Entries Tagged "cybersecurity"

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On Secure Voting Systems

Andrew Appel shepherded a public comment—signed by twenty election cybersecurity experts, including myself—on best practices for ballot marking devices and vote tabulation. It was written for the Pennsylvania legislature, but it’s general in nature.

From the executive summary:

We believe that no system is perfect, with each having trade-offs. Hand-marked and hand-counted ballots remove the uncertainty introduced by use of electronic machinery and the ability of bad actors to exploit electronic vulnerabilities to remotely alter the results. However, some portion of voters mistakenly mark paper ballots in a manner that will not be counted in the way the voter intended, or which even voids the ballot. Hand-counts delay timely reporting of results, and introduce the possibility for human error, bias, or misinterpretation.

Technology introduces the means of efficient tabulation, but also introduces a manifold increase in complexity and sophistication of the process. This places the understanding of the process beyond the average person’s understanding, which can foster distrust. It also opens the door to human or machine error, as well as exploitation by sophisticated and malicious actors.

Rather than assert that each component of the process can be made perfectly secure on its own, we believe the goal of each component of the elections process is to validate every other component.

Consequently, we believe that the hallmarks of a reliable and optimal election process are hand-marked paper ballots, which are optically scanned, separately and securely stored, and rigorously audited after the election but before certification. We recommend state legislators adopt policies consistent with these guiding principles, which are further developed below.

Posted on March 26, 2024 at 7:08 AM • View Comments

Improving C++

C++ guru Herb Sutter writes about how we can improve the programming language for better security.

The immediate problem “is” that it’s Too Easy By Default™ to write security and safety vulnerabilities in C++ that would have been caught by stricter enforcement of known rules for type, bounds, initialization, and lifetime language safety.

His conclusion:

We need to improve software security and software safety across the industry, especially by improving programming language safety in C and C++, and in C++ a 98% improvement in the four most common problem areas is achievable in the medium term. But if we focus on programming language safety alone, we may find ourselves fighting yesterday’s war and missing larger past and future security dangers that affect software written in any language.

Posted on March 15, 2024 at 7:05 AM • View Comments

NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0

NIST has released version 2.0 of the Cybersecurity Framework:

The CSF 2.0, which supports implementation of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, has an expanded scope that goes beyond protecting critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and power plants, to all organizations in any sector. It also has a new focus on governance, which encompasses how organizations make and carry out informed decisions on cybersecurity strategy. The CSF’s governance component emphasizes that cybersecurity is a major source of enterprise risk that senior leaders should consider alongside others such as finance and reputation.

[…]

The framework’s core is now organized around six key functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover, along with CSF 2.0’s newly added Govern function. When considered together, these functions provide a comprehensive view of the life cycle for managing cybersecurity risk.

The updated framework anticipates that organizations will come to the CSF with varying needs and degrees of experience implementing cybersecurity tools. New adopters can learn from other users’ successes and select their topic of interest from a new set of implementation examples and quick-start guides designed for specific types of users, such as small businesses, enterprise risk managers, and organizations seeking to secure their supply chains.

This is a big deal. The CSF is widely used, and has been in need of an update. And NIST is exactly the sort of respected organization to do this correctly.

Some news articles.

Posted on March 1, 2024 at 7:08 AM • View Comments

On the Insecurity of Software Bloat

Good essay on software bloat and the insecurities it causes.

The world ships too much code, most of it by third parties, sometimes unintended, most of it uninspected. Because of this, there is a huge attack surface full of mediocre code. Efforts are ongoing to improve the quality of code itself, but many exploits are due to logic fails, and less progress has been made scanning for those. Meanwhile, great strides could be made by paring down just how much code we expose to the world. This will increase time to market for products, but legislation is around the corner that should force vendors to take security more seriously.

Posted on February 15, 2024 at 7:04 AM • View Comments

On Software Liabilities

Over on Lawfare, Jim Dempsey published a really interesting proposal for software liability: “Standard for Software Liability: Focus on the Product for Liability, Focus on the Process for Safe Harbor.”

Section 1 of this paper sets the stage by briefly describing the problem to be solved. Section 2 canvasses the different fields of law (warranty, negligence, products liability, and certification) that could provide a starting point for what would have to be legislative action establishing a system of software liability. The conclusion is that all of these fields would face the same question: How buggy is too buggy? Section 3 explains why existing software development frameworks do not provide a sufficiently definitive basis for legal liability. They focus on process, while a liability regime should begin with a focus on the product—­that is, on outcomes. Expanding on the idea of building codes for building code, Section 4 shows some examples of product-focused standards from other fields. Section 5 notes that already there have been definitive expressions of software defects that can be drawn together to form the minimum legal standard of security. It specifically calls out the list of common software weaknesses tracked by the MITRE Corporation under a government contract. Section 6 considers how to define flaws above the minimum floor and how to limit that liability with a safe harbor.

Full paper here.

Dempsey basically creates three buckets of software vulnerabilities: easy stuff that the vendor should have found and fixed, hard-to-find stuff that the vendor couldn’t be reasonably expected to find, and the stuff in the middle. He draws from other fields—consumer products, building codes, automobile design—to show that courts can deal with the stuff in the middle.

