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Democratic Convention Computer Security Threat?
Hiawatha writes "Excuse me for tooting my own horn, but check out my story in today's Boston Globe about a possible security problem at the Democratic convention next week. If visitors plug insecure laptops with wireless connections into the convention's wired network, there could be trouble..."
From what I have heard, they are not allowing wi-fi of any kind. Not because its a security risk but because it can interfer with the equipment they really care about. the mic's and cameras and radios used to make sure everything goes smoothely.
I don't think there will be too much trouble with this. Just another company spreading the FUD trying to make a buck.
Ah heck, just compromise the laptops when they are back in the wilds of the Hotel network, then have them phone home once they get inside. Won't be hard. Just put a billboard to a porn site up outside the hotel that points to a server that exploits and IE flaw.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Repeat after me: "I am not a party. I am a person. I will cast my vote for the person who is most likely to represent me even though it may NOT be the choice of my employer, my friends, nor my family's historical voting record, nor anyone else's interest. I will vote for myself. It's why I walk into the voting booth alone instead of sending someone else to vote on my behalf."
If you have the priviledge to vote, don't just throw it away on the lesser of two evils when other choices are available.
As long as Globe writers are reading Slashdot, perhaps someone could clarify this mystery:
- Yesterday's paper claimed that "11% of Boston businesses" believe they'll make more money as a result of the DNC, with 78% expecting the same or less>
- Today's paper featured the Causeway Street pizzeria owner who put up a pro-Bush banner and is closing his store for the week and going to Canada, expecting more trouble than business if he stays open.
Excuse me? If a guy who owns a freaking pizzeria across the freaking street from the Fleet Center doesn't think the convention is worth any money, who the hell are those 11% of business owners who think they'll benefit?What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Red Hat Linux to be precise. You can apply as an admin if you want...
The DNC might want to invest in several of these little goodies. Power them up and problem solved.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
When it seems technology moves too slow, consider that 4 years is a very long time in the computer world.
1981 - start of Reagan 1st term. IBM PC barely exists.
1985 - Reagan 2nd term. Amiga still months from introduction.
1989 - Bush Sr. 1st term. Gopher looks like it's going to be a real winner.
1993 - Bill Clinton 1st term. Most people are stil l having trouble accessing more than 1 Megabyte of memory. Microsoft offers users "himem.sys" as a solution. Linux begins to change all that.
1997 - Bill clinton 2nd term. Everybody's reading about who poked who in the Oval Office - on a computer network that spans the globe
2001 - GWBush 1st term. Cheap computers perform at a more than a billion FLOPS. Hard drive prices crash through the floor. Wireless networking barely alive.
2005 - Wireless networking causes massive chaos in the government, allowing robotic overlords to storm the Democratic Convention. Scene is repeated three weeks later at the Republican Convention. Robots declare martial law, and institute an omnipotent supercomputer and the emperor of the world. Declares Sunday to be free ice cream day. Jaded citizens eat it up.
When you look at the state of the art at 4 year intervals, it seems like a lifetime. When GW Bush was first elected, a nice computer would have been 1 GHZ or less, with 64 megs of RAM. And before that, it would have been a little Celeron 300A, or maybe a Pentium MMX.
Can anyone predict the state of the art in 2009?
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
"Who in their right mind would want to hack into the democratic convention? The only ones I can think of are Republicans, and we all know they never do anything illegal like that..."
They only need to say that it's part of a terrorism investigation, and then the carrier is required to let them snoop the wired network, and the carrier is prohibited from revealing the snooping -- EVER, even long after the fact -- and, oh yeah, I forgot to mention, no judge or warrant required.
They don't have to do it illegally, just invisibly.
Look, you vote republican because of a lot of issues I would assume. So don't let one issue derail you from voting republican again. When you turn yourself into a one issue voter, you become a tool for the other side. Vote for the guy who will overall be better for the country. I'm pretty sure you wil stick with Bush.
So WiFi security is not something the Convention IT staff can control, with or without WEP
Nearly a 100% of all notebook computers brought to the convention will have WiFi built-in to them. A few sensible folks will have their notebooks configured to only latch onto "known" access points using wep. The rest will have their WiFi settings set to allow both ad-hoc and infrastructure mode and to connect automatically. These people, while probably smart and successful in other ways, are likely to be morons who are network-retarded.
