Not only is this intrinsically bad, but it encourages cronyism and corruption, and can create economic problems by raising barriers to entry in security-related industries.
Misguided weakening of "sunshine laws" like the FOIA. Because information is power even more in the Federal bureaucracy than in most places, there's an incentive for agencies to hoard it for political reasons. When all else fails, these laws often serve, not so much to free the underlying information, as to expose the illegitimate reasons it's being held secret.
The occasional calls for outright banning the release of scientific or engineering information, in the style of the idiotic Feinstein "bomb making information" law.
To me, the withholding of security risk information is a form of fraud. It is the same as rolling back the odometer on a used car. It is the same as selling Pintos with exploding gas tanks and the same as selling flammable pajamas to children. Companies must be required to release security risk information about their systems in a timely manner. They must be legally liable for damages that result from security issues between the time they discover the problem and the time they warn users of the problem. These kinds of penalties will force companies to create secure systems in the first place. And, to warn people in a timely manner so that they can take action to protect themselves. Although it is tempting I don't think the developers should be required to fix the system. But, a list of all outstanding security problems must be included in advertising and on the packaging of any system. People have to be able to make an informed decision about what systems to use. We put warning labels on beer and cigarettes, we require people to wear seat belts, we require the disclosure of the ingredients of all our food, we have lemon laws to protect us from unscrupulous car salesmen, and we have product liability laws that cover every physical thing we purchase. But, we have no equivalent legal protection from the purveyors of software snake oil.
The only way a company should be able to get out from under these penalties is to declare the product "dead", notify all customers of record that no more security support will be given for that product. Declaring the software dead should also require that the source code and/or system designs as well as any patent and copyrights to the system be released to the customers so that customers can arrange for other sources of security support for the system. At that point the company would not be allowed to sell, distribute, or accept any sort of payment including royalties and support payments for the software.
Stonewolf
I work at a major Tier 1 hosting provider and network security is always a huge concern. The largest issue the confronts my customers in terms of security is liability. I feel that the onus needs to be on the companies that owns the solution to provide adequate security. Many times I see customers say "I don't need a Firewall much less an IDS, no one would want to hack my website". Well unfortunately this makes them vulnerable for crackers to open up the box and turn it into a warez FTP site. Suddenly their bandwidth shoots out of control and we bill them for their usage. The customer in question then says that they are not liable for the bandwidth because it was not their traffic, despite the fact we spell out in their contract that they are liable for misuse of their servers. Additionally, some customer machines will be taken over for a DDOS. Say Customer X has no security and their box is compromised. Customer X's box then participates in a DDOS against Microsoft.com, and when Microsoft's attorneys go through the lists of who attacked them they sue Customer X. I'm not sure if this needs to be legislated, but I do feel companies need to be aware that they are responsible for their own security and to try and shuffle the blame on to a 16 year old script kiddies that compromised their machines is just showing their negligence in not providing adequate security. If you would like more examples of this for your research feel free to email me at adambruce09@hotmail.com
Umm...hmmm. If the US constitution grants the right to bear arms, and if crypto is classified as a munitition under US law, then don't you yanks have a constitiutional right to use crypto?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
To them, pro-active computer security is like flushing money down the toilet.
In order to change this, in the context of this discussion, are you suggesting that congress legislate free clues?
A Stanford law professor has already theorized that owners of hacked sites could be held liable. While I'm not aware of any cases having been brought, it will happen. Right now, it's just credit card number gets stolen, script kiddie buys pr0n, owner reports fraud, credit card company charges back. It would fall to the porn site to seek recourse, and I can think of few less sympathetic plaintiffs than a porn site. One of these days, this will change. Remember: It's always easier to count the money spent doing something than the money lost by not doing it.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
You are absolutely right - computer intrusion fraud would be much harder to detect than other kinds of fraud. This is one thing a law would have to address - perhaps making it a federal offense to commit insurance fraud, and create a branch of the FBI that investigates fraud claims. If the insurance company suspects that it may be fraud (and they would make it their business to know what a real intrusion looks like), they would look into it during a normal claim investigation, and, if necessary, alert the FBI to a possible fraud investigation.
