FBI Raids Security Researcher's Home

Sparr0 writes, "The FBI has raided the home of Christopher Soghoian, the grad student who created the NWA boarding pass site. Details can be found on his blog including a scanned copy of the warrant. The bad news is that he really did break the law. The good news is that Senator Charles Schumer did it first, 19 months ago, on an official government website no less. The outcome of this trial should be at least academically interesting. At best, it could result in nullifying some portion of the law(s) that the TSA operates under." Read on for Sparr0's take on what laws may apply in this case.

Boiling down some of the legalese, the charges (if any are filed) will be "conspiracy to knowingly present a false and fictitious claim upon or against the United States, or any department or agency thereof in violation of USC 18 (secs. 2, 371, 1036, 1343, 2318) and USC 49 (secs. 46314 and 46316) and 49 CFR (secs. 1540.103 and 1540.105)" (edited for brevity).

Comments

Too bad it has to be this way

[Salvance]

Even faced with potential jail time, some people have a burning desire to be in the limelight. I wonder why Christopher Soghoian didn't just create a site anonymously. It would likely have the same effect, and he'd stay out of prison.

It's unfortunate that exposing holes in our security gets no press until someone actually leverages the hole to cause harm. For years before 9/11, the U.S. knew our airports were pitifully insecure, particularly Boston Logan, yet failed to do anything about it. So even though we'll be safer as a result of Christopher's work, he may be in prison. Unfortunately our society aplauds the whistleblower only well after the whistle has been blown, and the government aplauds them almost never at all.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[Simon Garlick]

The fact that you think Soghoian should have HIDDEN HIS IDENTITY FROM THE GOVERNMENT in order to identify a flaw in official security processes says a lot about your government.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[bfields]

I wonder why Christopher Soghoian didn't just create a site anonymously.

He's one guy, he's young, and he's been entirely open and straightforward about why he's doing this--that gives him a much better chance to shame the TSA. It would've hurt his case (with the public, at least) if he'd looked furtive.

And someone with determination (not to mention search warrants) could probably figure out who he was eventually anyway.

Unfortunately our society aplauds the whistleblower only well after the whistle has been blown

Well, I'm applauding.

You can also contribute to his legal defense fund, if you'd like to show your support.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[ricree]

Like others have said, it wouldn't be all that hard for him to have done it anonymously, but he shouldn't have to in the first place.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[chazwurth]

The line between sensible and thoughtless disclosure is a tricky one though. If the secret society of bad guys already know about it then all bets are off, but how do you know?

In this case, the vulnerability had been made clear by others months prior to this disclosure. In fact, this wasn't so much a disclosure as much as it was a public demonstration of just how easy it is to exploit the already known vulnerability. ...unless you wanted to make a point and shame an organisation, then it would be foolish and malicious, and possibly illegal.

Attempting to shame an organization isn't necessarily foolish and malicious. If that organization is a government body charged with insuring your safety, and it is failing spectacularly to do so, you might desire to shame it publicly in order to improve its behavior. Illegal, I'll grant -- and often the law is unjust.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[psykocrime]

He didn't have to publicly supply a way to bypass security.

He didn't.

That is endangering everyone unnecessarily.

No, it's not. As plenty of others have already pointed out, it doesn't matter if Osama f'in Bin Laden is sitting
in the seat beside you on your flight... As long as he doesn't have a bomb, or any other means of creating problems
on the flight, the fact that it's Osama is irrelevant. So these fake boarding passes *might* help somebody
get on a plane who isn't allowed... big deal, they will still be searched, run through a metal detector, bomb-sniffing
crap, etc. This is completely insignificant from a security standout.

And even if it were a security flaw, people have to realize that with freedom comes danger. It's probably a little bit more
dangerous to live in a very free country, than one with a strict totalitarian regime who controls every movement everybody makes... but most
people will take that tradeoff. I know I sure will. "Give me Liberty or give me Death" is not just a cute sound bite to me.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't have to publicly supply a way to bypass security. That is endangering everyone unnecessarily. First he should have contacted the airport security officials privately about it. If they did nothing, he should have then announced that he had found a way to bypass security, but not given any specifics. If they still did nothing, he should have publicly reported the problem.

