… was caused by a malware-loaded USB Flash Drive. Plugging the cigarette-lighter-sized flash drive into an American military laptop at a base in the Middle East amounted to “a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” according to William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of defense.
Many security experts as well as flash drive vendors have known about this event for a long time, but the information was not made public until this week when Mr. Lynn’s article was published in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. This is one of the reasons behind the suspension of removable flash media (not just USB flash drives) by the Department of Defense (DoD) in November 0f 2008.
The DoD discovered that banning the use of removable flash media was pretty painful, since many operations, such as loading of targeting information, depended on them. On February 12, 2010, after a lot of research and implementation of new processes and procedures, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) issued an all-DOD message allowing “the limited return to use of memory sticks and thumb drives in all DOD NIPRNET, SIPRNET and JWICS computers using Windows operating systems.” The caveat is that the devices must be government “procured and owned,” the command said.
That means no more picking up a flash drive tchotchke at a trade show or running down to Best Buy or your local electronics store to pick up a drive to use within the DoD. Your organization must buy, provision, distribute, and manage the device which must appear on the DoD list of approved devices.
The history of my employer, SPYRUS, is tightly coupled to the US Government. In 1992 SPYRUS partnered with Microsoft and DoD to develop the first secure government email system using our Fortezza hardware encryption device. In 2003, SPYRUS began its crypto modernization program, focusing on building devices using advanced cryptographic algorithms including ECC, AES, and SHA-2. In 2004, NIST announced a set of cryptographic algorithms that were approved to protect all unclassified and most classified information and called it Suite B. The announcement mentioned that SPYRUS has already implemented the suite.
The Hydra Privacy Card™ Personal Encryption Device is the first and only USB encrypting flash drapproved by the US government to protect tactical data at the SECRET level and below whe used with the approved operational security doctrine.
Hydra PC Personal Encryption Device
Every file is encrypted with a unique key, so even if you did manage to crack one file, you would have to start from scratch to attack the next file. Unlike other USB flash drives, The Personal Encryption Device can be locked down to one or more PCs, prevent the connection of other USB storage devices, is infinitely expandable, and can protect data no matter where it is stored.
You see, the Personal Encryption Device uses replaceable microSD cards. When you run out of space, just pop another card into the device and keep going. Is your file too big to store on a microSD card, or you just want access to it from another location? You can put the encrypted file anywhere you like-including on the Internet, since it cannot be decrypted without the Personal Encryption Device that encrypted it.
Hydra PC Digital Attache
The Hydra Privacy Card™ Digital Attaché does everything that the Personal Encryption Device can do and more. You can partition the memory card and add sharing certificates to files or memory cards for secure sharing. When you encrypt a file or card, you decide who else is allowed to access it and you ask them to send you their sharing certificate to embed within the file. Again, files can securely be stored anywhere because the files can only be decrypted by the device that encrypted the file and the devices with which the file is shared.
Finally and very important are non-repudiation and data containment. The first simply means that the data has not been altered and you can prove who encrypted the file and when they encrypted it. The second is sometimes called DLP or data leakage prevention.
SPYRUS implements non-repudiation by sealing the file when it is encrypted. First the plaintext is hashed, optionally compressed, then encrypted. The device ID and timestamp are embedded and the whole file is hashed again. This means that neither the plaintext nor ciphertext can be altered. What is decrypted must be what was encrypted and the validity of the file can be validated at any time without needing to decrypt the contents.
Data containment is actually pretty amazing. SPYRUS implements a K of N or quorum scheme. Keys are never stored anywhere but are reconstituted as required. To reconstitute a key, you need a specific set of pieces to come together. One of them is the user’s password. Others come from inside the hardware of the device, and one of them can come from an authorized PC. Yes, Hydra Privacy Card devices cannot be unlocked by the user even if they know the password unless the rest of the quorum is present.
