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Hacking Construction Cranes

Construction cranes are vulnerable to hacking:

In our research and vulnerability discoveries, we found that weaknesses in the controllers can be (easily) taken advantage of to move full-sized machines such as cranes used in construction sites and factories. In the different attack classes that we’ve outlined, we were able to perform the attacks quickly and even switch on the controlled machine despite an operator’s having issued an emergency stop (e-stop).

The core of the problem lies in how, instead of depending on wireless, standard technologies, these industrial remote controllers rely on proprietary RF protocols, which are decades old and are primarily focused on safety at the expense of security. It wasn’t until the arrival of Industry 4.0, as well as the continuing adoption of the industrial internet of things (IIoT), that industries began to acknowledge the pressing need for security.

News article. Report.

infossl January 22, 2019 hacking, internetofthings, reports, Security technology, vulnerabilities Read more >

Congressional Report on the 2017 Equifax Data Breach

The US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has just released a comprehensive report on the 2017 Equifax hack. It’s a great piece of writing, with a detailed timeline, root cause analysis, and lessons learned. Lance Spitzner also commented on this.

Here is my testimony before before the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection last November.

infossl December 19, 2018 breaches, databreaches, nationalsecuritypolicy, reports, Security technology Read more >

2018 Annual Report from AI Now

The research group AI Now just published its annual report. It’s an excellent summary of today’s AI security challenges, as well as a policy agenda to address them.

This is related, and also worth reading.

infossl December 10, 2018 artificialintelligence, reports, Security technology, securityengineering Read more >

How to Punish Cybercriminals

Interesting policy paper by Third Way: “To Catch a Hacker: Toward a comprehensive strategy to identify, pursue, and punish malicious cyber actors“:

In this paper, we argue that the United States currently lacks a comprehensive overarching strategic approach to identify, stop and punish cyberattackers. We show that:

There is a burgeoning cybercrime wave: A rising and often unseen crime wave is mushrooming in America. There are approximately 300,000 reported malicious cyber incidents per year, including up to 194,000 that could credibly be called individual or system-wide breaches or attempted breaches. This is likely a vast undercount since many victims don’t report break-ins to begin with. Attacks cost the US economy anywhere from $57 billion to $109 billion annually and these costs are increasing.

There is a stunning cyber enforcement gap: Our analysis of publicly available data shows that cybercriminals can operate with near impunity compared to their real-world counterparts. We estimate that cyber enforcement efforts are so scattered that less than 1% of malicious cyber incidents see an enforcement action taken against the attackers.

There is no comprehensive US cyber enforcement strategy aimed at the human attacker: Despite the recent release of a National Cyber Strategy, the United States still lacks a comprehensive strategic approach to how it identifies, pursues, and punishes malicious human cyberattackers and the organizations and countries often behind them. We believe that the United States is as far from this human attacker strategy as the nation was toward a strategic approach to countering terrorism in the weeks and months before 9/11.

In order to close the cyber enforcement gap, we argue for a comprehensive enforcement strategy that makes a fundamental rebalance in US cybersecurity policies: from a heavy focus on building better cyber defenses against intrusion to also waging a more robust effort at going after human attackers. We call for ten US policy actions that could form the contours of a comprehensive enforcement strategy to better identify, pursue and bring to justice malicious cyber actors that include building up law enforcement, enhancing diplomatic efforts, and developing a measurable strategic plan to do so.

infossl November 2, 2018 cyberattack, cybercrime, hacking, reports, Security technology Read more >

Security Vulnerabilities in US Weapons Systems

The US Government Accounting Office just published a new report: “Weapons Systems Cyber Security: DOD Just Beginning to Grapple with Scale of Vulnerabilities” (summary here). The upshot won’t be a surprise to any of my regular readers: they’re vulnerable.

From the summary:

Automation and connectivity are fundamental enablers of DOD’s modern military capabilities. However, they make weapon systems more vulnerable to cyber attacks. Although GAO and others have warned of cyber risks for decades, until recently, DOD did not prioritize weapon systems cybersecurity. Finally, DOD is still determining how best to address weapon systems cybersecurity.