He was acting towards the end of your suggested sequence of events, it has already got to the point of being publicly reported - what Soghoian did was effectivly bring it to the public's attention.

• This was such an obvious flaw - one could reasonably assume security officials knew about it
• Many others - including Senator Schume, and Slate Magagine (http://www.slate.com/id/2113157/) had drawn attention to this "vulnerability" prior to Soghoian
• Soghoian had tried to publicise the problem previously without sucess - then he had his brilliant idea of producing his PHP script to demonstrate the ease with which the vulnerability could be exploited - only by doing this did he really succeed in fulfiling his duty to publicly report the problem. He has done a better job than either the Senator or Slate Magazine or the others who knew about this flaw in bringing it to the public's attention - he should be applauded for doing that.
• The fact that he has published on anonymity Preserving in P2P Networks strongly suggests that he could have acted anonymously if he had wanted to (or felt he needed to)

I am quite shocked that if Slashdot was the Jury, and the Jury's opinions were the initial opinions of the individual Jurors and not those of the Jury acting as a committee following deliberation that we wouldn't have unaminously aquited Soghoian. I'm in the UK - and this scares me - given the state of the extridaition arrangements the UK has agreed to with the USA and the potential for indefinate imprisonment in the US for non-citizens. I've been to the US twice on business this year, reading this and the countless articles like it will certainly make me think twice before arranging another trip.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[FractalZone]

"It's probably a little bit more dangerous to live in a very free country, than one with a strict totalitarian regime who controls every movement everybody makes... but most people will take that tradeoff."

One can only hope that most people see their freedom/liberty and individual rights being slowly eroded in the name of (bogus) safety.

I don't know about you, but I have never been directly adversely affected by a terrorist or some obvious act of terrorism (not the namby-pamby kind of "terrorism" that involves nothing more than someone feeling uncomfortable or vaguely threatened).

On the other hand, the War on Terrorism, like the War on (Some) Drugs, and every other crisis the U.S. government invents to further its agenda, to the detriment of the best interests of the people and in direct opposition to its ostensible reason for being, namely to uphold the Constitution of the United States, is making my life (and quite probably that of most people reading this) worse on a regular basis.

These days, unlike when I was a teenager, the equivalent of the Gestapo goon's order, "Your papers, please!", is very real in the USA. The jackbooted thugs are not Nazi Germans, but rather TSA, BATF, DEA, EPA, and FBI agents as well as other minions of the federal government and their state and local bully boys.

Why should any average person, engaged in ordinary behavior be expected to carry ID, much less present it like a good little subject/ward of the State?

Of course, I may be out of touch...I remember when the very notion of patenting an idea was considered absurd. Software patents would have been dismissed as ludicrous. So it goes...downhill. I also remember when I could go to the airport, buy a ticket (paying with cash if that was my preference), get on a plane and travel, effectively anonymously as one's stated name was simply accepted, and arrive at my chosen destination (within the U.S., anyway); never feeling the presence of any government agency looming over me (with the remote exception being the FAA :-).

It all boils down to this: Who do you want controlling your life (and the lives of the people you interact with on a daily basis) -- you (and them), or Big Brother armed with the latest high tech surveillance gear, weaponry and a nearly complete disregard for the Constitution?

I'll take my chances when I get on a flight to Las Vegas that some rabid anti-abortion, anti-gambling activist group has not decided to hijack the plane and crash it into Caesar's Palace as some sort of protest against all the imagined evils that it's members think Sin City represents.

I know, based on statistics and documented history, that I am far more likely to be harmed by government than I am by an organization such as Al Quaeda. Taxes taken out of my pocket to fund these government Wars on This, That, and The-Other-Thing which just happen to make me less free are definitely a threat to my well being. Are you any different?

