Entries Tagged "homeland security"

Page 8 of 37

Counterfeit Pilot IDs and Uniforms Will Now Be Sufficient to Bypass Airport Security

This seems like a really bad idea:

…the Transportation Security Administration began a program Tuesday allowing pilots to skirt the security-screening process. The TSA has deployed approximately 500 body scanners to airports nationwide in a bid to prevent terrorists from boarding domestic flights, but pilots don’t have to go through the controversial nude body scanners or other forms of screening. They don’t have to be patted down or go through metal detectors. Their carry-on bags are not searched.

I agree that it doesn’t make sense to screen pilots, that they’re at the controls of the plane and can crash it if they want to. But the TSA isn’t in a position to screen pilots; all they can decide to do is to not screen people who are in pilot uniforms with pilot IDs. And it’s far safer to just screen everybody than to trust that TSA agents will be able figure out who is a real pilot and who is someone just pretending to be a pilot.

I wrote about this in 2006.

Posted on August 12, 2011 at 6:59 AM • View Comments

Man Flies with Someone Else's Ticket and No Legal ID

Last week, I got a bunch of press calls about Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, who flew from New York to Los Angeles using an expired ticket in someone else’s name and a university ID. They all wanted to know what this says about airport security.

It says that airport security isn’t perfect, and that people make mistakes. But it’s not something that anyone should worry about. It’s not like Noibi figured out a new hole in the airport security system, one that he was able to exploit repeatedly. He got lucky. He got real lucky. It’s not something a terrorist can build a plot around.

I’m even less concerned because I’ve never thought the photo ID check had any value. Noibi was screened, just like any other passenger. Even the TSA blog makes this point:

In this case, TSA did not properly authenticate the passenger’s documentation. That said, it’s important to note that this individual received the same thorough physical screening as other passengers, including being screened by advanced imaging technology (body scanner).

Seems like the TSA is regularly downplaying the value of the photo ID check. This is from a Q&A about Secure Flight, their new system to match passengers with watch lists:

Q: This particular “layer” isn’t terribly effective. If this “layer” of security can be circumvented by anyone with a printer and a word processor, this doesn’t seem to be a terribly useful “layer” … especially looking at the amount of money being expended on this particular “layer”. It might be that this money could be more effectively spent on other “layers”.

A: TSA uses layers of security to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation’s transportation system. Secure Flight’s watchlist name matching constitutes only one security layer of the many in place to protect aviation. Others include intelligence gathering and analysis, airport checkpoints, random canine team searches at airports, federal air marshals, federal flight deck officers and more security measures both visible and invisible to the public.

Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail during the attempt.

Yes, the answer says that they need to spend millions to ensure that terrorists with a viable plot also need a computer, but you can tell that their heart wasn’t in the answer. “Checkpoints! Dogs! Air marshals! Ignore the stupid photo ID requirement.”

Noibi is an embarrassment for the TSA and for the airline Virgin America, who are both supposed to catch this kind of thing. But I’m not worried about the security risk, and neither is the TSA.

Posted on July 6, 2011 at 5:53 AM • View Comments

RAND Corporation on Trusted Traveler

New paper: “Assessing the Security Benefits of a Trusted Traveler Program in the Presence of Attempted Attacker Exploitation and Compromise“:

Current aviation security procedures screen all passengers uniformly. Varying the amount of screening individuals receive based on an assessment of their relative risk has the potential to reduce the security burdens on some travelers, while improving security overall. This paper examines the security costs and benefits of a trusted traveler program, in which individuals who have been identified as posting less risk than others are allowed to pass through security with reduced security screening. This allows security resources to be shifted from travelers who have been identified as low risk, to the remaining unknown-risk population. However, fears that terrorists may exploit trusted traveler programs have dissuaded adoption of such programs. This analysis estimates the security performance of a trusted traveler program in the presence of attacker attempts to compromise it. It finds that, although these attempts would reduce the maximum potential security benefits of a program, they would not eliminate those benefits in all circumstances.

Posted on June 20, 2011 at 7:01 AM • View Comments

Yet Another Way to Evade TSA's Full-Body Scanners

Last night, at the Third EPIC Champion of Freedom Awards Dinner, we gave an award to Susie Castillo, whose blog post and video of her treatment in the hands of the TSA has inspired thousands to complain about the agency and their treatment of travellers.

Sitting with her at dinner, I learned yet another way to evade the TSA’s full body scanners: carry a small pet. She regularly travels with her small dog, and has found that she is always directed away from the full-body scanners and through the magnetometers. I suspect that the difficulty of keeping the dog still is why TSA makes that determination. (The carrier, of course, goes through the x-ray machine.)

I’m not sure what the TSA is going to do now that I’ve publicized this unpublished exception. Those of you who travel with small pets: please let me know what happens.

