The "Oyster card" used on the London Tube was at issue in the Dutch case, and a similar fare card used on the Boston "T" was the center of the U.S. case. The Dutch court got it right, and the American court, in Boston, got it wrong from the start -- despite facing an open-and-shut case of First Amendment prior restraint.

The U.S. court has since seen the error of its ways -- but the damage is done. The MIT security researchers who were prepared to discuss their Boston findings at the DefCon security conference were prevented from giving their talk.

The ethics of full disclosure are intimately familiar to those of us in the computer-security field. Before full disclosure became the norm, researchers would quietly disclose vulnerabilities to the vendors -- who would routinely ignore them. Sometimes vendors would even threaten researchers with legal action if they disclosed the vulnerabilities.

Later on, researchers started disclosing the existence of a vulnerability but not the details. Vendors responded by denying the security holes' existence, or calling them just theoretical. It wasn't until full disclosure became the norm that vendors began consistently fixing vulnerabilities quickly. Now that vendors routinely patch vulnerabilities, researchers generally give them advance notice to allow them to patch their systems before the vulnerability is published. But even with this "responsible disclosure" protocol, it's the threat of disclosure that motivates them to patch their systems. Full disclosure is the mechanism (.pdf) by which computer security improves.

Outside of computer security, secrecy is much more the norm. Some security communities, like locksmiths, behave much like medieval guilds, divulging the secrets of their profession only to those within it. These communities hate open research, and have responded with surprising vitriol to researchers who have found serious vulnerabilities in bicycle locks, combination safes (.pdf), master-key systems and many other security devices.

Researchers have received a similar reaction from other communities more used to secrecy than openness. Researchers -- sometimes young students -- who discovered and published flaws in copyright-protection schemes, voting-machine security and now wireless access cards have all suffered recriminations and sometimes lawsuits for not keeping the vulnerabilities secret. When Christopher Soghoian created a website allowing people to print fake airline boarding passes, he got several unpleasant visits from the FBI.

This preference for secrecy comes from confusing a vulnerability with information about that vulnerability. Using secrecy as a security measure is fundamentally fragile. It assumes that the bad guys don't do their own security research. It assumes that no one else will find the same vulnerability. It assumes that information won't leak out even if the research results are suppressed. These assumptions are all incorrect.

The problem isn't the researchers; it's the products themselves. Companies will only design security as good as what their customers know to ask for. Full disclosure helps customers evaluate the security of the products they buy, and educates them in how to ask for better security. The Dutch court got it exactly right when it wrote: "Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings."

In a world of forced secrecy, vendors make inflated claims about their products, vulnerabilities don't get fixed, and customers are no wiser. Security research is stifled, and security technology doesn't improve. The only beneficiaries are the bad guys.

If you'll forgive the analogy, the ethics of full disclosure parallel the ethics of not paying kidnapping ransoms. We all know why we don't pay kidnappers: It encourages more kidnappings. Yet in every kidnapping case, there's someone -- a spouse, a parent, an employer -- with a good reason why, in this one case, we should make an exception.

The reason we want researchers to publish vulnerabilities is because that's how security improves. But in every case there's someone -- the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the locksmiths, an election machine manufacturer -- who argues that, in this one case, we should make an exception.

We shouldn't. The benefits of responsibly publishing attacks greatly outweigh the potential harm. Disclosure encourages companies to build security properly rather than relying on shoddy design and secrecy, and discourages them from promising security based on their ability to threaten researchers. It's how we learn about security, and how we improve future security.

This essay previously appeared on Wired.com.

EDITED TO ADD (8/26): Matt Blaze has a good essay on the topic.

The "Oyster card" used on the London Tube was at issue in the Dutch case, and a similar fare card used on the Boston "T" was the center of the U.S. case. The Dutch court got it right, and the American court, in Boston, got it wrong from the start -- despite facing an open-and-shut case of First Amendment prior restraint.

The U.S. court has since seen the error of its ways -- but the damage is done. The MIT security researchers who were prepared to discuss their Boston findings at the DefCon security conference were prevented from giving their talk.

The ethics of full disclosure are intimately familiar to those of us in the computer-security field. Before full disclosure became the norm, researchers would quietly disclose vulnerabilities to the vendors -- who would routinely ignore them. Sometimes vendors would even threaten researchers with legal action if they disclosed the vulnerabilities.