If someone is willing to commit this kind of fraud, one that brings real damage to their business, then either that person is in trouble or the company is in trouble. Remember, the insurance covers provable losses, so any claim will probably fall short of actual losses in time, reputation, stock price, insurance rate, and actual bottom line. A company is less likely to do this to itself or its stock than a rogue employee, and investigations tend to bring these rogue elements into clear relief.
I agree, fraud is a problem, as well as the international aspect of the Internet. Its hard to see how any laws can help make it more secure. But the insurance idea, especially if it's mandatory for government contracts, creates a financial incentive to secure networks, and sets a benchmark for what is a reasonably secure environment.
The most important thing is to push for the correct approach. By that I mean whenever one talks about anything "digital" or "computer"/"internet"-related, commonsense dissapears, most people tend to look at relations as if a different balance was needed. It is not. Cyber tools are like any other tools. Companies that offer computer-related products should be accountable for damages, like any other company. Products that involve risk should stamp that clearly in the manuals. Tha most secure way to use software should be described in detail. If one promisses and sends a bill, one has to deliver, or else compensate. Things like that. Think of software as an automobile. It's so simple! That would answer many other questions.
One thing, though, *is* different: the absence of an a clear geographic location for things and people on the net. This can only be dealt with through international cooperation. I would advise your Senator not to try and push for unilateral measures, as seems to be the norm in the US with this administration, because that would make it far more difficult to iron-out differences in the future.
Oye, ad-hoc thoughts...
A trivial definition of curtilage. Namely I own my boxes, I own my networks, I own the services that are offered. I have the right to dictate how those boxes, networks, and services will be used, since I am the one who paid for and built them. If you have any questions about this stance, subscribe to something, some day... the fact that I may be a "home user" or "major provider" should not make any difference.
Right now, any arbitrary, anonymous vendor has more rights to my stuff than I do via EULA "at any time" clauses. In some cases, any anonymous box has more legal rights to my stuff than I do. And finally, even the lowest end-user has the ultimate legal right to bind us to any legal agreement they're dumb enough to click on, even if they have no authority to make such a consent. All of this because curtilage is largely undefined, and where it is, it is grossly inconsistent.
The lack of curtilage is exemplified on two basic fronts.
a) Easter eggs in software. A product is offered with a specific functionality, e.g. an "office suite". The suite will often contain undisclosed and very irrelevent "features" that are flat-out undesired. Q.V. any package that may use resources that are not directly related to their explicit purpose - an application may attempt to "report home" to the vendor and STEAL network services. Or, things as trivial as packages that modify your browser's start page. Huh? Sorry, such things are outside the scope of intent, and violate turf.
b) If I initiate a packet stream that produces an effect that is explicitly against the intent of a service provider - namely, unauthorized utilization of bandwidth (theft of service), unauthorized utilization of CALs (theft of service), unauthorized utilization of CPU cycles (theft of service), unauthorized utilization of storage devices (theft of service... realize that all of the aforementioned are regularly "leased" by companies for serious cash), insertion of data, deletion of data, modification of log files... I go to jail. Some other idiot does that exact same thing because "you can make your sex life better," it's called Spam. Sorry, that should be trespass, tampering, theft of service, and anything else that applies to the results of an "evil packet stream". The exact same events occur, Period.
Other stuff - present "opt-in spam" laws fail, since the definition of "opting in" requires no authentification by the end user. First case and point - No user in our organization is authorized to subscribe (opt-in) to any mail list, and they don't. Yet we regularly get junk sent to them, all claiming to be "opt-in". That'd be a neat trick. Second case and point - it's quite trivial for me to subscribe you, Mr. Arbitrary Email Address, to any spam list I want. No effort is required of these "opt-in" lists to validate the authenticity of the request.
