Dragan on Security

There is serious vulnerability with A5/1 encryption scheme used in GSM networks. It can lead to interception of GSM calls.This vulnerability has been presented by Karsten Nohl and Chris Paget at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3). This event is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It took place from December 27th to December 30th 2009 at the bcc Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany.

Citation from CCC Web site:

The world’s most popular radio system has over 3 billion handsets in 212 countries and not even strong encryption. Perhaps due to cold-war era laws, GSM’s security hasn’t received the scrutiny it deserves given its popularity. This bothered us enough to take a look; the results were surprising.

From the total lack of network to handset authentication, to the “Of course I’ll give you my IMSI” message, to the iPhone that really wanted to talk to us. It all came as a surprise – stunning to see what $1500 of USRP can do. Add a weak cipher trivially breakable after a few months of distributed table generation and you get the most widely deployed privacy threat on the planet.

Cloning, spoofing, man-in-the-middle, decrypting, sniffing, crashing, DoS’ing, or just plain having fun. If you can work a BitTorrent client and a standard GNU build process then you can do it all, too. Prepare to change the way you look at your cell phone, forever.

Slides are here.

Track repository is here. It implements attack on the A5/1 cipher.

Torrents are here.

Note 1: This in not advocating exploiting weaknesses but rather wanting to inform about the fact that GSM calls are already being intercepted and decrypted using commercial tools.

Note 2: Links above are active in moment of writing this blog post. It is possible that some of them can be recalled or inactive from various reasons.

In its Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System Appliances, dated April 14, 2009 Gartner positioned TippingPoint and Juniper Networks as leaders in field, together with McAfee andSourcefire.

However, these days (December 2009), there are a lot of talks about not encouraging results of test done by NSS Labs related to IPS solutions of these companies.

An independent test and evaluation of 15 different network intrusion-protection system products from seven vendors showed none were fully effective in warding off attacks against Microsoft, Adobe and other programs. NSS Labs, which conducted the test without vendor sponsorship of any kind, also evaluated the 15 network IPS offerings for their capability in responding to “evasions,” attacks delivered in an obfuscated and stealthy manner in order to hide. In that arena, Juniper Networks and TippingPoint didn’t perform particularly well. Juniper IPS scored lowest at only 17% effectiveness. Here is article on NetworkWorld. In that arena, the McAfee and IBM IPS held up particularly well.

TippingPoint’s president Allan Kessler posted his view on blog. Also, this topic become active on SecurityFocus mail lists with Focus on IDS (here).

It is my belief that this report and tests will affect IPS market, but also trust into various reports from [independent] research and testing houses.

Updated on December 11th, 2009: Also see Rick Moy’s blog post “Network IPS Group Test Results Available“.

National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has opened a public competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which converts a variable length message into a short “message digest” that can be used for digital signatures, message authentication and other applications.  The competition is NIST’s response to recent advances in the cryptanalysis of hash functions. The new hash algorithm will be called “SHA-3” and will augment the hash algorithms currently specified in FIPS 180-2, Secure Hash Standard. This competition is announced in the Federal Register Notice published on November 2, 2007. I wrote about it here and here.

NIST has selected the Second Round Candidates of the SHA-3 Competition recently. Following 14 second round candidates are selected to continue in the competition:

1. BLAKE
2. Blue Midnight Wish
3. CubeHash
4. ECHO
5. Fugue
6. Grøstl
7. Hamsi
8. JH
9. Keccak
10. Luffa
11. Shabal
12. SHAvite-3
13. SIMD
14. Skein

A report summarizing NIST’s selection of these candidates will be forthcoming. A year is allocated for the public review of these algorithms, and the Second SHA-3 Candidate Conference is being planned for August 23-24, 2010, after Crypto 2010.

You can see candidates, post your comments and see other comments, see details on submitters site here.

After quite some time of silence regarding my work on Wireless Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (WIDS / WIPS), I’m considering continuing that work. In past I have done research, published couple of papers on this topic at conferences and journals and also created concept, basic architecture and design of system and products. This possible “reactivation” of work is particularly pushed by recent increased interest of companies, organizations and institutions including commercial, government etc, who contacted me regarding it, and requirements of many production environments.

