Secret Service Goes War Driving

JSC writes "Looks like the Secret Service is taking a page from the WarDriving handbook. Your tax dollars at work includes springing for the Pringles can for the antenna."

Comments

They aren't doing it to get free bandwidth

[Dancin_Santa]

They are planning on informing companies that they have leaky wireless networks. They aren't doing it to leach bandwidth like most wardrivers.

Re:They aren't doing it to get free bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet more subsidies.

So my tax dollars are being spent on sending the secret service to do a private business's job for them?

What's next? Do I have to pay the government to go in and help companies decide what pleasing colors to paint their hallways and do ergonomics checks?

grumpy old man rant about your tax dollars

[capnjack41]

I bet they paid way too much for those Pringles cans (like their $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats).

Re:grumpy old man rant about your tax dollars

[toomz]

More importantly, who got to eat the The People's Pringles. Some unscrupulous SS agent, no doubt.

Re:grumpy old man rant about your tax dollars

[commodoresloat]

Here's some info.

Re:grumpy old man rant about your tax dollars

[Jonny Ringo]

I must say I'm impressed and suprised that Pringles got a government contract :-)

Re:grumpy old man rant about your tax dollars

[Tony-A]

Excerpts:

The equal allocation method calculates prices for large numbers of items in a contract by assigning "support" costs such as indirect labor and overhead equally to each item. Take a contract to provide spare parts for a set of radar tracking monitors. Suppose a monitor has 100 parts and support costs amount to a total of $100,000. Using the equal allocation method each part is assigned $1,000 in such costs, even though one item may be a sophisticated circuit card assembly, which requires the attention of high-salaried engineers and managers, and another item may be a plastic knob. Add $1,000 to the direct cost of the part and you get a billing price.

"An agent from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, who grasped the equal allocation method better than FBI and GAO auditors had done in an earlier investigation, used a blackboard to persuade an official in the U.S. Attorney's office in New York that no charges should be filed against Gould for billing the government $435 for a hammer."

You would think that auditors would be smarter than that!

So?

[ConsumedByTV]

I do it.
Why should I care if the SS does it :)

Right Kyle?

Re:So?

[norwoodites]

But this might help the Cincinnati Reds keep Jr.

Also it helps the Cincinnati economy.

Re:So?

[ConsumedByTV]

From Santa Rosa?
Live in the southern removed part of the state now?

The article got this one right

[kbroom]

(...)These networks are becoming common in airports, universities, coffee houses, businesses, homes and even some public squares. But they are sold with no security measures (...)
Actually, most vendors advertise WEP as a security mechanism for these wireless networks, but as we all know, it is pretty much useless. I wonder if the writers of the article wrote the above statement knowing this fact, or if they just got lucky.

Re:The article got this one right

[Agent Green]

Just bear in mind that the amount of patience and time required to collect enough packets for AirSnort may take you awhile.

I have yet to find anyone who has really been able to bust a WEP key in a period of less than 4 hours...and this is in a high-traffic lab environemnt. I tried for 2 days in my home lab without success...then gave up.

Several vendors have patched their firmware so no FFs appear in the initialization vector, so Airsnort's use is somewhat limited on those networks to transmissions from other notebooks...and if the site is running Cisco hardware with LEAP, forget about it.

Unless you plan to put a laptop in somewhere and leave it for a few days, don't get your hopes up too much on getting enough packets.

Its Warchalking....

[siliconshock.com]

Warchalking PDF FAQ and check out This site

Check the Lottery

[I_am_Rambi]

Peterson recently drove down a major Washington street and found over 20 wireless networks, many of which had no security at all. Peterson said his probes are part of good police work, like a patrolman driving through a neighborhood.

I know of someone who drove downtown in my hometown and picked up many wireless networks. This included 4 laptops with pringle can antennas. Among one of these networks he noticed the name was the state Lottery, thats right, the lottery. As he looked up, he was passing the building for the state lottery. It is interesting to see how many open wireless networks that there are in a town.

He also informed one company of the open network (he knew the network admin) and immediatly lost his ip for that network.

Is it illegal to pick up the wireless network as you drive by, if you don't do anything with it? Or is it illegal to pick it up and browse the net or both?

Re:Check the Lottery

[dattaway]

Is it illegal to pick up the wireless network as you drive by, if you don't do anything with it?

I don't know. But I'm sure it is illegal for the person's email you just forged over their wireless network. With all the things you could do to someone, this type of revenge appears to be the most evil things a person could do...

Why is this coming from taxes?

[MikeFM]

If companies want security let them hire someone to secure them and audit their security. How is this something that should come from taxes? It makes great sense to audit themselves or anything of key importance but just random wardriving sounds like a waste of $$$.

