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Security Predictions of 2004
scubacuda writes "Computer World's security predictions for 2004: R.a..n,d,o.,m p,u,,n,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n evading spam filters, Internet access filtering, better desktop management, enterprise personal firewall deployment, tools that securely scrub metadata, corporate policies against USB flash drives, Wi-Fi break-ins, Bluetooth abuses, cell phone hacking, centralized control over IM, public utility breakin publicized, government defense against cybercriminals, organized cybercrime, and a shorter time to exploitation."
R.a..n,d,o.,m p,u,,n,c.t,,u_a.t.1..0.n makes it nearly impossible to block spam messages by filtering keywords.
Can't the spam filters just remove it all? They don't really need the punctuation to check for Viagra advertisements anyway.
This is a good thing. It makes it harder for the victims to read, and gives a lot of anomolies that any modern statistical filter will find extremely useful.
OK... so they predict...
More Of The Same!
Astounding.
Remind you of something?.
That random punctuation stuff is more difficult to read than 1337speak, and will continue to be: leetspeak, at least, has a fairly broad group of people that -want- to understand it and use it conversationally, and thus its more understood.
:P) sends an adrenaline rush through me. I look forward to dealing with such attacks (either preventatively, directly, or for clients, etc.) - seriously. It's exciting stuff.
At any rate, I doubt such punctuation will be a problem. I've already seen a good deal of it get killed with bayesian filters anyway.
The other things though - very interesting. It's not like we can't predict these things ourselves, though - it's only a mattre of time before they happen, what with the increasingly dense levels of tech in our society.
Being the thrill-seeking geek that I am, the prospect alone of bluetooth hacking (wartoothing?
I can see there being a definate increase in the need for serious, intelligent, and knowledgeable computer security staff; they'll likely start supplanting what's left of IT staff, as well as replacing some of the positions that were dumped in the last several years. After IS? Who knows. Maybe we'll be batteries by then, or maybe fighting the machines.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It doesn't take very much CPU to s/\W//g
Yeah! Block all email containing only graphics!
Base64 isn't hard to decode... or to just bin.
I've never seen an email with an IP address based URI that wasn't spam. Trash em
Not this user, or this user's spam filter. Spams using these techniques get the highest spam scores and when 5 is worthy of trashing, 35 is worthy of laughing at (at least until I get so much spam I'll put it in /dev/null rather then ~/mail/spam)
Don't put your email address online, period. Other solutions like filters only address part of the problem, because you still have to pay for the bandwidth and there's the problem of false positives. I wrote a little Javascript Turing email obfuscator, which prevents renders your email address invisible to bots, even those that can execute javascript.
An ounce of prevention...
My experince since we changed from Windows 3.1 to NT and now 2000 is that the few cases where users screwed up their PCs have been outweighed by the constant demands for an engineer visit to carry out a trivial task using the admin password. And no-one can defrag their hard disks. Ever.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I use a 2.5" 20GB USB hard drive when I move between branch offices for work as it carries all my data and stuff with me. I also use my HD as a kind of FTP directory when I want to install client software across a server network.
Come to think of it, there's nothing to stop somebody with one of these Hard drives from importing and exporting several CDs worth of data on it, and importing all kinds of strange software or even CD-copying software into the workplace to make nice CD ISO images or even whole drive dumps of code that should not be freely distributed.
The USB hard disk is probably way more risky than a flash drive, because 512MB while it can still hold a lot of info, is still expensive and is limited by its size.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Spammers actually seem to try defeating bayesian spam filters by "training" them with random words:
From: Noah Poe
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 15:58:49 -0600
To: a.konrad@aon.at
Subject: canberra happen
aides bone emmanuel rumania persistent josephine pencil majesty bottom
anarch molecular cafe hepburn done ellipsoid monoceros chokeberry pungent decontrolled
orphanage keel cessna lippincott drugstore onion inclement empire
This is just sick.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Ok, this is probably a dumb question, but why the hell doesn't anyone make a spell checking spam filter? Just set it to junk any incoming email with more than x% spelling mistakes, and voila! All y,o.ur.,. r,a.,n.d,.om.,,. p,.u,.nc,.tu,at,i.on and |33t 5p34k is fucked. Combine it with a regular spam filter, and you're set!
