Could Firmware Expiration Dates Fix The Internet Of Broken Things...Before People Get Hurt?

from the the-looming-global-IOT-shitstorm dept

If you hadn't noticed, the incredibly flimsy security in most Internet of Things devices has resulted in a security and privacy dumpster fire of epic proportions. And while recent, massive DDoS attacks like the one leveled against DNS provider DYN last year are just one symptom of this problem, most security analysts expect things to get significantly, dramatically worse before they get better. And by worse, most of them mean dramatically worse; as in these vulnerabilities are going to result in attacks on core infrastructure that will inevitably result in human deaths... at scale.

Estimates suggest that 21 billion to 50 billion IoT devices are expected to come online by 2020. That's 21 to 50 billion new attack vectors on homes, businesses and governments. And many of these are products that are too large to replace every year (cars, refrigerators, ovens) but are being manufactured by companies for whom software -- and more importantly firmware updates -- aren't a particular forte or priority.

To date, there are a number of solutions being proposed to tackle this explosion in poorly-secured devices, none of which seem to really solve the issue. Agencies like Homeland Security have issued a number of toothless standards the companies that are making these poorly-secured products are free to ignore. And efforts at regulating the space, assuming regulators could even craft sensible regulations without hindering the emerging sector in the first place, can similarly be ignored by overseas manufacturers.

In the wake of the Wannacry ransomware, University of Pennsylvania researcher Sandy Clark has proposed something along these lines: firmware expiration dates. Clark argues that we've already figured out how to standardize our relationships with automobiles, with mandated regular inspection, maintenance and repairs governed by manufacturer recalls, DOT highway maintenance, and annual owner-obligated inspections. As such, she suggests similar requirements be imposed on internet-connected devices:

A requirement that all IoT software be upgradeable throughout the expected lifetime of the product. Many IoT devices on the market right now contain software (firmware) that cannot be patched even against known vulnerabilities.

A minimum time limit by which manufacturers must issue patches or software upgrades to fix known vulnerabilities.

A minimum time limit for users to install patches or upgrades, perhaps this could be facilitated by insurance providers (perhaps discounts for automated patching, and different price points for different levels of risk)."

Of course, none of this would be easy, especially when you consider this is a global problem that needs coordinated, cross-government solutions in an era where agreement on much of anything is cumbersome. And like previous suggestions, there's no guarantee that whoever crafted these requirements would do a particularly good job, that overseas companies would be consistently willing to comply, or that these mandated software upgrades would actually improve device security. And imagine being responsible for determining all of this for the 50 billion looming internet connected devices worldwide?

That's why many networking engineers aren't looking so much at the devices as they are at the networks they run on. Network operators say they can design more intelligent networks that can quickly spot, de-prioritize, or quarantine infected devices before they contribute to the next Wannacry or historically-massive DDoS attack. But again, none of this is going to be easy, and it's going to require multi-pronged, multi-country, ultra-flexible solutions. And while we take the time to hash out whatever solution we ultimately adopt, keep in mind that the 50 million IoT device count projected by 2020 -- is expected to balloon to 82 billion by 2025.

Filed Under: expiration dates, iot, patches, recalls, sandy clark, security, vulnerabilities

Congressional Rep Pushes His 'Hack Back' Bill By Claiming It Would Have Prevented The WannaCry Ransomware Attack

from the yeah-probably-not dept

Legislator Tom Graves is pushing his cyber defense bill again. So far, his bill -- which we covered here in March -- is still in the drafting stages and has yet to be introduced. It has a unmemorable name (Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act) [but a much better acronym (ACDC)] and a handful of ideas that are questionable at best.

The bill would amend the CFAA to give companies the ability to "hack back" to shut down attacks and identify the attackers. It would not allow them to go on the offense proactively and it doesn't actually grant companies new statutory permissions. Instead, it provides them with an affirmative defense against CFAA-related charges, should someone decide to take them to court.

The good news about the bill's slow crawl is it's being rewritten before being introduced. According to the Financial Times, Graves and his team are consulting with cybersecurity experts to craft a better bill.