Culpability for negligence / intent. Code Red & Nimda demonstrated two very big things. a) Microsoft sucks, and b) Most users and admins are typhoid maries. The patch against the CRV vector had been out for quite a long time before CRV came to town. Fine. Then, it hit, and spread like crazy. It made the news... it made ALL the news. And to this day, there are still boxes out there that are spreading it, boxes that are actively attacking our systems. If a user gets an outlook virus, and that macro sends itself to everyone, fine - the first time, there's no intent. But when that user keeps using that box, day after day, and that box keeps attacking MY systems, sooner or later the law needs to recognize that there IS some form of intent present. That person is potentially killing me by their actions; they are *certainly* costing me money. Addressing this might have a nice "social" side effect, btw, of making a certain vendor a little more cautious towards exactly *where* they decide to implement scripting features...
Slightly along these lines, again curtilage. The current license model allowed by law is grossly incorrect. The typical computer system (be it a home PC, or a 15 server setup like I have here) consists of three entities. First, there's the hardware owner. He owns the box, and has ultimate say as to what that hardware does. Next, there's the software [license] owner. That person can say what happens with a package, but has no implicit rights to the box it runs on. Lastly, there's the end user, who has the right to type. The present model does not address this. If my 5 year old neighbor sits at my keyboard, using a program my wife bought, he has full proxy authority for me. He can commit me to mortgages, bind me to EULAs, whatever... by simple virtue of the fact that he's physically able to.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Let's look at this on a higher level.
Do we really need more laws?
If this guy realy wants to be a servant of the people how about going through the old, dusty laws and getting rid of them.
You know, the ones like swinging a lantern in front of a horseless carriage. These guys in government really need to 'clean house' not 'shop more'. I know it's not as sexy, but being a servant is not a sexy job.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
The difference between the public sector and the private sector isn't in the concentration of idiots, it's the reach of their decisions. When a private company makes bad decisions, the worst that can happen is that the company in question goes bankrupt. When government makes bad decisions, we end up with unjust laws that apply to everyone and are difficult to change.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Stop ignoring the wishes of the victim. I was involved in a case where a mid-level manager called law enforcement about a fairly serious intrusion. After the FBI became involved, the CEO stepped in and said they didn't want to prosecute if it would result in publicity for them. So what happens? They not only brought the case to court, but issued a press release, making the case front-page news.
Prosecutors need to stop ignoring victims' wishes. They also need to stop grandstanding for the media on cases like this. A lot more companies would report incidents and cooporate if they knew that the case would end in a quiet plea deal instead of a high-profile trial.
1. Don't make it illegal to do research or learn about security issues. It is necessary in order to provide security.
2. Don't make it illegal to announce security flaws and exploits. It is critical that information about security holes be open and available.
3. Prosecute people who cause damage by using software with malicious intent - not for developing software.
4. Either require Microsoft to fix their pathetically broken security model or allow people to recover damages from them for security lapses. The situation with Microsoft software vis a vis security is ludicrous.
5. Mostly keep the government out of the way - there is nothing the government or a bunch of new laws can do to make networks or the Internet more secure.
6. Encourage the FBI's NIPC to develop some minimum level of expertise and competence. Right now, there doesn't seem to be any. All they do is parrot what Microsoft tells them.
Reread all the great replies above and below. Then take a good look at security tools, and then tell your colleagues that the best tools and techniques were developed with the cooperation and a shared dream of privacy/protection that the entire world shares. Extremely brilliant and caring people from everywhere have made network security possible.
Recognize the shared effort, and common dream in here, and it might, just might, someday propogate into reality.
Perhaps even moreso in the case of RedHat as they are just blindly redistributing stuff others wrote and have no input in the design
No, I don't. If Red Hat started to distribute GnomeOutlook some day, they deserved to be sued to Hell and back.
Red Hat's product is selling decisions. "This we take, that we don't". So maybe writing code isn't their business, but selecting code is. And therefore they should be held responsible, at least by their paying customers.
Actually, Red Hat is a MAJOR contributor to Open Source development, employing such luminaries as Alan Cox (kernel) and Rasterman (enlightenment). RedHat had the fix for the ptrace exploit out in THEIR release of 2.4.9, but the fix didn't make it into the general kernel tree until 2.4.10. Also Red Hat puts a LOT of development effort into the GNU tools, such as gcc and glibc, so I don't think it is quite fair OR accurate to say they are "blindly redistributing stuff others wrote and have no input in the design". Companies that hire Open Source developers andd tell them "Develop Away" are a major factor in the current state of OSS technical excellence. Were it not for the RHATs, Caldera's, SUSe's and IBM's of the world, Linux would be nowhere NEAR its current state.
utter rubbish
I always lean towards less government interaction as any good Republican or Libertarian would do. So of course, the only stuff congress should do is make suggestions.
