Posts tagged 'national security'

It’s widely acknowledged that the cyber security workforce needs more talented young people to engage. Just as we, at SE Labs, want to help fix information technology security by testing products and services, we also want to encourage an interest among young people, hopefully igniting a passion for understanding and defending against hacking attacks.

We test next-gen security products AND encourage the gen-next!

Our attempts to enable youth from progressing from complete novice, through to getting their first job and then to reaching the top of industry, is an initiative to bring about the needed change and fill the gaps.

As part of our new corporate social responsibility programme we set up an event at Carshalton Boys Sports College to introduce the concept of cyber security and its career prospects to the students.

Around 15 participants ranged from year 10s to sixth formers (aged 16-18) attended the main presentation and all year groups approached us at the stand we set up.

We outlined various topics in the presentation including the different types of cybercrime and attacks; and institutions offering free and paid courses to certain age groups on cyber security, aimed at students.

We also addressed how to break into the cyber security sector; what positions are available in the industry; and how employees are in high demand in both public and private sectors, part- and full-time, in virtually every industry in countries around the world.

Then we went through a test run of a targeted attack to demonstrate what it looks like and what it means.

“Why do we use Kali Linux?”, “What should I do to get into cyber security?”, “What are the skills required?”, were a few curious questions asked by the students at the end of the presentation.

Those who came over to the stand wanted to know who we were, what we do and simply, “what is cyber security?”

They were interested in who are clients are (we gave limited answers due to NDAs), what do they need us and how did we manage to get this far. A lot of these were asked by the younger years who were inquisitive to learn more about this subject. Positive!

Feedback from the college:

On behalf of the Governors, Head Principle, students and parents of Carshalton Boys Sports College, I would like to thank you for your valued input, helping to make our Directions and Destinations Day a great success. 

Our staff work tirelessly to open our students’ minds to the possibilities available to them, but without the support of partners like you, that job would be impossible. Together we had the school filled with a sense of purpose all day and responses we have had from students and parents have shown us that the day has inspired our students. 

We have already started thinking about the future and would be grateful if you have any suggestions about how we might make things even better next year. 

Thank you once again for giving your time, energy and expertise last week.

Well, yes! A career in cyber security is a journey for sure, but a worthwhile one. And in the end, it’s more about people than machines, as a mind’s software can be more powerful than any hardware.

Pooja Jain, March 2018

Posted on October 1st, 2018 by admin and tagged cybersecurity, education, national security, targeted attacks

Is Amber Rudd right about encryption? Jon Thompson isn’t so sure.

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd recently claimed in an article that “real people” prefer ease of use to unbreakable security when online. She was met immediately by outrage from industry pundits, but does she have a point?

Though paywalled, as reported elsewhere, Rudd asks in her article, “Who uses WhatsApp because it is end-to-end encrypted, rather than because it is an incredibly user-friendly and cheap way of staying in touch with friends and family?”

Rudd name-checked Khalid Masood, who used WhatsApp minutes before he drove a van into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge killing three, and then fatally stabbed a police officer outside Parliament before being shot dead. However, Masood was not part of any MI5 investigation. In fact, a week after the attack, police had to appeal for information about him. His final WhatsApp message seems to have been the first sign that he was about to strike. The recipient was entirely innocent, and knew nothing of his murderous intentions.

There are plenty of other atrocities that were planned in part via social media apps. The attacks on Paris in December 2015, and the Stockholm lorry attack to name but two. In the UK the new UK Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA), which caused so much fuss last year, can compel vendors to decrypt. So, why not just use that? The answer is somewhat complicated.

The IPA makes provision for Communications Service Providers to be served with a notice that they must remove encryption from messages to assist in the execution of an interception warrant. Apart from Providers needing access to private decryption keys, reports suggest that any move to enforce this measure would meet stiff opposition, and may not even be enforceable.

Many of the most popular secure messaging apps use the Signal Protocol, developed by Open Whisper Systems. This is a non-profit organisation and lies outside the UK’s jurisdiction, so its compliance would be difficult to obtain, even if the companies using the protocol agreed to re-engineer their platforms to include backdoors, or to lower encryption standards. There are also plenty of other issues to be resolved if Rudd is to get her way.

If the government mandates weaker encryption for messaging apps in the UK, then companies will face difficult business choices and technological challenges. It boils down to a choice: they could weaken their encryption globally, or they could just weaken encryption in the UK. But what happens
if you send a secure message from outside the UK to someone inside the country? Can the UK authorities read it? Can the recipient, using a lower encryption standard, decrypt it? How would international business communications work if the UK office doesn’t use the same encryption standard as a foreign parent company?

