The Firehouse

Last Saturday, while reading through my feeds, I noticed this post on TechCrunch by Duncan Riley, where he tells the story of an attempt by scammers to get his Skype credentials (and wonders why they’d want to do such a thing), much in the same way we’re accustomed to receive emails from PayPal, eBay, and almost any bank on earth. These emails claim there is a problem with your account, and you should ‘confirm your details’ in order to stop said account from being suspended. This will of course do nothing other than give your credentials to these criminals for unhealthy purposes.

Today, a friend that I had not chatted with in some time comes online, and sends me this:

My first thought has been “Uhm, why would Mike send me something like this?”. He’s not prone to even send smilies, always very short and to the point. I go to ask him about it, but I then notice he is in do-not-disturb mode, so I cannot even warn him about the now-obvious scam! It seems that phishers and other scum are realizing people fall for email traps less and less, and are attacking other more trustworthy systems. In this case, the attacker is sending a screensaver, most likely loaded with a trojan. Beware of -any- communication, even from friends, that is unusual in timing, behavior or content. Also, beware about being asked for your IM details, and use strong passwords.

Some of you have already heard of the very nasty vulnerability recently discovered in Windows, which allows code injection when the hapless victim simply views an animated cursor on a HTML page or an email message. Microsoft has announced that due to the seriousness of this issue, it will publish an out-of-sync patch as soon as it is ready, i.e. they will not wait for Patch Tuesdayâ„¢. [Update: as I was writing this, I noticed this post which states that patch MS07-017 has been released].

What do you do when you have in your hands the best security distribution in the world? Use it! Here is the result of Mati Aharoni’s (aka Muts) impersonation of The Mexican – click the image to view the full video.

Kids, do not try this at home, and if you are using Windows, well…my sincere condolences. While you are at it, check out the home site for BackTrack.

This is rather funny, be it not because it involves a US congressman, Denny Rehberg of Montana, and his communications director. Apparently, Rehberg was not happy with the grades he got while at Texas Christian University, and thus started to shop around for a hacker that would break into the institution’s systems to upgrade his grades. He contacted none other than attrition.org, where the entire email exchange has been posted. It is a rather fun read if you are a true hacker – not to be confused with a criminal, who are into doing these sort of things – and a warning to clueless politicians.

So, the great news over at TechCrunch today were that Google has added a feature called Mail Fetcher to GMail, which basically allows you to grab email from other services, such as Yahoo.

This sounds great, and it probably is for GMail users, but it is also great for Google. Someone with legal wits should point a browser towards GMail’s terms & services, and check whether there are any provisions to exclude or include, explicitly or not, the scanning of all incoming and outgoing email from these other services. Maybe Google will also scan the contents of the additional email services you add to your GMail account to send you targeted ads. Maybe Google will have even better demographics by tying the IP addresses found in the headers of all the additional emails with their own database of registered users. There is a saying that nobody sells dimes for 9 cents, it’s a rather good saying to move your wallet by.

Any lawyers in the audience?

You probably remember the post I made regarding FON’s figures, and how much I thought they differed from reality. It got quite a lot of attention, particularly from detractors, and from Martin Varsavsky himself. Many comments were posted on my blog and some others, which pointed towards the fact that I am involved in a startup which supposedly is a clone of FON, and thus I was biased and in no position to comment on FON. To cut a long story short, Martin posted a rather vicious personal attack on his blog, which I answered, he counter-commented, to which I again answered, but he never conceded a bit.

During my investigations that led to the statistics post, I also discovered a serious flaw in the maps management system, which would allow anyone to re-position any FON hotspot and change its address without first logging into the user area.

All that was required was the node’s ID and the hotspot owner’s user ID, both easily obtainable from the public queries that maps.fon.com launches against the database where hotspot data is held, and which I used to gather the statistics. For a determined attacker, it would have been very easy to place every single FON hotspot right in the middle of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

I could have very easily posted about this, but I refrained from doing so for a reason – while I do not work full-time in the IT security industry, I have done quite a bit of consultancy work in the past, related to IT security, particularly in the wireless field. This means that I am fully aware of the industry-approved vulnerability disclosure procedure, which can be explained simply as:

• Document the vulnerability, and inform the company about the fact that you have found it.
• Wait for an initial response, establish contact points, and work a schedule for fixing the issue.
• Work with the company to help them solve the issue.
• Once the issue has been fixed, make a public disclosure on both sides about the vulnerability, giving credit to the person or company that discovered it.

You can find more references to this policy at Microsoft’s Security Response Center, here and here. A PDF from oisafety.org also describes this process in detail. A perfect example on how not to do things is the recent disclosure of a code injection vulnerability, which allowed manipulation of FON’s routers without even having to open them – even though their points are valid, they should have given FON the chance to fix the problem before going public.

In this case, I contacted FON’s support email first September 27th, and received a response on the 29th. This was really generic, only wanting to know about the details, and not acknowledging the normal procedure as I have explained above. On October 2nd, I emailed them again, asking to confirm that they understood the procedure, and on the 3rd they replied that they agreed on following the procedure.