You know how the chemical industry uses a diamond to warn users of the risks of a substance right? How about doing the same for software? Here's the 4 areas I'd like to see:
1. Possibility of hidden holes vs. freely-available source:
Any software that's not open source will die on this one. How can your software be secure if there may be backdoors?
2. Establishment:
Any software that's been around since the sixties is going to be tested more than something written last year. Also, its easier to find help on newsgroups/webboards for established software.
3. Customization:
Most programs can be customized through a GUI interface, through the editing of a text file, or both. Traditionally, text files allow the most customization, but a killer GUI could also score well on this point. Also, software that is not released under a GPL-like agreement cannot be strengthened by an administrator. This sub-point could be probably be broken off into a new area.
4. Platform independance:
If the administration should change from one OS to another, its desirable to keep the same software. Flexibility in this regard equals safety. New-hire administrators are more likely to be knowledgable about software available for any platform. Also OS vendors who build security software for their own OS only are more likely to be concentrating on profitability over security.
Of course, these standards may be tough for some software vendors to acheive (no names here!). But that doesn't make them unimportant.
If we would have had these standards a long time ago, I don't think we'd be in the mess we are today.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
There isn't a contract involved in using open source, so no-one can be held liable.
Not so. There IS a legally enforceable license (which is a contract) and it is legally enforceable. The "consideration" to support a contract's enforceability does not HAVE to be money.
utter rubbish
The information on a job application is useless. Don't think law enforcement can't find this without going through your employer. Seriously, anyone with enough desire and resources would be able to get your name, last few addresses, SSN, employment history, place of birth, drivers license number, mother's maiden name, and other similar stuff. And it wouldn't take all that much time (you could gather all of the above within a week or so).
There are no Constitutional protections in the kind of transfer of information you're talking about. If the company wants to hand over the info, you can't stop them. If the company doesn't want to hand over the info, it will take a court order/subpoena/search warrant to get it. If you work for a company like that, they're crazy.
The Daily Build
I no longer live in California, but I'd love to see some changes in the state.
In a nutshell, intelligently enforce the laws you have.
One. Fund a specialized law enforcement group dedicated to cybercrimes committed by individuals and organized crime gangs located physically in the state. The group should consist of state marshalls, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, and a civilian oversight committee. Recruit from computer science programs at state universities, or require experienced judges and prosecutors to attend graduate level CS programs at least part time. The oversight committee should be paid, at levels to rival good silicon valley firms, so that experienced engineers can spend a couple of years helping to guide law enforcement efforts.
The cybercrimes group should go after trade secret thieves, spammers, scammers, slammers, crammers, and others who feed on the naivete of consumers, or who interfere in the operations of companies. They should target phone companies who slam/cram consumers, arresting corporate officers on criminal charges as warranted. They should actively track down individuals and groups who send out UCE, since spam clogging my servers is the largest single cost I have as an administrator. There should be an undercover unit targeting criminal groups who dupe individuals with "guaranteed 100% opt-in 5 million email addresses CDROM". There are many confidence/scam operators in California who have no fear of prosecution, because there hasn't been a single arrest in the last decade for any hi-tech scams in the state.
The group should have a very publically advertised way of being contacted, and should give priority to administrators like myself who want to start legal proceedings against criminals inside of California. The people taking the complaint should have a thorough understanding of network issues, system management, and technology in general. That means you will have to pay them competitive salaries, which will make this the most expensive law enforcement group in the state. Don't worry about the cost, the value to california businesses and voters^Wtax pay^W^Wresidents will be worth it.