This isn’t the first time the UK government has attempted to find an answer to the problem of encryption. Back in January 2015, the then-Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech in which he said there should be no means of communication “which we cannot read”. He was roundly criticised as “technologically illiterate” by opposition parties, and later clarified his views, saying he didn’t want to ban encryption, just have the ability to read anyone’s encrypted communications.

Authoritative voices have since waded into the argument. Lord Evans, the former head of MI5, has recently spoken out about the problems posed by strong encryption: “It’s very important that we should be seen and be a country in which people can operate securely – that’s important for our commercial interests as well as our security interests, so encryption in that context is very positive.”

Besides, if the government can decrypt all messages in the UK, won’t genuine terrorists simply set up their own “dark” services? Ten seconds on Google Search shows plenty of open source, secure chat packages they could use. If such groups are as technologically advanced as we’re led to believe, then it should be simple for them, and terrifying for the rest of us. Wouldn’t it be better to keep such groups using mainstream apps and quietly develop better tools for tracking them via their metadata?

Rudd’s argument that “real people” want ease of use over strong encryption implies that secure apps are in some way difficult to set up and require effort to maintain. The opposite is plainly true, as anyone who’s ever ‘butt dialled’ with their mobile phone can tell you.

Rudd’s argument also plays into the idea that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. While writing this piece, I accessed several dozen online information sources, from mainstream news reports of terrorist outrages to super paranoid guides for setting up secure chat services. I accessed many of these sources multiple times. I didn’t access any extremist material, but my browsing history shows a clear and persistent interest in recent atrocities perpetrated on UK soil, secure chat methods, MI5 and GCHQ surveillance methods, encryption algorithms, and so on. Joining the dots to arrive at the wrong conclusion would be a grave mistake, and yet without the wider context of this blog piece to explain myself, how would authorities know I’m not planning to be the next Khalid Masood or Darren Osborne? The answer lies in developing better tools that gather more context than just what apps you use.

Posted on August 21st, 2017 by admin and tagged cybersecurity, encryption, gchq, government, national security, spying

Is this the dawn of the quantum computer age? Jon Thompson investigates.

Scientists are creating quantum computers capable of cracking the most fiendish encryption in the blink of an eye. Potentially hostile foreign powers are building a secure quantum internet that automatically defeats all eavesdropping attempts.

Single computers far exceeding the power of a hundred supercomputers are within humanity’s grasp. 

Are these stories true, as headlines regularly claim? The answer is increasingly yes, and it’s to China we must look for much current progress.

The Quantum Internet
Let’s begin with the uncrackable “quantum internet”. Sending messages using the properties of the subatomic world has been possible for years; it’s considered the “gold standard” of secure communications. Chinese scientists recently set a new distance record for sending information using quantum techniques when they transmitted data 1,200Km to a special satellite. What’s more, China is implementing a quantum networking infrastructure.

QuantumCTek recently announced it is to deploy a network for government and military employees in the Chinese city of Jinan, secured using quantum key distribution. Users will send messages encrypted by traditional means, with a second “quantum” channel distributing the associated decryption keys. Reading the keys destroys the delicate state of the photons that carry them, so it can only be done once by the recipient, otherwise the message cannot be decrypted and the presence of an eavesdropper is instantly apparent.

The geopolitical implications of networks no foreign power can secretly tap are potentially immense. What’s scarier is quantum computers cracking current encryption in seconds. What’s the truth here?

Encryption Under threat
Popular asymmetric encryption schemes, such as RSA, elliptic curve and SSL, are under threat from quantum computing. In fact, after mandating elliptic curve encryption for many years, the NSA recently declared it potentially obsolete due to the coming quantum computing revolution.

Asymmetric encryption algorithms use prime factors of massive numbers as the basis for their security. It takes a supercomputer far too long to find the right factors to be useful, but it’s thought to be easy for a quantum algorithm called Shor’s Algorithm.

For today’s strong symmetric encryption, such as AES and Blowfish, which use the same key to encrypt and decrypt, the news is currently a little better. It’s thought that initially, quantum computers will have a harder time cracking these, only really halving the time required by conventional hardware. So, if you’re using AES with a 256-bit key, in future it’ll be as secure as a 128-bit key.

A Quantum Leap

How far are we from quantum computers making the leap from flaky lab experiments to full production? The answer depends on the problem you want to solve, because not all quantum computers are the same. In fact, according to IBM, they fall into three classes.

The least powerful are quantum annealers. These are available now in the form of machines from Canada’s D-Wave. They have roughly the same power as a traditional computer but are especially good at solving optimisation problems in exquisite detail.  Airbus is already using this ability to increase the efficiency of wing aerodynamics.