For liberty,
Fractalzone

I wouldn't mess with NWA

[CrazyJim1]

They're straight out of Compton yo.

Real reason he is being arrested:

[hsmith]

The gov't doesn't like to look bad. They don't like flaws being publically seen of their great "system" of boondoggles which they have created.

We all now the TSA is a scam, we all know we are not one bit safer, we all know the airways are no better than they were before 9/11. Just a great hat trick.

For his sake

[Lord_Dweomer]

For his sake I'm glad this is getting so much coverage. Not only will it hopefully make a lot of America realize how dumb our government is, and make them realize that Democrats can be just as authoritarian as Neocons...but most importantly, it makes it near impossible for the Feds to "disappear" him because he has the media spotlight on him and the second he goes missing the entire internet will raise a royal hell storm. And that is a PR shitfest that the GOP definitely does not want to have on their hands, especially around election time.

Of course, at this point...I wonder if they even care that the public would be aware.

Re:For his sake

[Simon Garlick]

the second he goes missing the entire internet will raise a royal hell storm

Oh no, not a hell storm of nerds posting anonymous comments on Internet messageboards! Anything but that!

Re:For his sake

[Tony Hoyle]

Yeah, like dimitri skylarov was all over the front pages of the newspapers, and CNN did a three hour special on software patents, and the Fox picked up on how regressive the DMCA was...

Oh, wait... this is planet earth, I forgot.

Legal Defense Fund

[Anonymous Coward]

Soghoian is setting up a legal defense fund. You can learn more and donate at
http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/10/legal-d efense-fund.html

Re:What did he expect?

[illegalcortex]

Look, if my house has poor security, you're still in trouble if you start a factory to create keys for criminals to break in.

You wanna rethink that analogy there, "Reality Master"? Cause I'm pretty sure they call those places "locksmiths."

Write to your senator now ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Senator,

I would like to bring your attention to the outrageous behaviour our government agencies have displayed regarding the matter of security researcher Christopher Soghoian's comments on the TSA security procedures.

Quite frankly the FBI raid on his premises are beyond comprehension for a country that preaches freedom and respect for human rights.

Not only would I like you to help in resolving Christopher's plight, I would also ask that you investigate and bring to the public's attention the true nature of the effectiveness of the TSA policies as well as to the rather offensive nature of the "secrecy" of the policies upheld by the organization.

Public transparency of the government is very important to me and any help you can give to avoid being virtually disenfranchised due being unable to evaluate the performance of my elected officals is critical.

Sincerely

Exposing the powerful is always a crime

[davecb]

And so a corollary is that any security researcher who exposes a risk or danger is a criminal (;-))

--dave

Re:What exactly were they looking for?

[loraksus]

Harassment, mainly. He is looking at a period of several months and several appearances in court and discussions with his lawyer before he gets his computer and personal property back, assuming they aren't "lost" in the system.

The repairs for any damage that the FBI did, include the maliciously broken window (really, the FBI doesn't know how to pick locks?) will come out of his pocket.

And yes, now they can scan his hard drive for whatever they want, im / chat logs, "kiddie porn" (aka porn involving a girl who faked her ID, even if it is sold through regular channels under the belief that it is legal - it just takes 1 of these to get a mandatory sentence of several to a dozen years in prison, depending on the state).
Anything that can be used for character assassination will be. It doesn't help that that congressman who is trying to look tough on terrorism opened his mouth either.

Re:Read The Declaration of Independence.

[Lumpy]

And that did that AFTER they were of a size of group that was not easily quietened or disappeared. Until then you HAVE to be the silent dissent that they cant put a finger on. Only after your numbers are large enough that you can put up a fight and they have to think twice before arresting you and hanging you for treason.

The founding fathers did not sign that document and then nailed a copy to the kings door when it was only 8 of them. They did that quietly and only AFTER they had sufficient strength to overcome the oppression that would be sent when they made their intentions public.

