Computer Security Experts Release Report Slamming Proposals To Backdoor Encryption, As FBI Makes Latest Push

from the bad-ideas dept

Later today, FBI director James Comey will testify before two separate Senate panels about "going dark", the buzz phrase for law enforcement's ridiculous fear of strong encryption. In preparation for this, Comey has posted an article claiming that he's not "a maniac" and recognizes the value of strong encryption... but.

1. The logic of encryption will bring us, in the not-to-distant future, to a place where devices and data in motion are protected by universal strong encryption. That is, our conversations and our "papers and effects" will be locked in such a way that permits access only by participants to a conversation or the owner of the device holding the data.

2. There are many benefits to this. Universal strong encryption will protect all of us—our innovation, our private thoughts, and so many other things of value—from thieves of all kinds. We will all have lock-boxes in our lives that only we can open and in which we can store all that is valuable to us. There are lots of good things about this.

3. There are many costs to this. Public safety in the United States has relied for a couple centuries on the ability of the government, with predication, to obtain permission from a court to access the "papers and effects" and communications of Americans. The Fourth Amendment reflects a trade-off inherent in ordered liberty: To protect the public, the government sometimes needs to be able to see an individual's stuff, but only under appropriate circumstances and with appropriate oversight.

He ends the piece by noting that he's just encouraging debate on the topic:

Democracies resolve such tensions through robust debate. I really am not a maniac (or at least my family says so). But my job is to try to keep people safe. In universal strong encryption, I see something that is with us already and growing every day that will inexorably affect my ability to do that job. It may be that, as a people, we decide the benefits here outweigh the costs and that there is no sensible, technically feasible way to optimize privacy and safety in this particular context, or that public safety folks will be able to do their job well enough in the world of universal strong encryption. Those are decisions Americans should make, but I think part of my job is make sure the debate is informed by a reasonable understanding of the costs.

But, of course, this suggests that there hasn't been much debate on this. There has been. There was a giant debate twenty years ago and people realized how important strong crypto is and how dangerous it is to undermine it. And yet, now he's claiming we need a new debate. We don't. It's been concluded and forcing everyone to retrace their steps from two decades ago is just a waste of time, especially considering that many of these people could be working on more important things, like better protecting us and our data.

But... instead, the debate is happening. And now a large group of folks who lived through the last debate have published a fantastic report on why backdooring encryption is monumentally stupid. The report is written by a who's who of computer security folks:

Harold Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matthew Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Matthew Green, Peter G. Neumann, Susan Landau, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffrey I. Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Michael Specter, Daniel J. Weitzner

The paper highlights that this debate was done decades ago:

Twenty years ago, law enforcement organizations lobbied to require data and communication services to engineer their products to guarantee law enforcement access to all data. After lengthy debate and vigorous predictions of enforcement channels “going dark,” these attempts to regulate the emerging Internet were abandoned. In the intervening years, innovation on the Internet flourished, and law enforcement agencies found new and more effective means of accessing vastly larger quantities of data. Today we are again hearing calls for regulation to mandate the provision of exceptional access mechanisms. In this report, a group of computer scientists and security experts, many of whom participated in a 1997 study of these same topics, has convened to explore the likely effects of imposing extraordinary access mandates.

We have found that the damage that could be caused by law enforcement exceptional access requirements would be even greater today than it would have been 20 years ago. In the wake of the growing economic and social cost of the fundamental insecurity of today’s Internet environment, any proposals that alter the security dynamics online should be approached with caution. Exceptional access would force Internet system developers to reverse “forward secrecy” design practices that seek to minimize the impact on user privacy when systems are breached. The complexity of today’s Internet environment, with millions of apps and globally connected services, means that new law enforcement requirements are likely to introduce unanticipated, hard to detect security flaws. Beyond these and other technical vulnerabilities, the prospect of globally deployed exceptional access systems raises difficult problems about how such an environment would be governed and how to ensure that such systems would respect human rights and the rule of law

As the paper notes, beyond the technical problems with these proposals, there's also the fact that other governments are going to want this same capability and that opens up all sorts of problems:

The greatest impediment to exceptional access may be jurisdiction. Building in ex- ceptional access would be risky enough even if only one law enforcement agency in the world had it. But this is not only a US issue. The UK government promises legislation this fall to compel communications service providers, including US-based corporations, to grant access to UK law enforcement agencies, and other countries would certainly follow suit. China has already intimated that it may require exceptional access. If a British-based developer deploys a messaging application used by citizens of China, must it provide exceptional access to Chinese law enforcement? Which countries have sufficient respect for the rule of law to participate in an international exceptional access framework? How would such determinations be made? How would timely approvals be given for the millions of new products with communications capabilities? And how would this new surveillance ecosystem be funded and supervised? The US and UK governments have fought long and hard to keep the governance of the Internet open, in the face of demands from authoritarian countries that it be brought under state control. Does not the push for exceptional access represent a breathtaking policy reversal?