For the DoD (remember the DoD? That’s how this article started…), this means that Hydra Privacy Card devices cannot be accessed outside of the approved DoD systems either to read information or put a virus onto it. And that’s pretty darn cool in my opinion!
Hydra Privacy Card devices are available on many government contracts including one that I cannot even talk about, and us civilians can buy one at Amazon.
The security world is agog over new malware that has been spreading via USB storage devices and is programmed to steal data from systems running specific software used in utilities and industrial manufacturing plants.
The worm, dubbed Stuxnet, propagates by exploiting a hole in all versions of Microsoft Windows in the code that processes shortcut files, ending in “.lnk,” according to a Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog post. Merely browsing to the removable media drive using an application that displays shortcut icons, such as Windows Explorer, will run the malware without the user clicking on the icons. The worm infects USB storage devices or other removable storage devices that are subsequently connected to the infected machine. Those USB storage devices then infect other machines much like the common cold is spread by infected people sneezing into their hands and then touching door knobs that others are handling. Symantec researchers said they are seeing between 8,000 and 9,000 infection attempts a day.
Once the machine is infected, a Trojan looks to see if the computer it lands on is running Siemens’ Simatic WinCC software. The malware then uses a default password that is hard-coded into the software to access the control system’s Microsoft SQL database.
Just Say No To Windows?
Now it would be easy to say that “friends don’t let friends use Windows” but that is not the solution, or you might wonder why a well-known default password is hard-coded into an application that is running critical infrastructure. Windows is here to stay so you better have a plan to live with it, but using default hard-coded passwords is somewhere near the top of the list of what not to do. I won’t even go there.
What About Changing The Default Siemens Password?
Siemens spokesman Michael Krampe says don’t do it. Changing the password would interrupt communications between the WinCC software and the Microsoft SQL database and interfere with the operations. Siemens is examining ways to increase the security of the authentication procedures, he said.
Ban USB Storage Devices?
If the problem is that the worm spreads by the connection of USB storage devices, then the knee jerk solution is to ban the use of USB storage devices on SCADA systems. The US Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Task Force Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) banned the use of USB flash drives within their networks about 18 month ago due to this exact problem–malware being introduced from the outside.
But because the DoD realized that productivity dropped substantially after the ban was put in place, it was recently modified, with several provisos; 1) The drives must be on an approved list; 2) They must be purchased and issued by the organization using them and 3) There must be approved policies and procedures for their use. Again, the biggest problem is malware coming in from the outside, and even a secure, encrypted USB drive cannot help with that problem.
Security Domains
The only was to prevent the spread of malware on USB storage devices from system to system is to lock them down to a specific system or to a set of systems.
Security Domains
You can see that I have created red, blue, and green security domains in the illustration above. When I bring a new USB storage device into my organization, I assign it to one or more of the security domains, thus restricting the use of the device to only the systems defined as part of the domain.
For example, a storage device in the red domain can only connect to computers in the red domain. A device assigned to the red and green domains can connect and move information between red and green systems. Because moving information between domains is risky, I might configure only one device for cross-domain transfer and assign it to a trusted employee. If information shows up on the red domain that I know belongs only on the green domain, I know who must have moved it.
Now take this one step further; if a system is outside of the three domains, the USB storage device will not mount on it and if a rogue device comes into my organization it cannot be mounted on my systems. So I have limited what can come in to my organization and what can go out of my organization.
Available Today
If you’re thinking that it would be cool if such a device existed then I would like to point you to the SPYRUS Hydra Privacy Card (Hydra PC) devices because this is exactly what they are designed to do. They keep secure information inside of your organization and keep insecure information (such as malware) out.
In fact, the Hydra PC Personal Encryption Device is the only COTS USB flash drive approved by the USA National Security Agency (NSA) to carry tactical data at the SECRET level and below, when operated in accordance with the approved security doctrine.
Comments?