In operational testing, DOD routinely found mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities in systems that were under development, yet program officials GAO met with believed their systems were secure and discounted some test results as unrealistic. Using relatively simple tools and techniques, testers were able to take control of systems and largely operate undetected, due in part to basic issues such as poor password management and unencrypted communications. In addition, vulnerabilities that DOD is aware of likely represent a fraction of total vulnerabilities due to testing limitations. For example, not all programs have been tested and tests do not reflect the full range of threats.

It is definitely easier, and cheaper, to ignore the problem or pretend it isn’t a big deal. But that’s probably a mistake in the long run.

infossl October 10, 2018 control, cybersecurity, departmentofdefense, encryption, nationalsecuritypolicy, operationalsecurity, passwords, reports, Security technology, vulnerabilities, weapons Read more >

New Report on Police Digital Forensics Techniques

According to a new CSIS report, “going dark” is not the most pressing problem facing law enforcement in the age of digital data:

Over the past year, we conducted a series of interviews with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, attorneys, service providers, and civil society groups. We also commissioned a survey of law enforcement officers from across the country to better understand the full range of difficulties they are facing in accessing and using digital evidence in their cases. Survey results indicate that accessing data from service providers — much of which is not encrypted — is the biggest problem that law enforcement currently faces in leveraging digital evidence.

This is a problem that has not received adequate attention or resources to date. An array of federal and state training centers, crime labs, and other efforts have arisen to help fill the gaps, but they are able to fill only a fraction of the need. And there is no central entity responsible for monitoring these efforts, taking stock of the demand, and providing the assistance needed. The key federal entity with an explicit mission to assist state and local law enforcement with their digital evidence needs — the National Domestic Communications Assistance Center (NDCAC)has a budget of $11.4 million, spread among several different programs designed to distribute knowledge about service providers’ policies and products, develop and share technical tools, and train law enforcement on new services and technologies, among other initiatives.

From a news article:

In addition to bemoaning the lack of guidance and help from tech companies — a quarter of survey respondents said their top issue was convincing companies to hand over suspects’ data — law enforcement officials also reported receiving barely any digital evidence training. Local police said they’d received only 10 hours of training in the past 12 months; state police received 13 and federal officials received 16. A plurality of respondents said they only received annual training. Only 16 percent said their organizations scheduled training sessions at least twice per year.

This is a point that Susan Landau has repeatedly made, and also one I make in my new book. The FBI needs technical expertise, not backdoors.

Here’s the report.

infossl July 27, 2018 backdoors, fbi, forensics, lawenforcement, police, reports, Security technology Read more >

Department of Commerce Report on the Botnet Threat

Last month, the US Department of Commerce released a report on the threat of botnets and what to do about it. I note that it explicitly said that the IoT makes the threat worse, and that the solutions are largely economic.

The Departments determined that the opportunities and challenges in working toward dramatically reducing threats from automated, distributed attacks can be summarized in six principal themes.

Automated, distributed attacks are a global problem. The majority of the compromised devices in recent noteworthy botnets have been geographically located outside the United States. To increase the resilience of the Internet and communications ecosystem against these threats, many of which originate outside the United States, we must continue to work closely with international partners.

Effective tools exist, but are not widely used. While there remains room for improvement, the tools, processes, and practices required to significantly enhance the resilience of the Internet and communications ecosystem are widely available, and are routinely applied in selected market sectors. However, they are not part of common practices for product development and deployment in many other sectors for a variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) lack of awareness, cost avoidance, insufficient technical expertise, and lack of market incentives

Products should be secured during all stages of the lifecycle. Devices that are vulnerable at time of deployment, lack facilities to patch vulnerabilities after discovery, or remain in service after vendor support ends make assembling automated, distributed threats far too easy.

Awareness and education are needed. Home users and some enterprise customers are often unaware of the role their devices could play in a botnet attack and may not fully understand the merits of available technical controls. Product developers, manufacturers, and infrastructure operators often lack the knowledge and skills necessary to deploy tools, processes, and practices that would make the ecosystem more resilient.

