Entries Tagged "cell phones"

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AT&T's iPad Security Breach

I didn’t write about the recent security breach that disclosed tens of thousands of e-mail addresses and ICC-IDs of iPad users because, well, there was nothing terribly interesting about it. It was yet another web security breach.

Right after the incident, though, I was being interviewed by a reporter that wanted to know what the ramifications of the breach were. He specifically wanted to know if anything could be done with those ICC-IDs, and if the disclosure of that information was worse than people thought. He didn’t like the answer I gave him, which is that no one knows yet: that it’s too early to know the full effects of that information disclosure, and that both the good guys and the bad guys would be figuring it out in the coming weeks. And, that it’s likely that there were further security implications of the breach.

Seems like there were:

The problem is that ICC-IDs—unique serial numbers that identify each SIM card—can often be converted into IMSIs. While the ICC-ID is nonsecret—it’s often found printed on the boxes of cellphone/SIM bundles—the IMSI is somewhat secret. In theory, knowing an ICC-ID shouldn’t be enough to determine an IMSI. The phone companies do need to know which IMSI corresponds to which ICC-ID, but this should be done by looking up the values in a big database.

In practice, however, many phone companies simply calculate the IMSI from the ICC-ID. This calculation is often very simple indeed, being little more complex than “combine this hard-coded value with the last nine digits of the ICC-ID.” So while the leakage of AT&T’s customers’ ICC-IDs should be harmless, in practice, it could reveal a secret ID.

What can be done with that secret ID? Quite a lot, it turns out. The IMSI is sent by the phone to the network when first signing on to the network; it’s used by the network to figure out which call should be routed where. With someone else’s IMSI, an attacker can determine the person’s name and phone number, and even track his or her position. It also opens the door to active attacks—creating fake cell towers that a victim’s phone will connect to, enabling every call and text message to be eavesdropped.

More to come, I’m sure.

And that’s really the point: we all want to know—right away—the effects of a security vulnerability, but often we don’t and can’t. It takes time before the full effects are known, sometimes a lot of time.

And in related news, the image redaction that went along with some of the breach reporting wasn’t very good.

Posted on June 21, 2010 at 5:27 AM • View Comments

The Continuing Incompetence of Terrorists

The Atlantic on stupid terrorists:

Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.

Many Taliban operatives are just as clumsy when suicide is not part of the plan. In November 2009, several Talibs transporting an improvised explosive device were killed when it went off unexpectedly. The blast also took out the insurgents’ shadow governor in the province of Balkh.

When terrorists do execute an attack, or come close, they often have security failures to thank, rather than their own expertise. Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the Nigerian “Jockstrap Jihadist” who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list.

Fortunately, Abdulmutallab, a college-educated engineer, failed to detonate his underpants. A few months later another college grad, Faisal Shahzad, is alleged to have crudely rigged an SUV to blow up in Times Square. That plan fizzled and he was quickly captured, despite the fact that he was reportedly trained in a terrorist boot camp in Pakistan. Indeed, though many of the terrorists who strike in the West are well educated, their plots fail because they lack operational know-how. On June 30, 2007, two men—one a medical doctor, the other studying for his Ph.D.—attempted a brazen attack on Glasgow Airport. Their education did them little good. Planning to crash their propane-and-petrol-laden Jeep Cherokee into an airport terminal, the men instead steered the SUV, with flames spurting out its windows, into a security barrier. The fiery crash destroyed only the Jeep, and both men were easily apprehended; the driver later died from his injuries. (The day before, the same men had rigged two cars to blow up near a London nightclub. That plan was thwarted when one car was spotted by paramedics and the other, parked illegally, was removed by a tow truck. As a bonus for investigators, the would-be bombers’ cell phones, loaded with the phone numbers of possible accomplices, were salvaged from the cars.)

Reminds me of my own “Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot.”

Posted on June 18, 2010 at 5:49 AM • View Comments

SnapScouts

I sure hope this is a parody:

SnapScouts Keep America Safe!

Want to earn tons of cool badges and prizes while competing with you friends to see who can be the best American? Download the SnapScouts app for your Android phone (iPhone app coming soon) and get started patrolling your neighborhood.

It’s up to you to keep America safe! If you see something suspicious, Snap it! If you see someone who doesn’t belong, Snap it! Not sure if someone or something is suspicious? Snap it anyway!

Play with your friends and family to see who can get the best prizes. Join the SnapScouts today!

Posted on May 10, 2010 at 2:11 PM • View Comments

Cory Doctorow Gets Phished

It can happen to anyone:

Here’s how I got fooled. On Monday, I unlocked my Nexus One phone, installing a new and more powerful version of the Android operating system that allowed me to do some neat tricks, like using the phone as a wireless modem on my laptop. In the process of reinstallation, I deleted all my stored passwords from the phone. I also had a couple of editorials come out that day, and did a couple of interviews, and generally emitted a pretty fair whack of information.