As you could have read earlier on this blog, that area has been one of my research interests for long time. Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), especially used in wireless and mobile networks, are becoming particularly interesting and important with increased usage of these types of networks. My research has been particularly oriented to usage artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic and neural networks to make these systems better, easier for use and more efficient.  At 19th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference ACSAC  (December 8-12, 2003, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA) I talked about Wireless Intrusion Detection System (WIDS) and proposed multilevel and multidimensional system with components: agent, sensor, server and management and reporting tools. Also I talked at some other conferences and published couple of papers on this topic. There are different approaches to intrusion detection and prevention, but very common for commercially available IDS/IPS is that they suffer many false alarms (positive and negative) and problems with performances. Separate problem are so called “zero-day” attacks that pass majority of today’s IDS / IPS systems unnoticed.

Wireless Intrusion Detection and Prevention System, in architecture that I proposed many years ago, consist of:

• WIDS / WIPS Agent. It is software installed on mobile computer or device. It detects intrusions and attacks by analyzing traffic and behavior, making conclusions and denies it. It protects computer or computerized device. Agent works in contribution with WIDS / WIPS Sensor and Server if those are available in network and can be reached. Position of application is on Personal Computer (PC) including Pocket PC (PPC) and similar mobile devices.

• WIDS / WIPS Sensor. It is an appliance which sits in wireless network environment. It has embedded logic for detecting intrusions and alerting stations and servers about it. It alerts network users and/or administrators too. Sensor works in contribution with WIDS Agent and Server if it is available in same network. Position of application is area of wireless computer network.

• WIDS / WIPS Server. It is corporate software which integrates functions of previous two components and has additional mechanisms such as: collecting, analyzing, making conclusions (based on neural networks and fuzzy logic implementation), and giving support to WIDS Agent and Sensor. It can communicate with CERT centers and similar. It is responsible for contribution with other security software or devices (antivirus software firewalls…) Server collects information about WLAN security, events, incidents, and performance from the WIDS Sensors deployed throughout a WLAN. The server delivers the information to the WIDS Console in format that helps Network Administrators immediately identify problems. Position of application is in corporate network or remote for more mutually linked networks.

•WIDS / WIPS Console & Management, Reporting Tools. This is set of utilities intended to provide possibility of monitoring, management, tuning, and preparing various reports about WIDS / WIPS components activity. They are installed on Server, but could collect and show data from various components of WIDS / WIPS system. Single utilities could reside on Agent and Sensor devices and hey provide remote access and configuration capability too.

This is just brief description. If you are interested in more details or want to consider contribution or investment into this development send me e-mail.

Recommended reading on Ars Technica: Battered, but not broken: understanding the WPA crack. It says:

Academic researchers have found an exploitable hole in a popular form of wireless networking encryption. The hole is in a part of 802.11i that forms the basis of WiFi Protected Access (WPA), so it could affect routers worldwide. German graduate student Erik Tews will present a paper at next week’s PacSec in Tokyo coauthored with fellow student and aircrack-ng team member Martin Beck that reveals how remnants of WPA’s predecessor allow them to slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client.

If this proves to be true, many wireless networks might be vulnerable. Let’s wait presentation “Gone in 900 Seconds, Some Crypto Issues with WPA” by Erik Tews on PacSecin Tokyo next week and see.

I have worked for some time on using of artificial intelligence (AI) for protecting computer / information systems and networks. My work is primarily in area of intrusion prevention and detection systems (IDS and IPS). Some of work and papers in this area has been published in journals and technical conferences. Also, I believe that is much more to come out in future.

But there is another angle of AI utilization. It is approach which considers machine intelligence usage for attack on systems’ security. Interesting article in IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine, by Carl E. Landwehr from University of Maryland, talks about topics and says:

Ray Kurzweil predicts that by 2040 or 2050, machine intelligence will exceed human intelligence – an event he and others have dubbed the “singularity”. Will such intelligent machines be better able to defend themselves than today’s relatively unsophisticated ones? Will their intelligence be used for attacks as well??