A poster named Nexus is claiming that he removed the protective epoxy coating from an IronKey secure USB flash drive and it still works. Photos of the chips on the device are shown here and here. What is interesting to me is that to get the FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification that the device has, it is supposed to have a ”Hard opaque potting material encapsulation of multiple chip circuitry embodiment or strong enclosure with removal/penetration attempts causing serious damage.” That is, the device should erase (zeroize) itself to prevent access to the protected contents including the encryption keys.
Once the epoxy is removed, an attacker has access to all of the chips and interconnects between them. This allows an attack against the encryption engine in addition to being able to read out the data on the memory chips. So I guess that while the IronKey has a very nice looking case that seems to be substantial when held in your hand, its data protection is only skin-deep—and that is really scary.
Comments?
Ron LaPedis, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, MBCP, MBCI
Steve Layman
Steve Layman, one of my friends and a Hewlett-Packard co-worker, died of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma a couple of weeks ago a month short of his 44th birthday and four months short of his tenth wedding anniversary. My dad died of the same disease when he was 44. But this is not a story about Steve nor of my father, but is a call to action for anyone reading my blog.
You see, I have a hereditary condition called Celiac Disease and a study published in the January 2009 issue of the journal Gastroenterology finds that patients with celiac disease and their family members have an increased risk of developing lymphomas.
Symptoms include chronic foul-smelling diarrhea, failure to thrive, and fatigue, but these may be absent while symptoms in other organ systems have been described, such as thyroid conditions, Crohn’s disease, IBS, and many more.
Celiac disease is caused by a reaction to gliadin, a gluten protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. Upon exposure to gliadin, and other similar protiens, the enzyme tissue transglutaminase modifies the protein, and the immune system cross-reacts with the small-bowel tissue, causing an inflammatory reaction which causes the villi lining the small intestine to die off. The only known effective treatment is a lifelong gluten-free diet.
According to my mother, my father showed none of the symptoms that I did before I was diagnosed, but a growing portion of diagnoses are being made in people with no outward sign of the disease as a result of increased screening. Although it remains unclear what the actual link between celiac and lymphoma is, the researchers speculate that celiac disease leads to inflammation and that inflammation drives the development of lymphomas.
The researchers suggest two key messages from the findings. First, that early detection of celiac disease can help decrease the risk of developing lymphoma. This was evident when researchers examined the link between celiac and lymphoma in the 1970s and compared it to rates today.
What’s more interesting to me is that people with a family history of celiac disease have a higher risk of developing lymphoma, which may suggest an “underlying mechanism that leads to both celiac disease and lymphoma.” Well, that’s nice to know.
So what’s the bottom line? If you have any problems whatsoever digesting wheat, or you have any of the symptoms listed above, get tested for celiac disease. And if you’re positive, routinely test your family members. An early diagnosis and treatment with a gluten-free diet could help prevent developing cancer later in life.
And as for the title of this blog posting? Say “Silly Yak” quickly and have someone else tell you what they heard.
Several weeks ago I blogged about several brands of USB flash drives which were all breached in the same way. The rumor mill has it that all of these drives were OEM’d from SanDisk, whose drives have been subject to other hacks in the past.
SanDisk and Verbatim maintain that a software update is sufficient to render their devices once again secure, but Kingston announced in December that “the best way to address this problem is to offer our customers replacement units that incorporate newer and stronger security architecture,” said John Holland, vice president, U.S. sales.
On January 27, Kingston announced the replacement drive. “The DataTraveler 5000 delivers unsurpassed levels of security and encryption to government and enterprise customers,” said Mark Akoubian, business manager, Secure USB Products, Kingston. “This portable data solution represents state-of-the-art data protection while providing end users with the simplicity of plug and play.”
The DataTraveler 5000 utilizes patented Secured by SPYRUS™ technology. According to SPYRUS, their Hydra PC was the first and is still the only USB flash device to pass both NSA verification for classified use and be FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated. It’s just a guess, but if the NSA verifies a device for classified uses, it’s probably done a bit’o'homework and the device is pretty darn secure.
