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Gag Order Fuels Responsible Disclosure Debate
jvatcw writes "The Boston subway hack case has exposed a familiar rift in the security industry over responsible disclosure standards. Many see the temporary restraining order preventing three MIT undergrads from publicly discussing vulnerabilities they discovered in Boston's mass transit system as a violation of their First Amendment rights. Others, though, see the entire episode as yet another example of irresponsible, publicity-hungry security researchers trying to grab a few headlines."
We discussed the temporary restraining order last weekend, and later the EFF's plans to fight it. CNet reports that another judge has reviewed the order and left it intact. Reader canuck57 contributes a related story about recent comments by Linus Torvalds concerning his frustration over the issue of security disclosure.
Linus is dead on right. If you find it, tell the author(s). If they don't respond? Tell the world. Software makers should credit those that find the bugs as well. This will eventually lead to credit where credit is due, and subsequent reputation building in a reasonable manner.
Gag orders just make things worse. This is where I believe the law should take a stand. If someone makes reasonable due diligence to report the vulnerability to the author(s) and nothing happens in response to the report, then the authors have no recourse on what happens when it is made public. This is in line with the intent of our legal framework now, and would not IMO violate legal values.
"Unsafe at any speed" was not exactly something the auto industry wanted to deal with, but they had to. Those lessons are very applicable here. Those who don't play nice and disclose to the public too soon should be penalized if actual damages can be shown. Restraint and respect. These two things have no dependency on reciprocal action.
I read Linus' rant and he's absolutely correct. The bigger the flame war over vulnerabilities, the more security companies make off of unwarranted fears etc. It's just a game, and where the law is concerned, we have prior examples to look at... and goddamnit, they are about cars! No analogy needed here
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However...
"...yet another example of irresponsible, publicity-hungry security researchers trying to grab a few headlines" <-- this does not invalidate this --> "First Amendment rights" ...no matter what the neo-cons or lobbyists might say.
...How? You may ask.
By letting Russian hackers release the info. The problem for the authorities is to prove that those under the gag order had a hand in this.The Russians get the information using no traceable medium. That includes the internet, post, fax etc.
Proving that the students had a hand in this, would be hard if not impossible. After all, the system was open to usage to everyone as long as they paid up -- including the Russians we are talking about.
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The MTA is trying to cover up the fact that their system design is very weak. The value of the card is actually stored on the card, and there's no central validation. That's embarrassing, considering that the MTA implemented fare cards quite late, long after other cities.
The NYC MetroCard system, in comparison, is totally paranoid. Cards have unique serial numbers and are validated by the entry gate, the station computer, and central servers at MetroCard HQ. Creating new cards with new IDs won't work. Duplicating cards is possible, but is detected the second time the card is used. NYC is so paranoid that equipment maintenance is performed by an outside company, but NYC employees handle the money and blank cards, so that no single party has full access. The New York City subway system was losing about $20 million a year to token fraud, and when the new system went in, they were determined that would stop. They had some fraud back in 1995, when someone stole a supply of blank cards and was able to encode them, but it turned out to be a rip-off for buyers - the cards only worked once, then were invalidated.
The first fare card system, San Francisco's BART, isn't that secure, but has an big advantage - BART has exit gates. So, while it doesn't have real-time validation against a central database, gate info is being transmitted in background to a central system, and if centralized analysis indicates something funny going on, central control can flag the card, trap the user at the exit gate, and alert station security to check the card.
I am glad this judge has put a gag order on the MIT students, because now there is no exploit, and we are all safe from the terrorists/etc.
As we all know, if we all don't talk about it, it doesn't exist... right?
Okay, so sarcasm aside, this is the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard. Attempting to fix a problem by stopping people from hearing about the problem?
I know I am over simplifying the matter to get my point across, but I'm doing this to point how ridiculous it is.
Additionally by saying "He added that in such cases, the goal of security researchers often seems to be to further their own agendas instead of helping others fix problems." shows a complete lack of understanding of market forces. Yes he is furthering his own agenda, and in the process, he benefits us. It's the market you commie bastard, it isn't evil, we all win, get over it.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"If anyone else knows, you must disclose."
Cool! Amazing Toys.
"Many see the temporary restraining order preventing three MIT undergrads from publicly discussing vulnerabilities they discovered in Boston's mass transit system as a violation of their First Amendment rights. Others, though, see the entire episode as yet another example of irresponsible, publicity-hungry security researchers trying to grab a few headlines."
Well, how about both? It can be a restriction of their first amendment rights *and* a publicity hungry "researcher" trying to grab headlines. They two things are not mutually exclusive.
Doing the Right Thing has not been in vogue for many years now, it is all about making some form of a statement.
