Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • August 17, 2011 4:18 AM

@ Helland Keller,

“That matters, because this is a different harddrive w/ a fresh load of a different OS”

On the assumption it was realy a clean install that did not bring in past files such as browser history or email addresses or software keys, then there is a couple of hardware options.

The first is inbuilt unique numbers such as your network card Ethernet MAC address, much work on these numbers was done by the likes of MicroSoft to stop pirated installs of their OS and other software. Even CPU chips have serial numbers and the like in them these days hidden away in “semi-mutable” WORM and Flash memory.

The reason for semi-mutable memory in chips is often the same as why the BIOS memory chips on your motherboard are also Flash memory :- UPDATES.

That is the cost of product recall is immense, if you go and look up the cost to Intel of the divide bug it far outweighed the manufacturing cost of new chips. Thus the solution of building in semi-mutable memory allows for the equivalent of “software updates” or patches for the hardware.

A similar idea (FPGA’s) came about because “Mask ROM Programing” and “Custom chip production” was way way to expensive for small hardware runs so in the early 1980’s it was quite common to see “Progamable And array Logic” (PAL) chips on hardware designs replacing traditional TTL/CMOS chips used as “glue logic”. The PAL in turn gave way to “Field Programable” logic, that instead of having an array of fusable links had EPROM or EEPROM that could be changed without the use of a soldering iron or screwdriver. The likes of Cisco use large numbers of FPGA’s in their high end routers and switches partly because it gets the design to market much much faster, but also because any problems found later can be easily configured out.

Whilst having Flash and Programable Logic chips makes life easier for the manufacturer, and thus supposadly cheaper for the customer it is also a significant security risk in two ways.

The first is due to “rapid development” it is now accepted that “field upgrades” are a primary requirment and that it should be possible for customers to “instal patches”. Thus if a user can change the contents of the semi-mutable memory from a file then so can malware. Although some manufactures have used PK to “sign” firmware code updates most have not, and of those that have one or two have had their short PKs reverse engineered or stolen (Texas Instruments calculators and Stuxnet being an example of each)

The second security problem with semi-mutable memory in the hardware is that of “fingerprinting” that is hardware engineers on having to have put semi-mutable memory in their designs tend to be over generous on the alocation “just to be safe” and then to keep managment of their backs fill it up with “audit/test” information thus providing the rich supply of unique or semi-unigue numbers that enable the likes of Microsofts “tied to hardware licencing” to work and the likes of “snoopware” to track the hardware in use.

Clive Robinson • August 17, 2011 7:35 AM

@ Richard Steven Hack,

“This is still a minor concern for most people because it just doesn’t happen that often”

As tommy noted these people collect anything and everything they can which is very creepy in of it’s self. They used to just sell this raw info but that is not nearly profitable enough, they now refine it.

Now there are many and varied ways of refining the raw information and most produce incorect assumptions at best.

One well known and much hated system is peoples “credit rating” used to decide if you are good for “credit”. ranging from a mortgauge to such minor things as a monthly mobile phone package. One way uses known past credit history but is expensive to use for small credit items, so somebody came up with the idea of “credit scoring” where you are asked a bunch of questions and these are compared to “norms” if you match you get the credit if not you get the brush off. The problem is a significant percentage of the population who are carefull with their money and would be a good risk cannot get credit by either method. So they are effectivly punished and excluded from some asspects of society because of this.

Now lets look at shop loyalty schemes and those discount vouchers they print out with your till recipt. In some places they are printed out randomly in others they are based on your previous shopping habits.

Now if you chat to store managers you will quickly find out many of those “special offers” they lose money on (effectivly they are breaking the law by selling below cost but that’s another matter) and the offer is made not to shift old stock but as an enticment.

Now these same managers will tell you about “shopping Barnacls” these are those people who specialise in buying “below price” by actually using these special offers to full extent. Store managers consider them to be lower life forms than dung beetle grubs, and want to not just eliminate them but activly punish them…

And this is a problem because they can blight your life in many ways (including damaging your credit rating)

One such blight is not forfilling orders, that is they take an order and then deliberatly put one or more items on “back order” not because they cannot forfil your order but in order to annoy you so you go and shop somewhere else in future.

Another is with phone lines, your number(s) are stored in their DB and when you are flagged as a barnacle you then get automaticaly directed to staff known to be poor performers (incompetant or rude etc), thus a double win for managers. The unwanted customer gets rubbed up the wrong way, and the staff member fails to meet target yet again so either leaves or their contract does not get renewed etc.

There are a whole load of other discriminatory ploys activly used by companies, but to do this to their benifit they need to know more and more about you.