THAT is the difference. If the article's author got 30-40 researchers and professors to all stand together and say "screw you Homeland security! you give us NO security!" and then published the proof to that effect, the FBI would not have raided their homes in 24 hours, a cowardly senator would not have opened his big trap against them and the government would have had to treat them very VERY differently.

A single person is easily opressed and removed. a larger group, specifically a group that is well known is not.

Who are the terrorists in this case?

[PhunkySchtuff]

My dictionary definition of a terrorist:
terrorist noun A person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims.
terrorism noun The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

I quote from his blog:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM. I'm sincerely glad I wasn't in bed when they raided the house. That would have been even more scary.

This is a case of classic police-state gestapo tactics.
This guy hasn't done anything wrong, he hasn't even hilighted a previously unknown security flaw, and now he's subject to this kind of treatment...

The only way to be certain...

[jd]

...of what the bad guys know is to tell them and mark it off on the list. Anything else is down to chance.

The chance of them knowing is the probability of them finding the information multiplied by the probability of knowing the value multiplied by the probability of producing a workable exploit.

The chance of you knowing if they know is the probability of them knowing multiplied by the probability of you knowing who the bad guys even are, multiplied by the probability of obtaining real information (they can jam anyone monitoring them by flooding the information space with junk information), multiplied by the probability of you knowing you even have real information, multiplied by the probability of being able to determine what the information actually means.

Counterintelligence is an exceptionally difficult field with a painfully poor track record. Most published successes have been by a series of sheer fluke events and staggering luck. Most published failures were unlikely to be anything else. We don't know about the unpublished stuff, but percentagewise, are we more likely to see bragging over achievements or failures, if both can be equally hidden?

I'm not saying that everything should be published, merely that it should not be assumed that not publishing is the same as others not knowing.

Now, can a case ever be made for publishing everything? Yes. Game Theory requires that all "full information scenarios" have a strategy for one side and one side only that will ALWAYS result in the winning conditions being met, no matter what the other side does. It is possible to imagine situations, particularly in computing where there is essentially no randomness and a "full information scenario" is possible, where the outcome can be guaranteed, if you want it to be.

No matter what anybody else might say, it is not the job of an enemy to make your life easy, so we shouldn't expect them to. We should expect them to do the researcxh, the legwork, the analysis to figure everything out. They might indeed just wait until someone tells them, but that should be a bonus. It should not be your modus operandi. In computer security, you must assume that there are opponents out there who could have all of the industry-standard backdoor passwords, a complete printout of every Operating System and network device QA test that failed and got overlooked, and a copy of the highest-end vulnerability scanner the commercial sector has going for it.

Hell, we know that a Russian spammer got a tier-1 backbone provider to turn off Blue Frog's Internet connectivity. Turning off a link like that is very traceable, but appears to have been regarded as mere amusement for the backbone provider. The same provider is hardly likely to show scruples when it comes to handing out internal or commercially-sensitive data, software or anything else. Given the repeatedly low scores on security for many US government departments and the almost routine mishandling of classified data, there are probably those in the information black markets who know more national secrets than the entire White House combined. If one backbone provider is riddled with corruption and pwned by organized crime, then we must assume that such people are unlikely to be avoiding big money out of a sense of decency and moral fortitude.

But if the most dangerous people have the most dangerous information already - and that includes whatever terrorists might actually exist - then most of the obscurity only serves to increase the value of what has already been stolen. This makes the thieves rich, the criminals dangerous, and the politicians popular for appearing to do something, but it doesn't make anyone else - users, vendors, bystanders - any better off at all. Illusions are fun on the stage, but they should be left there.

From Senator Schumer's Feb 13, 2005 Press Release

[Kanaka Kid]

From Senator Schumer's (D-NY) Feb 13, 2005 Press Release:

Schumer today laid out the following scenario in which someone on the terrorist watch list can get through airline security undetected:

1. Joe Terror (whose name is on the terrorist watch list) buys a ticket online in the name of Joe Thompson using a stolen credit card. Joe Thompson is not listed on the terrorist watch list.