I have long been a fan of software liability as a policy mechanism for improving cybersecurity. And, yes, software is complicated, but we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In 2003, I wrote:

Clearly this isn’t all or nothing. There are many parties involved in a typical software attack. There’s the company who sold the software with the vulnerability in the first place. There’s the person who wrote the attack tool. There’s the attacker himself, who used the tool to break into a network. There’s the owner of the network, who was entrusted with defending that network. One hundred percent of the liability shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of the software vendor, just as one hundred percent shouldn’t fall on the attacker or the network owner. But today one hundred percent of the cost falls on the network owner, and that just has to stop.

Courts can adjudicate these complex liability issues, and have figured this thing out in other areas. Automobile accidents involve multiple drivers, multiple cars, road design, weather conditions, and so on. Accidental restaurant poisonings involve suppliers, cooks, refrigeration, sanitary conditions, and so on. We don’t let the fact that no restaurant can possibly fix all of the food-safety vulnerabilities lead us to the conclusion that restaurants shouldn’t be responsible for any food-safety vulnerabilities, yet I hear that line of reasoning regarding software vulnerabilities all of the time.

Posted on February 8, 2024 at 7:00 AM • View Comments

Security Analysis of a Thirteenth-Century Venetian Election Protocol

Interesting analysis:

This paper discusses the protocol used for electing the Doge of Venice between 1268 and the end of the Republic in 1797. We will show that it has some useful properties that in addition to being interesting in themselves, also suggest that its fundamental design principle is worth investigating for application to leader election protocols in computer science. For example, it gives some opportunities to minorities while ensuring that more popular candidates are more likely to win, and offers some resistance to corruption of voters.

The most obvious feature of this protocol is that it is complicated and would have taken a long time to carry out. We will also advance a hypothesis as to why it is so complicated, and describe a simplified protocol with very similar properties.

And the conclusion:

Schneier has used the phrase “security theatre” to describe public actions which do not increase security, but which are designed to make the public think that the organization carrying out the actions is taking security seriously. (He describes some examples of this in response to the 9/11 suicide attacks.) This phrase is usually used pejoratively. However, security theatre has positive aspects too, provided that it is not used as a substitute for actions that would actually improve security. In the context of the election of the Doge, the complexity of the protocol had the effect that all the oligarchs took part in a long, involved ritual in which they demonstrated individually and collectively to each other that they took seriously their responsibility to try to elect a Doge who would act for the good of Venice, and also that they would submit to the rule of the Doge after he was elected. This demonstration was particularly important given the disastrous consequences in other Mediaeval Italian city states of unsuitable rulers or civil strife between different aristocratic factions.

It would have served, too, as commercial brand-building for Venice, reassuring the oligarchs’ customers and trading partners that the city was likely to remain stable and business-friendly. After the election, the security theatre continued for several days of elaborate processions and parties. There is also some evidence of security theatre outside the election period. A 16th century engraving by Mateo Pagan depicting the lavish parade which took place in Venice each year on Palm Sunday shows the balotino in the parade, in a prominent position—next to the Grand Chancellor—and dressed in what appears to be a special costume.

I like that this paper has been accepted at a cybersecurity conference.

And, for the record, I have written about the positive aspects of security theater.

Posted on December 6, 2023 at 1:18 PM • View Comments

Ransomware Gang Files SEC Complaint

A ransomware gang, annoyed at not being paid, filed an SEC complaint against its victim for not disclosing its security breach within the required four days.

This is over the top, but is just another example of the extreme pressure ransomware gangs put on companies after seizing their data. Gangs are now going through the data, looking for particularly important or embarrassing pieces of data to threaten executives with exposing. I have heard stories of executives’ families being threatened, of consensual porn being identified (people regularly mix work and personal email) and exposed, and of victims’ customers and partners being directly contacted. Ransoms are in the millions, and gangs do their best to ensure that the pressure to pay is intense.

Posted on November 17, 2023 at 11:31 AM • View Comments

New York Increases Cybersecurity Rules for Financial Companies

Another example of a large and influential state doing things the federal government won’t:

Boards of directors, or other senior committees, are charged with overseeing cybersecurity risk management, and must retain an appropriate level of expertise to understand cyber issues, the rules say. Directors must sign off on cybersecurity programs, and ensure that any security program has “sufficient resources” to function.

In a new addition, companies now face significant requirements related to ransom payments. Regulated firms must now report any payment made to hackers within 24 hours of that payment.

Posted on November 3, 2023 at 7:01 AM • View Comments

EPA Won’t Force Water Utilities to Audit Their Cybersecurity

The industry pushed back:

Despite the EPA’s willingness to provide training and technical support to help states and public water system organizations implement cybersecurity surveys, the move garnered opposition from both GOP state attorneys and trade groups.

Republican state attorneys that were against the new proposed policies said that the call for new inspections could overwhelm state regulators. The attorney generals of Arkansas, Iowa and Missouri all sued the EPA—claiming the agency had no authority to set these requirements. This led to the EPA’s proposal being temporarily blocked back in June.

So now we have a piece of our critical infrastructure with substandard cybersecurity. This seems like a really bad outcome.

Posted on October 24, 2023 at 7:02 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.