And the people most discriminated against are the ones who “have not”, and the effect of the discriminatory activity is to widen the gulf between those who are seen as “having” and those seen as “not”.

Have a look at,

http://blog.minethatdata.com/2008/10/forty-three-important-attributes-for.html

And figure how these can be used to discriminate against you.

Now lets look at stupid legislation whereby looking for knowledge is used against you, just like various religions used to burn you as a heritic or excommunicate you to drive you from society.

Like Doug C, I’m also a person who needs to have a very wide knowledge of what is going on in many many fields of endevor some of which are realy quite questionable to people who don’t think “hinky”.

One of the definitions of “renaissance man” is a polymath from the greek “polymathies” meaning “having learned much”. But why “renaissance” well if you look at those first “renaissance men you will find the likes of , Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci. They were widely read men of what we now call science who knowingly went against the doctrins and laws of the time to achive the knowledge from one field of endevor to push forwards the boundaries of other fields of endevor, and in the process broke the strangle hold that religion had on European society and so moved us forward into an age of enlightenment.

Thus aside from the historic period a “Renaissance man” is recognizabley different from other polymaths (such as Roger Bacon) in that the considered “all arts” to be open to investigation not just those “permited by authority”.

How does that translate to today and modern “stupid legislation” well…

What if you want to work out how to stop an IED from exploding in the way a terrorist or other has designed it to do?

It can with the current funding floating around be a very profitable line of endevor. However you need to know a lot about how those deploying IED’s designed it to find the weaknesses and commanalities that allow you an effective negation vector. This requires the research and storing of large amounts of not just IED data but the resources aims and objectives of those building IED’s.

This sort of reasearch and collation of data and knowledge about methods motivation and resources of those breaking the law is likewise required with nearly every other area of security.

However it is now effectivly illegal in the UK and many other places to seak out such knowledge and amass or collate it into a usefull form to carry out research or engineering.

Whilst actually not illegal to be in possession of such information it is one of those “anti-terror” targets whereby guilt by association is alledged and confirmed by the holding of such knowledge unless you can show a “good and proper reason” for holding it.

In this respect it’s a bit like the old law of “proceading in a public place equiped to commit a crime”, which we see a modern version of with “knife law” in the UK.

That is an “officer” of the law and or court decides only “in their unsubstatiated opinion” that your intent, without you actually having done anything others such as a jury of your peers would consider wrong. You are said by a person to be “going equiped to commit a crime” not actually to have committed a crime and be convicted as though you have commited a crime simply because “in their opinion” you were.

Many photographers are only to aware of the “war on photography” practiced in the name of “anti-terror” legislation.

I recently suffered this mindless stupidity recently in that I had a tool kit on me in a public place, part of which was a small bladed knife with a “supposadly” (in the officers opinion) locking blade on it I use as part of my proffessional equipment “to practice a trade” (electrical/electronic equipment installation and repair).

Now it is quite lawfull “to practice a trade” under EU legislation and it is actually a serious offence for people including those in authority to prevent “a person legal or natural of the European Union” carying out such a lawfull trade by confiscating tools or preventing freedom of travel (with the tools) to carry out the trade.

However the Metropolitan Police Service thinks otherwise for “Kiss 4r5e” politicaly motivated reasons that enable them to hide their own serious failings. And as a result I’m currently arguing my way through their bureaucratic nonsense as to “why they are right” even though they have broken the law and I have not. As they view for legally unsupportable political reasons and failings my lawfully purchased, lawfully owned, lawfully used lawfully carried tool “of my trade” as a “weapon” that they are going to unlawfully take from my possession and keep/destroy without going through any lawfull process, just one of threats and intimidation…

And the reason this small bladed knife is such a concern when others with much larger blades are not?

Belive it or not it’s a safety feature…

The UK government wants to ban all knives from being purchased owned or used because somebody might stab somebody with it, it is a position supported by ACPO (the unelected “boys club” of senior police officers) because due to their failings knife crime is rising in the UK.

Well the public out cry about such nonsence caused an initial political compramise in that it’s legal to carry a small bladed knife provided the blade is not fixed or lock in place. But this rules out simple pocket knives such as the “Swiss army Knife” because it has a “mechanical locking mechanisum” so the outcry continued. So they appeared to compramised a bit and came up with the far more dangerous and harmfull “in an officers opinion” reasoning. That is if an officer decides it’s a locking blade then the knife is illegal, unless it is used as part of a trade, which the officer can “in their opinion” decide is not the case if they chose to.

Now anyone who knows anything about knives will know that a locking blade is a requirment for the safe use of a knife. The only apparent exception being the so called “cut throat razor” where the design is such the blade is effectivly fixed to a small handle but the protective cover swings fairly freely so is actually illegal as it’s a fixed blade knife with handle with an attached safety case.