Secured By SPYRUS
In fact, I worked with SPYRUS while I was at a previous company and was pretty impressed with what they were doing. So impressed that when I was offered the opportunity to join them on the same day that the RSA 2010 security conference opens, I accepted.
At RSA we will be demonstrating the HYDRA PC™ Secure Pocket Drive, which runs Microsoft Windows Embedded. This Windows-on-a-stick reboots and takes control of your PC and uses the mouse, keyboard, display, and RAM to create a hack-proof computing environment. Come by the Kingston or OATH booths (351 and 2023 respectively) to see it in action.
Seacliff Partners International, LLC is not going away by any means, but if I can convince SPYRUS to start a blog, I’ll be doing a lot more over there. Until then, see you back here soon.
On Saturday, February 20th at approximately 2:20 p.m. Mountain Time, the shared server that my Internet domain is on experienced a hardware failure as a result of an annual fire system inspection at WestHost’s Data Center (DC). An inadvertent release of Inergen (a fire suppression product) was triggered by an actuator that was not removed by the vendor as required in the fire suppression pre-test checklist. Not all servers were affected but mine was.
My website was disappearing a few pages at a time before it disappeared completely as the RAID disk systems were powered down followed by the server. I figured that this was not a big deal as I keep backups of my entire site including my email and WordPress blogging system. What I didn’t count on was that:
- email sent to me while my server was down was being bounced
- they weren’t answering trouble tickets nor picking up the phone
- I had no idea what server my account was on so the status board was useless to me
- When I finally talked to them they would not allow me to restore my account to another server
While bouncing email is not a good thing, at least I only had my website there and wasn’t running my actual business in the cloud. I also have a backup email account at a different ISP (thank you Apple MobileMe!). Now imagine this event happened at Salesforce, Amazon, GoogleDocs, or Azure where I was running my business applications and not just a website. Do you have a contingency plan for an outage of your cloud-based business applications?
I’m an all Macintosh shop and I would rather take my chances in-house where I can pop down the street to buy a new Xserve, MacPro, or iMac and restore my backups myself. If your business is in the cloud, you may want to be thinking about having a backup at another provider or in house, even if you need to recover selectively.
A number of USB Flash Drive (USB Key) vendors sell drives which encrypt your information so that if the drive falls into the wrong hands, the information on them cannot be read. Some drives use software encryption (where the data is encrypted on the PC before being written to the drive), while others implement hardware encryption where the data is sent to the drive to be encrypted. Hardware encryption is considered to be more secure because the encryption key never leaves the drive. The figure shows a secure drive which has a crypto processor and a secure storage area which holds information which only the processor can access.
Secure Flash Drive
No matter the encryption method, when the drive is inserted into a PC, an application asks the user to enter their password to unlock the drive. Some drives, such as the SanDisk U3 series, have an embedded CDROM image which is mounted when the drive is inserted and the unlock program is run automatically by Microsoft Windows. Other drives use software which must be pre-installed or is present on an unlocked portion of the drive so that it can be run manually.
On January 4, 2010, it was widely reported that certain hardware-encrypted USB flash drives had been hacked. This is not exactly true since it was really the unlocking software which was hacked. Simply put, these drives had unlocking software which would accept your password, validate it within the PC, then send an unlock signal to the drive. The problem is that the unlock signal had nothing to do with the password. Let me explain.
As Easy As Opening an Electric Garage Door
Think of a residential electric garage door opener. You have a button inside your house to open it which looks something like a doorbell. In fact, it works the same way – when you press the button, it completes a circuit which opens the door. Now put a numeric keypad on the outside of the house so that you can open the door when you come back from a walk. You enter a code and if the code is correct, the door opens. Just like the switch inside, the keypad completes a circuit. If you pry the keypad off of the wall, you will see the wires that complete the circuit when the correct code is entered. To open the door you just need to connect the wires. So much for selecting a good code!