It'd also have the added bonus of keeping idiots who can't spell worth crap out of your inbox. And since it would work off a dictionary (preferably the same one as your outgoing spell checker, if equipped), you could always add whatever names, phrases, and abbreviations you wanted, while still keeping the "0MG L1EK MAK UR P3N0R 9 INCHZ LONGR!!" crap out of your inbox.
Surely we have the ability to create something like this. So where is it?
One of the requirements (coming from "concerned parents", of course) was to filter out swearing in the chat rooms. So if someone typed in, say, "you're a shit", what would actually appear for everyone else would be "you're a $!%^" or something similar.
Eventually, of course, we got into an arms race with the kids, who would write "sh1t", "s.h.i.t", "sh*t" and so on.
However, I came up with a program which generated a regexp which matched pretty much all the variations, and - to date - none of the kids have worked out a way around it.
This is how it worked.
(Actually, I can send anyone the original regexp generator code if they're interested - just mail me).
The basic concept was to use a table of "equivalences", for, eg. "a" => [ "@", "4", "A", ....], "f" => [ "ph", .... ]
For each swear word we generate a regexp with (r1|r2|r3|...) for each letter in the bad word, where r1, r2, r3, ... are the list of
equivalences for that letter.
That produces a list of swear word - matching regexps which we then combined into a super mega regexp which would match any of the 50 or so banned words.
One interesting thing is that you can end up with a regexp which is too big for GNU regexp to handle ... But there are ways to get round
that and you can code it up as a flex parser
too which doesn't have any limits as far as I
can tell.
The actual code is slightly more complex and does a few more things than above (eg. it works for "s.h.1.t" too, or even "s---h--1----------t". And it has a concept of "obliterator characters", so "sh*t" can be banned also.
If anyone's interested I can send the code.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Sure, you can defeat spam filters by being obscure enough. Do random punctuation, embed your message in a mass of unrelated words and so on. But from my experience, spam is already approaching the "vanishing point" when it ceases to be comprehensible even to the humans that are supposed to react to the things. I have had spam that has been so obscure it's taken me several minutes do decipher what they are trying to sell (and they still get caught by Spamassassin).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Stop spam at the source, stupid!
Don't use your email address, period. Other solutions like filters only address part of the problem, I wrote a little Javascript Turing email blocker , which prevents you using email!
No more email means no more spam, spam harvesters use viruses that collect email adresses from the computers of people that know you.
People that don't know how to use bcc spread your adress all over the net. So dont give out your email adress at all. Just send lonely test messages to yourself. mmm, a dictionary attack could still find you..... Stop checking your email!!!
Problem solved.
An ounce of prevention...
Subject: fodder gallonage
neglecter appease luis seagram bratwurst bluet
burgundian seamstress adair embolden frontal
rhodonite bitwise neither clara mercy footstool delivery
or how about....
Subject: dewdrop
perspicuous dinosaur fluency depart colombia oaken balfour odometer
because propel bead cowry nihilism
melanesia down mccluskey cryostat elena alphameric
----
I wondered what these emails were, but trying to poison spam filters seems correct. I figured spammers were doing it, but I thought the reason was just to spite us all. I'm sure people are doing this to email addresses and selling lists of "prepared email addresses" with compromised spam filters for extra message penetration panel sandman eyeglass conclusion inhibition globular irrigate -- er, sorry... yes, yes I have been checking my mail lately, why do you ask?