2. Joe Terror then prints his "Joe Thompson" boarding pass at home, and then electronically alters it (either by scanning or altering the original image, depending on the airline system and the technology he uses at home) to create a second almost identical boarding pass under the name Joe Terror, his name.

3. Joe Terror then goes to the airport and goes through security with his real ID and the FAKE boarding pass. The name and face match his real drivers license. The airport employee matches the name and face to the real ID.

4. The TSA guard at the magnetometer checks to make sure that the boarding pass looks legitimate as Joe Terror goes through. He/she does not scan it into the system, so there is still no hint that the name on the fake boarding pass is not the same as the name on the reservation.

5. Joe Terror then goes through the gate into his plane using the real Joe Thompson boarding pass for the gate's computer scanner. He is not asked for ID again to match the name on the scanner, so the fact that he does not have an ID with that name does not matter. [Since Joe Thompson doesn't actually exist it does not coincide with a name on the terrorist watch list] Joe Terror boards the plane, no questions asked.

Based on the above press release by a US Senator, shouldn't Schumer be charged with similar crimes?

Security post 9/11

[Cr33pybusguy]

Security is a joke in airports.

I was a airplane re-fueler at Edmonton International Airport post 9/11 (Shell Aerocenter 2002-2003) . I can tell you this. EVERY refueler and most baggage handlers carry knives or a multi-tool (ie. leatherman) of some sort. So do many pilots. Why is this? We use them to lever open hatches, latches, open your bags for the video cameras ect. (I shit you not. I know several guys who carry those little keys that fit the little locks on your bags so they can poke around in your bags) It would be a snap for some one on the inside to plant a knife. Or even a small gun.

But how do you get past security you ask. I'll tell you. We don't. We have our own entrances and exits and these don't use metal detectors or our steel-toed boots would set them off every time. The only thing that is our security check is our id tags. Sure we go through an extensive process before we are issued one but there's lots of criminals working at your airports. That and they aren't that tough to forge. If you have a "friend" at your local DMV you could probably do it.

So security is tight at the terminal? You can charter a small to large plane at your local FBO. We never check you or your bags. Why would we? We think you are some rich guy who jaunts around on his private jet. Perfect for loading with explosives and plowing into buildings on you jihadic quest.

But what about the regular people who go through security? Did you know that you are allowed 10 packs of matches but no lighters? I can do a shit load of damage with ten packs of matches and I'm sure you could too! Oh yeah the metal detectors that you walk through aren't sensitive enough to pick up a bic lighter. If you get caught with one. Just say oops, my bad I forgot about it and make sure they see your pack of smokes. They'll take the lighter away and thats it!

If you are worried when they swab your laptop and you've been chopping some of columbia's finest ontop of it don't worry. They are searching for bomb residue. But here's a secret. They don't swab your MP3 players, video cameras, and cell phones. They just scan them with the machines. I'm not sure how many ounces of high explosive you fit in a video camera but i'm guessing it's a fair amount.

What about sniffing dogs? I fly all over the place to meet up or disembark from ships. I can't remember the last time I saw one. Why? They are a bitch to train. (pun semi-intended) Something like one out of every 20 makes the grade. And THEN they are split up for K-9 tracking, bomb sniffing, narcotics, sniffing, blind leading ect. The odds of running into a dog is pretty slim unless ou are at one of the well funded big airports. (LAX, Heathrow ect.) Most of the guys who I work with on multi-national ships regularily bring some drugs home. Not alot, but a few grams to help make the welcome home party a bit more welcoming.

These flaws are just a few I could think of off the top of my head. So whats the point? If you are creative enough (and hackers prove this regularily) and determined enough you can get past and security thats in place. Especially when it's so shoddy like it is at our airports.

So to be honest some one forging a boarding pass should be the least of their worries. Happy flying!