In essence, this is what the experts at security firm SySS did to unlock the The Kingston DataTraveler BlackBox, SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise FIPS Edition and Verbatim Corporate Secure FIPS Edition drives. All of these drives support AES 256-bit hardware encryption. Since the AES 256-bit hardware encryption is pretty much uncrackable, they decided to crack the password entry mechanism.
When analyzing the Windows drive unlock program, the SySS security experts found a rather blatant flaw that slipped through testers’ nets. During a successful authorization procedure the program always sends the same character string to the drive after entry of a valid password. Going back to the garage door analogy, the Windows program ‘connects the wires’ to unlock the drive. The SySS experts wrote a small program which would ensure that the appropriate string was sent to the drive, irrespective of the password entered. As a result, they gained immediate access to the data on the drive.
The Vendors Respond
When notified by SySS about this worst case security scenario, the respective vendors responded quite differently. Kingston started a recall of the affected products; SanDisk and Verbatim issued fuzzy security bulletins about a ‘potential vulnerability in the access control application’ and provided a software update. When asked about the risk to European companies by heise Security, Verbatim Europe said that none of the affected drives have been sold in Europe – and that none will be shipped before the hole has been closed.
On the other hand, IronKey responded that their security analysts have analyzed the vulnerabilities that have been reported and that their products do not suffer from this vulnerability. This is because IronKey devices verify the correctness of a user’s password in hardware on the device. The security of IronKey devices does not depend on software on the host PC, which as this attack illustrates, easily can be tampered with.
FIPS 140-2
Journalists are asking how USB Flash drives that exhibit such a serious security hole were given FIPS 140-2 certification. A standard which was authored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and accepted by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of the Government of Canada.
Even though cryptographic products which have not received this certification are ineligible for government use in the USA and Canada, it is a minimum standard, and does not guarantee that a product is secure. Neither is it a substitute for having deep technical expertise in the design, implementation, and use of a security product.
Many business executives think that data security means
data encryption. The reality is that encryption is a small part of securing data, especially that which is on portable storage devices. Deep architectural knowledge is required in the areas of password management, authentication, encryption key management, roles and services, design assurance and physical security. It is vitally important that security vendors apply proper security architecture and review to their designs, and not just rely on the FIPS review process.
What Did We Learn From This?
In summary, a secure flash drive implementation was felled by an insecure unlocking mechanism. SySS asked the questions that others somehow missed. Security is not a point solution nor can it be implemented in a vacuum. Your company’s security must be dealt with holistically and if you don’t have experts on your staff, then find the experts you need before you need them. Don’t be afraid to ask embarrassing questions of your vendors and write damages recovery into your contract. The data you save may be your own.
Comments? I’d love to hear them.
Ron LaPedis, MBCP, MBCI, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP
Founder and Principal
Seacliff Partners International, LLC
President Obama said that there were “systemic and human failures” that prevented the government from stopping Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted terror attack. A lot of the talk has been about watch lists and information not being shared amongst agencies.
But why is a terrorist like SPAM?
- There seem to be more of them every day
- You miss some which are bad
- You flag some which are good
While politicians are posturing, a lot of US citizens are wondering what’s so hard about catching terrorists. I mean, it’s obvious when you see one, right? But while SPAM isn’t as deadly as a terrorist, SPAM filtering provides a good comparison for why we cannot keep out 100% of the bad guys while not bothering the good guys. Most likely your Internet Service Provider (ISP) runs a SPAM filter to prevent messages from getting to your PC. And your PC email program probably has a local SPAM filter which moves SPAM email from your Inbox to a SPAM folder.