The Active Cyber Defense Certainty bill, co-sponsored with Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, is in its early stages. After consulting with cyber security executives at an event at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the bill is being redrafted to include safeguards such as the requirement for companies to notify law enforcement if they are using such techniques, so they can examine that they are being used responsibly.

However, Graves' consultation process seems to begin and end here. There are many more security experts out there who believe this bill will do more harm than good and there doesn't appear to have been much consultation with those who disagree with Graves' beliefs.

The other questionable aspect of this renewed push for hack-back legislation is Graves' belief this bill would have prevented something it likely wouldn't have: the WannaCry ransomware attack.

Mr Graves said he believed the WannaCry ransomware, that hit the UK’s National Health Service and US companies including FedEx, may have been prevented if his bill had already been passed. “I do believe it would have had a positive impact potentially preventing the spread to individuals throughout the US,” he said. “Our proposal is to empower individuals and companies to fight back basically and defend themselves during a cyber attack.”

First off, nothing prevented companies and individuals from defending themselves from these attacks. Well, something did prevent them from defending themselves adequately, but the two entities most at fault were the NSA and Microsoft, with the former's exploit making prodigious use of the latter's security holes. There are other intermediate defensive steps that might have been taken just in general, but Microsoft is the dominant force in business software and the NSA itself was concerned this exploit might be too powerful and result in too much collateral damage.

Second, hacking back wouldn't have halted the attack. What killed the attack wasn't an attempt to track down the ransomware purveyors but rather by examining the exploit itself. A security researcher accidentally found a kill switch for the malware: an unregistered domain name which he purchased to hopefully track the attack. It turns out it also stopped the attack. There was no legal change that is needed to enable that to happen. Even if Graves' bill were law, it would have had nothing to do with ending the WannaCry attack. Certainly this won't be the case in every attack, but the lessons learned from the WannaCry attack have almost nothing to do with the actions this legislator wants to make legal.

Filed Under: hack back, hackback, hacking back, tom graves, vulnerabilities, wannacry

NSA Was Concerned About Power Of Windows Exploit Long Before It Was Leaked

from the and-still-nothing-until-the-last-minute dept

The NSA's exploit toolkit has been weaponized to target critical systems all over the world. So much for the debate over the theoretical downside of undisclosed vulnerabilities. (It also inadvertently provided the perfect argument against encryption backdoors.) The real world has provided all the case study that's needed.

It appears the NSA finally engaged in the Vulnerabilities Equity Process -- not when it discovered the vulnerability, but rather when it became apparent the agency wouldn't be able to prevent it from being released to the public. What's happened recently has been devastating and Microsoft -- whose software was targeted -- has expressed its displeasure at the agency's inaction.

Maybe the agency will be a bit more forthcoming in the future. Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg of the Washington Post report former NSA employees and officials had concerns about the undisclosed exploit long before the Shadow Brokers gave it to the world.

When the National Security Agency began using a new hacking tool called EternalBlue, those entrusted with deploying it marveled at both its uncommon power and the widespread havoc it could wreak if it ever got loose.

Some officials even discussed whether the flaw was so dangerous they should reveal it to Microsoft, the company whose software the government was exploiting, according to former NSA employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue.

Officials called it "fishing with dynamite." The exploit gave the NSA access to so much on compromised computers, the agency obviously couldn't bear the thought of voluntarily giving up such a useful hacking tool. But when it was first deployed, some inside the agency felt the vulnerability might be too powerful to be left undisclosed.

But there were plenty of others who viewed disclosure as "disarmament." Somehow, despite three straight years of leaked documents, the NSA still felt it had everything under control. The Shadow Brokers NSA exploit auction made it clear the NSA was no better at securing its software stash than it was at keeping thousands of internal documents from wandering out the door.

The only upshot is the NSA has now witnessed what kind of damage its exploits can do in the wrong hands. Since the agency cannot possibly ensure this sort of thing won't happen again, the question now is how much of other people's security is the agency willing to sacrifice in the name of national security?

