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FBI Password Database Compromised by Consultant
LackThereof writes "An IT consultant for the FBI, hired to work on their new 'Trilogy' computer system, apparently got hold of the username and password hash databases for the FBI's network. He then used a common dictionary attack to get usable passwords out of the hashes, including that of FBI director Robert Muller, making him able to access virtually any data stored electronically at the FBI, including Witness Protection program records. The consultant, Joseph Thomas Colon, claims he used the passwords to avoid bureaucratic obstacles, and that his actions were condoned by the FBI agents he was working with at the agency." (More below.)
"He has pleaded guilty to 4 counts of 'intentionally accessing a computer while exceeding authorized access and obtaining information from any department of the United States.' He initally gained access to the hash database by borrowing an agent's username and password; he then re-downloaded and re-cracked it three more times to keep up with the FBI's 90-day password expiration policy. Lesson: Your users are your biggest security hole. Don't trust your users, especially if they're government agents."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Indeed... in-deed...
The space unintentionally left unblank.
These are the people protecting me from terrorists? Scary, very scary.
s/comprised/compromised
I aim to misbehave.
So we charge the consultant, send him through the legal system, etc. Are we also going to do something to prevent this from happening again, like educating agents not to give out their username/password or allowing the kind of access this guy was able to get?
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re-cracked it three more times to keep up with the FBI's 90-day password expiration policy. Lesson: Your users are your biggest security hole. Don't trust your users, especially if they're government agents.
Lesson #2: Don't use stupid password expiration periods, which force users to come up with new yet easy-to-remember (=> crackable) passwords. If passwords never expire, your users are bound to pick a more secure password in the first place since they know that they don't have to change it every full moon. Make the passwords never expire and just run a dictionary attack against your users - if you get through, THEN start harassing your user about proper security.
The FBI's Trilogy program cost more than $535 million but failed to produce a usable case-management system for agents because of cost overruns and technical problems, according to the Government Accountability Office. While Trilogy led to successful hardware upgrades and thousands of new PCs for bureau workers and agents, the final phase -- a software system called the Virtual Case File -- was abandoned last year. The FBI announced in March that it would spend an additional $425 million in an attempt to finish the job. The new system would be called "Sentinel."
I need to check the Government Accountability Office more often. It's good to know we're spending 1 billion dollars to found a, most likely, failed attempt at secure computing for the FBI. Doh.
Now all we have to hear is that his laptop got stolen before he was caught.
Geeze, my sister could even run l0phtcrack. Can't give him much credit here.
Really, seriously, you do not crack passwords to get your work done. You crack passwords to ensure site security if it is part of your job description, but you do not use those accounts to get work done. Cripes.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Employers need to be more careful about whom they hire and what their employees are doing. Even the members of
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Just poor wording on the part of the author. Colon may have been provided access to the database by that FBI employee, and used a Perl script or any of several apps that can do their own SQL-connections to pull the data, only part of which would have been the hash.
And just for some additional information for others not familiar with this kind of thing, there are dozens of programs that can do brute-force comparisons. It's also possible that he just used a rainbow table, which are available on (sometimes more than one) DVD for relatively small sums for the comparison. With a few really good computers, or a distributed computing project, it's not terribly hard to build up a sizable rainbow table in a relatively short period of time.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Surely this proves that 90 day password expiration policies encourage users to pick weaker passwords they can remember because they are having to change them all the time?
Would it have been so easily cracked if everyone had a 10+ character password that was truly strong, even if it was only changed once a year or never?
Is there an argument for password systems including a dictionary attack test phase for new passwords that if the new password fails, the user has to change it again?
And maybe when data is really important, they might wish to utilise some other form of identification besides passwords. Certainly witness protection details should be far more protected. A biometric system, fingerprints are the easiest to implement these days without much cost, in addition to the password...
Of course the consultant had an 'in', as he was consulting for them. Some minor social engineering and they're all letting him access the systems, bypassing proper procedure.
In the end, there's no excuse for data this important being accessed illegitimately like this. Security measures should be in place, access procedures should be in force, restrictions on data movement from secure to insecure should be enforced. Yet we see it every week - laptop stolen with confidential data on, unencrypted, open, in a file on the desktop probably called "Social Security Database.xls" or "List Of Witnesses On Protection Program, Do Not Show To Criminals Who Will Pay Good Money For This.doc".
Good thing this guy pleaded guilty. Otherwise, someone might ask uncomfortable questions, like why FBI agents were active participants in this criminal act. The whole problem would have been averted if someone didn't give their username and password to this guy.