It is possible that, in future, we will have chance to see artificial intelligence systems which are able to fight. One side will be AI systems that attack and another AI supported systems which are in protection role and providing security.

Full citation of article: Carl E. Landwehr, “Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence: From Fixing the Plumbing to Smart Water,” IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 3-4, Sep/Oct, 2008.

Note: Article is available with subscription or can be bought as PDF.

It might happen even in middle of worlds’ financial crisis. We should wait and see. Or not just wait, you can really contribute to new search engine. To contribute, you should just install free software and use it. The name is Edgios and software is in Alpha stage.

Edgios already have got lot of publicity on Web sites and discussion forums. It is a large-scale distributed search ‘cloud’ that offers higher-quality search results. Users participate in the cloud by downloading the Edgios personal search software, and connecting that software to the net.

Recent discussion on one of most important developers’ forums in Serbia raised many questions about Edgios. Some of participants questioned idea, concept, and many raised privacy and security concerns as well. Also, it seems that many people are scared by Google and Yahoo and have no courage to question their solutions and to start something what may compete with big ones. It can be successful or not, but it is worth a try at least, especially if you have famous Venture Capital to back your ideas. If that is one who backed Skype it is then more serious.

Some of question raised in discussion are: Is it secure? Is it safe? Authors say:

Yes! That’s exactly the point. By having the Edgios personal search client on your computer, you’re in control of what you share and what you keep private. Traditional search engines keep much more information than you might expect, and they hang onto it for a long time. With Edgios, you’re in control.

I would add: do you know what Google or other search engines know about you already? Have you asked yourself that question?

Here are some facts grabbed from Edgios Web site about company:

Edgios is a US company, based in Palo Alto, CA. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a premier Venture Capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. DFJ shares with Edgios a passion for distributed computing, having backed Skype, the most successful P2P startup to date. Edgios has additional offices in Portland, OR, and in Serbia.

About founder:

The company has very strong connections with Serbia, having been founded by Dr. Borislav Agapiev, who grew up in Belgrade before moving to the US in 1985. The technology that makes Edgios possible has been developed entirely in Serbia, by a team of extremely talented and bright young developers. The entire team is proud of demonstrating that world-class search technology can be developed in Serbia, relying on the deep talent pool of local developers.

Edgios is Dr. Agapiev’s second search startup. He was also the founder of Vast.com, a San Francisco-based search engine for online classifieds. Vast.com is a leader in the online classifieds market, reaching millions of customers in the US and worldwide, having as partners and customers several large US companies. From its start, Vast.com has also been relying on Serbian engineers for technology development and innovation.

About search mechanism:

Edgios does not use a centralized search index of the Web, located in a massive data center, fed by an algorithmic ‘crawler’. Instead, it has an index that’s built by users, for users, and it employs a fully distributed index residing in memory and on the disks of computers that are part of the search cloud. The power of a fully decentralized, distributed search system is dependent on the number of its users. We believe that with just a few hundred thousand users that the Edgios search cloud is capable of surpassing conventional search engines, in terms of freshness, depth, and quality of search results.

It will be interesting to watch progress of this story and to be part of story, why not?

It seems that bad days came for MD5 and those who based hashes on it. It is possible to create two executable programs with different functionalities with identical MD5 hash. Therefore, it is possible to create malicious executable which has same MD5 hash as regular program. This can be done just by using public Internet information and tools.

Here is short story and list of resources that you can be interested in to try.

In March 2005, Xiaoyun Wang and Hongbo Yu of Shandong University in China published paper “How to Break MD5 and Other Hash Functions” in which they described an algorithm that can find two different sequences of 128 bytes with the same MD5 hash. That article originally was here, but it seems as it is not anymore. You can buy it from SpringerLink (here) for price of $25, or download based on subscription to it. There is free Power Point presentation here.