The NSA appears to believe it handled this as well as it could given the circumstances, but the outcome could have so much worse. The chain of events leading to the NSA's eventual disclosure helped minimize the collateral damage. It has very little to do with the steps the NSA took (or, more accurately, didn't take).

What if the Shadow Brokers had dumped the exploits in 2014, before the [US] government had begun to upgrade software on its computers? What if they had released them and Microsoft had no ready patch?

There's your intelligence community nightmare fuel. Had the vulnerability managed to take down US government hardware and software, the NSA would be facing even more criticism and scrutiny that it already is.

The NSA appears to only disclose vulnerabilities when forced to. It may possibly hand over those it finds to be of limited use. Former NSA head Keith Alexander says the agency turns over "90%" of the vulnerabilities it discovers, but that percentage seems inflated. The NSA spent years as "No Such Agency." It's only been the last four years that it's been forced to engage in more transparency and accountability, so it's tough to believe it's spent years proactively informing affected companies about the flaws in their products.

In any event, the NSA's second-guesswork will have do for now. Some legislators are hoping to shore up the vulnerabilities reporting process, but it's likely by the time it heads for the Oval Office desk, it will be riddled with with enough national security exceptions to make it useless. With the Shadow Brokers hinting they still have more dangerous exploits to release (including one affecting Windows 10), the decision to disclose these vulnerabilities will once again be informed by the NSA's inability to keep its hacking tools secure, rather than any internal examination of its hoarder mentality.

Filed Under: exploits, leaks, nsa, vep, vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities equities program, wannacry

Latest Exploit Dump By Shadow Brokers Contains Easy-To-Use Windows Exploits, Most Already Patched By Microsoft

from the menu-driven-God-Mode dept

The Shadow Brokers -- having failed to live up to half their name -- released more NSA exploits last week when it became apparent no one was willing to purchase the exploits from them. This dump was far more interesting than previous releases, as it contained a large number of Windows exploits and -- for some -- a very handy, easy-to-use front end for malware deployment.

This dump probably ruined a few Easter weekends at Microsoft, but not nearly as many as was first presumed. While the exploits targeted older versions of Windows, they would have caused trouble for government and corporate networks still relying those versions. Those targeting unsupported versions are the most dangerous, as those holes will never be patched. They're also the ones with the smallest user bases, so that mitigates the damage somewhat.

As Marcy Wheeler points out, the NSA had plenty of time to warn Microsoft about unpatched holes prior to the Shadow Brokers' latest dump.

That’s a critical detail for the debate going on on Twitter and in chats about how shitty it was for SB to release these files on Good Friday, just before (or for those with generous vacation schedules, at the beginning of) a holiday weekend. While those trying to defend against the files and those trying to exploit them are racing against the clock and each other, it is not the case that the folks at NSA got no warning. NSA has had, at a minimum, 96 days of warning, knowing that SB could drop the files at any time.

The big question, of course, is whether NSA told Microsoft what the files targeted. Certainly, Microsoft had not fully responded to that warning, as hackers have already gotten a number of these files to work.

Unlike the CIA dump happening at Wikileaks, the NSA had a pretty good idea what was contained in the Shadow Brokers stash. Microsoft, however, says it was never contacted by the NSA or "any agency" about the exploits ahead of their release.

Despite this statement, the exploits appear to have already been patched by Microsoft.

Today, Microsoft triaged a large release of exploits made publicly available by Shadow Brokers. Understandingly, customers have expressed concerns around the risk this disclosure potentially creates. Our engineers have investigated the disclosed exploits, and most of the exploits are already patched.

The most interesting patch on the list is MS17-010, released March 14th. It patched several remote code execution holes in older Windows versions. These patches weren't applied to test machines, resulting in the mistaken conclusion these vulnerabilities hadn't been fixed.

But the patch notes say nothing about who disclosed the vulnerabilities, which makes it an anomaly. Microsoft's denial, combined with its blank "acknowledgements" page, suggests the NSA itself warned the company about the vulnerabilities. It seems unlikely Shadow Brokers would have given Microsoft a heads up, as it hadn't warned any other affected vendor up to this point.