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[moertle]

Now... I didn't read the *entire* article, but I would think that they would check for leaks in places like Congressional offices. God knows we don't want a leaked love letter from a secretary to a Congressman.

I believe al-Quada has a secret lab developing their own pringle can antenna to war-camel-ride the D.C. area.

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[mamba-mamba]

From the article:

Chris McFarland, head of the Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force, said his agents have begun evaluating computer security along with other concerns when they scout out a place where the president or other protected dignitary will go.

McFarland said, for example, that agents have had extensive discussions with officials at George Washington Hospital about improving its wireless network security.

While the agents plan to offer their expertise to anyone who asks, they are focusing on places most important to their mission of protecting public officials. The hospital is several blocks from the White House and treated Vice President Dick Cheney ( news - web sites) during his heart problems.

[emphasis added]
MM
--

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[Dalcius]

Price goes up either way. Method A) you pay in taxes, method B) you pay on your own if you want wireless.

I'd rather make my own decisions on what my money is spent on, kthx.

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[commodoresloat]

Your libertarian government is killing business.

Business that can't survive in a free market doesn't deserve to survive. You might as well write "your democratic government is killing monarchy."

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[commodoresloat]

Which begs the question, what does it matter if Dick Cheney's hospital is near the starbuck's.

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[MikeFM]

Among other things I do security audits of businesses. So in this case the government is hurting my business. Rather than being paid to do this work I'm paying someone else to do what I could do for a business that isn't even mine. Any business that can't afford to have a computing security officer or an occassional consultant come in probably hasn't got the money to tip the wireless scale that much anyway. IF they can afford it then let them pay for it and not the taxpayer. Would you also suggest the taxpayer pay for all businesses janitors because if not the cost of mops might go up?

Corporate welfare is killing America.

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[Tony-A]

Nope. The Secret Service's job is to protect the president and they are quite good at that job. Basically, if the president is going to visit a place, the locals who have "always" been there are not much of a risk. Any strangers who "just happen to be in town" are cause for interest. The problem with an insecure wireless network is that it is a convenient opportunity for the "bad guys" to use as part of their infrastructure.

So when the SS does it now it's okay?

[lannocc]

I find it interesting that when the Secret Service goes around wardriving and alerting network owners of insecure networks it's okay, but then Joe "gray"-hat hacker does the same thing these same network owners attempt to prosecute the individual.

Re:So when the SS does it now it's okay?

[possible]

I find it interesting that police officers can drive over the speed limit and run through red lights with their sirens on, but if Joe "gray" hat driver does the same thing, he gets a ticket or goes to jail. Give me a break dude.

Re:So when the SS does it now it's okay?

[ShaunC]

I find it interesting that police officers can drive over the speed limit and run through red lights with their sirens on, but if Joe "gray" hat driver does the same thing, he gets a ticket or goes to jail. Give me a break dude.

On the other hand, to use several often-touted analogies, a police officer can't walk into my house at will and fill his Thermos from my coffee pot, he can't just trot into my office and start using the company's T3, and unless he has damned good reason, he'd better not be walking up to my back porch and jiggling the doorknob. Doing any of the above without a warrant or some other valid reason to make entry would quickly get him in trouble if not fired.

I know these analogies are flawed, but so is yours. A police officer (at least around here) isn't allowed to go 90mph or fly through a red light unless he's responding to an emergency call or pursuing a known felon. I don't believe anyone called up Agent Peterson and asked him to come check out their WAP on the double; it seems much more to me like he's just poking around. He's doing it under official directive, without a doubt, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.

Why is it that it's OK if Agent Peterson goes wardriving and maybe does a bit of snooping to probe a network, but if we do it, we could be sued or perhaps even branded as hackers (or terrorists, or whatever word they're using nowadays) and tossed into the clink? Why is that Agent Peterson can throw together a decent gain antenna made out of a Pringles can and look like a genius for using limited resources, but if we do that, we're frowned upon since we used a few raw materials for something other than their obvious purpose? Why is it that Agent Peterson is likely praised among his peers and the D.C. community for "protecting" government and corporate interests, yet you or I would wind up facing stiff penalties under the DMCA for using the Pringles can as a "circumvention device" to gain "unauthorized access" to this or that network, even if we had the same basic ideals (improving security) in mind?

"Because he works for the Secret Service" is not really much of an answer IMO. I can't go around murdering people I don't like, but neither can Secret Service agents; membership in the law enforcement community is not a carte blanche. If it had been a Secret Service agent who discovered and pondered publishing the flaw in HP's Tru64, would HP still have threatened with the DMCA? You're damned right they wouldn't have.