I started compiling the information I had into a working document, but after becoming so frustrated at the attacks received as a result on my post about the statistics, the decision was to simply let the issue go, forget about FON, and concentrate on my own project. A couple of days ago, browsing around for stuff to clean up on the laptop, I came across the half-written report, and decided to finish it and send it to FON support, with CC to Martin, just to close the case. I received a reply today that they have in fact fixed the vulnerability, with a short ‘thanks’ (actually, quoting his email in full: “thanks Mike, i understand its been fixed”) from Martin.

The public acknowledgement of the discovery posted by FON is found in this forum post. Only in the English forums, by a user created apparently for this particular purpose, as this is his first post ever, where it is not likely to draw much attention. This would be fine by me, had not there been the precedent of Martin’s fierce replies to my statistics post, followed by countless attacks by FON’s followers, including an unfortunate incident better left forgotten. What I really cannot understand is that, when I criticize FON, I get such a huge public lashing, whereas when I help them out, I get a three-line remark in a forum where it will go mostly unnoticed. The end result may well be that other vulnerabilities, and it is likely they exist, go unreported.

Whatever the case, this should show those who accused me of unfair, biased attacks on FON that I really just call the shots as I see them, when I smell bullshit, I will point to it, when I see a hole, I will help them fix it – again, IMHO, blogging is not about being or not biased, it is about being ethical and maintaining a set of standards. In my view, it should also prompt Martin to write an apology, but I am not holding my breath. Not that I care much either, what is most important is my work; this is my blog, where I spend part of my spare time, which is not actually that much.

I was reading an article over at The Register, an excellent tech news site (don’t forget to check the BOFH!), that explains a plan by Google to use a microphone connected to your PC to record the ambient sound, extract information about what you are watching on a nearby TV, and then deliver targeted advertising to you based on your selection. I wonder what would they deliver if you are a horror movie fan, or if you are watching Sir David Attenborough’s nature documentaries…but I digress.

In my book, this is plain and simple espionage. There are laws in some countries (also at state level in the U.S.) that govern wiretapping and conversation recording; in some cases, recording as long as you have the consent of one of the parties involved is OK, in others it is just plain illegal. Of course, Google would argue that they do not send the actual sound anywhere, but only a mere derived “signature”. Jim Atkinson’s tscm.com site has some really good information on the subject, as he has been dedicated to hunting down the spies for decades.

All this brings me to a new subject, which is the amount of information that Google may already be collecting about you – personally. Do you have a Gmail account? Do you know about something called Google Analytics? Some of you will have already put two and two toghether (answer is not three). Gmail privacy statement mentions:

Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans.

OK, so they have the contents of every email you send and receive, classified in terms of what sort of things you may buy if they present you with targeted advertising. On the other hand, Google Analytics is a statistics tool widely used by people and companies to track usage of their websites with a great deal of precision. Information collected by Analytics includes the IP addresses of visitors, every action they take, and every navigation path they follow.

Now, combine the two bits of information common to your Gmail account, and somebody.com’s tracking data of your browsing session – the IP address used to send the email, or to browse the site. It can be argued that in many cases, these IP address can be dynamic, or belong to a large organization behind a proxy – but hey, Google is now potentially handling millions of bits of statistical data, so they could eventually learn a great deal about what you do online. Now they only need what you are watching on TV, and your assimilation will be complete. Resistance is futile.

Can anyone say separation of powers? If you are really concerned about your privacy, you probably know what this will do, once placed in your hosts file:

# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com

If you don’t, then welcome to the era of privacy deprivation..

[Edit: I have changed the post's title, as it looks like the strike tag was causing problems with indexers...sigh]

The SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, or General Ass. of Authors & Editors), is Spain’s equivalent of the RIAA. I was rather amused by this video, where a couple of members of a TV show attempt and succeed at connecting to the SGAE’s WiFi network (it had no encryption enabled!), and download music – alledgedly pirated. They then add an extra twist by actually walking into the SGAE’s offices and asking to see someone, laptop in hand, saying they have just had an attack of good will and want to turn themselves in…

The audio is in spanish, but you will get the general idea even if you don’t understand the talk. My oppinion is that they shouldn’t have done this, as connecting to WiFi networks without the owner’s permission is illegal in most countries, Spain included – so they have actually provided potential prosecutors a perfect piece of evidence.

This was seen on a Boeing 767 while en route from Las Vegas to Atlanta, the flight being operated by Delta. Apparently, many people were having problems with their purchased movies, and so the crew decided to reset the system, provoking a nicely familiar sight.

Now we could all start making jokes about nmapping the plane, or trying to run Asterisk off a USB drive plugged into the management console, which by the way was accessible to anyone who wandered to the toilet and happened to look left. It had a nice big “Reset all” button too, two USB ports, and a gigabit etherenet RJ45. I just hope they don’t run a kernel with some remote_crash_plane() buffer overflow exploit…

I have just returned from a vacation, interluded by a couple of trips – one of them to DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker conference. This year, it ran at the Riviera hotel and casino in Las Vegas at the beginning of august.