More powerful are analogue quantum computers. These are much more difficult to build, and IBM thinks they’re about five years away. They will be the first class of quantum computers to exceed the power of conventional machines. Again, they won’t run programs as we think of them, but instead will simulate incredibly complex interactions, such as those found in life sciences, chemistry and materials science.

The most powerful machines to come are universal quantum computers, which is what most people think of when discussing quantum computers. These could be a decade or more away, but they’re coming, and will be exponentially more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers. They will run programs as we understand them, including Shor’s Algorithm, and will be capable of cracking encryption with ease. While they’re being developed, so are the programs they’ll run. The current list stands at about 50 specialised but immensely powerful algorithms. Luckily, there are extremely complex engineering problems to overcome before this class of hardware becomes a reality.

Meanwhile, quantum computer announcements are coming thick and fast.

IBM has announced the existence of a very simple device it claims is the first step on the path to a universal quantum computer. Called IBM Q, there’s a web portal for anyone to access and program it, though learning how and what you can do with such a device could take years.

Google is pursuing the quantum annealing approach. The company says it plans to demonstrate a reliable quantum chip before the end of 2017, and in doing so will assert something called “quantum supremacy“, meaning that it can reliably complete specialised tasks faster than a conventional computer. Microsoft is also in on the action. Its approach is called StationQ, and the company been quietly researching quantum technologies for over a decade.

Our Universal Future

While there’s still a long way to go, the presence of industry giants means there’s no doubt that quantum computers are entering the mainstream, but it’ll probably be the fruits of their computational power that we see first in everyday life rather than the hardware itself. So, solutions to currently difficult problems and improvements in the efficiency of everything from data transmission to batteries for electric cars could start appearing.

Life will really change when universal quantum computers finally become a reality. Be in no doubt that conventional encryption will one day be a thing of the past. Luckily, researchers are already working on so-called post-quantum encryption algorithms that these machines will find difficult to crack.

As well as understandable fears over privacy, and even the rise of quantum artificial intelligence, the future also holds miracles in medicine and other areas that are currently far from humanity’s grasp. The tasks to which we put these strange machines remains entirely our own choice. Let’s hope we choose wisely.

Posted on August 4th, 2017 by admin and tagged AI, cybersecurity, encryption, internet, national security, nsa, quantum computer, spying

Is the UK headed for a cybersecurity disaster?

With Brexit looming and cybercrime booming, the UK can’t afford major IT disasters, but history says they’re inevitable.

The recent WannaCry ransomware tsunami was big news in the UK. However, it was incorrectly reported that the government had scrapped a deal with Microsoft to provide extended support for Windows XP that would have protected ageing NHS computers. The truth is far more mundane.

In 2014, the government signed a one-year deal with Microsoft to provide security updates to NHS Windows XP machines. This was supposed to force users to move to the latest version of Windows within 12 months, but with a “complete aversion to central command and control” within the NHS, and no spare cash for such an upgrade, the move was never completed.

This isn’t the first IT Whitehall IT disaster by a very long way.

During the 1990s, for example, it was realised that the IT systems underpinning the UK’s Magistrates’ Courts were inadequate. It was proposed that a new, unified system should replace them. In 1998, the Labour government signed a deal with ICL to develop Project Libra. Costing £146m, this would manage the courts and link to other official systems, such as the DVLA and prisons systems.

Described in 2003 as “One of the worst IT projects ever seen“, Project Libra’s costs nearly tripled to £390m, with ICL’s parent company, Fujitsu, twice threatening to pull out of the project.

This wasn’t Labour’s only IT project failure. In total, it’s reckoned that by the time the government fell in 2010, it had consumed around £26b of taxpayer’s money on failed, late and cancelled IT projects.

The coalition government that followed fared no better. £150m paid to Raytheon in compensation for cancelling the e-Borders project, £100m spent on a failed archiving system at the BBC, £56m spent on a Ministry of Justice system that was cancelled after someone realised there was already a system doing the same thing: these are just a few of the failed IT projects since Labour left office seven years ago.

The Gartner group has analysed why government IT projects fail, and discovered several main factors. Prominent amongst these is that politicians like to stamp their authority on the nation with grandiose schemes. Gartner says such large projects fail because of their scope. It also says failure lies in trying to re-implement complex, existing processes rather than seeking to simplify and improve on them by design. The problem is, with Brexit looming, large, complex systems designed to quickly replace existing systems are exactly what’s required.

A good example is the ageing HM Customs & Excise CHIEF system. Because goods currently enjoy freedom of movement within the EU, there are only around 60 million packages that need checking in through CHIEF each year. The current system is about 25 years old and just about copes. Leaving the EU will mean processing an estimated 390 million packages per year. However, the replacement system is already rated as “Amber/Red” by the government’s own Infrastructure and Projects Authority, meaning it is already at risk of failure before it’s even delivered.