If so, the Vulnerabilities Equity Process sort of works. I mean, the NSA held onto these as long as it could, but finally informed the affected party when it became apparent it might have to share its "exclusive" exploits with the rest of the world. Better late than never, and certainly better when delivered ahead of a very public disclosure.

What's in the latest dump is now mostly useless. But not completely useless. There are still plenty of machines running older Microsoft software that are still vulnerable, many of them possessed by corporations and government agencies. If the software is old enough, the security holes are permanent.

Not that those with the latest and greatest should rest easy. The NSA hasn't stopped producing and purchasing exploits. The SB stash was a few years old. Current Microsoft software remains under attack from state intelligence agencies and criminals. But this dump of tools shows just how powerful the NSA's toolkit is -- one made even more dangerous by its apparent ease of use. It makes exploit delivery possible for anyone, not just those with a very specific skillset.

Filed Under: 0days, exploits, hacks, nsa, shadow brokers, vep, vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities equities process, windows
Companies: microsoft

CIA Leak Shows Mobile Phones Vulnerable, Not Encryption

from the and-cia-isn't-helping dept

As you've probably heard by now, this morning Wikileaks started releasing a new cache of information regarding CIA hacking tools. This is interesting on a variety of levels, but many of the reports focus on the claims that encrypted chat apps like Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram may be compromised. See the top two links in this screenshot:

Wikileaks itself may have contributed to this view with the following paragraph in its release:

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

But the details don't seem to show that those apps are compromised, so much as that Android and iOS devices are compromised. It's always been true that if someone can get into your phone, the encryption scheme you use doesn't matter, because they can just pull keystrokes or grab data before you encrypt it -- in the same way that someone looking over your shoulder can read your messages as well. That's not a fault of the encryption or the app, but of the environment in which you're using the app itself.

And that should really be the bigger concern here. Over the years, nearly all of the focus on hacking mobile phones has been on the NSA and its capabilities, rather than the CIA. But it's now clear that the CIA has its own operations, akin to the NSA's hacking operations (kinda makes you wonder why we need that overlap). Except that the CIA's hacking team seems almost entirely unconcerned with following the federal government's rules on letting private companies know about vulnerabilities they've discovered.

Remember, the Obama White House put in place what it called a Vulnerabilities Equities Program in which the intelligence community is supposed to default to letting private companies know about vulnerabilities. And, yes, this was always something of a joke as there was a giant loophole involving "except for a clear national security or law enforcement need" that the NSA basically used to withhold vulnerabilities all the time. Still, at least the NSA appeared to get around to revealing some vulnerabilities eventually (probably once they were no longer useful).

Here, however, it looks like the CIA was hoarding some really serious vulnerabilities with wild abandon. In a chart released by Wikileaks you see that the CIA is getting these vulnerabilities from a variety of sources. Some it's finding itself, some it's purchasing, and some are shared via other agencies, such as the NSA or the UK's GCHQ. As Ed Snowden notes, there is now clear evidence (which many suspected, but which had not been proven) that the US government was secretly paying to keep US software unsafe and vulnerable. That's really dangerous. It's putting basically everyone in much more serious danger, just so the CIA, NSA and others can get in when they want to:

This is why the whole conversation about mandating backdoors and "going dark" was so dangerous in the first place. Those were plans to force even more of these vulnerabilities into the wild, just for the very very rare cases where they were needed by law enforcement or intelligence.

At a time when the President is suddenly acting as if he's concerned about domestic surveillance (at least of himself), perhaps now would be a good time to crack down on this kind of stuff. I'm not holding my breath -- but, for now, we're getting a lot more insight into the CIA's electronic surveillance methods, and it sounds like there's more to come.

Filed Under: cia, encryption, hacking, nsa, phones, surveillance, vep, vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities equities program
Companies: wikileaks

'Nice Internet You've Got There... You Wouldn't Want Something To Happen To It...'

from the this-is-no-longer-theoretical dept

Last month, we wrote about Bruce Schneier's warning that certain unknown parties were carefully testing ways to take down the internet. They were doing carefully configured DDoS attacks, testing core internet infrastructure, focusing on key DNS servers. And, of course, we've also been talking about the rise of truly massive DDoS attacks, thanks to poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and ancient, unpatched bugs.

