Battle Creek, Michigan Settles Dispute with ORBZ

Peter Sachs, Esq. writes: "According to a press release that now appears on its official website, the City of Battle Creek, Michigan has 'settled"' its dispute with ORBZ.ORG. The City concluded that ORBZ.ORG had no criminal intent to cause the City harm by testing the 'open relay' status its server. In fact, the Assistant to the City Manager said, '...we recognize that [ORBZ.ORG] has done us a service. We are going to be taking a close look at our policies regarding Lotus security updates and how we can avoid the issue in general'"

Comments

Re:more info?

[frank_adrian314159]

There was a defect in releases earlier than 5.0.9. When E-mail was received from an address having a certain form, the system would go into a hung state, consuming 100% of the server's CPU cycles. Here is the reference to the details.

The defect was fixed in version 5.0.9 and Lotus has moved on with version 5.0.10 being released soon. Many people as of yet have not upgraded their servers, leaving ORBZ open to similar actions if they stumble accross other Domino servers that are running older software and whose owners might be more litigious.

So ORBZ isn't out of the woods yet.

Shooting people to tests for vests

[Skapare]

From the press release by Michelle Reen, Assistant to the City Manager, Battle Creek, Michigan:

"But, if I can draw the analogy that just because everyone should wear a computerized bulletproof vest doesn't mean that shooting people to find out who isn't wearing one is the best answer. If Mr. Gulliver chooses to do this, he perhaps shouldn't be surprised that he will occasionally be confused with the type of individual he is fighting against."

This analogy is flawed. Here's why:

Shooting people is something where, if a vest is not worn, can be expected to cause serious injury or death. Even if a vest is worn, the outcome can be injury, and death has been known to happen.

A more accurate analogy would be tapping someone on the shoulder to see if they are alive. But you don't expect that one in tens of thousands happens to have a very sore shoulder, and this tapping causes great pain.

My analogy is more correct because the kinds of tests ORBZ does is not one where a reasonable person doing this kind of activity (reasonable in this case meaning someone who understands the SMTP protocol, and related standards like RFC822, TCP, etc) would expect to cause serious problems. At most, this should trigger an alarm in more secure servers, which can then be filtered for this known testing source. ORBZ is not including codes intended to damage or destroy computer systems in these tests just to see if they would be destroyed (as Ms. Reen's analogy would suggest).

It seems to me that the city of Battle Creek perhaps acted a bit hasty in the way they reacted. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have the police involved in the investigation, and I'm not saying they shouldn't pursue acquiring information to further that investigation. However, such an investigation should be tempered by the understanding that defective software, especially that which has not been properly maintained, or properly configured, can, and very frequently does, fail on account of that defect simply as the result of a properly formed standards defined computer or network activity. We all know PC systems (especaily, but not exclusively, Windows) can fail at times even though only normal activity is taking place. Just because an activity can come from outside, from the internet, does not mean that it can only be malicious.

I recommend the City of Battle Creek Michigan, and any other government or business in like circumstances, operate under the following suggestions:

• Whenever something causes a system to fail, include in any investigation of the cause an analysis of why it failed, including the protocols and software codes involved. Don't just hand it over to the police after the first jump to conclusion. Gain an understanding of exactly why the system failed, especially if the failure repeats.
• Whenever a problem is tracked to some source, don't jump into threatening mode on initial contact, unless you have a reason to believe the communication would fail any other way. Serious intent to investigate and followup on real crimes does not mean aggression in legal procedures gains anything. Were this a real internet cracker, there wouldn't have been any useful information from this first step, anyway.
• Place stronger protection between office LANs and city WANs and the internet itself. But do more than just a simple firewall that allows raw TCP streams to pass. Use a strong secure server with proxying where possible. Systems like Lotus Notes are Microsoft Exchange are too likely to be vulnerable, and too mission critical for staff operations, to be expected to also serve as the shield facing the internet. Run an OpenBSD server with something like Postfix to forward mail, and Squid to cache web accesses both in and out.
• Institute new procedures that outline standard timeframes for keeping computer systems up to date, especially with the latest security alerts. All security patches should be installed within 7 days of availability or a report made to the top official regarding why that patch cannot be applied, describing alternative steps to deal with the risk. All other systems should be upgraded to the latest version within 90 days, if free. If not free, an analysis of the benefits (if any) of purchasing such an upgrade should be provided to the person in charge of making system software purchasing decisions, within 90 days.

Also, get the reverse DNS fixed on your mail server.

Re:Better late than never?

[flamingcow]

"The purpose of the search warrant was to determine the identity of the person who sent the email that caused our system to fail so we could then determine whether further investigation would be necessary."

The search warrant cited our domain no less than 7 times. Had the detective taken the time to read the website, the situation would have been quite clear to him.

Second, this all could have been avoided if Ian Gulliver hadn't freaked when he got the order. If he'd waited a bleeding 24 hours this would have been resolved and ORBZ could have gone on its merry way.

Having more knowledge here of what went on than you, please trust me. In my opinion, this 'settlement' wouldn't have been nearly as forthcoming if a certain Wired.com article didn't cause major embarassment. I believe that this 'settlement' is much more public relations damage control than an actual realization that a mistake was made.