I am guessing that you scan your SPAM folder a couple times a day looking for legitimate emails which somehow got filtered and you also get ticked off when you see a SPAM email in your Inbox. If someone has ever called you to find out why you didn’t answer their email and you said that you never received it, chances are that your ISP deleted the email as SPAM and it never reached you. If a legitimate email is stopped at the ISP or winds up in your SPAM folder, this is called a false positive and means that a good email was treated as if it were SPAM. This would be like the TSA doing an extra security check on a person who is not a threat.
On the other hand, if a SPAM email winds up in your Inbox, this is called a false negative because it was treated as if is were legitimate, just like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab being allowed on an airplane.
It’s A Trade Off
Security, like your SPAM filter, is a trade off. It is near impossible to get it just right. You are either too tight (lots of false positives) or too loose (lots of false negatives). The only way to prevent every single SPAM email from showing up in your Inbox, or prevent any terrorist from getting on an airplane is to prevent any email from showing up in your Inbox or not allowing anyone to get on an airplane. While you will never hear a politician say it, there is no such thing as 100% security. Even the strictest police states on the face of the earth, Nazi Germany and later on East Germany, couldn’t achieve 100% security. Witness the French Underground and the number of people who managed to escape to the West.
According to March 2009 article in USA Today, the government’s terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007. Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations. Each entry on this list is similar to an entry in a SPAM filter. Every time an email comes in for you, the sender is checked to see if it is on the black list and if it is, the email is deleted. The problem is that innocent senders and innocent people can wind up on the list either because their name is similar to someone else’s or by mistake (how did Senator Ted Kennedy ever get on the list? We’ll never know).
Do The Best You Can
I have worked with a lot of FBI agents and found them to be dedicated, hard working individuals. Each of them believes that they are on the front lines protecting US Citizens and take their job seriously. But you still need to remember that security is a trade off. Unless you want to lose any semblance of liberty, privacy, and civil rights, you cannot have 100% security. Even the Israelis know this. When a bomb goes off they tend to the dead and injured, clean up the mess, and are back in business in a few hours.
Bad stuff happens, and all of it cannot be stopped. While the system let Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab get on the plane, the system also worked through the quick action of a single person who was aware of his surroundings. What were Abdulmutallab’s seat mates doing, that someone had to jump over a row of people to get to him?
In 1698, Algernon Sydney stated that, “God helps those who help themselves.” Even John F. Kennedy told us, “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” So ask not how your country can protect you 100% of the time, but ask what you need to do to help protect yourself and your country. And don’t just pray to God for help, take action to help yourself. Be like Jasper Schuringa - aware of your surroundings and ready to take action. Only you can protect yourself and those around you.
It is a basic tenant of defense that it is impossible to guard everything from every attacker. That is, the guards cannot be everywhere all of the time. If 100 people are trying to get in, and 10 people are trying to keep them out, the chances are high that one or more will get in. That’s just the way it goes.
No matter what we do as a government or as a people, there are some who will hate us and try to attack us. That cannot be changed either. The world has always been dangerous to humans – whether from animals or other clans. There never was and never will be 100% security. We just have to do the best that we can, and without a lot of chest puffing from our members of Congress who are not on the front lines. It is political suicide to admit that there is no such thing as 100% security.
If everyone is on the watch list, then no one is on the watch list. Again, you cannot watch everyone but need to be judicious in the application of resources. Without knowing who else is on the watch list, how can we know whether or not Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is more or less of a threat?
The Safest Airline
The safest airline in the world, it is widely agreed, is El Al, Israel’s national carrier. The safest airport is Ben Gurion International, in Tel Aviv. No El Al plane has been attacked by terrorists in more than three decades, and no flight leaving Ben Gurion has ever been hijacked. What are the Israelis doing that we aren’t?
Airports in the United States and many other countries are built around convenience while in Israel it’s all about security. We get our boarding passes online and check our baggage at the curb. At TSA checkpoints, twenty-something employees stare at screens, doing the best they can to not talk to us.
