China, is it our cyber defense red herring?

There are thousands of articles perpetuating the claim that China is out to get us on the Internet. And yet, all these discussions are begging the question, is it China attacking? Also, are they even the "usual suspects"?

While I can point to real facts of China making active use of information warfare, cyber warfare, or whatever else you choose to call it (such as the release of 0 days being patched by Microsoft
and originally reported by the Taiwanese government, search Microsoft's site), I can also point to Germany (intelligence Trojan horse), the US (The Farewell Dossier) and other countries such
as North Korea (without much detail, so questioned).

We have a failing, that even as experts we see an IP source in China for an attack, and as it is popular, and we are still used to think in the physical world, jump to the conclusion the actor is from China. The actor is often from the US, Eastern Europe, Russia, Brazil, and many other countries. That in turn does not mean these actors are then sponsored by these countries. Information warfare is about covertness, not about being loud. The Internet is perfect for plausible deniability, as I've learned when writing the postmortem analysis of the 2007 attacks against Estonia, for the Estonian CERT.

The Chinese know more about the uses of being covert than any of the rest of us, in their strategy, their actions, and their history. If they are being so indiscreet it is for a specific reason, perhaps as a smoke-screen, or indeed, they are not doing it to begin with.

I am not saying the Chinese government does not attack, I am saying naming them continually is nothing but a baseless red herring, and an easy scape-goat we have all grown used to. Thus, blaming China by itself has become acceptable just because people did it often enough. The story of Ethos manufacturing itself.

Malicious computers in China are a problem we can't and shouldn't deny. However, continually claiming China is the Big Bad and attributing every attack to them, is beyond ridiculous. Nothing to see here, move along.

Then again, maybe if we keep saying it's the Chinese with every attack we see, they will get some ideas and make it true for us. It may eventually prove true, but our current proof is based mainly on people claiming it in the past. We are better than this.

Gadi Evron,
ge@linuxbox.org.

Follow me on twitter! http://twitter.com/gadievron

Lessons I Learned from Cyber Crime, an Article Series

I have been slow on updating this blog due to blogging on Dark Reading. I will make amends and start updating here more often. I will also start to cover my more interesting blogs on Dark Reading, here. You can also read my personal blog where I write about things I find interesting, or funny.

A few months ago I wrote a short series on some of the lessons I learned from the world of security and cyber crime. About systems and networks, people and communities, and finally, projects and making things happen, the first one begins with:

"The history of anti-spam teaches us about half-baked ideas and how people succeeded or failed to implement them. The analogy of evolution, while limited, demonstrates how reactionary solutions can achieve strategic goals before they are made obsolete by countermeasures.

How do you herd cats? In a series of blogs starting today, I'll explore the history of fighting cybercrime and how and why certain solutions worked while others failed, how we can recreate success, and what lessons we can distill to build business solutions, affect change in communities -- and even fight terrorism."

The three posts in question, are:

1. Lessons From Fighting Cybercrime

"... Criminals were forced to evolve in a desirable direction, which is a victory on its own. Evolution in capabilities occurs to circumvent security measures. By limiting the spammers' options they evolved to a technological battleground where we have more control."

2. Lessons From Fighting Cybercrime, Part 2

"... It enumerates ways by which "new" and "amazing" suggestions on solving the spam problem go wrong... If only "everyone" (or most people) used their solution or "forced users" to act counter intuitively (and similar truisms), spam would be "gone". It is well worth a read.

Trying to map how some solutions work while others can't even get off the ground and seeing how communities and social systems change is fascinating. The examples above and many other lessons of fighting cybercrime are illuminating. Especially when we consider they are mostly derived from failures of technical solutions to solve a human problem, a common design fallacy this day and age."

3. Cybercriminals: More Obvious Than They Think?

• "...Let me pose it this way: It's a hot summer day, and you're drinking a beer at the beach. People are having fun and relaxing. Suddenly, you see a person wearing an heavy coat. Is this suspicious?"

• "... Encryption is a great tool, but it also draws attention to you for using it. In your organization, how likely is an attacker to identify important resources just by watching for encrypted traffic? In some cases, it may be better to stay obscure, in the background as noise, than to use encryption. If the malware sample is new and therefore undetected by antivirus, then the same unfortunately applies to malware authors."

I hope you find these posts interesting. Do share your thoughts with me. Any anecdote, epiphany or even just an insight from your own experience will be appreciated.

Gadi Evron,
ge@linuxbox.org.

Follow me on twitter! http://twitter.com/gadievron

Time for self reflection

In case you don't read any of what I have to say below, read this: I have dual citizenship. Along with my homeland citizenship, I am of the Internet, and see it as my personal duty to try and make the Internet safe.