And there's still the technical problems. Government officials still seem to think it's possible to build a golden key that only government can access. This is technologically ignorant:

[B]uilding in exceptional access would substantially increase system complexity. Security researchers inside and outside government agree that complexity is the enemy of security — every new feature can interact with others to create vulnerabilities. To achieve widespread exceptional access, new technology features would have to be deployed and tested with literally hundreds of thousands of developers all around the world. This is a far more complex environment than the electronic surveillance now deployed in telecommunications and Internet access services, which tend to use similar technologies and are more likely to have the resources to manage vulnerabilities that may arise from new features. Features to permit law enforcement exceptional access across a wide range of Internet and mobile computing applications could be particularly problematic because their typical use would be surreptitious — making security testing difficult and less effective.

[E]xceptional access would create concentrated targets that could attract bad actors. Security credentials that unlock the data would have to be retained by the platform provider, law enforcement agencies, or some other trusted third party. If law enforcement’s keys guaranteed access to everything, an attacker who gained access to these keys would enjoy the same privilege. Moreover, law enforcement’s stated need for rapid access to data would make it impractical to store keys offline or split keys among multiple keyholders, as security engineers would normally do with extremely high-value credentials. Recent attacks on the United States Government Office of Personnel Management (OPM) show how much harm can arise when many organizations rely on a single institution that itself has security vulnerabilities. In the case of OPM, numerous federal agencies lost sensitive data because OPM had insecure infrastructure. If service providers implement exceptional access requirements incorrectly, the security of all of their users will be at risk.

There's a lot more in the report itself, which is worth reading. As Kevin Bankston, the director of the Open Technology Institute, notes, we've had this debate and it's time to end it. It's over.

Tech companies, privacy advocates, security experts, policy experts, all five members of President Obama’s handpicked Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, UN human rights experts, and a majority of the House of Representatives all agree: Government-mandated backdoors are a bad idea. There are countless reasons why this is true, including: They would unavoidably weaken the security of our digital data, devices, and communications even as we are in the midst of a cybersecurity crisis; they would cost the US tech industry billions as foreign customers — including many of the criminals Comey hopes to catch — turn to more secure alternatives; and they would encourage oppressive regimes that abuse human rights to demand backdoors of their own.

Most of these arguments are not new or surprising. Indeed, it was for many of the same reasons that the US government ultimately rejected the idea of encryption backdoors in the 90s, during what are now called the “Crypto Wars.” We as a nation already had the debate that Comey is demanding — we had it 20 years ago! — and the arguments against backdoors have only become stronger and more numerous with time. Most notably, the 21st century has turned out to be a “Golden Age for Surveillance” for the government. Even with the proliferation of encryption, law enforcement has access to much more information than ever before: access to cellphone location information about where we are and where we’ve been, metadata about who we communicate with and when, and vast databases of emails and pictures and more in the cloud. So, the purported law enforcement need is even less compelling than it was in the 90s. Meanwhile, the security implications of trying to mandate backdoors throughout the vast ecosystem of digital communications services have only gotten more dire in the intervening years, as laid out in an exhaustive new report issued just this morning by over a dozen heavy-hitting security experts.

If only someone would explain that to Comey, everyone could get back to work. Yet, unfortunately, it looks like he wants to rehash this debate over and over again, despite the fact that the basics aren't going to change.

Filed Under: backdoors, computer security, cybersecurity, encryption, going dark, james comey, mobile encryption, security

Encryption: What The FBI Wants It Can Only Have By Destroying Computing And Censoring The Internet

from the and-it-doesn't-seem-to-understand-this dept

The FBI -- and by extension, every law enforcement agency it partners with -- wants holes carved in cellphone encryption. The problem is that it doesn't even know what specifically it wants.

When asked directly if the FBI wants a backdoor, [Amy] Hess [Asst. Director of FBI's Science & Technology branch] dodged the question and did not describe in detail what actual solution the FBI is seeking.

“We are simply asking for information that we seek in response to a lawful order in a readable format,” Hess responded, while also repeating that the Bureau supports strong encryption. “But how that actually happens should be the decision of the provider.”

When pressed again, Hess said that it would be okay for the FBI not to have a key to decrypt data, if the provider “can get us that information by maintaining the key themselves.”

That's asking the impossible -- for a great many reasons. First and foremost, compromised encryption is compromised encryption. It can be exploited by criminals and other unwanted entities just as certainly as it can assist law enforcement agencies in obtaining the information they're seeking. There's no way around this fact. You cannot have "good guys only" encryption.