That all came to a head this morning when large chunks of the internet went down for about two hours, thanks to a massive DDoS attack targeting managed DNS provider Dyn. Most of the down sites are back (I'm still having trouble reaching Twitter), but it was pretty widespread, and lots of big name sites all went down. Just check out this screenshot from Downdetector showing the outages on a bunch of sites: You'll see not all of them have downtime (and the big ISPs, as always, show lots of complaints about downtimes), but a ton of those sites show a giant spike in downtime for a few hours.

So, once again, we'd like to point out that this is as problem that the internet community needs to start solving now. There's been a theoretical threat for a while, but it's no longer so theoretical. Yes, some people point out that this is a difficult thing to deal with. If you're pointing people to websites, even if we were to move to a more distributed system, there are almost always some kinds of chokepoints, and those with malicious intent will always, eventually, target those chokepoints. But there has to be a better way -- because if there isn't, this kind of thing is going to become a lot worse.

Filed Under: attack, ddos, dns, internet, vulnerabilities
Companies: dyn

If Someone Is Testing Ways To Take Down The Internet, Perhaps It's Time To Build A Stronger Internet

from the let's-get-it-done dept

There's been a lot of buzz over respected computer security expert Bruce Schneier recently talking about how someone, or some organization, or (most likely) some state actor, is running a series of tests that appear to be probing for ways to take down the entire internet. Basically, a bunch of critical infrastructure providers have noticed some interesting attacks on their systems that look like they're probing to determine defenses.

Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they're used to seeing. They last longer. They're more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure.

The attacks are also configured in such a way as to see what the company's total defenses are. There are many different ways to launch a DDoS attacks. The more attack vectors you employ simultaneously, the more different defenses the defender has to counter with. These companies are seeing more attacks using three or four different vectors. This means that the companies have to use everything they've got to defend themselves. They can't hold anything back. They're forced to demonstrate their defense capabilities for the attacker.

This article is getting a collective "oh, shit, that's bad" kind of reaction from many online -- and that's about right. But, shouldn't it also be something of a call to action to build a better system? In many ways, it's still incredible that the internet actually works. There are still elements that feel held together by duct tape and handshake agreements. And while it's been surprisingly resilient, that doesn't mean that it needs to remain that way.

Schneier notes that there's "nothing, really" that can be done about these tests -- and that's true in the short term. But it seems, to me, like it should be setting off alarm bells for people to rethink how the internet is built -- and to make things even more distributed and less subject to attacks on "critical infrastructure." People talk about how the internet was originally supposed to be designed to withstand a nuclear attack and keep working. But, the reality has always been that there are a few choke points. Seems like now would be a good time to start fixing things so that the choke points are no longer so critical.

Filed Under: attack, bruce schneier, cybersecurity, internet, vulnerabilities

Apple Updates iOS To Close Three Separate 0days That Were Being Exploited

from the throw-away-your-phone dept

As you may have heard, if you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, even iPod Touch) you should be updating your devices, like a few hours ago. Seriously, if you haven't done it yet, stop reading and go update. The story behind this update is quite incredible, and is detailed in a great article over at Motherboard by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. Basically after someone (most likely a gov't) targeted Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates with a slightly questionable text (urging him to click on a link to get info about prison torture), a team of folks from Citizen Lab (who have exposed lots of questionable malware) and Lookout (anti-malware company) got to work on the text and figured out what it did. And, basically the short version is that the single click exploits three separate 0days vulnerabilities to effectively take over your phone in secret. All of it. It secretly jailbreaks the phone without you knowing it and then accesses basically everything.

“It basically steals all the information on your phone, it intercepts every call, it intercepts every text message, it steals all the emails, the contacts, the FaceTime calls. It also basically backdoors every communications mechanism you have on the phone,” Murray explained. “It steals all the information in the Gmail app, all the Facebook messages, all the Facebook information, your Facebook contacts, everything from Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat, Telegram—you name it.”

So that's great.