Later on, researchers started disclosing the existence of a vulnerability but not the details. Vendors responded by denying the security holes' existence, or calling them just theoretical. It wasn't until full disclosure became the norm that vendors began consistently fixing vulnerabilities quickly. Now that vendors routinely patch vulnerabilities, researchers generally give them advance notice to allow them to patch their systems before the vulnerability is published. But even with this "responsible disclosure" protocol, it's the threat of disclosure that motivates them to patch their systems. Full disclosure is the mechanism (.pdf) by which computer security improves.

Outside of computer security, secrecy is much more the norm. Some security communities, like locksmiths, behave much like medieval guilds, divulging the secrets of their profession only to those within it. These communities hate open research, and have responded with surprising vitriol to researchers who have found serious vulnerabilities in bicycle locks, combination safes (.pdf), master-key systems and many other security devices.

Researchers have received a similar reaction from other communities more used to secrecy than openness. Researchers -- sometimes young students -- who discovered and published flaws in copyright-protection schemes, voting-machine security and now wireless access cards have all suffered recriminations and sometimes lawsuits for not keeping the vulnerabilities secret. When Christopher Soghoian created a website allowing people to print fake airline boarding passes, he got several unpleasant visits from the FBI.

This preference for secrecy comes from confusing a vulnerability with information about that vulnerability. Using secrecy as a security measure is fundamentally fragile. It assumes that the bad guys don't do their own security research. It assumes that no one else will find the same vulnerability. It assumes that information won't leak out even if the research results are suppressed. These assumptions are all incorrect.

The problem isn't the researchers; it's the products themselves. Companies will only design security as good as what their customers know to ask for. Full disclosure helps customers evaluate the security of the products they buy, and educates them in how to ask for better security. The Dutch court got it exactly right when it wrote: "Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings."

In a world of forced secrecy, vendors make inflated claims about their products, vulnerabilities don't get fixed, and customers are no wiser. Security research is stifled, and security technology doesn't improve. The only beneficiaries are the bad guys.

If you'll forgive the analogy, the ethics of full disclosure parallel the ethics of not paying kidnapping ransoms. We all know why we don't pay kidnappers: It encourages more kidnappings. Yet in every kidnapping case, there's someone -- a spouse, a parent, an employer -- with a good reason why, in this one case, we should make an exception.

The reason we want researchers to publish vulnerabilities is because that's how security improves. But in every case there's someone -- the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the locksmiths, an election machine manufacturer -- who argues that, in this one case, we should make an exception.

We shouldn't. The benefits of responsibly publishing attacks greatly outweigh the potential harm. Disclosure encourages companies to build security properly rather than relying on shoddy design and secrecy, and discourages them from promising security based on their ability to threaten researchers. It's how we learn about security, and how we improve future security.

---

Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT Global Services and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can read more of his writings on his website.

On the 29th episode of The Silver Bullet Security Podcast, Gary talks with Dennis Fisher, executive editor of The Security Media Group at TechTarget. Dennis helps run SearchSecurity.com and Information Security Magazine. Gary and Dennis discuss the current “BS factor” in security journalism, shopping at TJ Maxx right after the TJX privacy breach, the state of software security, and which is harder: being a fry cook at Hardees or working as a PR flack.

• Dennis’ blog
• TJX
• Joe Walsh plays dirty laundry
• Software Security Grows
• Dennis’ un-named podcast
• Series of Tubes
• Hardees
• Nike/iPod

Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system, an advance that many in the security community say will have far-reaching implications not only for Microsoft, but also on how the entire technology industry thinks about attacks.

In a presentation at the Black Hat briefings, Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. will discuss the new methods they've found to get around Vista protections such as Address Space Layout Randomization(ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and others by using Java, ActiveX controls and .NET objects to load arbitrary content into Web browsers.

By taking advantage of the way that browsers, specifically Internet Explorer, handle active scripting and .NET objects, the pair have been able to load essentially whatever content they want into a location of their choice on a user's machine.

Paper here.

Doesn’t this seem backwards to you? Shouldn’t the MBTA be suing the vendor who sold them the flawed system? Security problems go away by mandating independant security testing before a product is accepted, not by trying to get security researchers to be quiet. This is a good example of how the reactive approach doesn’t work. The flaws are still in the system and suing researchers has just shined a bright light on them.

Update 08/09/2008 6:00pm EST:

The EFF is appealing the injunction which is blocking the students from speaking about the results of their testing.

