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Mitnick Testifies on Telco's Security
Woefdram writes "Our favourite computer criminal (?) Kevin Mitnick testified in a case against Telco Sprint that their security was like Swiss cheese: full of holes. The story on SecurityFocus quotes Mitnick, saying, 'I had access to most, if not all, of the switches in Las Vegas,' and tells how he came up with a list of 100 challenge-response codes." We've written about this case before.
The only thing Mitnick is better at than hacking (or possibly eating pizza!) is publicity grubbing. Let's face it, there have been thousands of better crackers, but Mitnick manages to always claim the spotlight. Most people would want to lie low after what Mitnick has been through - but he has a career as "Celebrity Cracker" to maintain.
I liked this quote "The only way I know that this is a Nortel document is to take you at your word, correct?," asked Riley. "How do we know that you're not social engineering us now?" - now *that* guy is thinking correctly!
A little planning goes a long way...
"their security was like Swiss cheese: delicious."
.sig is wrong, so what?)
(yeah, my
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
...is this testimony going to come back for possible charges in the future? In other words, could Sprint now decide to go after him?
No. He's already been tried for this specific crime - it would be double jeopardy. (Yes, like the movie with Ashley Judd, only with less sex appeal, since there's no women's prison involved.) You can't be tried for the same crime twice. If you commit two murders you can be tried twice, but they can't try you twice for the same murder.
What's your damage, Heather?
A quote from the article:
"With the five year statute of limitations long expired, Mitnick appeared comfortable describing with great specificity how he first gained access to Sprint's systems..."
This does not surprise me at all. I work for a large telecommunications company. 4 years ago our group took over responsibility for 40 switches, 32 of which were DMS-100s. The forst thing we had to do was change the admin passwords- some were still the default password installed by Nortel when the switch was first built, others were as simple as admin:admin. All someone would have needed to do is call a NOC and pose as a Nortel engineer to get the dial up numbers and voila! Tens of thousands of customers without service and a very long report to the FCC.
"Once he is released from prison, Mitnick will be on supervised release for three years, during which time his access to computers and his employment in the computer industry will be severely restricted."
While testifying in a case isn't technically work in the computer industry, consulting definetly would be. Maybe this is outside the scope because we're talking about telco equipment and not computers per se (which, coincidentally, goes back to Mitnick's roots as a marginally talented phreaker and a decent social engineer)?
Or perhaps Mitnick's just an outright idiot. I don't recall him getting wailed on by Sprint during his legal proceedings, so I'm not certain that he's exempted from prosecution by way of double jeopardy. A curious thing, this testimoney.
What is most vital is that in this case, unlike other previous Mitnick cases, the telco is arguing that Mitnick didn't break in while Mitnick is insisting that he did. Mitnick is offering proof in the form of documents and passwords and the Sprint of Nevada lawyer is saying that the information Mitnick is bogus or publicly available. This is such an exact turnaround from the last legal tangle that Mitnick was in that I gotta wonder if it's even the same universe.
Does this have any relevance to legal cases outside the Munoz "Vegas escort" case? I don't know, but I could see it happening: Hollywood lawyers calling on DeCSS authors and users, arguing that the software they have doesn't actually promote piracy. Could be interesting!
I worked for a year and a 1/2 on a project designed to replace the DMS-100 provisioning and configuration systems. I can tell you that those systems are complex in the extreme to set up correctly. I knew people who had worked with them for 20 years and still had questions about how they worked. It's not through Sprint's stupidity that they were hackable, it is a by-product of overly complex system engineering.
This is a common problem in this industry. Having complex systems when you're the defacto standard makes a great revenue stream in your consulting and training systems, but kills the reliability of said systems. Nortel/Cisco/IBM never take the fall for it however, because they can just say "well, you didn't configure it right" and Sprint/etc can't even argue - it would take 2 years and 10 consultants to even find out.
http://kered.org
You gotta admit though, he's got the earmarks to be one of those great mythological figures one day.