Abstract of paper “How to Break MD5 and Other Hash Functions” says:

MD5 is one of the most widely used cryptographic hash functions nowadays. It was designed in 1992 as an improvement of MD4, and its security was widely studied since then by several authors. The best known result so far was a semi free-start collision, in which the initial value of the hash function is replaced by a non-standard value, which is the result of the attack. In this paper we present a new powerful attack on MD5 which allows us to find collisions efficiently. We used this attack to find collisions of MD5 in about 15 minutes up to an hour computation time. The attack is a differential attack, which unlike most differential attacks, does not use the exclusive-or as a measure of difference, but instead uses modular integer subtraction as the measure. We call this kind of differential a modular differential. An application of this attack to MD4 can find a collision in less than a fraction of a second. This attack is also applicable to other hash functions, such as RIPEMD and HAVAL.

In meantime, Peter Selinger from Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University, published the tool that you can download for free and which he used to create MD5-colliding executable files. He calls it the “evilize” library. This software is based on Patrick Stach’s implementation of Wang and Yu’s algorithm. You can find his original implementation here.

Eduardo Diaz has described a scheme by which two programs could be packed into two archives with identical MD5 hash. A special “extractor” program turns one archive into a “good” program and the other into an “evil” one.

Almost three years ago I had published blog post on MD5 Online Cracking. Also, I have written about NIST new hash competition here and here.

[Thanks to Zeljko for pointing me to this implementation of tool.]

I had already written the post about NIST Competition for New Cryptographic Hash Function on my blog. Here are updates based on article by William E. Burr, “A New Hash Competition”, IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 6,  no. 3,  pp. 60-62,  May/Jun,  2008.

Author says in abstract:

Since the discovery of collision attacks against several well-known cryptographic hash functions in 2004, a rush of new cryptanalytic results cast doubt on the current hash function standards. The relatively new NIST SHA-2 standards aren’t yet immediately threatened, but their long-term viability is now in question. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has therefore begun an international competition to select a new SHA-3 standard. This article outlines the competition, its rules, the requirements for the hash function candidates, and the process that NIST will use to select the final winning SHA-3 standard.

And then, in article:

NIST expects to launch a Hash Competition Conference to review the initial submissions in February 2009; the second conference will occur roughly a year later in 2010 to review public comments submitted on the submissions and their analysis. Following this second conference, NIST will select a small number of finalist candidates (probably five or so) for intensive review by the community. If, as we expect, we get 20 or more initial submissions, we’ll inevitably hear some disagreements about the finalists, but we can only intensively analyze a small number of algorithms, and, as in the AES competition, all the finalists will be good hash functions, although we might have to drop some worthy submissions.

Cryptanalysis of the finalists will be the tricky part—the time that skilled cryptanalysts can donate is the limiting resource here.

NIST is building up its limited cryptanalytic resources, but will rely heavily on the global cryptographic research community to do the bulk of the cryptanalysis. If the AES competition is any model, many analysis papers on the candidates will be submitted to various conferences. NIST will tentatively review the cryptanalysis results and review performance in a third workshop scheduled for 2012, after which they will select a winner.

The winning team might get nothing but glory for their huge effort. NIST expects the best people in the world to participate, as they did in the AES competition, because the community believes an open competition is the best way to select cryptographic standards. NIST expects to work hard, have fun, and significantly advance the state of the art while giving the world a valuable, secure hash function standard.

Poll “Primary motives for hacking are” which was open on this blog since December 21, 2007 to March 31, 2008 is closed now. Based on answers of visitors, who took opportunity to vote in the poll, main reason why hackers (malicious ones) are attacking is because they take it as intellectual challenge. Next reason is money etc.

Here is summary of results.

As it was said in introductory post for poll, it is based on Australian government Institute of Criminology i.e. its High tech crime centre classification. You can see paper (linked in blog post also) here.

There were polemic about definition of hackers and is that correct to say that hackers are malicious. Many people think that definition of hackers mean that they “wear white hat” i.e. hackers are not driven by malicious motives. However, crackers are ones who “wear black hat” i.e. they are supposed to be malicious, according that opinion. Also, some people mentioned that poll lacks precise definition of hacking and description of hacker and cracker difference for sake of this poll.

This poll is about public opinion – what people think about hackers and their motives, so it was left to opinions and thoughts of everyone and a little bit imprecise (intentionally). :)

You can look into Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition of hacker – it may be interesting.