The researches believe they've tracked back the exploit to a secretive hacking company called NSO Group. The full Citizen Lab writeup on all of this is quite fascinating as well. They estimate that this exploit from NSO probably costs in the range of a million dollars on the market, though obviously it's closed now. That doesn't mean that NSO or others don't have other exploits up their sleeves.

The report also notes that this kind of exploit is probably just used by nation states right now, but there's nothing to say that it couldn't move down the stack before too long, letting all sorts of mischievous characters look to basically completely pwn your phone. Pretty scary stuff, and yet another reminder of why it's so dangerous that folks like the NSA are hoarding 0days, rather than revealing them, and that the FBI is trying to force tech companies to break encryption and other tools that are necessary to block these kinds of attacks.

Filed Under: 0days, exploits, hacking, human rights, ios, iphone, surveillance, vulnerabilities
Companies: citizen lab, lookout, nso

To The NSA, The Word 'Security' Is Synonymous With 'Gaping, Unpatched Holes In US Developers' Software'

from the Vulnerability-EXPLOITATION-Process dept

A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer has taken to LinkedIn to point out to all of us griping about the broken Vulnerability Equities Process -- exposed by hackers holding NSA zero-days -- have it all wrong. Michael Tanji says the NSA isn't here to protect developers from malicious attacks. It never was and it's never going to be.

Intelligence agencies exist to gather information, analyze it, and deliver their findings to policymakers so that they can make decisions about how to deal with threats to the nation. Period. You can, and agencies often do, dress this up and expand on it in order to motivate the workforce, or more likely grab more money and authority, but when it comes down to it, stealing and making sense of other people’s information is the job. Doing code reviews and QA for Cisco is not the mission.

Suck it up, Cisco. That gaping hole uncovered by the Shadow Brokers was discovered at least three years ago by the NSA and if it chose not to tell you about it, it had its reasons. Namely: national security.

The Obama administration made sympathetic noises in the wake of the Snowden leaks, suggesting the NSA err on the side of disclosure. It simultaneously gave the agency no reason to ever do that by appending "unless national security, etc." to the statement.

But part of the phrase "national security" is the word "security." (And the other part -- "national" -- suggests this directive also covers protecting US companies from attacks, not just the more amorphous "American public.") Allowing tech companies who provide network security software and hardware to other prime hacking targets to remain unaware of security holes doesn't exactly serve the nation or its security. So, while Tanji may claim the NSA isn't in the QA business, it sort of is. The thing is the NSA prefers to exploit QA issues, rather than give affected developers a chance to patch them.

And if an NSA operative left behind a bag of tech tools in a compromised server, it really doesn't do much for the argument that the government can be trusted with encryption backdoors -- the sort of thing FBI Director James Comey is still hoping will materialize as a result of his never ending "going dark" sales pitch. Julian Sanchez, writing for Cato, points out the NSA's mistake should lead to some pretty severe trust issues.

This hack also ought to give pause to anyone swayed by the government’s assurances that we can mandate government backdoors in encryption software and services, allowing the “good guys” (law enforcement and intelligence agencies) to access the communications of criminals and terrorists without compromising the security of millions of innocent users. If even the NSA’s most closely guarded hacking tools cannot be secured, why would any reasonable person believe that keys to cryptographic backdoors could be adequately protected by far less sophisticated law enforcement agencies? The Equation Group hack is a disturbingly concrete demonstration of what network security experts have been saying all along: Once you create a backdoor, there is no realistic way to guarantee that only the good guys will be able to walk through it.

So, that's one huge problem with both the hoarding of exploits and the NSA's refusal to actually participate in the Vulnerability Equities Process. The definition the NSA has chosen for "national security" doesn't mesh with statements made by its cybersecurity overseers.

Back in 2014, federal cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel insisted in a post on the White House blog that the process is strongly weighted in favor of disclosure. The government, he assured the public, understands that “[b]uilding up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest.”

Maybe things have changed in the past couple of years, but they haven't changed as much as Michael Tanji claims. He states that the NSA is no longer charged with playing cyber-defense.

