Essays in the Category "Computer and Information Security"
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When It Comes to Security, We're Back to Feudalism
Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone. Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook…
Fear Pays the Bills, but Accounts Must Be Settled
A lot of the debate around President Obama’s cybersecurity initiative center on how much of a burden it would be on industry, and how that should be financed. As important as that debate is, it obscures some of the larger issues surrounding cyberwar, cyberterrorism, and cybersecurity in general.
It’s difficult to have any serious policy discussion amongst the fear mongering. Secretary Panetta’s recent comments are just the latest; search the Internet for “cyber 9/11,” “cyber Peal-Harbor,” “cyber Katrina,” or—my favorite—”cyber Armageddon.”
There’s an enormous amount of money and power that results from pushing cyberwar and cyberterrorism: power within the military, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department; and lucrative government contracts supporting those organizations. As long as cyber remains a prefix that scares, it’ll continue to be used as a bugaboo…
So You Want to Be a Security Expert
This essay orginally appeared as part of a series of advice columns on how to break into the field of security.
I regularly receive e-mail from people who want advice on how to learn more about computer security, either as a course of study in college or as an IT person considering it as a career choice.
First, know that there are many subspecialties in computer security. You can be an expert in keeping systems from being hacked, or in creating unhackable software. You can be an expert in finding security problems in software, or in networks. You can be an expert in viruses, or policies, or cryptography. There are many, many opportunities for many different skill sets. You don’t have to be a coder to be a security expert…
Securing Medical Research: A Cybersecurity Point of View
ABSTRACT: The problem of securing biological research data is a difficult and complicated one. Our ability to secure data on computers is not robust enough to ensure the security of existing data sets. Lessons from cryptography illustrate that neither secrecy measures, such as deleting technical details, nor national solutions, such as export controls, will work.
Science and Nature have each published papers on the H5N1 virus in humans after considerable debate about whether the research results in those papers could help terrorists create a bioweapon (…
Debate Club: An International Cyberwar Treaty Is the Only Way to Stem the Threat
We’re in the early years of a cyberwar arms race. It’s expensive, it’s destabilizing, and it threatens the very fabric of the Internet we use every day. Cyberwar treaties, as imperfect as they might be, are the only way to contain the threat.
If you read the press and listen to government leaders, we’re already in the middle of a cyberwar. By any normal definition of the word “war,” this is ridiculous. But the definition of cyberwar has been expanded to include government-sponsored espionage, potential terrorist attacks in cyberspace, large-scale criminal fraud, and even hacker kids attacking government networks and critical infrastructure. This definition is being pushed both by the military and by government contractors, who are gaining power and making money on cyberwar fear…
The Vulnerabilities Market and the Future of Security
Brazilian Portuguese translation
Recently, there have been several articles about the new market in zero-day exploits: new and unpatched computer vulnerabilities. It’s not just software companies, who sometimes pay bounties to researchers who alert them of security vulnerabilities so they can fix them. And it’s not only criminal organizations, who pay for vulnerabilities they can exploit. Now there are governments, and companies who sell to governments, who buy vulnerabilities with the intent of keeping them secret so they can exploit them.
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Schneier-Ranum Face-Off on Whitelisting and Blacklisting
This essay appeared as the second half of a point/counterpoint with Marcus Ranum.
The whitelist/blacklist debate is far older than computers, and it’s instructive to recall what works where. Physical security works generally on a whitelist model: if you have a key, you can open the door; if you know the combination, you can open the lock. We do it this way not because it’s easier—although it is generally much easier to make a list of people who should be allowed through your office door than a list of people who shouldn’t—but because it’s a security system that can be implemented automatically, without people…
The Plan to Quarantine Infected Computers
Keeping infected computers at bay is great in theory, but there are all sorts of complicating factors to consider.
Last month Scott Charney of Microsoft proposed that infected computers be quarantined from the Internet. Using a public health model for Internet security, the idea is that infected computers spreading worms and viruses are a risk to the greater community and thus need to be isolated. Internet service providers would administer the quarantine, and would also clean up and update users’ computers so they could rejoin the greater Internet.
This isn’t a new idea. Already there are products that test computers trying to join private networks, and only allow them access if their security patches are up-to-date and their antivirus software certifies them as clean. Computers denied access are sometimes shunned to a limited-capability sub-network where all they can do is download and install the updates they need to regain access. This sort of system has been used with great success at universities and end-user-device-friendly corporate networks. They’re happy to let you log in with any device you want—this is the consumerization trend in action—as long as your security is up to snuff…
When to Change Passwords
How often should you change your password? I get asked that question a lot, usually by people annoyed at their employer’s or bank’s password expiration policy—people who finally memorized their current password and are realizing they’ll have to write down their new one. How could that possibly be more secure, they want to know.
The answer depends on what the password is used for.
The downside of changing passwords is that it makes them harder to remember. And if you force people to change their passwords regularly, they’re more likely to choose easy-to-remember—and easy-to-guess—passwords than they are if they can use the same passwords for many years. So any password-changing policy needs to be chosen with that consideration in mind…
The Dangers of a Software Monoculture
This essay appeared as the first half of a point-counterpoint with Marcus Ranum. Marcus’s half is here.
In 2003, a group of security experts—myself included—published a paper saying that 1) software monocultures are dangerous and 2) Microsoft, being the largest creator of monocultures out there, is the most dangerous. Marcus Ranum responded with an essay that basically said we were full of it. Now, eight years later, Marcus and I thought it would be interesting to revisit the debate.
The basic problem with a monoculture is that it’s all vulnerable to the same attack. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845—9 is perhaps the most famous monoculture-related disaster. The Irish planted only one variety of potato, and the genetically identical potatoes succumbed to a rot caused by Phytophthora infestans. Compare that with the diversity of potatoes traditionally grown in South America, each one adapted to the particular soil and climate of its home, and you can see the security value in heterogeneity…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.