Two. Criminalize aiding and abetting identity theft. This means the state should stop selling records to marketing firms. California needs to rework its incorporation laws to dis-allow companies from compiling marketing databases for sale to others. Any corporation that compiles in depth information on individuals (putting together name, address, SS#, CDL# and photo, tax history, property records, medical info) and then sell it should have its charter revoked immediately, and criminally prosecute the directors.
I'm regularly in touch with my counterparts on the west coast of the US, and I hear their complaints on a regular basis. The FBI has dropped *ALL* cases that don't directly involve shit that happened in September. Local cops are completely incompetent to do anything more than write speeding tickets or bust kids with joints. There is no state organization to fight cybercrime. The admins spend most of their time keeping their long distance voice traffic on the best carrier when they get slammed once a month. They deal with a level of spam which equals 80% of their incoming traffic, much of it from dialups inside of California. They have to deal with employees walking out with 40 CDROMs full of locally produced code who start at a competitor the next day, who one month later have an identical product that even duplicates the bugs. Hackers at the firewall are insignificant compared to all the other criminal activity going on.
Look at the Avant! case, where a handful of engineers walked out of Cadence, and the next week started selling an identical product at half the price and made millions of dollars in profit. The only way Cadence could prosecute was to pay for training for the judge and prosecutor, pay the whole investigation costs, and it still took most of a decade for the criminal parts of the case to occur.
There are organized gangs selling spam-kits to unsuspecting idiots all over California. They take a bunch of money up front from the scammees, in promise of huge returns down the road for selling "penis enlargement" and MLM scams. Until now, these scammers have had no fear of prosecution, because there isn't a cop or judge in the state who will (or able to) apply the law.
There are arguments that most of these things should be left to civil action. The problem is that civil action costs lots of money, and the civil courts tend to ignore complex cases that don't have huge amounts of money on both sides. The PUC is incapable of dealing with crammers, and have declared that any consumer who is hurt can throw millions into a civil case and hope to win. With consumer protection at the lowest in California history, its time for the government to step back into enforcing the law.
Arguments about the internet being international are just a red herring. The laws are already on the books, some jurisdiction has to start applying them first. So what if most of the scammers leave the state? Fine, but I doubt it will happen, the drug dealers didn't all leave with tough new anti-drug laws. I'd be willing to bet very few people have enough money to start a new life in another state, spammers are lazy bastards. Kick down a few doors, prosecute some spammers and make some press about it. You might only make a small dent in spam, but I'll take anything I can get.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Lets see:
.. but thats what I'm talking about. The market is dumb. Just think about what has happened when the market has spoken on:
.. and I'm a smoker .. ie, market speaks on consumables)
.. geez, I mean really, how can you honestly think the market chooses whats right? The market chooses what their neighbour has. The market wants to be coddled, loved, and cuddled, with no mention of responsibility, possible consequences of decisions and policies .. ah geez, I could go on and on. The market follows the illusion of wealth and happiness (in that order), not the reality of progress and safety.
Subject: Network security policies
To prevent: Network attacks, abuse of data and IP
Classification of offense it is desined to limit: Computer Hacking, now classified as terrorism, and/or writing insecure code and/or building insecure networks
Punishment: Life in prison, also in aiding and abetting (even if you were unaware that you helped the offender), no statute of limitations
Possible loss of offense: Everything from money (your entire business, for instance) to lif (think about hacking air traffic control data), to national security details
Subject: Drunk driving policies
To prevent: Drunk driving
Classification of offence it is designed to stop: Minor
Punishment: A few years in jail
Possibler loss due to offence: From nothing to a few killed (or up to a dozen if you want to include pileups as a result)
Your own government seems to classify the offences that network security is designed to prevent above those of drunk driving. Sure, drunk driving is far more visible, in that you can link the loss of life directly to the offence
- cigarettes (death, staggering burden on health care orgs
- the environment (ie, market speaks on cars)
- child labour (ie, market speaks on clothes)
.. and all of these problems would be far MORE rampant were it not for government regulation.
The market dictates NEEDS, but it never dictates RESPONSIBILITIES. Never did the market ask for breathalizer ignitions, even if you seem so aghast to the idea that drunk driving is accepted by 'the market'.