there are more parts to an email than just the subject line or the message body that still give away emails as spam. So even if random punctuation circumvents the spotting of something as specific as "viagra" by changing it to "v..1.,a,g.r,,a" or something similar it doesn't matter much. There are so many other hints that it's basically meaningless to do this, they still get caught because of those other clues. I'm still amazed at how well my bayesian filter of choice, popfile http://sourceforge.net/projects/popfile does with all my email needs. Filtering out spam, sorting out other emails into work, family, and a handful of other 'buckets' to get everything going where I'd like it to go. Spammers are indeed trying out different ideas all the time, but next to nothing ever gets through. And when something does manage to slip by on a rare occasion, well, you just made popfile that much better at catching the rest of the crap anyways. shrug. Been a long time (since I found popfile) since spam was even the slightest concern to me. There are quite a few different bayesian-based filtering methods out there, definitely a good idea to check at least one of them out. Popfile's a good choice, especially if you'd like to sort things besides spam too.
I expect the new IM worms to be the next major disaster to these tech companies, just like Slammer was for their unmanaged MS SQL installations.
It surprised me that noone listened to my suggestions on setting up an internal server. OK, not every luser knows IRC, but surely there are many IMs that can be set up to use an internal server and block everything else at the firewall. We tried the Lotus Notes clone of AOLs AIM and it sucked (as everything Notes), apart from using encrypted line data.
I remember trying to get hold of a senior developer I was working with using plain old talk in a terminal and he didn't know it... He got the notification in his shell and called me instead. Sort of explains the renaissance of these dummy IM clients.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
My boss (hardcore BSD hacker and anti-spam activist) added a simple rule to our spam filters: more than 5 consonants in a row in the From: field and it's tagged as spam. I'm pretty sure if neccessary he can add a rulle to check how many characters in a sentence are vowels, consonants, digits and punctuation. more than x% of punctuation in a sentence plus y% digits and the filter tags as spam.
I'm not as good as him but I'm sure this can be done quite easily in perl with regexes.
What ? Me, worry ?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The problem is, USB thumb drives are more wide-spread, cheap as chips and, from a security stand-point, easy to loose.
Thankfully I havent lost any of my USB drives, I usually securely wipe them every few weeks JIC.
512 MB is very damaging, what corporations are scared of, are the copying of sensitive documents. Documents such as network diagrams, disaster recovery plans, security plans etc etc are usually no larger than 10 megs, but could deliver a damaging blow to business confidentality concerns.
I'm seeing a definate rise in large businesses I'm dealing with are already banning USB thumb drives.
.-.--
Anti SPAM tools already include anti-obfuscation support. Here's one of many scripts for spamassassin.
- cnb
as the OS gains mindshare, it will also gain it's first dedicated worm/virus. I hope I'm *not* right.
Email, right now, is not very restrictive. Up the standard, and you'll have many more constraints within which to work.
People have been calling for a p2p solution to email for a while, which presents its own challenges, but does suggest that those in the know are open to change.
Just a thought...
Who mediates your information?
Personal firewalls; yes more people will use them. In some cases, they will be important, though the rules of if it isn't running it can't be exploited and less is more are much more effective on an intranet. Firewalls add management issues that can be avoided with careful use of tools like Nessus to audit your network. That said, limited and careful of local firewalls is a good idea if you've already taken the proper steps and the user has an identifiable need.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I've noticed a trend with a bit of the spam i've been getting recently: Random HTML.
The following is an example:
<Aegf>Bigger</gorR>><feakj> feet today!<alefa>
I have to admit, its rather effective in tricking many spam filters. Most spam filters can't tell the difference between real and fake HTML. Additionally, most HTML rendering engines automatically skip the false HTML, and still show the spam message.
Sunny Dubey
The more I read on this, the more I become convinced that AI will come about as a result of the spam wars.
Hmm...if the greatest email filter (the delete key) isn't working for you and your time is soooo precious because you are a corporate big wig then you always can use your "secretary" to preview the emails and delete the crap. Or have we learned nothing from years of postal services and mailrooms?
blocking all spam is like saying the RIAA can stop you from burning a cd. its just not going to happen
Three major spammers began their sentences today at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary at Allenwood, Pennsylvania. Their Romania-based operation had created several well-known viruses to assist in sending spam by breaking into the computers of others. Each was initially charged with 12,346,000 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The leader was also charged with operating an ongoing criminal enterprise. FBI and Homeland Security investigators located the spammers, and the U.S. Department of State arranged for their extradition to the US for trial. All pled guilty to reduced charges after being convinced that they could be put away for life. The leader will serve 25 years, and his assistants will serve 15 years each.