There was plenty to see and do, from conferences as interesting as war-rocketing to an insight into the US-VISIT program, and it’s plans to implement RFID tags into the green visa waivers, or the 2D barcode receipts given out at airports.

I participated in the wardriving events, organised by Thorn, and which consisted of the Running Man and Fox Hunt competitions. Our team was led by Renderman, and we had some backup that put up some noise (fake APs, floods, etc.) to make the contest more interesting.

The Running Man started well, but unfortunately the other team tripped casino security by walking past their booth with a magmount omni antenna on each shoulder, a laptop, several WiFi cards dangling from their belts, a YellowJacket, and other gear – apparently, the IT guys freaked out, and they wanted the contest shut down. After the intervention of Ross and Priest, we were allowed to carry on, but limiting the search area to the venue, and not the whole casino. After the contest resumed, we found the Running Man in around 15 minutes, and won!

The second contest, Fox Hunt, consisted of a hidden WRT54G that was only on for 15 seconds every minute. One was supposed to locate the fox, connect to it, and change the SSID after brute-forcing admin account. 15 seconds to do all that is not a lot! So, our plan was to locate the fox….and make a run with it to a safe place, so we could kill the 15 second timer circuit, reduce the amount of RF leaking out and have a go at changing the SSID. The first part of the plan went well, but then the other team got slightly miffed, called Thorn, who in turn called us to go back to the contest table with the WRT so the other team could also have a go at it.

Interestingly, Thorn had taped the admin password to the bottom of the router, but neither team noticed it! In fact, the other team ended up brute-forcing the AP and changing the SSID. We contested that since when we removed and reapplied power to the AP, the SSID went back to its default, we had in fact won, but Thorn wasn’t having any of it. The contest was a tie, which was decided by the question “Who owns the OID 00:00:00?”, the answer to which is Xerox. We got it wrong, and so we lost. Next year we will be better prepared for sure.

Here are a few pictures from the event:

Thorn and Renderman giving their presentation on the Church of Wifi, with CoWPatty, the WPA rainbow table generator, and the WRT54G mods, which included my WaRThog.

The war-rocketing guys, and their awsome rocket. I wonder how they got that thing past airport security.

The WaRThog on the left, with two more of CoWF’s modified WRT54Gs.

If you used DEFCON’s wireless network to check your email, access your corporate network, etc., but didn’t use any form of security (VPN, SSH…), you are bound to be in the Wall of Sheep. It displays captured user names, passwords, domains and access methods – I actually had the two colleagues travelling with me show up here, even though I told them to not even open their laptops while at the con.

See you next year!

Do you work a lot while on the road? If you use Vodafone’s GPRS/3G data service, it could be costing a lot more than you think.
You surely heard about Vodafone blocking Skype on their mobile network in the UK, with T-Mobile following suit, all in the name of ‘fair use’ and distribution of network resources. Supposedly, using Skype instead of downloading MP3s can make their network grind to a halt…let’s just move on.

I was involved in a project about a year ago, the goal of which was to write an IP stack for an embedded device. The approach was to write the stack in an easy-to-debug higher level language on a PC, then port it to the device. So, I went ahead and started writing the PPP code, aided by a GSM modem and a Vodafone SIM card with GPRS enabled.

To my surprise, as soon as the PPP session was established, a public IP address was given by the network, and packets started arriving. Curious about what this data was, but already suspicious of what it could be, I wrote a quick-and-dirty TCP decoder, and rightly so, the misterious packets were nothing more than the usual flurry of port scans any device attached to the internet is receiving all day long. NetBIOS ports, common trojans, SSH, you name it, it was all coming in.

It was obvious that the security implications of these port scans were just as if the internet connection was coming from a DSL line – but there was a twist. GPRS fees are paid for downloaded data, but what is the definition of downloaded data? Is it just the data portion of a TCP or UDP packet? Is it the whole packet? Thus, were you actually paying for these port scans, and even for getting hacked?

“Vodafone customer support, how may I help you?”

Turns out they couldn’t help me much. Not even the technical department understood what I meant by port scans, or ‘rogue’ data coming from the internet and being charged for it. I escalated and called the UK support line, and finally got someone to admit that they don’t perform any form of filtering, “for technical reasons, as it is something very difficult to accomplish”. Besides, they were sure some customer might want their NetBIOS ports open for the whole internet to see.

Fast-forward to 2006…and they are blocking Skype. If someone can come up with a decent explanation, other than they only block data harmful to their revenue, I’d be glad to hear it. They don’t care if some kiddie hacks into your computer, and turns it into a file dump, as long as you pay for the traffic. Alas, if you touch their voice revenue with a VoIP application, they will go to any length to “protect” you.