But beyond that, even if the FBI manages to get what it wants, it will do so at the expense of general computing. Requiring built-in backdoors or key escrow will dismantle the very systems it's meant to access. Computer scientist Jonathan Mayer delivers a long, detailed hypothetical involving the Android platform and how the FBI's desired access would fail -- and do severe collateral damage -- every step of the way. (via Boing Boing)

First off, if Google gives the FBI the backdoors it wants, that only nails down Google. But Google also distributes thousands of third-party apps through its Play store. And these apps may not contain the subverted encryption the FBI is looking for. Now, Google has to be in the business of regulating third-party apps to ensure they meet the government's standard for compromised encryption.

The obvious answer is that Google can’t stop with just backdooring disk encryption. It has to backdoor the entire Android cryptography library. Whenever a third-party app generates an encrypted blob of data, for any purpose, that blob has to include a backdoor.

This move may work, but it only affects apps using Google's encryption. Other offerings may rely on other encryption methods. Then what? It has a few options, all of them carrying horrendous implications.

One option: require Google to police its app store for strong cryptography. Another option: mandate a notice-and-takedown system, where the government is responsible for spotting secure apps, and Google has a grace period to remove them. Either alternative would, of course, be entirely unacceptable to the technology sector—the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown system is widely reviled, and present federal law (CDA 230) disfavors intermediary liability.

At this point, Mayer suggests the "solution" is already outside the realm of political feasibility. Would the FBI really push this far to obtain encryption backdoors? The FBI itself seems unsure of how far it's willing to go, and many officials quoted (like the one above) seem to think all the FBI really needs to do is be very insistent on this point, and techies will come up with some magical computing solution that maintains the protective qualities of encryption while simultaneously allowing the government to open the door and have a look around any time it wants to.

So, if the FBI is willing to travel this very dark road littered with an untold amount of collateral damage, it still hasn't managed to ensure the phones it encounters will open at its command. Considering phone users could still acquire apps from other sources, the government's reach would only extend as far as the heavily-policed official app store (and other large competitors' app stores). Now what? More government power and less operational stability.

The only solution is an app kill switch. (Google’s euphemism is “Remote Application Removal.”) Whenever the government discovers a strong encryption app, it would compel Google to nuke the app from Android phones worldwide. That level of government intrusion—reaching into personal devices to remove security software—certainly would not be well received. It raises serious Fourth Amendment issues, since it could be construed as a search of the device or a seizure of device functionality and app data. What’s more, the collateral damage would be extensive; innocent users of the app would lose their data.

Even if the government were willing to take it this far, it still doesn't eradicate apps that it can't crack. (But it may be sufficient to only backdoor the most used apps, which may be all it's looking to achieve...) App creators could decide to avoid Google's government-walled garden and mandated kill switch by assigning random identifiers and handling a majority of the app's services (like a messaging service, etc.) via a website, out of reach of app removal tools and government intervention. To stop this, the US government would need to do the previously unimaginable:

In order to prevent secure data storage and end-to-end secure messaging, the government would have to block these web apps. The United States would have to engage in Internet censorship.

Robert Graham at Errata Security makes similar points in his post on the subject, but raises a couple of other interesting (in the horrific train wreck meaning of the word) points. While the government may try to regulate the internet, it can't (theoretically) touch services hosted in foreign countries. (Although it may soon be able to hack away at them with zero legal repercussions…)

Such services could be located in another country, because there are no real national borders in cyberspace. In any event, such services aren't "phone" services, but instead just "contact" services. They let people find each other, but they don't control the phone call. It's possible to bypass such services anyway, by either using a peer-to-peer contact system, or overloading something completely different, like DNS.

Like crypto, the entire Internet is based on the concept of end-to-end, where there is nothing special inside the network that provides a service you can regulate.

The FBI likely has no desire to take its fight against encryption this far. The problem is that it thinks its "solution" to encryption is "reasonable." But it isn't.

The point is this. Forcing Apple to insert a "Golden Key" into the iPhone looks reasonable, but the truth is the problem explodes to something far outside of any sort of reasonableness. It would mean outlawing certain kinds of code -- which is probably not possible in our legal system.

The biggest problem here is that no one arguing for "golden keys," key escrow, "good guy" backdoors, etc. seems to have any idea what implementing this could actually result in. They think it's just tech companies sticking it to The Man, possibly because a former NSA sysadmin went halfway around the world with a pile of documents and a suitcase of whistles with "BLOW ME" printed on the side.

