Michael N. Dundas

Have you ever seen the Verified by Twitter logo.  It is suppose to give the public assurance that the person that holds the account is the real person and not someone pretending to be them.  Off and on over the last few weeks I have been trying to find out what the procedure is? What are the requirements?  How to they prove the individual is who they say they are?  Does Twitter intend to role it out to everyone?  I have had no luck.  Any queries seem to go into a vacuum.  They have this page which says:

To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a ‘Verified Account’ feature. We’re working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis. Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!

The first and last statements are what interests me, “To prevent identify confusion” and “Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!”.

I have always been a fan of the music group The Corrs.  One of the members, Sharon Corr has gone out on her own and is creating some songs and getting ready to release an album.  I have been following her on Twitter. She has a Verified by Twitter account. Her twitter ID is @Sharon_Corr.  If I look at her account, from the picture and links to her website and videos I can be reasonable certain it is her.  However, what if you were looking for a different Sharon Corr.  There must be more than one Sharon Corr in the world.  So I randomly tried @SharonCorr.  This person appears to be someone who writes poetry.  But is her name really Sharon Corr?  What if it is and she applies for a Twitter verified account?  Will Twitter verify it and give her the Verified by Twitter logo?  If her name is Sharon Corr, then they should.  But that might confuse someone like myself, looking for the singer Sharon Corr, so maybe they won’t.

How does Verified by Twitter make me feel safe as a user of Twitter?  If they fully roll this program out, they will encounter multiple people with the same name that all have verified accounts.  Maybe they use the URL on the profile page as the key.  If I see that the URL points to Sharon Corr’s website and there is a Verified by Twitter logo I can be certain that the person that has the website URL, also owns the Twitter account.  Of course that would confirm the relationship between the twitter account and the website, not the actual person Sharon Corr.  This of course assumes they know what I am looking for?  How do they know which Sharon Corr I want?

I looked up Taylor Swift for fun.  Her account is Verified by Twitter.  Her ID is @taylorswift13.    There is also a @taylorswift13x.  If you look at the two accounts they are very similar.

Taylor Swift’s real account (I think)

The website doesn’t help, because the URL points to itself.  We know Taylor Swift is popular so if you look at the followers count and combine that with the tweets and news articles you can conclude this is her account … maybe.

A fake Taylor Swift account (I think)

This is probably the fake one because of the follower count.  But then again, maybe this persons name is Taylor Swift and maybe this is the person I am looking for, not the popular one.  I am very confused now and Twitter said in their statement above that they were going “To prevent identify confusion”.  In order to do that, you actually have to know what identity I want to find, you can’t just guess. But that is what they are doing ‘guessing’ what I want based on popularity.  I think Verified by Twitter is just security theater.  The verified account doesn’t help.  Verifying someone is a complex problem and  putting a logo on a page just doesn’t cut it.

Maybe the logo should really be “Twitter verifies this to be the popular person you might be looking for logo”?

Ever wonder if you were being compensated appropriately?  Maybe you are being under paid or maybe you are being overpaid.  Being under paid or over paid is often typical.  In the first case, you might have been in your current position for 2 years and the cost to hiring an individual in your role with your skill set has increased significantly.  Often times since you have been at the company for a while, you have received the standard increase in salary of x percent which is less than the current market rate.   In the latter case, the market value of someone in your position with your experience has dropped.  New hires are cheaper, but the employer typically doesn’t drop your salary, they just give you the nominal x percent raise per year.

I know one individual who was at a company for a number of years.  He moved within the company to manage a new team.  He was surprised to learn the amount of money his team members were making compared to his salary.   He then became really upset when he learned that an individual that now reported to him was making more money than he was.  The company rectified the situation of course, but these things happen.  Salaries get out of alignment with the market.

I have been trying to determine my market value lately.  I hate the money part, I always have.  I like doing interesting stuff with cool people.  For me the money is secondary, tertiary or even further down the list, it always has been.  That being said, you have to pay the bills, and you want to be treated fairly. In order to know that you are being treated fairly, you need to have some data to compare and contrast.  I have tried several methods including on-line databases, research reports on salaries for people in technology.  I found them to vary widely regardless of the factors.  I didn’t trust the the data I was getting.  The results were all over the board.