Speaking of razors, under the UK legislation even a plastic “safety shaving razor” would be clasiffied as illegal because even that iny blade is fixed into the frame attached to a handle…

This sort of “stupid legislation” actually does considerably more harm than good. First off it means you have to carry an unsafe knife if you want to carry one, or face the risk of an “officer” deciding it’s “not for trade” and therefor must be for crime with a long prison sentance.

Secondly it stops people learning to use knives safely, thus people stop using them which in the long term causes a very valuable tool to become not used and thus society as a whole suffers immesurably as a result. Put simply tool use defines us as a species it’s what we do better than any other creature and it is what has alowed us to become the societal creatures we have become rather than just “part of the food chain”.

This “in an officers opinion” style legislation is extreamly harmfull to society as it engenders fear and oppression and ceeds the direction of society into harmfull culdesacs for politicaly motivated individuals with self agrandisment as their reason for existance or proffit.

Thus any method of restricting peoples behaviour by collecting data on them that might at some point in an “officers opinion” make them guilty of “thought crime” makes society as a whole weak fearfull and prey to easy coersion.

Clive Robinson • August 17, 2011 2:40 PM

@ Richard Steven Hack,

“The real issue is precisely what you point out: the existence of “thought crime”.”

Yes but what is “thought crime”, put simply it’s somebody looking to convict somebody for reasons of an agenda. It does not matter if a crime has been commited as long as the political impression is given that one has.

For instance today on the UK BBC news and Russian RT news channels they have stories running about two people in the UK jailed for four years for aledgadly insighting a riot via facebook.

The thing is there was not a riot and people interviewed who had knowledge of this tiny (supposadly private) facebook group indicated that what they had posted was clearly sarcasm/humour and no way an attempt to start a riot. If what has been said on these news channels is true then justice has not been served by the action of the court, mearly a kowtow to political preasure which has backfired.

“By complaining about normally irrelevant corporate customer tracking, you’re focusing on just one tool which, repeat, for 99.9999 percent of the population simply isn’t a threat.”

But is it 99.9999 percent? are you talking about the number of randomly selected scapegoat “examples of justice being seen to be done” or the people who are available for random selection as “examples”?

Arguably the US has no home grown muslim terrorists but any muslim or person who looks like a muslim is a target to become an “example” in some way, and US muslims are only to aware of this in the way they are treated by other US citizens and the authorities. Some dare not fly to see relatives abroad for the fear of what might happen to them others nolonger use the Internet or even read forign newspapers from the fear of the impression it might give.

But it is not just religion or foreigners that are being targeted, it is becoming clear that the US Government has for whatever reason decided that “ECO-awarness” is a threat to corperations and the politicos they “pay off” via lobbying. They appear to belive that ECO-awarness is a threat like no other before it and they have thus decided to brand any ECO-actavist a terrorist and some have made it onto the FBI “most wanted” list for crimes that are considerably less than plain old fashioned arsonists of which the US has many.

Already judges have had their “pumps primed” and any civil disobediance or minor criminal activity involving “ECO” activities are receiving unrealisticaly harsh sentancing. And sometimes being imprisoned for lengthy terms without being charged or convicted. Those that have been convicted then find themselved being moved to one of two special federal “Communications Managment Units” that have been described as “baby gitmos in the US heartland”.

In one case of a civil protestor the prosecuter baldly stated to the court that a defendant was a terrorist because ECO and anarchist literature had been found in their possession. Which appeared to be a refrence to accademic information they possessed in books and web downloads…

Now you might count that in as part of,

“It’s a threat only to people like US who burrow into “thought crime” territory.”

But the point is, what many people might do about any number of things today may not be regarded today as illegal, questionable or abnormal. But tomorow for want of a new “enemy within” be treated as terrorist activities by politicos looking to bolster their flaging ratings and federal and other agents willingly hopping onto the bandwagon to improve their position.

The US saw this with the Joe McCarthy “Anti-American” hearings and anti-communist campaign in the decade following the late 1940’s, which ostensably were used to remove any opposition to Republican sponsoring companies and organisations. And many Americans who lived through it’s effects think it is happening all over again…

The problem with “witch hunts” is anybody can be accused of being a witch, and evidence will be found to prove they are a witch, irrespective of if it is even possible to be a witch. You might only burn one person in a million but potentialy anybody in society can be accused.

France saw this with the revolution anybody could be denounced without evidence and be treated to that short climb to Dr Guillotine’s humane execution device, just to ensure the revolution was seen to be being kept pure…