• Low-tech is very effective. Movie-plot threats -- terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists with biological agents, terrorists targeting our water supplies -- might be what people worry about, but a bunch of trained (we don't really know yet what sort of training they had, but it's clear that they had some) men with guns and grenades is all they needed.

• At the same time, the attacks were surprisingly ineffective. I can't find exact numbers, but it seems there were about 18 terrorists. The latest toll is 195 dead, 235 wounded. That's 11 dead, 13 wounded, per terrorist. As horrible as the reality is, that's much less than you might have thought if you imagined the movie in your head. Reality is different from the movies.

• Even so, terrorism is rare. If a bunch of men with guns and grenades is all they really need, then why isn't this sort of terrorism more common? Why not in the U.S., where it's easy to get hold of weapons? It's because terrorism is very, very rare.

• Specific countermeasures don't help against these attacks. None of the high-priced countermeasures that defend against specific tactics and specific targets made, or would have made, any difference: photo ID checks, confiscating liquids at airports, fingerprinting foreigners at the border, bag screening on public transportation, anything. Evenmetal detectors and threat warnings didn't do any good:

  "If I look at what we had, which all of us complained about, it could not have stopped what took place," he told CNN. "It's ironic that we did have such a warning, and we did have some measures."

  He said people were told to park away from the entrance and had to go through a metal detector. But he said the attackers came through a back entrance.

  "They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front," he said.

If there's any lesson in these attacks, it's not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. Of course, that's not the way we're programmed to think. We respond to stories and not analysis. I don't mean to be sympathetic; this tendency is human and these deaths are really tragic. But eighteen armed people intent on killing lots of innocents will be able to do just that, and last-line-of-defense countermeasures won't be able to stop them. Intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. We have to find and stop the terrorists before they attack, and deal with the aftermath of the attacks we don't stop. There really is no other way, and I hope that we don't let the tragedy lead us into unwise decisions about how to deal with terrorism.

No longer are OS vendors and other large infrastructure technology providers the main source of vulnerabilities. It’s the thousands of applications, produced by thousands of software vendors, that make up this huge 3rd wave. ISS reported that in 2007 that the top five sources of vulnerabilities: Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, and Cisco, had dropped to supplying us with only 13.6% of our vulnerabilities. 86.4% came from the other thousands of software vendors that supply our computers with a seemingly unending supply of vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit.

In a recent report Microsoft has congratulated itself on doing a good job securing Windows. And by all accounts they have done a good job. But then they state this:

“Unless software development practices change throughout the industry, any improvements in the security of Windows would be meaningless.”

Whoa. Millions of dollars spent on securing the most prevalent piece of software and it could be meaningless? Yes, it’s true. Since attackers typically only need one vulnerability, if it isn’t in the network, and it isn’t in the host configuration, and it isn’t in the OS, they will happily exploit a vulnerability in an application.

At every shift of exploit target the problem has gotten more difficult to solve. Networks had choke points and could be centrally managed. It took a while but eventually host configurations became centrally managed and automated tools could scan configurations. Although OSes were huge and complex beasts with 10’s of millions of lines of code, with enough effort, their vulnerabilities have been largely tamed as Microsoft’s Windows and the Linux kernel track record shows. This was a very substantial, over five year effort, which used some of the most talented security people anywhere.
But now what to do? Instead of a few OSes we now have thousands of applications with vulnerabilities. As Microsoft found out, the attackers don’t go away, they just move on to the next incrementally less juicy vulnerability. In the world of exploits that typically means the vulnerability with the next smallest target population.

Attackers have started with the common client applications that can be found on almost every machine: Acrobat, Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime, popular antivirus software. And they will continue down the popularity slope until they get to application populations down in the thousands which is getting to fairly small software vendors. Attackers can do this because they can bundle many vulnerabilities together, exploiting the statistical fact that you must have some vulnerable software installed. Compromised web sites have been found attacking visitors with over ten client side exploits preying on multiple versions of vulnerable client software.