Atrivo (also known as Intercage), is a network known to host criminal activity for many years, is no more.

Not being sarcastic for once, this is time for some self reflection.

I wish I was one of those who sleep soundly tonight. Being clear in my conviction that Atrivo should be out of business, and being positive my decision to help that happen was sound--While I would do it again, I am sad.

I won't sleep soundly tonight, as that company, criminal and abusive as it clearly and contemptuously was, still sustained quite a few families in several layers of employment, from sysadmins sitting in the US of A all the way to minor low-level fraudsters employed by their clients' clients.

I will however, be able to look myself in the mirror for my part in the
effort to get rid of them--and even gloat some. My conscious is as clear to me as my sadness is crystal. We may not have changed the wall of battle in the long term and whenever one criminal falls, another jumps up to the opportunities of the land of the free--the Internet. But for once, just for a while, we halted the machine. We stopped the wheels of evil, even if only for a fortnight.

While doing so, ee also touched some lives in a destructive fashion. The criminals'.

No villain ever sees himself as the bad guy, as the saying goes. A friend recently showed me Russian language comments written on Brian Krebs' recent Washington Post story. In them, the posters ask: "why do you take our bread away?"

In a lecture during ISOI 5, some folks just didn't understand the meaning. Their bread. Their bread. We in the Western world, behind the cultural divide speak a different language. Their culture isn't poorer than ours, it is unequivocally different.

We can not truly comprehend what it means for some folks in Russia to no longer be able to feed their children this month. Nor can we understand that by sending email, we made those children starve. Cheap theatrics on my part, you say? You got that right. It doesn't make it any less true.

Cyber crime is a war waged against the Western world. At first, no one even noticed and it was a niche.. an art. While the artists still exist, they are a minority, the hackers. For the criminals however, motive is as irrelevant as nationality. Whatever actions are taken, be it a political defacement, fraud or spam, the unavoidable secondary impact remains the same: damage to the Western economy and security in an exponential growth which will become ever clearer in the coming years.

Yes, my friends. I would do the same again. I feel sorry for Atrivo, but they were harboring the equivalent for the Internet of active missile launchers firing on Israel from the Gaza strip. They are human beings who hit a curve in the road to their success. Cyber criminals, however, establish such growth as parasites and whatever I may feel for needing to resort to the end game weaponry, these people need to be smacked down like cockroaches.

Ten years ago they were a pride to their parents, today they are a scourge. What will they be in ten years?

If all reasonable and even some unreasonable approaches fail. That does not mean I don't have to feel sorry for them, and me. But it also doesn't mean we don't need to fight back.

Not even a hundred years ago, disastrously, war was business and an
acceptable horrifying part of life. A few years later, in 1918, war was
unthinkable. In the century since we who live in or are influenced by
Western culture made war no longer an option we can publicly stomach, while facing those who would play us like children because of it.

War is horrifying and evil, it is also a last resort in a world not as
ascendant as we would like to think. The Internet has its own "liberals" and I am proud to be one of them. However, I am also practical and see that wishing for a world we once had is not. A world where I could host files on my neighbor's servers openly, where children could happily use pocket calculators and go to libraries for their school work rather than Google and read Wikipedia. You did so, do your children?

This new world has its price, and that price is a complete loss of public privacy, and a culture of ineffective security.

We are reliant on our Auntie Jane's computer knowledge for our own security, and while not many would follow us to our bathrooms to infringe on our personal privacy, online we have no privacy, however much it helps us to lie to ourselves that something we do publicly (read, on the Internet) is private.

I accepted that, but that is because I am in the trenches for years. Others live better not knowing. But it doesn't mean I won't work diligently to make it remain.. functional.

Indeed, taking a step back from my niche in security, and seeing how bad things truly are--people can still surf for porn, and argue over who the best Star Trek captain is. Cyber crime, in all its immense activity of billions of incidents an hour, is background noise. But the background noise continually increases. When will it overflow?

All I really want is to maintain the functionality we have, regardless of the abuse. And yet... Going back to Atrivo, they made enough money by now. And regardless once more, their criminal clients are already back online elsewhere--in some places possibly hosted by what seems like Atrivo, only under a different name.

We did not win, but boy does it feel good to have a victory once in a while for morale's sake. We halted the machine, even if only just for a short time. That, my friends, also has strategic implications as far as our ability is to influence networks running clean on the Internet, although only time will determine if I am right on that.

Enough whining though. Who is next on the target list? :)

More seriously, why do I care so much? I have dual citizenship. Along with my homeland citizenship, I am of the Internet, and see it as my personal duty to try and make the Internet safe.

Gadi Evron,
Of the Internet.
ge@linuxbox.org

Follow me on twitter! http://twitter.com/gadievron