Network security is about enforcing the responsibility we all must share to make networks and the data they carry more secure. If you really think a market is going to mandate a responsibility upon itself that is probably not economically benificial to the individual in the long run, but carries great social weight and overall economic 'insurance', you're out of your mind. Actually, no wait, you're just a good example of why the market has no place in the arena of technological and social responsibility.
The market also dictates that women on television be 90lbs, and recent numbers show that 1 in 4 women below 30 have eating related issues. The market dictates that rap videos show gangers and hos and bitches, ensuring that negros retain this descructive image years after we thought we had licked this whole 'racism' thing. The market dictates poison, buddy. Whatever you or your friends or me or my friends want, you can bet its bad for my loved ones, which is why I have no quams about handing over such responsibilities to a government that would be free of private sector influences (ie, a government you could trust).
I guess in light of the fact that it is difficult for a government to be impartial to corperate forces and to be, in general, trustworth and smart, letting the market dictate the needs of the people is about our only option these days. Just remember that the reason the government is so fucked up right now is that the 'best and brightest' are driven to the private sector, where their talents can only be applied against a profit margin, not a betterment of a population.
Factor in the miseducation of 'the market' (how many people actually know about the recent passport.com exploits)
"Old man yells at systemd"
The case of Randal Schwartz is not the greatest example of misapplication of the law. Like Kevin Mitnick, Randal has been made into a martyr even though he suffered primarily as a result of his own bad choices.
AC writes:
While Randal is a nice guy and his motives were pure, his actions were wrong. He may not have deserved the royal reaming he got, but he did overstep the bounds of his role at Intel.He was a consultant, he was at Intel to perform a specific role, which did not include password cracking and building a 'backdoor' to the Internet.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I was offered a better opportunity recently, which allowed me to leave a fortune 500 company where I was the engineering manager providing ISP services to thousands of end users. While in that position, I often asked myself this same question and came up with the following wish list.
There are a couple of things that the government can do to make computer networks and computing more secure.
1) Repeal the DMCA. When security problems are found in an implementation of an algorithm, this law makes it illegal to talk about the problem or to implement a solution.
2) Repeal patent law as it applies to software. Software is well protected under copyright law as a work of art. The underlying function (algorithms used) for every program out there is a subtle change to prior art. It's just that no one but large corporations have access to the courts to successfully challenge these ludicrous restriction's on sharing mathematical equations with one another.
3) Allow end users to sue companies that keep there products closed and security problems a secret.
4) After fixing the above. Get out of the way as the free market takes over and those with bad software are forced to compete or go out of business.
- Require all U.S. ISPs (especially AOL) to use egress filtering on their border routers. This may not put a complete end to DDoS, but it will certainly ease the burden imposed on the 'net by script kiddies. This is especially necessary in light of the fact that a 'feature' of the home edition of Windows XP is that consumer Windows users now have the ability to forge IP headers;
- Leave crypto alone. It is a necessary component of secure e-commerce as well as being a component of criminal communications. There are enough ways to snoop on the bad guys already without disabling an already-struggling sector of the economy. Besides, how are you going to keep the black hats from having crypto when all they need is a copy of gcc and a modestly talented programmer to write their own crypto software. It sounds over-simplified but it is true that "When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto.";
- Get competent, disinterested technical advice before legislating technical issues. Have your advisor give you both the pros and the cons of the issue, then vote in the best interest of the people who elected you, NOT the corporations that financed your campaign;
- Give serious consideration to passing legislation banning some of the more abusive EULA provisions, especially disclaimers of ALL liability for consequential damages. American law has enough safeguards in place that holding software companies responsible for damages they cause by, for instance, gross negligence (like not releasing the patch to cure the Code Red vulnerability until the exploit was "in the wild") will NOT destroy the industry.
- Repeal the DMCA and put the SSSCA on the rubbish heap. The RIAA, MPAA and the BSA are powerful enough that they don't NEED a class os special crimes just to protect them. Additionally, "standardization" and "certification" of "security measures" will make the digital world less, not more, secure
- If you feel you really MUST pass some laws regarding 'net abuse, give us some anti-spam, anti-online-fraud and anti-identity-theft laws with REAL TEETH!