Of course, the whole thing could have also been averted if normal users didn't have access to the password file. The Unix world figured out that shadow password files are a good idea a long time ago. Too bad the wisdom there hasn't caught on.
One thing everyone should know when working for a large organization is that they have policies for everything because they assume everyone is dumber than paste. The up side of this as a consultant is that you can bill a week for 30 minutes of work because there's a week of paperwork needed before you can perform any task. This guy tried to get things done more efficiently by sidestepping the boundaries. Small companies can respect that kind of attitude, but not the government. That kind of behavior results in lower billings to the government, and that is unamerican.
Jumping through hoops, as silly as they may be, is an important part of any technical job within a large organization.
Colon claimed that he did this because he was tired of having to seek bureaucratic authorization for every last task, including adding printers. Having worked with government agencies before, I can say I understand his frustration. But his later justification was priceless:
Okay, so: getting authorization was onerous, so he asked for permission from agents in the Springfield office to forge their superiors' credentials in order to speed up the process. And they gave it to him.
Did you get that? I was originally gonna boldface the best parts, but I couldn't decide where to start.
1. The contractor, fed up with an onerous and ridiculous authorization process,
2. asked for permission from FBI officials to crack their superiors' passwords,
3. and the FBI officials in question said yes.
Okay, so, Colon is in court. What happened to the FBI staffers who gave him the go-ahead?
Been charged with illegal access? He apparently used a brute force cracking script to compromise
the database he had tenative acccess to. If he needed greater acces, he would have had it. The
article is , at best, lacking in solid information. At least to me it is.
Regular access audits would have picked this up much sooner. End of story. By hanging this poor bastard out to dry, they've basically exposed even more lack of security.
I call for this every time something like this gets published , and I'll call for it again :
We need (real) IT professionals in Congress, they need to form an oversight committee, and they need to have pretty much unrestricted access to most systems so they can be effective.
These holes have *got* to get plugged. Its not only embarrassing, its media porn and its going to encourage hacks that *do* result in something bad happening.
Nimrods.
So one hash file gives him access to all FBI records, including the most sensitive? No offense, but why aren't the most sensitive of services protected by isolating them in a separate system? Compromising the witness protection program could endanger the lives of everyone protected by it, and just the ideas that it might be compromised could reduce the chances of people helping the FBI and testifying.
Isn't witness protection data Need To Know? Why would the FBI director Need To Know anything at all at a moment's notice from his desktop PC? It would make much more sense to have a separate system, and have him walk down the hall, ask someone to retrieve what he needs, and maybe get ONE record made available for a limited time.
I'm not trolling or anything. Seriously, can someone suggest scenarios whereby immediate, free access to that data is valuable, especially by people who don't already know whether you or I are in the program?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Forcing one's boss to do something is terribly difficult. You generally need support from your boss' boss. When they're both high-level political appointees, it's that much harder. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that it's not always possible. Generally easier (and better, imho) to teach him, give him some sort of appreciation of the pile of excrement he can wind up in if he doesn't.
As for two-factor, I know VA is moving towards it (and was before the whole laptop debacle). Might be fed-wide. Hopefully this will light a fire under it.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
When I was in university the admins had a program on one of the linux labs that would try to crack /etc/shadow and if it found a password it would email you saying that your password wasnt secure. I dont remember if it gave a hint about what your password was but it definetly made you think twice about using a weak password someone can crack so easily.
Its scary the FBI doesnt even do this kind of simple audits
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
The FBI illegally obtains our information, why can't we illegally obtain theirs?
Haiku for you!
You need to chill out, if our government doesnt hire honest people then the government would fall apart. I mean, it would be terrible to have dishonest people with so much information! Right now this proves that we have a lot of honest people and one or two bad apples which are caught in a timely manner, the government can run clean. The reason we allow the government to have all of our information and view it so easily is to stop terrorists and those that act like terrorist but are classed as criminals in our judicial system.
If we dont get all this information together we wont be safe, and without being safe our entire country would fall apart. So we have to have complete and unfettered trust in our government that it is doing the right thing as they know everything about us!
Remember to smile for the security camera, there is an angel on the other side.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
This guy not only cracked his employer's passwords (many of whom probably have high security clearance), but he actually logged into them routinely and used them as part of his workflow for nearly a year. Hello?
Compare that to the clearly less harmful actions of Randal Schwartz, who went gray-hat (one time, without using the logins, as a security warning). Three felony convictions and a rather severe sentence.