Archive
Two Gulf States to Ban some BlackBerry Functions..
Following on from a failed state-wide “hack” of the Blackberry system, where the state-controlled telco etisalat tried to distribute a “performance enhancing patch” to Blackberry users (which turned out to be a state-controlled back door program), The United Arab Emirates is threatening to block e-mail sending and IM delivery on Blackberries, and Saudi Arabia is threatening to block Blackberry-to-Blackberry IM.
According to BBC News:
Both nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets. This is because the Blackberry handsets automatically send the encrypted data to computer servers outside the two countries.
New China encryption rules won’t pose headaches for U.S Vendors?
This week, Jaikumar Vijayan at Computerworld posted an interesting article about new Chinese rules designed to control the import of non-domestic encryption products.
Many people have infered that these new rules will mean products imported into China will be somehow compromised, or unsafe, because their details will have been released to the Chinese Government.
Nothing could be further from the truth.. Read more…
Passware release Bitlocker/Truecrypt Decryption Tool
Following on from my post “10 Things You Don’t Want To Know About Bitlocker”, “TPM Undressed” and “Firewire Attacks Revisited” it recently came to my attention that Passware, Inc. A feisty California company has released a version of their forensic software which will decrypt Bitlocker and TrueCrypt protected hard disks via the classic Firewire vulnerabilities.
A full write-up can be found on the Passware site, but simply, given a machine that’s running, but has encrypted drives (for example one using Bitlocker in TPM-only mode, or a machine which is suspended, not hibernated). As to how to do it, well they have implemented the exploit in a very neat and usable way:
NIST 800-111. Practical Advice for Data Protection Projects
This week I want to take an opportunity to remind readers of the excellent NIST publication 800-111.
Yes, I know, another complex government sponsored report, but 800-111, for those implementing any kind of data protection project, is one of the best reports on the subject, dealing with technology, practical use of, and risk analysis. It’s really (for NIST publications anyway) a very good read.
The other reason to pay attention to 800-111, is quite simply it’s the document regulations mention when talking about “Good Practice”, “Industry Standard processes”, “Accepted Best Practice” etc. This document contains the advice that you’ll be measured against if you ever end up in court defending your Security Policy against something like Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00. Read more…
LiveLog – interactive near-real-time Log Monitor
EPE Log Reader for McAfee Endpoint Encryption v6
TPM “Undressed..”
Recently it was announced with much fanfare that the now-ubiquitous “TPM” chip found in most modern computers had been hacked. This obviously unnerved a lot of people, especially those hanging the safety of their secrets on free solutions like Microsoft Bitlocker which use the TPM to provide convenience to their users.
The attack, invented about 60 years ago, but elegantly implemented by Christopher Tarnovsky of Flylogic involved attacking the hardware of the chip itself by uncasing it and probing its signal pathways – something that seems difficult until you read their blog and realize they do it every day.
Chris used a combination of off-the-shelf acids and rust-remover solutions to dissolve first the outer casing of the chip, then the wire grid tamper-proofing shields inside.
Once “undressed” he was able to probe and monitor what was going on inside anonymously. Read more…
“Cheap” Secure USB Sticks, you get what you pay for?
Recently a whole slew of news sites announced a newly discovered vulnerability (care of the German Security firm SySS) on a range of “supposedly” secure consumer USB sticks.
These models from SanDisk, Kingston and Verbatim were apparently easy to defeat and retrieve the data from without knowing the users password or having any prior knowledge or touch on the stick.
The exploit was simple – it seems the software tool shipped with the sticks validates the password, not the stick itself, and the sticks use a fixed authentication key. Yes, ALL sticks use the same auth key. By simply sending this known ack key to the stick, you can unlock it, or any other stick.
Interestingly, some of these insecure devices had been through FIPS 140-2 Level 2 security certification, so should really have been immune to this kind of attack.
Personal Data Breach Compensation Suit Thrown Out In Missouri..
A knock to the campaign to ensure companies take better care of our personal data occurred this when when John Amburgy lost his case against Express Scripts in Missouri, USA.
John alleged that he had spent significant time and effort in protecting
his identity following Express Scripts’ breach back in October 2008. They offered free credit report monitoring services to the people who’s PII/PHI they lost, but only to those who proved they had been victims of identity theft.
Yes, it seems you have to be a victim of identity theft because of Express Scripts breach before Express Scripts will offer you help in protecting and monitoring your identity… Read more…
Evil Maid, another nefarious trojan attack..
Last month Joanna Rutkowska posted a very interesting article showing a practical “Evil Maid” attack against the open-source TrueCrypt FDE product. The attack is reasonably simple, subvert the pre-boot authentication engine of the full-disk encryption product in question to add a password-sniffing routine, then wait for the unsuspecting user to authenticate to their machine and then retrieve the credentials at a later stage.
Evil Maid is simply hooking the pre-boot code of TrueCrypt and adding a routine to store the users password. Because the TrueCrypt code is quite simple, it’s a relatively easy thing to do, but the attack is theoretically valid regardless of this fact, just the effort to make the hook code increases with the sophistication of the pre-boot environment. Read more…
Who?
 | EVP Cyber Product Innovation for Mastercard. Formally the Chief Technology Officer for Intel Secure Home Gateways, CTO for McAfee Enterprise Endpoint, CTO McAfee Innovation team, and Founder/CTO SafeBoot Corp. |
Simon Says - Musings of a Technology CTO 
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