Contrast this with an Israeli airport where you stay with your bags until your security check is complete and airline and highly-trained security personnel talk to you and watch you constantly. You’re not allowed to approach the ticket counter until you are cleared by the security system, while in the United States, security is an apparent afterthought.
Israeli airport security, much of it invisible to the untrained eye, begins before passengers even enter the terminal. Officials are constantly monitoring passengers’ behavior, alert to clues that may hint at danger. Profilers make a point of interviewing travelers, sometimes at length, and oftentimes asking questions that don’t seem to make any sense at all – and that’s the idea. The point of the long questioning is to find inconsistencies in a terrorist’s cover story, or to agitate him into a panic. If you are lying or distracted by something, the profilers will soon figure that out and you will be marked as a possible threat and action will be taken.
It’s The People
While the TSA is busy confiscating cosmetics, small pocket knives, and water bottles, the Israelis understand that it is the people who are threats, not the objects that they are carrying. To a much greater degree than in the United States, security at El Al depends on intelligence and intuition rather then performing rote actions and ignoring the passengers.
Meanwhile, the TSA seems to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the recent incident. Anecdotal reports from arriving passengers indicate that all pillows and blankets are being collected an hour before arrival, and that passengers are told they must remain in their seats for that last hour, with nothing on their laps – not even reading material. So if you need to detonate that improvised explosive device you smuggled on board, you’ll now have to do it at least an hour and fifteen minutes before landing. Or, as Bruce Schneier points out, do we really think the terrorist won’t blow up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?
Other passengers are reporting that the in-flight entertainment systems on international flights are being shut down so that passengers can’t see the flight progress map to determine the plane’s location, so if you don’t have an iPhone you’ll just have to make a guess. And if you have a weak bladder or are suffering from intestinal distress, don’t be surprised if a flight attendant or an air marshal starts banging on the lavatory door.
Is there a 100% guarantee of safety? No there is not. But in three decades, not one El Al plane has been attacked from within, and those are pretty good odds. In my opinion, it’s time for us to learn from the Israelis and get serious about how we protect ourselves when flying rather than closing the door after the terrorist has left the plane.
What do you think? I look forward to your thoughtful comments.
A laptop crammed with secret data was stolen from inside the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) nerve center. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a big deal since they finally learned and the data on this particular laptop was fully encrypted.
However, the USB device used to decrypt the highly sensitive data was stolen along with the laptop.
The loss was said to have occurred toward the end of November but news of the event did not leak out until late last week and was not con firmed until ear lier this week. A spokesman for the MoD said that “an investigation by MoD police is ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment further.” Well, no kidding!
While at SanDisk, I proposed a system which would use GPS and access to wireless networks to determine where a device was, and if it was not where it was supposed to be, it would either lock up or erase itself. The system was never built, but I am guessing we would have had at least one customer.
What Did We Learn From This?
Just like you would normally keep the key or combination away from the lock which it opens, you should keep the electronic key away from the information which it is protecting. You also shouldn’t write your password on a sticky note and put it under your keyboard.
And as an aside, if you have guns at home, keep them and the ammunition locked up separately so the kids don’t try to play cops and robbers with a loaded weapon. The UK MoD just shot themselves in the foot and we don’t need any more of that.
In Other Exciting News
3D versions of Avatar have a complex Digital Rights Management (DRM) system which involves several certificates and server-delivered time-sensitive keys. Several theaters in Germany received these protected versions of Avatar for preview screenings. However, something went wrong with the DRM system and after trying for several hours to get the film decrypted so they could play it, at least one theater gave up and went 2D. Now why the heck would you DRM something that takes a few hundred thousand dollars of specialized equipment to show? I mean, it’s not like I can play it on my home theatre system even if I did steal it – and apparently the 2D version isn’t protected, which would play on my home system. I don’t even pretend to understand this reasoning and I guess that’s why I’m not in show business.
Ron LaPedis, MBCP, MBCI, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP
Founder and Principal
Seacliff Partners International, LLC