.utter rubbish
the best thing that government can do about computer security is stay the fuck out. There is not a single solitary computer security issue for the government that is not 100% entirely one way - that is everything and all control and authority is supposed to flow to the government and public is supposed to just accept the gradual criminalization of doing a credible good job. There is not single computer security issue for the government that does not involve eroding the ability to actually perform computer security.
So Mr. Lobby please go back to your Congressperson and tell them that the number one issue for the government is to pull its collective head out of its ass and leave the heavy lifting to the people who have some skin in the game.
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When Uncle Sam tells me he wants to set up a filter at the local ISP, I know exactly what he means. I have not forgotten what he told me yesterday.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
At no point when using free software do you agree to a contract controlling your /use/ of the software. You get a chunk of code, and the right to do whatever you damn well want with it, within the bounds of copyright law. It's only when you redistribute that code that you run up against the license.
/do/ with that software, as well as various stuff about redistribution. That's the difference between the two cases.
When you buy a piece of software from MS, you agree to a contract specifying what you can
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
A great set of folks to ask about this kind of thing would be the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They have members with expertise of both law and technical issues, and I'm sure they'd be more than glad to provide whatever assistance they can.
there's just one thing the gov can do about network security: promote crypto.
as long as we have unencrypted protocols, we will never be secure.
of course, there are tons of other issues, such as shoody applications, the usual bugs even in good ones, low-level exploits such as the argus one, lazy admins not patching their systems, etc., etc. - but the gov can't do anything about any of those.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The other use of a gun is to defend oneself or others against being killed or harmed. That's why we issue guns to police officers. Not because we want the police to kill people, because we want the police to protect people. Private citizens need legal access to guns for the exact same reasons the bodyguards protecting the president or, heck, Britney Spears need access to them.
And since you don't need to fire a gun for its presence to be a useful deterrent, the presence of guns can actually act to reduce harm to humans. I'm not saying guns always reduce death and violence and harm, but they sometimes do, and that's all the pro-gun side really needs for the guns/nmap analogy to hold up.
I play Nerd-Folk!
The design of the Internet requires that all entities on it act cooperatively. It was never designed to provide fair and equal service to all adversaries. Corporations are required by their shareholders to act in an adversarial manner wherever their profits are concerned.
This means that the Internet must evolve into a network run by a single organization (such as Microsoft or AOL) where dissent and creativity are not allowed to exist.
If this is the goal of Congress, then no action is required. But understand that this means you are writing off the investment which was made to date (and turning it over to the eventual winner) and that you will never again see an economic boom like the one we experienced in the 90's prompted by the growth of the Internet.
On the other hand, if Congress deems it important for the United States to maintain a strong technological superiority, and is interested in restoring the "capacity to innovate" which the Internet brought to us, then steps must be taken to ensure that the Internet can act as a fair and level playing field for all entities.
Since the Internet requires (at a technical level) a fair administrative regime, and since corporate ownership of the Internet cannot allow this to happen, Congress must choose between legislating an Internet structure which does not discriminate between players, or replacing the technology of the Internet with a system which can handle an adversarial administrative regime.
The former would require "common carrier" status laws for network service providers, and may also require de-valuing intellectual property protection, since IP and copyright law is the weapon of choice for corporate aggression on the Internet.
The later would require replacing the technology, at the TCP/IP level, with a new technology which enforces a fair and level playing field.
The risk to Congress, should it fail to take these actions is that the Internet Community will perceive the loss of the fair and level playing field as damage, a route around the problem, making foreign territory the location of choice for innovation and technological advancement.
In summary:
Look very carefully at the way the Microsoft Monopoly case is being handled. Nothing has yet been done to remedy their monopoly practices.
Require Internet access providers to provide service on a fair basis, including legal prohibition on "engineered structural damage" as are created by filtered routing, content-sensitive routing, and such.
So what does all of this have to do with increasing the security of the Internet? Security has to focus on the structural level; it's not an after market add on. The insecurity we have today was designed-in. It will have to be designed out, not painted over.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.