A telling quote from Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney at the EFF gets to the heart of the issue:

“Courts have found that the First Amendment covers these things. We believe that this is a protected speech activity. When you discuss security issues, if you are telling the truth, that is something that should be protected.”

Apparently the MBTA has known about this problem since at least March, 2008 when a graduate student from the University of Virginia announced he was able to break the encryption system.

The U of VA researcher gave an interview where he described why security by obscurity is not a valid security approach for a cryptosystem:

Q: What are your thoughts on security by obscurity? Is NXP using this method of protection?

A: Security-through-obscurity hardly ever works. The lack of proper peer-review often even hurts the security of the system. Our Mifare work discovered several vulnerabilities that could be fixed without increasing the cost of the cards. NXP did for a long time rely on obscurity for the security of some of their products, but now decided against this outdated design approach and instead bases the security of newer RFID cards on publicly scrutinized cryptography and independent evaluations.

Q: Can you explain “Kerckhoffs Principle” and why it applies to your work?

A: Kerchoff, who lived in the 19th century, observed that keeping anything secret is really hard. So instead of relying on the secrecy of your whole system, it would a lot easier to only rely on the secrecy of a small secret key. Security systems should hence be publicly known and analyzed, and only the key should be secret. When properly realised for RFID cards, Kerchoff’s principle means that by analyzing their own cards, thieves cannot compromise your cards. This is contrary to our Mifare work, where we only analyzed a few copies of the the secret algorithm that is found in all cards and were consequently able affect the security of all the other billion cards out there.

The MBTA not only accepted a security system which relied on security by obscurity but once accepting this flawed model must try to maintain this obscurity with the court system.

The documents detailing the presentation are here.

Based upon talking with Microsoft customers over the past five years, they are always looking for that little bit of extra information to help make prioritization decisions.  An obvious example of this is the severity attached to the vulns.  However, as explained by Mike Reavey of the the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) over on the Ecostrat blog today, customers are also very interested in which vulnerabilities already have exploit code or sample exploits available.

According to our analysis in the most recent Security Intelligence Report (SIR), only about 30 percent of the vulnerabilities we fix each year have exploit code released.  Why is it not 100% ?  Some are not interesting to attackers, sure, but some are simply more challenging to develop a consistent exploit against.  It seems like it would be practically useful if this sort of information could be analyzed and published for customers.

How does one come up with an Exploitability Index?

• The MSRC will analyze the vulnerability and explore what it would take to exploit it, with the support of our Security Vulnerability Research & Defense (SVRD) team.  This will include leveraging methodologies from the broad researcher community.
• We will also ask security researcher members of the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) (download FAQ) to review the vulnerabilities and check our analysis before releasing the index.

The idea of the Exploitability Index is to provide more information to help customers prioritize Microsoft security updates. This Index will reflect our best estimate, scrutinized by MAPP partners, of the likelihood of a functional exploit being developed for a given vulnerability.

If you are interested, I did an interview with Mike Reavey a while back, where we discuss what sort of information customers want that isn't yet in Security Bulletins.  FYI, the video is about 15 minutes long and the early part focuses on Mike, how he got into security and how he ended up at Microsoft before we get to the Security Bulletin discussion ... if you want to get right to the Security Bulletin discussion, skip forward to about 08:40.

If you like these sorts of videos, click on
SecurityGuy 001 - Interview with MSRC Leader Mike Reavey and it'll take you to the edge.technet.com site and you can check out the related videos.

Regards ~ Jeff

Brian Krebs has the details–

Charles Edge, a researcher from Georgia, had been slated to discuss his research on a weakness that could be used to defeat FileVault encryption on the Mac. But sometime last week, Black Hat organizers pulled his name and presentation listing from its schedule of talks.

Contacted via cell phone, Edge said he signed confidentiality agreements with Apple, which prevents him from speaking on the topic and from discussing the matter further.

Almost every year, much of the drama leading up to and during Black Hat seems to revolve around talks that are canceled or censored at the last minute for various legal reasons.

Read the full article here.

New Speaking of Security co-host, Amanda VanVeen, meets with Jeff Carpenter, Senior Product Marketing Manager at RSA, to discuss how the latest release of RSA Aughtentication Manager supports organizations focusing on business continuity. When natural or man-made disasters hit, it's important that employees be able to quickly and easily access network resources, but it's equally important to know just who those new remote workers are.