Can you prove it?
Wait here for a few minutes..
**a few minutes later**
Here are the passwords for your central switches, I had them on file in one of my drop points down the street. Lucky me that it was still there.
**laywer fumbles and swears**
Remember, Hackers are like boyscouts, they're always prepared.. they just prepare for alot more than preventing forest fires and walking old ladies across the road.
-GiH
-This isn't my dog, this is an aibo. My dog is years more advanced than this.
I live in Arizona, and I have four Sprint PCS phones: One for myself and three are for my "on-call" employees. These phones are on 24 hours a day for obvious reasons.
A disgruntled ex-employee in Delaware (who had been fired years ago), who happens to know my phone number, strolled into a Sprint PCS store in Kentucky, and asked the proprietor (or rather, the idiot working there) to bring up my account information. Now remember: All this person knew was my phone number. The Sprint PCS idiot happily punched up my account and showed the unidentified person my account details: All my phone numbers, numbers that had been called on these phones, how much my bill was... it goes on and on. In short, someone who only knew my phone number got access to all my "private" information, no questions asked.
I discovered this when the person in Delaware (who was in Kentucky at the time) called and told me, in the form of a threat. I immediately called the Sprint PCS customer support line and told them of the problem. They had some explaining to do, and I expected them to immediately change my phone numbers and account information. They refused, and explained that any such breach of security was impossible: The gentleman in the store should have asked for an account password. If the customer didn't know the password (or so claimed the customer support woman), the account information could not be accessed. This made sense, as computers do ask for passwords before showing any protected information. So I assumed the ex-employee was lying to annoy me, and dropped the issue.
Later that night, angry employees began calling me repeatedly and complaining of crank calls. Then, I got a call from the disgruntled shmoe in Delaware. Turns out, my assumption had been wrong. I came to the conclusion that private account information is protected by nothing more than a company policy: The employees in the stores can bring up any account, and the password is DISPLAYED along with all the other information. They're SUPPOSED TO ask you for the password before giving out any information. That's one hell of a security system, eh? So I immediately called Sprint PCS's customer support thing again, but this time, when they answered, I demanded to talk to a supervisor. The conversation went something like this:
Sprint PCS lady: May I ask about the nature of the call?
Me THE NATURE OF THE CALL IS SPRINT PCS GIVING OUT MY PERSONAL INFORMATION TO STRANGERS WITHOUT MY CONSENT!
Sprint PCS lady: One moment...
At this point, a supervisor lady answered, and I explained (rather angrily, I may add) exactly what happened, and DEMANDED that they change all my phone numbers IMMEDIATELY. (I was doing this as an immediate action, to be followed by any number of things, including the high possibility of cancelling my account altogether, followed by strong legal action.) Now the supervisor freaked out and got a bunch of people on my case within minutes. She explained that my conclusion about their security had been correct (that nothing is password protected at all), but that I could optionally make my account "high security", which basically means that certain other information (like a social security number or something) is needed before account details can be accessed. So I demanded that my account immediately be made high security. Then, she began the process of changing my phone numbers, and mentioned that it would cost some amount of dollars to make the change. At that point, I became pissed and said, "I'M STILL CONSIDERING WHETHER I'M GOING TO SUE YOU AND YOU'RE GOING TO CHARGE ME TO CHANGE THE PHONE NUMBERS, AFTER YOUR COMPANY SCREWED UP?!?!?!?" She realized the error of her ways and waived the fees. I continued to raise hell with Sprint PCS for an hour or so, making DAMN SURE that no errors would occur in my next bill (because every time a change is made with them, errors show up in the next bill or two and you have to call and bitch about it, especially when you have multiply phones), and that international calls won't be disabled on the phones (because enabling international calls is a long and complicated process with them, one that raised my blood pressure to the sky too), and that various other problems won't pop up. In all, they were a bit helpful, considering they did screw me over.
But anyway, that was MY story of how much their security sucks.