Market incentives should be more effectively aligned. Market incentives do not currently appear to align with the goal of “dramatically reducing threats perpetrated by automated and distributed attacks.” Product developers, manufacturers, and vendors are motivated to minimize cost and time to market, rather than to build in security or offer efficient security updates. Market incentives must be realigned to promote a better balance between security and convenience when developing products.

Automated, distributed attacks are an ecosystem-wide challenge. No single stakeholder community can address the problem in isolation.

[…]

The Departments identified five complementary and mutually supportive goals that, if realized, would dramatically reduce the threat of automated, distributed attacks and improve the resilience and redundancy of the ecosystem. A list of suggested actions for key stakeholders reinforces each goal. The goals are:

Goal 1: Identify a clear pathway toward an adaptable, sustainable, and secure technology marketplace.

Goal 2: Promote innovation in the infrastructure for dynamic adaptation to evolving threats.

Goal 3: Promote innovation at the edge of the network to prevent, detect, and mitigate automated, distributed attacks.

Goal 4: Promote and support coalitions between the security, infrastructure, and operational technology communities domestically and around the world

Goal 5: Increase awareness and education across the ecosystem.

infossl July 11, 2018 botnets, economicsofsecurity, internetofthings, reports, Security technology Read more >

Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Report

New US government report: “Report on Improving Cybersecurity in the Health Care Industry.” It’s pretty scathing, but nothing in it will surprise regular readers of this blog.

It’s worth reading the executive summary, and then skimming the recommendations. Recommendations are in six areas.

The Task Force identified six high-level imperatives by which to organize its recommendations and action items. The imperatives are:

Define and streamline leadership, governance, and expectations for health care industry cybersecurity.

Increase the security and resilience of medical devices and health IT.

Develop the health care workforce capacity necessary to prioritize and ensure cybersecurity awareness and technical capabilities.

Increase health care industry readiness through improved cybersecurity awareness and education.

Identify mechanisms to protect research and development efforts and intellectual property from attacks or exposure.

Improve information sharing of industry threats, weaknesses, and mitigations.

News article.

Slashdot thread.

infossl June 12, 2017 cybersecurity, medicine, reports, Security technology Read more >

Survey Data on Americans and Cybersecurity

Pew Research just published their latest research data on Americans and their views on cybersecurity:

This survey finds that a majority of Americans have directly experienced some form of data theft or fraud, that a sizeable share of the public thinks that their personal data have become less secure in recent years, and that many lack confidence in various institutions to keep their personal data safe from misuse. In addition, many Americans are failing to follow digital security best practices in their own personal lives, and a substantial majority expects that major cyberattacks will be a fact of life in the future.

Here’s the full report.

infossl February 14, 2017 cyberattack, cybersecurity, fraud, reports, Security technology, trust Read more >

CSIS's Cybersecurity Agenda

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published “From Awareness to Action: A Cybersecurity Agenda for the 45th President” (press release here). There’s a lot I agree with — and some things I don’t — but these paragraphs struck me as particularly insightful:

The Obama administration made significant progress but suffered from two conceptual problems in its cybersecurity efforts. The first was a belief that the private sector would spontaneously generate the solutions needed for cybersecurity and minimize the need for government action. The obvious counter to this is that our problems haven’t been solved. There is no technological solution to the problem of cybersecurity, at least any time soon, so turning to technologists was unproductive. The larger national debate over the role of government made it difficult to balance public and private-sector responsibility and created a sense of hesitancy, even timidity, in executive branch actions.

The second was a misunderstanding of how the federal government works. All White Houses tend to float above the bureaucracy, but this one compounded the problem with its desire to bring high-profile business executives into government. These efforts ran counter to what is needed to manage a complex bureaucracy where greatly differing rules, relationships, and procedures determine the success of any initiative. Unlike the private sector, government decisionmaking is more collective, shaped by external pressures both bureaucratic and political, and rife with assorted strictures on resources and personnel.

infossl February 10, 2017 cybersecurity, nationalsecuritypolicy, reports, Security technology Read more >