Turing's Bletchley Notes Discovered
In an astonishing turn of luck, Alan Turing's Banbury Notes have turned up as roof insulation, at Beltchley Park's Hut 6. Reportedly, the notes were discovered during the renovation of the Hut in 2013.
Rothman, Corraling the Curmudgeon
In the Information Security racket, and find yourself banging your head against the wall too often? Displaying angry, curmudgeon-like characteristics? You - my friend - are in luck, as Mike Rothman President of Securosis holds forth in this entertaining [yet interestingly true] video for many security professionals.
From Tiny Acorns, Mighty Oaks Grow...
It is Good and Right to take a step back from the protective security services we provide as a bulwark against the seemingly unrelenting attacks by miscreant's worldwide, and contemplate a force of nature that is surely as important as the work we do. Ladies and Gents. Girls and Boys, behold the Acorn. Enjoy!
Feet of Clay, AdBlock
In astonishing news, via El Reg's Kat Hall, comes the sorry tale of AdBlock [originally published by the Financial Times] of the true [previously unknown] business model of AdBlock. Here's the money quote [noted below]:
'The add-on is free to download, with Eyeo generating revenue through its "whitelisting" programme. ' - via The Register's Kat Hall
iOS Espionage Tool Discovered
In a typically fascinating post, over at TrendLabs, written by Lambert Sun, Brooks Hong (Mobile Threat Analysts) and Feike Hacquebord (Senior Threat Researcher), we learn of a recently discovered iOS espionage tool. Ladies and Gentlemen, Girls and Boys, behold, the money quote:
"We found two malicious iOS applications in Operation Pawn Storm. One is called XAgent (detected as IOS_XAGENT.A) and the other one uses the name of a legitimate iOS game, MadCap (detected as IOS_ XAGENT.B). After analysis, we concluded that both are applications related to SEDNIT. The obvious goal of the SEDNIT-related spyware is to steal personal data, record audio, make screenshots, and send them to a remote command-and-control (C&C) server. As of this publishing, the C&C server contacted by the iOS malware is live." - via TrendMicro's TrendLabs blog authors Lambert Sun, Brooks Hong and Feike Hacquebord.
NIST Releases First Revision for Media Sanitization Guidelines
News, via Pat O'Reilly of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Computer Security Division [NIST CSRC]; in which, the good Mr. O'Reilly notifies us of the release of NIST Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1, Guidelines for Media Sanitization. MYou can also view and download any previous NIST ITL [Security] bulletins, and their associated documentation and special publications at the NIST Computer Security Divisions' Computer Security Resource Center.
Wasps, Facial Recognition
News [via the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) Science magazine], of the employment of facial recognition by wasps; utilized by the creatures in the sometimes enormous effort to defend their nests. Proof positive there is nothing new under the sun...
Marc Tobias on Forbes, Wireless Alarm System Fail
via the inimitable Marc Weber Tobias, comes revelations published in Forbes, regarding the latest in flawed physical security alarm systems. Joining entertaining writing coupled with a profound level of experience and knowledge regarding physical security system and their ilk, Mr. Tobias' work is highly appreciated around these parts. If you read anything today, do yourself a favor and take a gander at his latest work at Forbes. You can also read his detailed reportage on in.security.org. Well worth the time.
IPv6 Security Myth: No NAT Means No Security
Astoundingly, myths still arise in this epoch of science, strangely so, when dealing with new technologies [Read: new means new in the final two years of the last century as IPv4 was originally codified by the IETF in 1981, with the acceptance of RFC 791] - in this case the vaunted move to IPv6. Now, arising from the ashes of IPv4 exhaustion hysteria, comes a current popular myth surrounds the utilization NATs in IPv4 and the lack of a counterpart construct in IPv6.
IETF RFC 7258, Pervasive Monitoring Is An Attack →
Quite likely, the most important document published this week on Infosecurity.US, now over a half-year old, [released during the month of May, 2014]. In accordance with the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of publication of this document, this RFC is published in it's entirety, without modification. Further information and Feedback opportunities can be found at the RFC Editor / RFC Database. The following information is the accurate content of RFC 7258. Enjoy!