It would be interesting to see the fingers being pointed if said system was attacked by terrorist and the only people killed were the family of the two sides. My guess is that the other sides point of view would become immediately obvious and they would both then point fingers at each other in an attempt to make themselves feel better.
However in this particular case I can see why the courts would give a gag order until the case is heard - that is not a violation of your first amendment rights. It has generally been established that whilst things are being litigated that the more restrictive side is somewhat enforced until the case is decided. That really only makes sense - otherwise why even have the courts have some type of decision in this case as one side is the de facto winner?
Ah well, what do I know? It's worth our deaths to tell everything yet of we kept all flaws secret then all would be well. We can't do something reasonable like, say, not tell people bent on killing us how to do it and when we are informed of a problem fix said thing. Nope, too hard to do and it may show that we aren't the Saviors of the World we think we are. Heck we may even have to look at the other side as Not Crazy and wanting to live free and with little threat of death - how bad would that be?
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Yes he is furthering his own agenda, and in the process, he benefits us. It's the market you commie bastard, it isn't evil, we all win, get over it.
The market is neither evil, nor good, it merely is.
But, as we've seen time and time again, without regulation, markets tend towards imperfect competition.
That said, what you and many other people generally fail to point out is exactly how security researchers contribute towards the free market. Their contribution is information. Complete information (in this case) is when everyone has knowledge that an exploit exists. Perfect information is when everyone has knowledge of how the exploit works.
But economics and markets are never that simple and it isn't very hard to argue that the net harm from releasing the information is greater than the net good.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Post it to wiki:
http://wikileaks.org/
Then, if some moron complains, point him/her to this article. No good deed goes unpunished, so to hell with them.
The Tech leaked these slides days ago.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
It really covers absolutely everything you care about. If you're willing to, you can do all of this from the comfort of your bedroom.
Now, I'm not in Boston, but next time I am...
My thoughts:
First amendmend rights are a red herring. The fact that you have a right to say something doesn't make it a good idea to say it.
Publicity-hungry researchers trying to grab a few headlines also aren't the issue here.
The issue here is security. And that raises the question of who we are trying to protect. As far as I am concerned, we _should_ be trying to maximize overall security. I think the best way to do that is to protect the users of products. So, the question then becomes: What kind of disclosure yields the best security for users?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question depends on a variety of factors. I think the three most important ones are:
1. How will the vendor react to being informed of the vulnerability?
2. How will the users react to being informed of the vulnerability?
3. How will the black hats (bad guys) react to being informed of the vulnerability?
None of these questions can be answered generally. In particular, in general, you cannot know how the black hats will react, because you cannot know if the black hats were already aware of the vulnerability. If they weren't, you have just given them a new attack vector. This is a Bad Thing, and one of the most common arguments against full disclosure. On the other hand, if they were already aware of the vulnerability, you have just told them nothing they didn't already know. Since you can't know, in general, if the black hats already know of a vulnerability, it seems that full disclosure is a bad idea, overally. But that's if you only consider point 3.
Once you factor in points 1 and 2, the picture changes. The fact that you found a vulnerability is always interesting news to the vendor and the users. If they didn't know about it already, the vendor now knows that they have a problem that affects their users and that they need to fix, and the users know they have a problem that the vendor hasn't fixed yet, and that they should protect themselves against. If the vendor or the users did know about the vulnerability, they now know that _another_ person has found it, and that, perhaps, more priority should be given to fixing it and protecting against it. In case of full disclosure, everybody now knows for sure that the black hats know about the vulnerability, that they _will_ use it to attack systems, and that it _must_ be protected against and fixed as soon as possible.
Now, I am going to say a couple of things that aren't really factual, but that seem reasonable to me.
First of all, protecting yourself from vulnerabilities and getting them fixed is _always_ the right way to deal with vulnerabilities. Doing so as soon as possible minimizes the time you are vulnerable, and thus is a Good Thing. Not everyone realizes the importance of this. But, once a vulnerability has been announced publicly, you _know_ that the black hats know about it, so it is clearly risky to not protect yourself against it.
Secondly, in general, you will never make all users aware of a vulnerability. It may seem that a vendor could inform the users of their product of a vulnerability. However, vendors are notoriously reluctant to provide their users with information about vulnerabilities. If they provide information at all, it is usually not detailed enough to allow users to take protective measures, or comes long after the black hats have already started exploiting the vulnerability. Moreover, even the vendor will not know everyone who uses a product. And nobody can exclude the possibility that some of these users may be black hats, or that the information may leak to the black hats. Public disclosure at least gives every user of the product the possibility to inform themselves of a vulnerability.