As a result they are unlikely to realise that while they are busy and connected to the wired network, their computers have also connected automatically to the blackHatAP that has been setup in the closed-for-the weekend in the Pizzeria across the street. A convenient and cheap SEP field will prevent them from seeing small message dialogs that inform them of these events.
Some of these notebooks, as a result of belonging to irresponible morons, will already be 0wn3d. They are twice as likely to not be updated using windos update..
In short these computers will behave pretty much the same as the drunk chick flahing her tits at Dayton Beach on spring break (altho why we only see photos of them on the internet and never meet any of these tipsy goddesses IRL is beyond me. Oh wait, that probably cuz I'm here instead of there.!)
I would lay a wager of 10 bucks at odds of 5-1 that at least 5% of the notebooks on-site will automatically latch onto the first available AP AND be unpatched enough to allow arbitrary code execution using a buffer overflow vulnerability on some port OR have a trojan installed which can be leveraged to execute said code
What is the hapless IT support guy to do? Here are a few ideas -
1. Ban all notebooks since you cant physically inspect the WiFi settings for the visitors. This idea will probably get you fired though. The morons are rich and powerful and will get their way in penetrating your network with their toys. Being a BOFH is only going to get you shafted.
2. Set up your own AP with repeaters all over the place and hope the ho-ing notebooks latch on to your WiFi network first. I am sure this is not foolproof, but will probably bring down your risk by 70%. The boundary cases here are truly that - the notebooks on the wifi edge might see a better signal from blackHatAP and kiss up to it.
3. This may not be legal in your Locale/state/country. Adherence to local laws is your responsibility. Disclaimer made, heres the option - Install a jammer for WiFi frequencies. Better yet, if you have the Secret servce on hand, get them to do it. Simple and efficient. Unintended Interference is a bizatch though.
I thought about the option of setting up a WiFi farm that would create its own /. effect on the BlackHatAP but that wouldn't scale well if the BlackHat set up more than one AP....
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
At a technical conference earlier this year, I noticed something going between a few machines that looked a lot like a wireless virus, but was unable to capture it properly (they weren't my machines, I was just trying to shut down rouge APs).
The trick is being able to turn a normal laptop into an access point, then spreading the virus to other machines as they "automagically" try to connect to whatever AP they can find. Then those infected computers turn into APs, etc.
This type of thing has happened before, but in this case we did have a 802.11A/B/G network running as well as wired. There is no solution to prevent it from happening (short of forcing people not to bridge their connections), but there are ways to detect and contain it. The netadmins just need to setup something that will also talk to these bridged 802.11A/B/G cards. Once they detect a bridge, find out what hardwired port they are coming through, find the Mac address, penalty box the mac address, and you've then forced them to go seek help hopefully from a helpdesk that knows what you are doing to people to cause them to go to the helpdesk.
Cheers!
--Brett
Actually, would it be a big deal if some hackers did get into the convention network?
Nobody is going to die from a wifi security breach. The same laptops are going to be in hotels a few hours later and be just as attackable then as they ever were anyway.
In fact I would be surprised if there was anything of value accessible through the convention wifi network. More than likely there will be a hopelessly overloaded T1 and a handful of printers that are out of paper anyway, just like every other convention.
If the democrats set up a file share with a bunch of strategic plans or something, well sheesh, they're going to get leaked anyway, regardless of the wifi network.
I think the article goes into the old "the sky is falling" category. It's kind of amusing that wifi actually takes place in the sky, but that's about it.
Have someone (or several someones) walking the convention hall floor with sniffers. Any machine found to be transmitting packets via WiFi gets the plug pulled on the wired network. Since every location in the hall is numbered, a simple call back to the network center can get them switched off without having to physically confront them. However, I just like the idea of a guy walking up with scissors and SNIPPING them.
Maybe they should hire Nigerian guards.
Signs would be posted all over -- "TURN OFF YOUR WIFI OR YOUR NETWORK CONNECTION WILL BE TURNED OFF. If you do not know how to do this, please call 1-900-xxx-xxxx ($3.95/minute) for assistance." Using the number of a phone sex line would not be funny. (OK, yes it would, but it's still not a very good idea.)
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.