But it isn't. And their continual shrugged assertion that the "smart guys" at tech companies will figure this all out for them is not only lazy, it's colossally ignorant. There isn't a solution. The government can't demand that companies not provide encryption. It's not willing to ban encryption, nor is it in any position to make that ban stick. It doesn't know what it needs. It only knows what it wants. And it can't have what it wants -- not because no one wants to give it to them -- but because no one can give it to them.

Yes, many tech companies are far more wary of collaborating with the government in this post-Snowden era, but in this case, the tech world cannot give the FBI what it wants without destroying nearly everything surrounding the "back door." And continually trotting out kidnappers, child porn enthusiasts and upskirt photographers as reasons for breaking cell phone platforms doesn't change the fact that it cannot be done without potentially harming every non-criminal phone owner and the services they use.

Filed Under: backdoors, computer security, cybersecurity, encryption, fbi, jonathan mayer, security

Microsoft Security Exec Suggests Internet Tax To Pay For 'Computer Health Care' Program

from the is-that-an-HMO-or-a-PPO? dept

Tank Szuba alerts us to the story about a Microsoft security exec suggesting that it might make sense to implement an internet usage tax to help fund a "computer healthcare system" to fix the notoriously insecure software that his company produces. It doesn't sound like a well-thought out proposal. It seems more like a brainstorm from a panel discussion by Scott Charney, Microsoft's Vice President for Trustworthy Computing. He suggests, as others have, that a system could be setup for quarantining infected computers, but when asked how to pay for it, he suggests such a tax. Or, of course, Microsoft could make software that doesn't have as many security holes.

Charney seems to model his idea off of our broken healthcare system:

"I actually think the health care model ... might be an interesting way to think about the problem,"

Has he looked at how well healthcare has been working lately? Of course, as with healthcare, the real issue should be preventative efforts, and those mainly start with Microsoft and how it architects its software. But I guess it's easier to just ask everyone to pay a tax to hide that.

Filed Under: computer security, healthcare, scott charney, tax

More Patent Battles Making Your Computer Less Secure

from the ain't-patents-great? dept

Last year, we pointed to some patent battles among security software companies, noting how the end result would undoubtedly be less secure computers. As these security firms argued over who thought up an idea "first" and who owed who what amounts of money, you can rest assured that those exploiting the security holes couldn't care any less about who came up with what exploit first. In the constant battle between security firms and malicious hackers, distracting the security firms and having resources devoted to arguing over patents (and paying each other royalties) seems designed to just make it that much easier for malicious hackers to stay that much further ahead, while making it more and more difficult for any security firm to actually provide anything close to comprehensive security. And, it's only going to get worse. Slashdot points us to an article about Microsoft's rather broad patent on proactive virus protection, despite the fact that others had proactive virus protection products on the market well before Microsoft filed for the patent. While Microsoft isn't yet doing anything with the patent, the fact that it got it now means that others have to be extra careful in tiptoeing around proactive virus protection -- and that's only going to make virus makers happy.

Filed Under: computer security, patents, viruses
Companies: microsoft

Is It Time For Computer Security Experts To Get Jobs In The Medical Device Arena?

from the dance,-heart-patient,-dance! dept

Last week, one of the stories that got a few headlines and made the rounds concerned the news that some popular heart monitors could be hacked, potentially in a way that would provide powerful shocks to to the heart of someone who had such a device implanted. The reports made it very clear that the likelihood of such a hack was incredibly slim, as it would require a tremendous amount of access. So, this isn't something to worry about today, but it does suggest one area where it may pay for medical device makers to start thinking a little bit more about security. There was a report, about two years ago, that also warned of something similar, which we played down as a bit of fear-mongering (it had no real details, just suggesting that pacemakers would become a hacking target). It still seems like this is not going to be a huge threat any time in the near future, but that doesn't mean that those who design medical devices, especially those with connections to the outside world, shouldn't at least think through the potential security concerns and design these devices with security in mind from the beginning. That seems a lot safer than having to fix all of the installed devices down the road.

Filed Under: computer security, hacking, medical devices

Will Patent Battles Make Your Computer Less Secure?

from the hurray-for-patents dept

Just as a new study is coming out suggesting that anti-virus software is getting worse at actually protecting your computer comes some other news that there's a brewing patent battle in the anti-virus world, with one firm, Trend Micro, going after a bunch of other companies for daring to use similar techniques in trying to protect computer equipment. If ever there were a perfect example of patents being used to hold back progress, this would be it. Computer security is incredibly important -- but it's a rapidly changing field, as both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" need to be constantly adjusting. Preventing firms from being able to use one method (and to improve on it, change it, build on it, etc.) simply gives the malware writers a huge leg up. They have no such qualms about building off of others' work, and this will simply lead to malware getting further and further ahead of security software, as security companies are held up in their ability to continue to adapt.

Filed Under: computer security, patents, security
Companies: trend micro