Thirdly, historically, vendors have been reluctant to fix vulnerabilities unless they were publicly known. This is a Bad Thing, because the fact that a vulnerability is not publicly known does not mean it is not being exploited. Now, of course, vendors could change. And some of them have changed. But, hi
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Temporary restraining orders of all different kinds are often issued at the beginning of a legal case. The idea is that a party might be doing another party harm, and you shouldn't have to wait for the conclusion of a court case (which can take years in some cases) to get the harm to stop. The other party can, of course, argue that the restraining order would cause them harm and thus shouldn't be granted.
Take, for example, a case of someone slandering you. The make knowingly false statements about you with the intent to harm you. This is a matter in which you can take legal action against them, so you do. However, they are a rich prick, so they lawyer up and basically work to drag the lawsuit out as long as possible. They know they'll lose, they just want it to take forever. So should they be allowed to continue while the case is going on? Should you continue to have to endure this for months, maybe years? No, so you'd try to get the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to make them shut up until the case was settled.
Now I'm not saying that it was a good idea for the city to bring a case against these students, however that isn't really for the judge to decide at this point. The question basically comes down to: Could the respondents (the students) cause the plaintiff (the city) harm through their actions? Would it cause the respondents hard to have to cease their action? Well yes, it would cause the city harm if the students revealed their information. You can argue the city deserves it, but all the same. However it won't really cause the students any harm to have to keep quiet about it until the case is settled.
Hence you can see why the judge would grant the order. It isn't a permanent order or anything, it is basically just saying "You have to keep your mouths shut until we've had a chance to examine the case in court." If the EFF lawyers make a good argument (I wouldn't count on it, the EFF has a poor courtroom record) as to why the gag order should be lifted, the judge will do that.
You see this kind of thing in patent cases all the time. A party will sue over a patent and request an injunction to prevent the other party from selling the allegedly infringing product. These often get granted, then removed shortly after when counter arguments are made.
It even applies to personal restraining orders. If you want a restraining order against someone, you go to a judge and present your case. If they find it compelling, one is granted. The person it was against can then challenge it, but it is granted before they can challenge it. Happened to a friend of mine. A girl he knew liked to use them as weapons against people and he pissed her off, so she got one on him. He then went to court and argued why it was bullshit. The judge agreed, dismissed the order and barred her from getting another one against him for a couple years.
So while you can get mad at the city, the legal system appears to be working as it should.
And for good reason!!!
They have a RIGHT to speak. They can exercise discretion and do people a favor, or they can exercise a different kind of discretion and do a different group of people a favor, or they can lack discretion and get themselves arrested for illegal speech, which does happen sometimes... but only AFTER they say it! There is no such law as "conspiracy to say something harmful or offensive"!
Regardless of whether it is right or responsible or moral for them to do what they want to do, they have a RIGHT to speak. And you can't mess with that right without messing up a hell of a lot more than just the "security" of one sorry municipality or corporation.
Prior restraint amounts to a legal attempt to read someone's mind. Sorry, but "thought crimes" STILL do not exist in this country. Because prior restraint would open up a whole nightmarish can of worms and, effectively legitimize the concept of "thought crime", it should never be tolerated even a little bit, EVER.
The situations of the Linux kernel and the Boston subway are completely different. In the case of the Linux kernel, people need to know because it's their security that's at stake. In the case of the Boston subway, it all comes down to the economics of fare evasion and doesn't affect anybody's security (and you can be certain that the Boston subway knew about this and accepted it when they bought the system).
Now, I think the MIT students have a first amendment right to disclose this. However, I also think that these kinds of antics deserve reproach: people should point out that this was a stupid thing to do.
This is really CYA on behalf of the incompetent people running the Boston system.
They made the cheap choice ( unvalidated stored value cards w/ crappy encryption of the data ) and it bit them on the ass.
So now, someone else discovers the OBVIOUS FLAWS, and publicises the incompetence of the administration responsible.
Here's a little secret: The researchers are surely not the FIRST people to discover this. They're just pointing it out. I'm sure others are already exploiting the flaws even before the announcement.
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In a related story it appears the Judge's home was broken into and ransacked and several irreplaceable articles were stolen and destroyed without anyone knowing even though it has an activated alarm and security locking system. It appears that there was a flaw in the system that enabled the perpetrators bypass it. This flaw was know to security researchers however they were under a gag order and were not permitted to release this information to the general public. The gag order was applied for by the company because âoeif the general public knew about the flaw it would impact our revenue streamâ.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
You appear to be overlooking the critical point that the students' planned presentation did not Reveal All -- critical information needed to actually exploit the flaw was left out. MBTA was told this and sued anyway. The only "harm" the city would have suffered is well-deserved acute embarrassment.