The solution to this problem is all software must be written securely, not just the software from the big guys. Small vendors think they aren’t a target just like home users used to think they weren’t a target. People thought, “Why would someone want to attack my home computer?” Then they realized they did home banking, or had a fast internet connection that could be used for DDoS attacks or sending spam. All software vendors need to get the same wakeup call. Attackers don’t want to find a vulnerability in your software to make you look bad. They want any vulnerability. If the population of your software is small they will just bundle your vulnerability together with others in an exploit pack. The days of the average software vendor not having to worry about application security are officially over.

Unfortunately, there's not really anything to his response. It's obvious he doesn't want to admit that they've been checking ID's all this time to no purpose whatsoever, so he just emits vague generalities like a frightened squid filling the water with ink. Yes, some of the stunts in article are silly (who cares if people fly with Hezbollah T-shirts?) so that gives him an opportunity to minimize the real issues.

Watch-lists and identity checks are important and effective security measures. We identify dozens of terrorist-related individuals a week and stop No-Flys regularly with our watch-list process.

It is simply impossible that the TSA catches dozens of terrorists every week. If it were true, the administration would be trumpeting this all over the press -- it would be an amazing success story in their war on terrorism. But note that Hawley doesn't exactly say that; he calls them "terrorist-related individuals." Which means exactly what? People so dangerous they can't be allowed to fly for any reason, yet so innocent they can't be arrested -- even under the provisions of the Patriot Act.

And if Secretary Chertoff is telling the truth when he says that there are only 2,500 people on the no-fly list and fewer than 16,000 people on the selectee list -- they're the ones that get extra screening -- and that most of them live outside the U.S., then it is statistically impossible that the TSA identifies "dozens" of these people every week. The math just doesn't make sense.

And I also don't believe this:

Behavior detection works and we have 2,000 trained officers at airports today. They alert us to people who may pose a threat but who may also have items that could elude other layers of physical security.

It does work, but I don't see the TSA doing it properly. (Fly El Al if you want to see it done properly.) But what I think Hawley is doing is engaging in a little bit of psychological manipulation. Like sky marshals, the real benefit of behavior detection isn't whether or not you do it but whether or not the bad guys believe you're doing it. If they think you are doing behavior detection at security checkpoints, or have sky marshals on every airplane, then you don't actually have to do it. It's the threat that's the deterrent, not the actual security system.

This doesn't impress me, either:

Items carried on the person, be they a 'beer belly' or concealed objects in very private areas, are why we are buying over 100 whole body imagers in upcoming months and will deploy more over time. In the meantime, we use hand-held devices that detect hydrogen peroxide and other explosives compounds as well as targeted pat-downs that require private screening.

Optional security measures don't work, because the bad guys will opt not to use them. It's like those air-puff machines at some airports now. They're probably great at detecting explosive residue off clothing, but every time I have seen the machines in operation, the passengers have the option whether to go through the lane with them or another lane. What possible good is that?

The closest thing to a real response from Hawley is that the terrorists might get caught stealing credit cards.

Using stolen credit cards and false documents as a way to get around watch-lists makes the point that forcing terrorists to use increasingly risky tactics has its own security value.

He's right about that. And, truth be told, that was my sloppiest answer during the original intervied. Thinking about it afterwards, it's far more likely is that someone with a clean record and a legal credit card will buy the various plane tickets.

This is new:

Boarding pass scanners and encryption are being tested in eight airports now and more will be coming.

Ignoring for a moment that "eight airports" nonsense -- unless you do it at every airport, the bad guys will choose the airport where you don't do it to launch their attack -- this is an excellent idea. The reason my attack works, the reason I can get through TSA checkpoints with a fake boarding pass, is that the TSA never confirms that the information on the boarding pass matches a legitimate reservation. If all TSA checkpoints had boarding pass scanners that connected to the airlines' computers, this attack would not work. (Interestingly enough, I noticed exactly this system at the Dublin airport earlier this month.)

Stopping the ‘James Bond’ terrorist is truly a team effort and I whole-heartedly agree that the best way to stop those attacks is with intelligence and law enforcement working together.

This isn't about "Stopping the 'James Bond' terrorist," it's about stopping terrorism. And if all this focus on airports, even assuming it starts working, shifts the terrorists to other targets, we haven't gotten a whole lot of security for our money.

FYI: I did a long interview with Kip Hawley last year. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend you do. I pressed him on these and many other points, and didn't get very good answers then, either.