The next day, Tuesday, we were ten minutes late getting out of the house. My wife and I dropped my daughter off at the daycare, then hurried to our regular coffee shop to get take-outs before parting ways to go to our respective offices. Because we were a little late arriving, the line was longer than usual. My wife went off to read the free newspapers, I stood in the line. Bored, I opened up my phone fired up my freshly reinstalled Twitter client and saw that I had a direct message from an old friend in Seattle, someone I know through fandom. The message read “Is this you????”? and was followed by one of those ubiquitous shortened URLs that consist of a domain and a short code, like this: http://owl.ly/iuefuew.

The whole story is worth reading.

Posted on May 7, 2010 at 6:56 AM • View Comments

Cyber Shockwave Test

There was a big U.S. cyberattack exercise this week. We didn’t do so well:

In a press release issued today, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC)—which organized “Cyber Shockwave” using a group of former government officials and computer simulations—concluded the U.S is “unprepared for cyber threats.”

[…]

…the U.S. defenders had difficulty identifying the source of the simulated attack, which in turn made it difficult to take action.

“During the exercise, a server hosting the attack appeared to be based in Russia,” said one report. “However, the developer of the malware program was actually in the Sudan. Ultimately, the source of the attack remained unclear during the event.”

The simulation envisioned an attack that unfolds during a single day in July 2011. When the council convenes to face this crisis, 20 million of the nation’s smartphones have already stopped working. The attack—the result of a malware program that had been planted in phones months earlier through a popular “March Madness” basketball bracket application—disrupts mobile service for millions. The attack escalates, shutting down an electronic energy trading platform and crippling the power grid on the Eastern seaboard.

This is, I think, an eyewitness report.

Posted on February 19, 2010 at 1:33 PM • View Comments

Sprint Provides U.S. Law Enforcement with Cell Phone Customer Location Data

Wired summarizes research by Christopher Soghoian:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.

The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated “pings” to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.

From Soghoian’s blog:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint’s Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies’ extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 law that requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics—since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004.

Sprint denies this; details in the Wired article. The odds of us ever learning the truth are probably very low.

Posted on December 3, 2009 at 7:18 AM • View Comments

Best Buy Sells Surveillance Tracker

Only $99.99:

Keep tabs on your child at all times with this small but sophisticated device that combines GPS and cellular technology to provide you with real-time location updates. The small and lightweight Little Buddy transmitter fits easily into a backpack, lunchbox or other receptacle, making it easy for your child to carry so you can check his or her location at any time using a smartphone or computer. Customizable safety checks allow you to establish specific times and locations where your child is supposed to be—for example, in school—causing the device to alert you with a text message if your child leaves the designated area during that time. Additional real-time alerts let you know when the device’s battery is running low so you can take steps to ensure your monitoring isn’t interrupted.

Presumably it can also be used to track people who aren’t your kids.

EDITED TO ADD (11/12): You can also use an iPhone as a tracking device.

Posted on October 28, 2009 at 1:28 PM • View Comments

Inferring Friendship from Location Data

Interesting:

For nine months, Eagle’s team recorded data from the phones of 94 students and staff at MIT. By using blue-tooth technology and phone masts, they could monitor the movements of the participants, as well as their phone calls. Their main goal with this preliminary study was to compare data collected from the phones with subjective self-report data collected through traditional survey methodology.

The participants were asked to estimate their average spatial proximity to the other participants, whether they were close friends, and to indicate how satisfied they were at work.

Some intriguing findings emerged. For example, the researchers could predict with around 95 per cent accuracy who was friends with whom by looking at how much time participants spent with each other during key periods, such as Saturday nights.

According to the abstract:

Data collected from mobile phones have the potential to provide insight into the relational dynamics of individuals. This paper compares observational data from mobile phones with standard self-report survey data. We find that the information from these two data sources is overlapping but distinct. For example, self-reports of physical proximity deviate from mobile phone records depending on the recency and salience of the interactions. We also demonstrate that it is possible to accurately infer 95% of friendships based on the observational data alone, where friend dyads demonstrate distinctive temporal and spatial patterns in their physical proximity and calling patterns. These behavioral patterns, in turn, allow the prediction of individual-level outcomes such as job satisfaction.

We all leave data shadows everywhere we go, and maintaining privacy is very hard. Here’s the EFF writing about locational privacy.

EDITED TO ADD (10/12): More information.

Posted on September 21, 2009 at 1:41 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.