(For those of you who are appalled that I could give the terrorists ideas on how to evade the full-body scanners, there are already so many ways that one more can’t hurt.)

Posted on June 14, 2011 at 7:54 AM • View Comments

New Airport Scanning Technology

Interesting:

Iscon’s patented, thermo-conductive technology combines infrared (IR) and heat transfer, for high-resolution imaging without using any radiation. The core of this is state of the art imaging which detects and processes a break in the established thermal balance between the clothes and a hidden object. The IR camera detects the heat radiating from even a tiny object, producing a dark/light shape. It is irrelevant how long an object is concealed under clothing as a new temperature imprint is created every time it is scanned. Using IR, the rays don’t penetrate beyond the clothing so there are no privacy issues.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): Another article.

I know no details.

Posted on June 10, 2011 at 6:14 AM • View Comments

New Siemens SCADA Vulnerabilities Kept Secret

SCADA systems—computer systems that control industrial processes—are one of the ways a computer hack can directly affect the real world. Here, the fears multiply. It’s not bad guys deleting your files, or getting your personal information and taking out credit cards in your name; it’s bad guys spewing chemicals into the atmosphere and dumping raw sewage into waterways. It’s Stuxnet: centrifuges spinning out of control and destroying themselves. Never mind how realistic the threat is, it’s scarier.

Last week, a researcher was successfully pressured by the Department of Homeland Security not to disclose details “before Siemens could patch the vulnerabilities.”

Beresford wouldn’t say how many vulnerabilities he found in the Siemens products, but said he gave the company four exploit modules to test. He believes that at least one of the vulnerabilities he found affects multiple SCADA-system vendors, which share “commonality” in their products. Beresford wouldn’t reveal more details, but says he hopes to do so at a later date.

We’ve been living with full disclosure for so long that many people have forgotten what life was like before it was routine.

Before full disclosure was the norm, researchers would discover vulnerabilities in software and send details to the software companies—who would ignore them, trusting in the security of secrecy. Some would go so far as to threaten the researchers with legal action if they disclosed the vulnerabilities.

Later on, researchers announced that particular vulnerabilities existed, but did not publish details. Software companies would then call the vulnerabilities “theoretical” and deny that they actually existed. Of course, they would still ignore the problems, and occasionally threaten the researcher with legal action. Then, of course, some hacker would create an exploit using the vulnerability—and the company would release a really quick patch, apologize profusely, and then go on to explain that the whole thing was entirely the fault of the evil, vile hackers.

I wrote that in 2007. Siemens is doing it right now:

Beresford expressed frustration that Siemens appeared to imply the flaws in its SCADA systems gear might be difficult for a typical hacker to exploit because the vulnerabilities unearthed by NSS Labs “were discovered while working under special laboratory conditions with unlimited access to protocols and controllers.”

There were no “‘special laboratory conditions’ with ‘unlimited access to the protocols,'” Beresford wrote Monday about how he managed to find flaws in Siemens PLC gear that would allow an attacker to compromise them. “My personal apartment on the wrong side of town where I can hear gunshots at night hardly defines a special laboratory.” Beresford said he purchased the Siemens controllers with funding from his company and found the vulnerabilities, which he says hackers with bad intentions could do as well.

That’s precisely the point. Me again from 2007:

Unfortunately, secrecy sounds like a good idea. Keeping software vulnerabilities secret, the argument goes, keeps them out of the hands of the hackers…. But that assumes that hackers can’t discover vulnerabilities on their own, and that software companies will spend time and money fixing secret vulnerabilities. Both of those assumptions are false. Hackers have proven to be quite adept at discovering secret vulnerabilities, and full disclosure is the only reason vendors routinely patch their systems.

With the pressure off, Siemens is motivated to deal with the PR problem and ignore the underlying security problem.

Posted on May 24, 2011 at 5:50 AM • View Comments

The Normalization of Security

TSA-style security is now so normal that it’s part of a Disney ride:

The second room of the queue is now a security check area, similar to a TSA checkpoint. The two G-series droids are still there, G2-9T scanning luggage and G2-4T scanning passengers. For those attraction junkies, you’ll remember that the G-series droids are so named because in the original Disneyland Park version of the ride, they were created by removing the “skins” from two of the goose animatronics from the soon-to-close America Sings attraction (Goose = “G” series). While we won’t tell you why, you’ll enjoy paying a lot of attention to what the scans of the luggage show is inside. When it’s your turn to go through the passenger scan (a thermal body scan), you may be verbally accosted by a security droid. Also, keep an eye out in the queue for an earlier version of RX-24 (“Captain Rex”) from the original Star Tours; he’s labeled “defective” and has some familiar dialogue.

This is the new Star Tours ride at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Posted on May 20, 2011 at 2:43 PM • View Comments

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 37

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.