UC Berkeley Cleaning up its Security Act

Bob Brown writes "UC Berkeley recently issued a scathing self-assessment of its IT department, which has been under fire in the wake of a couple of high profile security lapses at the school. NetworkWorld has a review of what the school's top networking guy says is being done to both secure and strengthen UC Berkeley's computer networks."

Comments

Re:Link to print version

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

God, that was silly of me! (didn't check the URL before posting)

Here's the article text, moderators, please mod the parent into the ground!

Securing UC Berkeley's network

School looks to shore up security in wake of breaches.

Linda Leung,Network World,04/24/06

The University of California at Berkeley has made a name for itself in networking, with innovations such as Unix, Berkeley Internet Domain Name, Smart Dust and SETI@home. But the school has made headlines over the past few years for some things of which it is less proud, namely a couple of security breaches (a stolen laptop containing personal information on graduates and a compromised database of California residents).

At the start of this year, the university published a scathing self-study of its Information Systems and Technology department. It acknowledged the school's advanced IT network and talented professionals but recommended radical changes to the IT department's governance and structure (read the report).

Clifford Frost, director of Berkeley's Communications and Network Services (CNS), recently spoke with Network World Senior Online News Editor Linda Leung about what the university is doing to ensure that when people think of the school, they think "innovation," not "infiltration."

How has IT evolved at the university?

It's been haphazard. In the case of the network, it's been pretty organized. Back in the '80s, there were campuswide committees that said networking is going to be important so let's start building it up now. The campus financial and administrative systems are pretty advanced. But campus student systems [such as online registration and course catalogs] are less well-funded and organized because there has not been a single high-level sponsor. This is one of key things the campus is open to addressing in the reorganization.

Also: What makes Harvard's net tick

What is your security plan?

Every networked device has to have its operating system kept up to date with security patches - Windows 95 is not allowed unless you buy a separate firewall device and stick it in front of [Windows 95]. There are microscopes controlled by old operating systems - [the owners] have to put a firewall in front of them. We have software that people can use for free - they don't have to buy their own firewall or anti-virus software.

Having a policy only goes so far. McAfee's Foundstone scanner allows us to scan the network continuously for vulnerabilities. [If something is found] we tell [the device owners] to fix it or we turn off their access. Departments can log in and scan their own nets.

How else do you secure the network?

We do intrusion detection at the border of the campus network and more and more inside the network. We monitor to detect when systems have been broken into or are being broken into or about to launch an attack, and we can turn them off. We use McAfee IntruShield Snort, Nessus and Bro Intrusion Detection System. [Intrusion detection] is a big issue because we've had some pretty big security breaches on campus [see stories hereand here]. There is a big thrust in getting people to encrypt data on their desktop or laptop.

How do you get ahead of the security challenges?

The latest thing we're doing is getting people on campus to audit their systems, and the recommendation is to remove [sensitive i

Re:OpenBSD too

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Yeah, I always suspected I can't trust the security of *BSD...

There's quite a bit seperating openBSD & the Berkeley Software Distribution. netBSD was based on the last Berkely distribution & openBSD split from netBSD because some developers wanted security to be a stronger focus.

The openBSD project has completely rewritten most userland tools & also done a complete code audit looking for security bugs. The relationship between the current codebase & what came out of Berkeley ten years ago is pretty minimal.

Re:Sensitive stuff on laptops

[rjune]

A list of all of the students is commonly used to prepare reports required by the Department of Education (google IPEDS), providing data for college guides (we do about 50 per year), and surveys from professional organizations (e.g. Engineering Workforce Commission) However, the first thing you do with a file like that is to delete the following columns: Social Security Number, Names, Phone Numbers, Next of Kin data, and Addresses (except perhaps Country or State of Origin). The EMPLID (or college ID number) can be retained if additional data needs to be joined in. It is very easy to retain the necessary demographic data and delete the personal data that can uniquely identify a person. There is no excuse for such carelessness with sensitive personal data.

Re:I wonder if they still have the "rms" account..

[Anonymous Coward]

BBS Scene.... Back in the early 90's we used to share password files in the back rooms of bbs's. It was notoriously easy to guess
a password on a UCB machine, then cat the unshadowed password file. Well, then you know what to do next, right: Leave crack running on the file on the old Sun 3 in the corner and some day or days later we would have a stack of accounts. Most of them were cracked with dictionary words. Too easy.

Re:Sensitive stuff on laptops

[buysse]

Under FERPA, even a name and a grade for a paper is federally-protected private data. So, if you have a spreadsheet with the scores from the last quiz, that's sensitive, personal data about students that triggers those laws. It isn't necessarily SSNs and CC#s. Hell, under FERPA, even the names of students in a class can be protected if one student has preferred to have their directory info suppressed. There's a report available from my current employer that has names and ID pictures for all the students in a class -- again, protected data.

The threshold is so low for private data that basically any academic staff is using it every day, and carrying it on their laptops, on USB sticks, on their home computers, etc.

Security in Berkeley? Riiiight

[BerkeleyDude]

You'd think that since BSD comes from Berkeley, it should be a popular OS on campus... Think again. Everyone's #1 choice is: Windows XP.

You go to a (non-CS) computer lab. You login with your SID and password. A new Administrator account is created for you. Go ahead, do whatever you want - when you logout, all your files will be deleted, and everything will be restored to the original state. Completely secure, until you realize... "Duh. I have an administrator account. Why can't I just prevent the computer from restoring everything on logout?".

I reported this to one of the lab workers, and even demonstrated: she logged into her own account, but the desktop background picture said in big red letters, "Caution: This system has been haxx0red". She was pretty shocked, and said she would inform the system administrators.

This was half a year ago... Nothing has changed.

The CS labs are different, though. They run Solaris 9. Security shouldn't be a problem here. Usability is, though. How many of you guys remember what Gnome 2.0 looks like? How about Acrobat Reader 4? I do, unfortunately. And the Slashdot jokes about "^H" suddenly made so much sense...