My point is that it's all perception. If ABC Corp. gets a call from the Secret Service saying "Your wireless network is insecure, I could use it to do something nefarious," the IT goober is notified; and either the network is locked down or the incompetent IT manager is fired, tout de suite. If ABC Corp. gets that same phone call from a curious layperson, ABC Corp. gets on the phone with its legal team, subpoenas the phone records, and files suit against the "terrorist hacker perpetrator."

This is wrong, and the underlying perception is one that we're going to have to work very hard to change.

Shaun

P.S. Hi USSS, are you still reading? My homepage hasn't had any hits from eop.gov lately, I feel neglected :)

Pringles Can Antenna

[p00kiethebear]

Ive been wanting to make one of these for awhile now. You can find some absolutely splendiferous pictures here: http://verma.sfsu.edu/users/wireless/pringles.php

Re:Pringles Can Antenna

[packeteer]

for the google illiterate there is also this

Re:Pringles Can Antenna

[packeteer]

also for the more technically inclined... yah right like im going to find some of them on slashdot...

Re:Pringles Can Antenna

[packeteer]

also for the legally inclined

Re:Pringles Can Antenna

[packeteer]

hell on slashdot everyone can be a lawyer though not one has to pass the BAR...

Personally im glad...

[packeteer]

Im glad my tax dollars are going to someything like this. Not that they are war driving but they are using pringles cans. I mean i personally wouldn't spend my money on a nice antannea so why should the govt. spend my money on one. if a pringles can is good enough for me than its good enouh for the govt.

Re:Personally im glad...

[phorm]

As long as it's not the afformentioned $400 pringles can then yes. It's nice to see that the government is taking an active role in wireless security - shows they recognise the issues - and that they do sometimes realize that a $2000 extension antenna from online is sometimes not as good as a do-it-yourself pringles can setup. Maybe some of them read slashdot. Actually, a lot of them probably read slashdot... they're probably reading this comment right now.

Of course, I'm Canadian. I think the government here still thinks a toilet costs $9000 - phorm

Re:Personally im glad...

[h0tblack]

Although they are still spending plenty of cash on the expensive antennas too:
"Peterson's tools are a laptop, a wireless network card and one of three antennae mounted on his car. One is a small metal antenna; the second is a large, white, 2-foot-tall tube; the third is a homemade antenna made out of a Pringles can"

The FUD is working!!!

[God! Awful]

A quasi-mainstream news source called warchalkers "independent security researchers." That's gotta be a first.

-a

Network Security

[Aurelfell]

Maybe this publicity will create some market for a security product to be used for wireless. A lot of companies don't realize that wireless networks allow potential hackers an easy way around a firewall, and as such, there's little demand for a product to prevent such a breach. If the SS can bring that to light with their Pringles can, maybe that will change. And maybe Pringles will get into network hardware too. That'd be ironic.

Re:Network Security

[jpt.d]

Ok... let me see - I have a linksys v.2 baby connecting my ibook and my desktop pc. I made the SSID not broadcast, which I am sure is about as effective as WEP, which I don't have on. How do I secure this network? I keep seeing things saying how bad WEP is, but no real solutions to the problem.

Tax dollars at work

[EvilStein]

*munch*munch*munch**munch*munch*munch**munch*munch *munch*

"Hey Agent 423.. got any more Pringles?"

*munch*munch*munch**munch*munch*munch**munch*mun ch *munch*

"No, but I could sure use another Coke.."

*munch*munch*munch**munch*munch*munch**munch*mun ch *munch*

So how do you secure a wireless LAN?

[BinBoy]

Stories about wardialing are popping up everywhere now. So how do you prevent unauthorized access to your wireless LAN? I have 128-bit encryption enabled. Is that enough to prevent bandwidth stealing/snooping or is there something else?

Re:So how do you secure a wireless LAN?

[mgaiman]

Linksys has a fairly good knowledge base article for securing their APs: Here

Re:So how do you secure a wireless LAN?

[ThePlumber2]

Easy, first you firewall your machine to only allow ssh out. Then you create a subnet with only your AP. Then you create a VPN server on another subnet. Install vpn over ssh, train the firewall that is between these subnets and you are on your local network, via a 1024 bit rsa encrypted pipe.

No web, no bullshit. No-one else can use your wireless to get to the internet or communicate to your machine.

Thanks,

Steve

PS You CANNOT rely on the security of these pieces of shit. Most all AP's come with fucked up open ports that you cannot shut down (Web int is one although I have seen that the piece of shit Netgear AP has 3 open ports, one is snmp which is probably open to the snmp trap bug that was out about 4 months ago.)