The one element in the intelligence community that was charged with supporting defense is no more. I didn’t like it then, and it seems pretty damn foolish now, but there you are, all in the name of “agility.” NSA’s IAD had the potential to do the things that all the security and privacy pundits imagine should be done for the private sector, but their job was still keeping Uncle Sam secure, not Wal-Mart.

That's simply not true. The NSA may secretly wish it had been completely rerouted to "attack" mode. That would more easily justify the hoarding of vulnerabilities and its ongoing refusal to hand over info to affected developers. But it's still supposed to be playing defense -- which means it has an obligation to both the American public who use software/hardware the NSA would rather see left unpatched, as well as the developers it's purposefully leaving open to malicious attacks.

The NSA has decided the best way to handle these competing directives is to muddy the waters by making them inseparable.

Because computers are now the easiest way to spy on people, and because everyone — even U.S. adversaries — uses the same Internet, there has long been what officials like to call a "healthy" or "creative" tension between the foreign espionage mission and the information assurance mission of the NSA.

Crudely put, the IA's cyber mission is to find security holes in Internet infrastructure and common software and patch them; the signals intelligence mission is to find the same holes and keep them open as long as possible so they can be used to spy on foreigners.

When the two directorates merge, some fear that the much larger and better funded signals intelligence mission will simply absorb the IA mission.

As it stands now, the offensive side of the NSA's cybersquad is roughly twice the size of its defensive team -- which clearly indicates which end of the equation the NSA believes is more important to its national security mission.

The NSA's actions in regards to the Vulnerability Equities Process shows it believes some forms of national security are more equal than others. It's far more interested in ensuring its collections continue to be fed than it is with patching security holes -- holes it has often created -- that affect millions of US citizens and dozens of hacker-tempting firms.

It also shows the government is not to be trusted when it demands "good guy only" access. It can't protect the backdoors it's already created and it has only the slightest interest in protecting the nation from the bad guys that will inevitably find its secret entrances.

Filed Under: defense, hacking, nsa, offense, protection, vep, vulnerabilities

Why Are The Congressional Intelligence Committees So Quiet On The NSA Malware Leaks?

from the speak-up,-feinstein,-we-can't-hear-you dept

Last week, we wrote about the leak of various NSA hacking tools, that showed it had zero-day exploits for a bunch of hardware, including some from Cisco. This has raised some concerns about how long the NSA sat on these vulnerabilities without telling companies -- along with reaffirming what many people already suspected: that the supposed "Vulnerabilities Equities Program" (VEP), in which the NSA is supposed to disclose the vulnerabilities it finds to the companies to patch, is a complete joke.

But Marcy Wheeler has another important point about all of this. When the Snowden documents originally leaked three plus years ago, the various top members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees -- the so-called Gang of Four -- were quick to speak out (and condemn) the leak. But, oddly, this time they're staying pretty quiet.

Within hours of the first Snowden leak, Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers had issued statements about the phone dragnet. As far as I’ve seen, Adam Schiff is the only Gang of Four member who has weighed in on this

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also spoke with Mary Louise. He said he couldn’t comment on the accuracy of any reports about the leak.

But he said, “If these allegations were true, I’d be very concerned about the impact on the intelligence community. I’d also obviously want to know who the responsible parties were. … If this were a Russian actor — and again, this is multiple ‘ifs’ here — we’d have to ask what is causing this escalation.”

Say, Congressman Schiff. Aren’t you the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and couldn’t you hold some hearings to get to the bottom of this?

Meanwhile, both Feinstein (who is the only Gang of Four member not campaigning for reelection right now) and Richard Burr have been weighing in on recent events, but not the Shadow Brokers release.

If the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were really about "oversight" of the NSA, then shouldn't they have jumped on this immediately? Shouldn't they be looking into how the NSA manages the VEP? Shouldn't they be looking into how these tools got out? Why are they just staying silent or giving meaningless statements like Schiff's?

Filed Under: 0days, adam schiff, devin nunes, dianne feinstein, house intelligence committee, leak, malware, nsa, richard burr, senate intelligence committee, vep, vulnerabilities