Over the last several years, NSA has quietly been enhancing NSA Secure Linux, and has now released a secure Linux distribution for general use by U.S. Government sites. In this system, information coming in from the Internet is automatically held at a low level of trust, and cannot corrupt other information on the machine. A compatible secure browser, mail server, web server, and DNS server are provided. Free, open source copies of this code are available.
New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announces a $12.6 billion verdict against Microsoft in the "Blaster VIII" case. The court held that Microsoft violated New York's "reckless endangerment" law by distributing web browsers which automatically opened content that might contain viruses, resulting in the distribution of the "Blaster VIII" worm to over 200 million computers worldwide.
Dell today announced the recall of 1.2 million computers for a security flaw. Fear of a liability lawsuit prompted the move.
RTFA. Spammers crack their way through the security measures (filters) designed to prevent their unauthorized access to other people's property. The existing computer security laws need to be enforced against this form of cracking.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Almost all of these are just "we'll see the current trend continue".
...
Ironically, my own prediction isn't much different:
In 2004, lots of interesting things will happen in security, and none of the things that would matter will change. Instead, a lot of time, money and effort will be thrown at the wrong non-solutions.
i.e. more of 2003, or 2002, or 2001,
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yeah, the USB ports don't work on my workplace desktop. It was annoying when I discovered that, as I purchased a USB flash drive for precisely that purpose, transferring files I work on during breaks to and from home. Although I still circumvented it by writing a script on my home PC that allows me to transfer just about anything between the two. Go figure.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
That's sofa kingdom.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Spammers send me volumes of dada poetry like this, and it's all stuff that appears before HTML, which I assume is the main content of the mail. Pity that I filter out HTML. And here I was hoping that there was an international dada poetry guerrilla group...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The far most nefarious spam I've seen so far is the kind that has a bunch of dictionary words in the bare 7-bit part of a MIME encoded message. It's common to see this stuff if you have a mail client that doesn't render the multi-media portion of the e-mail by default. You'll see something like;
conduit horse house press lingo technical gelatin overlord brown uniform
In the muli-media portion you'll see spam like never before.
How to stop these? You can't train a bayes database with dictionary words as it would eventually defang the whole method. Your only option I suppose would be to compare the contents of the multi-media portion with the 7-bit ASCII portion and see if they match. Problem here is to make the comparison fuzzy enough to allow for multi-byte characters and stuff like that.
The words thing about this type of spam is that at best your bayes database is circumvented, but at worst it is trained to see good words as bad or bad words as good and is rendered useless.
With SpamAssassin it is easy to set when to auto-train your bayes backend and when not to. I have my required_hits option set to '4.0' so I would use the following settings;
use_bayes 1
auto_learn 1
auto_learn_threshold_spam 7
auto_learn_threshold_nonspam -5.5
With this I am reasonably confident that I am not training my bayes database with good words as bad unless it really is found to be spam impirically, and inverse unless I am sure it's a good e-mail, typically by means of AWL or whitelist_from.
If anybody has solved this, I would be very grateful to hear what you did and how you did it.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
I just got one of those "Millions of email addresses on a CD" spams. It includes the fax number required to request them.
Anyone in the 240 and 416 area codes that feels like clogging up someone's fax machine with tubgirl and goatse?
Here's the meat of this junk (I removed several hundred asterisks):
--quote begins--
DON'T YOU WANT TO KNOW!
PURCHASE OUR Email Addresses Directory ONLY
IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE OUR Email Addresses Directory with
525 MILLION in 5-disk set.
Complete package 5-disk set only $99.00!!
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. TO ORDER, READ BELOW:
Fill out the Form below and fax it back to
1-240-371-0672 OR 416-467-8986