Seems to me that the manufactures of these peices of crap dont have a clue about security and decided not to give you the option of security either. Netgear of all place (Banyan Vines right?) should know, but when I called them, all I got was some fucked up off-shore help desk (in INDIA of all places) I sat on the phone working through language barriers to finally find out that the tech of course had no fucking idea of what I was saying. They eventually called me back to tell me that there is no way to turn these services off..... My next stop was the store to return their junk. That is when I decided to buy the piece of shit Linksys that i now have (Although it is better if you ask me, and they support linux). No matter what though, you will have a hard time finding one that is truly secure. Take it into your own hands though. I did. In fact, im writing this from my notebook in my bed, wirelessly.

The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[jerryasher]

How many hacking cases in the past few years have just been for just port scanning -- a knock on the door?

Peterson recently drove down a major Washington street and found over 20 wireless networks, many of which had no security at all. Peterson said his probes are part of good police work, like a patrolman driving through a neighborhood.

"I feel it is part of crime prevention to knock on the door," Peterson said.

So that's what port scans are, just knocking on the door, part of crime prevention, and not malicious in and of itself.

Re:The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[h0tblack]

In the article they say that this "...is part of a new government plan to build relationships with businesses so that they will feel more comfortable reporting hacking attempts to authorities". I'm sorry, but if your in a company and you get a Secret Service guy literally knocking on your door and telling you he's been scanning your network, how does this improve relations. I'd guess most people would run a mile!

Re:The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[Siva]

Peterson recently drove down a major Washington street and found over 20 wireless networks, many of which had no security at all. Peterson said his probes are part of good police work, like a patrolman driving through a neighborhood.

yeah i found this quote interesting too. the analogy sounds a little off though. seems to me it's more like a policeman walking through a neighborhood, checking to see whose front doors are unlocked. which is, of course, not what id want the police to be doing to my house. then again, i dont make a habbit of leaving my front door unlocked anyway...

Re:The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[jerryasher]

I agree that it depends on who is doing the knocking. The image I conjure up from Peterson is that of the old irish cop, late 1880s, walking through the business district late at night, rattling the door knobs. Who would argue with that?

I myself don't like port scanning of my systems unless I have authorized it myself. I don't mind an occasional knock on the door regardless of who it is from. But I'm not willing to criminalize port scans.

I recall several times in the past years many cases of hacking in which nothing more than port scans were literally made into federal offenses. I don't recall any specifically, and I my recollection may be faulty.

I don't mind throwing the book at criminals, but I don't want to see legitimate activities criminalized. I don't want to see reasonable activities made unreasonable through silly prosecutions and precedent.

Occasionally I have used telnet to telnet to a machine infected with CodeRed or Nimda. Not to bring it down, but just to see the HTML stream. That's been argued on /. as both a reasonable and criminal thing to do. And justified with the knock on the door metaphor.

I find it interesting to see that the secret service in this instance uses the knock on the door metaphor to indicate the benign behavior. Now, what if that had been you, port scanning whitehouse.gov?

Re:The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[Siva]

are they actually using port scanning to do this? i haven't read much on war(driving|chalking) (other than the occassional mainstream article and the spiffy chart of chalk symbols), so i'm not informed as to how people go about doing it. i suppose i should read more on it.

i've read many stories about the legal fallout from port scanning. how's this for an analogy: having open ports on a machine is like people leaving their bedroom window blinds open in their highrise apartments at night. sure, the person probably (IANAL) has a legal expectation of privacy, and those peeping in from the next building over could be charged with something. but really, if you want to do something without worrying about people peeking in, why leave the blinds open? you'll not likely catch the guy with the telescope sitting in his unlit apartment, so why give him the chance? unless, of course, that kind of thing turns you on, so you leave the blinds open on purpose. then you invite others to watch.

Re:The knock on the door metaphor, Fed Style

[jerryasher]

I don't know what they are doing, but it sounds as though they are sniffing packets at the least. Do they try to connect? Dunno.

I try not to get into metaphor games. I see the value of having an understandable metaphor, but I am jaded from having seen lots of lawyers fight battles of the metaphor in an attempt to sway people away from facts and/or common sense. So now metaphors just confuse me. Similes are even worse. My poor brain.

Having said that I've always felt that as far as wireless signals go (radio, cell, cordless, TV, ...) I've always felt that if someone is going to broadcast their signal through my living space, that I should be allowed to do anything I want (i.e. decrypt it and view it/listen to it) to view and anayze that signal. So for instance I have always felt it was lame and counterproductive to make it law that folks cannot listen in or tape cordless/cell phone calls.

