[GPSCC-chat] Heartbleed is real. Do something real.

Sat Apr 12 17:23:16 PDT 2014

I attended a retired union worker's BBQ today where reps from various
legislators' offices were available to answer questions. I mentioned the
Heartbleed bug a couple of times in my comments (once before and once after
the legislators' assistants and some legislators themselves showed up
late). I mentioned that the Heartbleed bug affects the security of credit
card numbers and PINS as well as the passwords to your favorite web sites.
I mentioned that to find out if your favorite web site has been patched to
fix the Heartbleed bug, you can simply Google for "Heartbleed" and find an
article that has a link to one of the sites that allows you to test the web
sites that you use to see if they have fixed the bug. I also urged the
legislators to come up with rules requiring banks to take various
additional security measures and to allow online account feature choices
that would tend to thwart any similar future bug. Such security features
and selections include: Any two factor security for transferring funds
online should include an offline component such as mailing the customer a
new debit card upon their request with new card numbers and a new security
code on the back. The new security code should only need to be used if the
customer transfers money online or uses the online bill pay features, so
that if the customer does not use those features, the new security code
would not be entered into the user interface of the bank's web site by the
customer. Another user selection would include the ability to let the
customer select (through a secure method) to either disable the online
money transfer features such as bank account money transfers and online
bill pay at some point after the creation of the account or to sign up for
a secure online account at the start that has those online features
permanently disabled. The "secure method" for changing (enabling or
disabling) these features could include, in the case of Direct Express
where there are not always Comerica bank branches available in every town,
a network of banks such as Chase and Wells Fargo, who do tend to have
branches in more places, who could securely transfer such requests to
Comerica upon the customer visiting the local branch and presenting a photo
ID. It is possible to implement part of these features without making any
changes to existing procedures by simply using an online bank account that
requires you to enter your current 3 or 4 digit security code on the back
of your debit card before making any online money transfers or before using
online bill pay features. Then if you want to be secure in this way, order
a new debit or credit card with all new numbers and simply never use those
online money transfer features so that you never enter the new security
code into your bank's web site user interface. If you really want to be
secure, you can tell your bank to disable online access to your account(s).
That way if someone hacks your security code when you use it on a third
party web site, they won't be able to use your bank's web site to steal any
funds from you (especially from your other accounts such as your savings
accounts), at least not through the front door anyhow. As for legislation
or not, it may be best to simply present these ideas to the experts and
legislators and have them lobby the banks, rather than casting new sections
of law into stone, as the banks may need to adapt quickly to future
security threats that may circumvent these new ideas and because of that
they should not have their hands tied by legislation. The next opportunity
to do this type of lobbying in the San Jose area will be at the Senior Scam
Stopper Seminar, Friday, April 18th, 2014 from 2PM-4PM at the Campbell
Community Center Orchard City Banquet Hall, 1 W Campbell Avenue, Campbell,
CA 95008. CA State Assembly member Paul Fong is putting on this event in
conjunction with the Contractors State License Board. The event will
include a panel of experts on preventing seniors from being scammed. It is
recommended to RSVP for this event as seating will be limited. To RSVP,
call 408-371-2802 or visit www.asmdc.org/yh. Thanks.

 Sincerely,

 John Thielking

On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Spencer Graves <
spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:

>  Hi, Cameron:
>
>
>       Thanks very much for all you've written on this.
>
>
>       Do you think the Wikipedia article on "Heartbleed" could be
> improved, e.g., by adding a section on "Gravity" (or some similar title),
> explaining what you just said?  I can help you with implementation if you
> don't feel comfortable with the Mediawiki markup language and the Wikipedia
> culture, I can help with that.  Additions without appropriate citations may
> be quickly reverted, but balanced comments with reasonable citations will
> likely be retained.  I think it's worth doing, because (as I previously
> noted) this "Heartbleed" article received almost 47,000 views on April 11
> (UTC), and over 39,000 on the three previous days combined.
>
>
>       Example:  17:12 today (5:12 PM, UTC), an anonymous user added a
> comment that, "It is believed that Heartbleed originates from the same
> organisation as stuxnet and duqu."  This comment included a reference to an
> article that mentioned neither stuxnet nor duqu.  It was undone 49 minutes
> later.  The article also includes comments that, "According to two insider
> sources speaking to Bloomberg.com, the United States National Security
> Agency was aware of the flaw since shortly after its introduction, but
> chose to keep it secret, instead of reporting it, in order to exploit it
> for their own purposes."  These comments cite 3 sources and are likely to
> remain in the article unless none of the 3 actually mention the NSA.
>
>
>       Best Wishes,
>       Spencer
>
>
> On 4/12/2014 11:10 AM, Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
>
>
> >Alarmists said we should change all our passwords.  I think that's
> overkill.
>
> I disagree.
> Bruce Schneier is no "alarmist."  He's the author of the standard textbook
> Applied Cryptography, and a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
> advisory board.  And he's the best tech writer to general audiences since
> Carl Sagan.  If you're having trouble with rational risk assessment (a
> widespread problem among activists), you should read his book *Beyond
> Fear* <https://www.schneier.com/book-beyondfear.html>.
>
> This is the worst Internet security problem due to a single programming
> error that I can remember, ever, because of the circumstances of its
> deployment and the nature of the exploit.
> When a vulnerability like this one is discovered, you *must* assume the
> bad guys have had the use of it since it was deployed.
> It allows not just stealing your password, but stealing the secrets that
> would make it impossible for your browser to detect an impostor HTTPS site.
> And in the standard deployment, exploiting the bug leaves no trace.
> In this case, the window was wide open for roughly two years.  Your
> passwords have *probably* been stolen from affected sites.
> Whether you have been managing them well is irrelevant.  Take all the
> needless risks you like, but don't lead others to take risks by denying
> them.
>
> Throwaway passwords used only for commenting on newspaper articles (etc)
> need not be replaced, unless they share recovery secrets with more
> sensitive accounts.  But *anything* useful for identity theft poses a
> risk.
> For example, the attacker might use your account at some ancestry site to
> discover some non-secret "secret" (e.g., street you lived on as a child,
> mother's maiden name) to accomplish a password reset on your bank site.
> (Next time, *lie* about your mother's maiden name, and keep the lie
> someplace safe.)  Identity thieves work on thousands of identities at a
> time, filling in a jigsaw puzzle on each potential victim.  They use
> efficient, automated, mass production techniques.  They rattle *every*doorknob.  You never know which pieces they already have or still need.
>
> I've been following my employer's well organized response to this
> problem.  One takeaway is our local experts are not at all concerned about
> Secure Shell V2.  A long obsolete implementation used SSL, but the one
> we've been using doesn't.  I had been mistaken about that.  They're also
> pretty confident about password managers that do client side encryption.
> E.g., LastPass <https://lastpass.com/> and Kwallet<http://userbase.kde.org/KDE_Wallet_Manager>.
> These tools make it practical to maintain distinct, strong passwords for
> each web site and hosted application, so you can stop using "log in with
> Facebook" type shortcuts.  Of course, LastPass on an unmaintained Windows
> XP host is only as secure as that host.  If it's full of memory-scraping
> malware, you've got a local version of Heartbleed.
>
> Rational risk assessment means ignoring irrelevant factors.  Mass
> production identity thieves don't care about your politics.  (Spearfishers
> do.  They use everything they know about you to compile a word list for
> guessing password and recovery secrets.)  They don't care how paranoid you
> are about mass surveillance.
>
> Forward this message as you see fit.
> -*Cameron*
>
>
>
> On 04/11/2014 09:33 PM, Spencer Graves wrote:
>
> Hi, Cameron, et al.:
>
>
>       A discussion of how to deal with problems like Heartbleed is now
> available on Wikiversity, "Managing risk from cyber attacks".
>
>
>       Please revise this as you see fit or send suggestions to me.
> Cameron has done a great service in providing his expertise on this list.
> The Wikipedia article on Heartbleed received almost 47,000 views on April
> 11 (UTC), and over 39,000 on the three previous days combined.  If this
> Wikiversity article gets a small portion of that number of views, it will
> provide a great service humanity.
>
>
>       Creating that article helped me think through what seemed like a
> sensible reaction.  Alarmists said we should change all our passwords.  I
> think that's overkill.  Even creating a simple list of all the accounts and
> passwords I've created over the years was more work than I felt justified.
> And creating such a list would miss the point.  We need to worry about the
> financial institutions that manage savings.  If cyber thieves drain those
> accounts, it could create big problems for us.  For more, see the
> Wikiversity article (
> https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Managing_risk_from_cyber_attacks).
>
>
>       Thanks again, Cameron -- and thanks to John and Drew for their
> additional comments.
>
>
>       Spencer
>
>
> On 4/11/2014 3:29 PM, John Thielking wrote:
>
>   Sorry to keep dragging this out, but I finally decided to search the
> RT.com web site using the search term "computer hardware" to see if I could
> find an article or two relating to my previous statement that RT.com
> broadcast the claim that computer hardware in general has been compromised
> by the NSA. I did find the following article at
>
> http://rt.com/op-edge/nsa-hacking-individual-computers-008/
>
>
>  that states that some of the material provided by Snowden does in fact
> indicate that some people's computers are implanted with special chips to
> aid the NSA in monitoring them. This may not be widespread just yet, but it
> does fit with previously broadcast info from RT.com that was saying that
> certain people's laptops that have been ordered online are sometimes
> transhipped to special NSA facilities where they have their hardware
> modified to contain implanted viruses or malware (in the CMOS perhaps?).
> Of course the article also says that the NSA may choose to bug all
> computers sold in a specific city, if that city is a region of interest for
> the NSA. I'll bet that Eugene, Oregon (Berkeley North) could be one of
> those places. And who knows, they might put radio bugs in all the watches
> sold there too.
>    More to think about I guess.
>
>  A more speculative opinion piece is located here:
>
> http://rt.com/op-edge/nsa-spying-future-total-952/
>
>
>  and a link to the Derspiegal article that this stuff is based on is
> contained here:
>
> http://rt.com/op-edge/annie-machon-nsa-spying-925/<http://rt.com/op-edge/nsa-spying-future-total-952/>
>
>  Any further thoughts?
>
>  John Thielking
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:19 PM, John Thielking <peacemovies at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  Another more specific question for you Cameron:
>>
>>  Is the patch for the Heartbleed bug supported for systems running
>> Windows XP, which was just barely out of date as of the time of broad
>> announcement of the Heartbleed bug, or do the people currently running
>> Windows XP also have to upgrade their OS?  I know my home computer only has
>> 500 MB of memory so I can't just do an easy upgrade to Win 7.  I hope not
>> too many POS terminals are also in the same boat.  They should upgrade to a
>> new OS anyway, but this problem may just compound the problem presented by
>> the Heartbleed bug itself.
>>
>>  John Thielking
>>
>>    ...
>
>
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>
>
> --
> Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
> President and Chief Technology Officer
> Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
> 751 Emerson Ct.
> San José, CA 95126
> ph:  408-655-4567
> web:  www.structuremonitoring.com
>
>
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