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BEST CURRENT PRACTICE
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Farrell Request for Comments: 7258 Trinity College Dublin BCP: 188 H. Tschofenig Category: Best Current Practice ARM Ltd. ISSN: 2070-1721 May 2014
Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
Abstract Pervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 1]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
1. Pervasive Monitoring Is a Widespread Attack on Privacy
Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise. The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting [IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and establishes the technical nature of PM. The term "attack" is used here in a technical sense that differs somewhat from common English usage. In common English usage, an attack is an aggressive action perpetrated by an opponent, intended to enforce the opponent's will on the attacked party. The term is used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An attack may change the content of the communication, record the content or external characteristics of the communication, or through correlation with other communication events, reveal information the parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator. [RFC4949] contains a more complete definition for the term "attack". We also use the term in the singular here, even though PM in reality may consist of a multifaceted set of coordinated attacks. In particular, the term "attack", used technically, implies nothing about the motivation of the actor mounting the attack. The motivation for PM can range from non-targeted nation-state surveillance, to legal but privacy-unfriendly purposes by commercial enterprises, to illegal actions by criminals. The same techniques to achieve PM can be used regardless of motivation. Thus, we cannot defend against the most nefarious actors while allowing monitoring by other actors no matter how benevolent some might consider them to be, since the actions required of the attacker are indistinguishable from other attacks. The motivation for PM is, therefore, not relevant for how PM is mitigated in IETF protocols. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
2. The IETF Will Work to Mitigate Pervasive Monitoring
"Mitigation" is a technical term that does not imply an ability to completely prevent or thwart an attack. Protocols that mitigate PM will not prevent the attack but can significantly change the threat. (See the diagram on page 24 of RFC 4949 for how the terms "attack" and "threat" are related.) This can significantly increase the cost of attacking, force what was covert to be overt, or make the attack more likely to be detected, possibly later. IETF standards already provide mechanisms to protect Internet communications and there are guidelines [RFC3552] for applying these in protocol design. But those standards generally do not address PM, the confidentiality of protocol metadata, countering traffic analysis, or data minimisation. In all cases, there will remain some privacy-relevant information that is inevitably disclosed by protocols. As technology advances, techniques that were once only available to extremely well-funded actors become more widely accessible. Mitigating PM is therefore a protection against a wide range of similar attacks. It is therefore timely to revisit the security and privacy properties of our standards. The IETF will work to mitigate the technical aspects of PM, just as we do for protocol vulnerabilities in general. The ways in which IETF protocols mitigate PM will change over time as mitigation and attack techniques evolve and so are not described here. Those developing IETF specifications need to be able to describe how they have considered PM, and, if the attack is relevant to the work to be published, be able to justify related design decisions. This does not mean a new "pervasive monitoring considerations" section is needed in IETF documentation. It means that, if asked, there needs to be a good answer to the question "Is pervasive monitoring relevant to this work and if so, how has it been considered?" In particular, architectural decisions, including which existing technology is reused, may significantly impact the vulnerability of a protocol to PM. Those developing IETF specifications therefore need to consider mitigating PM when making architectural decisions. Getting adequate, early review of architectural decisions including whether appropriate mitigation of PM can be made is important. Revisiting these architectural decisions late in the process is very costly. While PM is an attack, other forms of monitoring that might fit the definition of PM can be beneficial and not part of any attack, e.g., network management functions monitor packets or flows and anti-spam Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 3]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014 mechanisms need to see mail message content. Some monitoring can even be part of the mitigation for PM, for example, certificate transparency [RFC6962] involves monitoring Public Key Infrastructure in ways that could detect some PM attack techniques. However, there is clear potential for monitoring mechanisms to be abused for PM, so this tension needs careful consideration in protocol design. Making networks unmanageable to mitigate PM is not an acceptable outcome, but ignoring PM would go against the consensus documented here. An appropriate balance will emerge over time as real instances of this tension are considered. Finally, the IETF, as a standards development organisation, does not control the implementation or deployment of our specifications (though IETF participants do develop many implementations), nor does the IETF standardise all layers of the protocol stack. Moreover, the non-technical (e.g., legal and political) aspects of mitigating pervasive monitoring are outside of the scope of the IETF. The broader Internet community will need to step forward to tackle PM, if it is to be fully addressed. To summarise: current capabilities permit some actors to monitor content and metadata across the Internet at a scale never before seen. This pervasive monitoring is an attack on Internet privacy. The IETF will strive to produce specifications that mitigate pervasive monitoring attacks.