Another key system for the UK is the EU’s Schengen Information System (SIS-II). This provides real time information about individuals of interest, such as those with European Arrest Warrants against them, terrorist suspects, returning foreign fighters, missing persons, drug traffickers, etc.

Access to SIS-II is limited to countries that abide by EU European Court of Justice rulings. Described by ex-Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as a “fantastically useful weapon” against terrorism, after Brexit, access to SIS-II may be withdrawn.

Late last year, a Commons Select Committee published a report identifying the risks to policing if the UK loses access to SIS-II and related EU systems. The report claimed that then-Home Secretary Theresa May had said that such systems were vital to, “stop foreign criminals from coming to Britain, deal with European fighters coming back from Syria, stop British criminals evading justice abroad, prevent foreign criminals evading justice by hiding here, and get foreign criminals out of our prisons.

If Labour gains power, things are even less clear. Its manifesto makes little mention of cyber security, but says it will order a complete strategic defence and security review “including cyber warfare”, which will take time to formulate and agree with stakeholders. It also says Labour will introduce a cyber charter for companies working with the Ministry of Defence.

Regardless of who takes power in the UK this month, time is running out. The pressure to deliver large and complex systems to cover the shortfall left by Brexit will be immense. Such systems need to be delivered on time, within budget and above all they must be secure – both from internal and external threats.

Posted on June 8th, 2017 by admin and tagged brexit, cybersecurity, email, government, hacking, national security, phishing, ransomware

Who is behind the CIA’s hacking tools? Surprisingly ordinary geeks, it seems.

At the start of March came the first part of yet another Wikileaks document dump, this time detailing the CIA’s hacking capabilities. The world suddenly feared spooks watching them through their TVs and smartphones. It all made for great headlines.

The Agency has developed scores of interesting projects, not to mention a stash of hitherto unknown zero day vulnerabilities. The dump also gives notes on how to create well-behaved, professional malware that stands the least chance of detection, analysis and attribution to Langley. We’ve also learned some useful techniques for defeating antivirus software, which the Agency calls Personal Security Products (PSPs).

There’s also a deeper tale to tell. It’s about the personalities behind the redacted names working on these tools and techniques. They don’t seem so different from anyone else working in infosec.

User #524297 says he is a “Coffee addict, Connoisseur of International Barbecues, and Varied Malt Beverage Enthusiast.” Thanks to his comments, we know an ex-boss (nicknamed “Panty-Raider”) was considered “really odd”. Another had a large, carved wooden desk that went with him from job to job.

User #524297 also maintains a page dedicated to some interesting ideas. One is to use the OpenDNS DNSCrypt service to hide DNS requests emanating from a compromised host.

Another fun-loving User is #71473. He has a page called “List of ideas for fun and interesting ways to kill/crash a process“, which enumerates a dozen homebrew techniques and variations. Most are still at the concept stage, but under the list of uses to which they may be put, he includes “Knockover (sic) PSPs” and “Troll people”.

He also describes several proof-of-concept tools for his process crashing techniques. One is called DisorderlyShutdown, which waits a programmable amount of time (plus a random offset to make things seem natural) to select a random process to crash in the hope of leading to “data loss and gnashing of teeth”. Another is WarheadsToForeheads, which attempts to crash processes. About this tool, he says: “Considering making this an infinite enumeration to squash all user processes and make the user experience especially horrific.”

Revealingly, User #71473 also likes to hack the home pages of other Users: ” Its 11:30… time to deface people’s unprotected user pages…”

User #11628962 was deeply impressed by Subramaniam and Hunt’s “Practices of an Agile Developer”, and went to great lengths to enumerate the principles behind the work for others in his group. 

Meanwhile, we learn that User # 71475 loves to listen to music online and lists several streaming services and YouTube channels. He’s also an avid collector of ASCII-based emoticons. Everyone needs a hobby, right? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Amusingly, User #20873595 is keen for people understand that his last name does not begin with C, implying that it is in fact Hunt. There was also some debate about what User #72907’s office nickname should be. “Monster Lite” was the apparent front runner.

We also learned from the dump that some of the Users are heavily into the online card game Hearthstone, which unfriendly foreign state actors are likely now feverishly trying to hack.

The public at large has moved on, and the first of the vulnerabilities highlighted in the dump has been patched, but the industrious CIA hackers who originally found them are still beavering away, creating new tools to replace the old ones, finding new zero-days, thinking up new nicknames, trolling each other, and of course playing Hearthstone.

Posted on March 24th, 2017 by admin and tagged anti-virus, cia, cybersecurity, gchq, hacking, hearthstone, national security, nsa, spying, targeted attacks, wikileaks