They aren't particularly original, either...

[failrate]

Once upon a time, the military-government-corporate-et cetera complex had ALL the cool toys. Now, they are ripping off tricks that are widely posted by juveline nerdophiles. Now, if the government could only figure out how to clone gold, we could get out of our national debt. Best they go to the nearest MUD forum and get a crack off of some script-kiddies.

Too hard?

[phyxeld]

from the article: But they are sold with no security measures, and protecting a wireless network from hackers takes more knowledge than what network installation guides typically offer.

Every access point I've ever setup had simple instructions for enabling WEP. Granted, WEP isn't the end-all of wireless security, but I'll bet that the the SS's definition of "secure" and "not secure" is equivilent to "wep" or "no wep". Granted, most of the networks I see wardriving (airboxing!) have a default ssid like "linksys" or "WLAN", so I guess a lot of users probably never even attempt to configure their AP. But it certainly doesn't require "more knowledge than network installation guides typically offer".

Why are we paying for this?

[g4dget]

Don't we have bigger law enforcement issues than to protect management types who don't want to be inconvenienced by passwords or cables from hackers? It seems to me that if companies want to put money into wireless networking, they should pay for the necessary security infrastructure themselves.

For physical crime, you simply cannot protect yourself easily: there is no low-cost, convenient technology to protect yourself from a bullet or a fist.

But you have complete and easy control over most kinds of cyber crimes: if anything, you save money by going with the safer solution.

In different words, it looks to me like our tax dollars are making up for software deficiencies created by companies that rush products to market and by companies that install technology without understanding it.

it's ok Because They Can.

[commodoresloat]

true in theory, but are you going to make a citizen's arrest if you see a cop go 85 without his lights on, or (as is common) he turns his siren on just to blast through a red light?

Let's get realistic about this - The SS is doing this because they can. They have a huge budget and lots of nifty toys. They're supposed to know "what's going on" around DC, so they have license to snoop around to an extent. Their basic job description probably leaves many of them plenty of free time. Someone probably read an article in Wired, and thought it was cool. That's kind of what happens when you empower virtually unaccountable branches of the government; in this dept the SS has nothing on the CIA, for example....

Re:Real Security

[commodoresloat]

The government's job is to protect our borders

Actually that's only part of the govt's job, a small part at that (thoughtfully named "Border Patrol" so they wouldn't be confused with the "Secret Service.")

the corporations should be in charge of securing their own networks and hiring their own wardrivers, not making joe taxpayer foot the bill.

I agree with that fully, but not because I'm afraid of the country being taken over by people who come here to be cooks and gardners. The dude who wrote the letter to the article you linked is smoking crack. National emergency - give me a break. This guy claims to respect the Bill of Rights yet he advocates a mass expulsion, Milosevic-style. Keep your pants on, man, you're talking about a large disenfranchised and easily exploitable pool of cheap labor -- a problem, perhaps, but hardly a "massive army of invasion and occupation." Get real.

Re:FCC???

[ByteHog]

Doubt it. They can claim National Security, which can allow them to boss around anyone they want..

"We're from the Government..."

[Archeopteryx]

"...and we're here to help you." Is a phrase that ought to strike fear into anybody's heart! Dollars to doughnuts this is not the "helpful" measure it is being made out to be.

Be careful out there!

I like this, but

[hrieke]

I don't think that it is their job to go around and tell people that their network is open to the public.
On the other hand, maybe the builders of these items will start including some real default security in their products.
Or maybe people will wake up and start taking some responiblity for their actions! (yeah, right...)

Re:I like this, but

[fizban]

If your job is to protect national security and there are government agencies with networks that are wide open, then yes, you should be doing this...

People will only wake up when they become aware of the issue. Most people don't realize the severity of lax security on computers.

USSS?? Why isn't...

[GooberToo]

...this being done by or under the NSA? After all, this sounds exactly like what their charter calls for. I am confused as to why the SS is involved with performing these tests as it is clearly the NSA's domain. On top of all that, I'm not really sure that this is a role I want to see our goverment actively persuing.

annoying neighbor

[Suppafly]

"I feel it is part of crime prevention to knock on the door," Peterson said.


No, its acting like an annoying neighbor to knock on the door. It doesn't even occur to this guy that he might just be annoying people who have open networks on purpose.

Re:annoying neighbor

[PhxBlue]

And who has open networks on purpose, besides people who want to pay for total strangers' bandwidth?

I find it fascinating

[Unknown Poltroon]

that they are allowed to do this withthe sirens OFF. Fucking speeding cops.