3. Process Note
In the past, architectural statements of this sort, e.g., [RFC1984] and [RFC2804], have been published as joint products of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). However, since those documents were published, the IETF and IAB have separated their publication "streams" as described in [RFC4844] and [RFC5741]. This document was initiated after discussions in both the IESG and IAB, but is published as an IETF- stream consensus document, in order to ensure that it properly reflects the consensus of the IETF community as a whole.
4. Security Considerations
This document is entirely about privacy. More information about the relationship between security and privacy threats can be found in [RFC6973]. Section 5.1.1 of [RFC6973] specifically addresses surveillance as a combined security-privacy threat. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 4]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
5. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants of the IETF 88 technical plenary for their feedback. Thanks in particular to the following for useful suggestions or comments: Jari Arkko, Fred Baker, Marc Blanchet, Tim Bray, Scott Brim, Randy Bush, Brian Carpenter, Benoit Claise, Alissa Cooper, Dave Crocker, Spencer Dawkins, Avri Doria, Wesley Eddy, Adrian Farrel, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Phillip Hallam-Baker, Ted Hardie, Sam Hartmann, Paul Hoffman, Bjoern Hoehrmann, Russ Housley, Joel Jaeggli, Stephen Kent, Eliot Lear, Barry Leiba, Ted Lemon, Subramanian Moonesamy, Erik Nordmark, Pete Resnick, Peter Saint-Andre, Andrew Sullivan, Sean Turner, Nicholas Weaver, Stefan Winter, and Lloyd Wood. Additionally, we would like to thank all those who contributed suggestions on how to improve Internet security and privacy or who commented on this on various IETF mailing lists, such as the ietf@ietf.org and the perpass@ietf.org lists.
6. Informative References
[IETF88Plenary] IETF, "IETF 88 Plenary Meeting Materials", November 2013, <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/88/>. [RFC1984] IAB, IESG, Carpenter, B., and F. Baker, "IAB and IESG Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet", RFC 1984, August 1996. [RFC2804] IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804, May 2000. [RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552, July 2003. [RFC4844] Daigle, L. and Internet Architecture Board, "The RFC Series and RFC Editor", RFC 4844, July 2007. [RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", RFC 4949, August 2007. [RFC5741] Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers, and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009. [RFC6962] Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate Transparency", RFC 6962, June 2013 Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 5]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014 [RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J., Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, July 2013. Authors' Addresses Stephen Farrell Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland Phone: +353-1-896-2354 EMail: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie Hannes Tschofenig ARM Ltd. 6060 Hall in Tirol Austria EMail: Hannes.tschofenig@gmx.net URI: http://www.tschofenig.priv.at Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 6] Html markup produced by rfcmarkup 1.109, available from https://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcmarkup/
ENISA, Threat Landscape 2014 Analysis
ENISA, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security has published the agency's yearly Threat Landscape Report 2014 [PDF, 3,335 KB) analysis. Today's' Must Read.
Government of Canada, Data From Canada Mandated To Remain In Canada →
Dr. Michael Geist (Law Professor at the University of Ottawa, and the current holder of the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law) holds forth on current cloud cogitation up north (at least within the data confines of the Government of Canada / Gouvernement du Canada).
Supercalifragilistic Reidentifiability →
Well documented paper on the capability to identify entities via credit card metadata [i.e., the identification is based on what was once thought to be anonymous big data...]. Time to move back to currency transactions. Tout Simplement Incroyable.