I have however found the answer.  My solution was to query my network.  Via E-Mail, face to face conversations and Twitter, I asked a selected variety of individuals in the technology field.  Some managers, some directors, others owners of companies for input based on a few simple criteria including years of experience, location, and type of opportunity.  The responses were great.  They varied in detail and some included bonus and wages but information was very consistent across the network.   I am now much more comfortable with the market value for myself.

Personally, I have always wished that people were more open with their compensation.  Not to be nosy, but I think the openness would help many people and the industry in general.  Unfortunately, it is considered a very ‘private’ matter.  Most companies of course have explicit rules that say you can not discuss your compensation.  You can understand why they do this of course, it is to their advantage not the communities.

I’m realizing more and more that my personal network has a lot of untapped value. I need to harness it more and I also need to ensure I give back even more as that is what keeps it going. To all the individuals that responded to my query thank you.

Do you know what you are financially worth in your market?  Is the value accurate?

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Have you ever sent an email from a personal email account at work such as Hotmail, Gmail, or your personal account at your service provider?  When you do that you might assume that since you are sending the email from a central system it would not be possible for the recipient to information about you beyond what you give them and an email address.  Unfortunately this is not true.  Information is leaked in many ways.  SMTP, DNS, HTTP all can leak information about a particular individual or organization.  In my experience, most people know this is possible, but fail to grasp the ease with which information about a person or company can be discovered.

Here is a simple example to illustrate.  I have found when speaking to many users of email, they feel that their location could not be determined by the recipient in an email unless they specifically give it, or it would be at least difficult to find out.  They even feel more comfortable with this statement when they are using their personal email from a terminal at work or a Internet cafe via a browser.

I was recently corresponding with a friend of mine.  She has a Rogers email account that she uses for her personal email.  She sent me a response to an email.  By looking at the email itself, there is no information that would give away where she was located.  However, if I look at the email headers a wealth of information is available.  Let’s focus on one piece.

* headers not required for purposes of entry have been removed and others edited as required to protect identities

The ‘Received:’ header above displays an IP address.  Taking that IP address and doing a ‘whois’ (shown below) reveals the company name where the email originated.

* removed ISP information and edited company info to ensure privacy

How could this information be used?  If someone wanted to surreptitiously gather intelligence on a target, one could send a email to a target asking an innocuous question.  By responding the target has unknowingly revealed their place of employment.  A few searches on Google, a picture on Facebook of yourself and family members … you get the idea.

This type of information gathering has valid uses.  Determining a time-line of a target and their actions from a corporate or legal investigation, determining if your spouse is cheating on you, or your teenage child is lying are some examples.

I am not suggesting that you should try to hide this or not use the Internet.  I am also not suggesting it will be fixed anytime soon, if ever.  I am suggesting to be aware.  Be aware that in todays world, data about yourself is being leaked all the time and any determined individual or group can find out what you are up to with minimal effort.  Be aware that even the most common activity leaks data.

How secure or anonymous do you feel when using the Internet?

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I live in Canada.  The current Winter Olympics of 2010 are in Vancouver B.C. which last time I checked was in Canada. According to NBC I am not permitted to view the Olympics due to Copyright.  The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver B.C. Canada is restricted to viewers within the United States.

Of course I was able to view the videos.  Amazing what you can accomplish with a simple proxy plus some software to save the video to disk for normal viewing.  This is the Olympics – where the world comes together to compete share and all that.  Yet there is copyright being applied nationally.  Just silly. Geo-IP is silly as well for this type of enforcement.  When it comes to content delivery networks, Geo-IP is very beneficial to delivering data efficiently, but its use for copyright between borders needs to go away.

Normally I wouldn’t bother to tune in specifically to listen to Tiger Woods apologize, but I happened to be somewhere where it was on the radio so I listened.  I watched his apology again last night.  To me it didn’t feel sincere, it felt scripted, controlled.  I admit that would be a tough thing to do without some preparation, that isn’t what really bothered me.  What really bothered me about his apology I have been bothered with before.  I have observed it previously in other apologies, interviews and statements from individuals in the public eye.

Tiger was upset about the media probing his family and following his daughter to her school.  He made statements such as:

“what we say will remain between the two of us”

“everyone one of these questions and answers is a matter between Elin and me”

“these are issues between a husband and wife”

I have seen this many times before and here is the thing; when you choose a path which moves you more in the public eye, you loose some of your private life, period, full-stop.  It has always been this way.  More specifically, if you choose to become a politician, police officer, actor, sports professional, appear on a reality TV show, CEO of a major company, popular blogger or anything else where you increase your exposure in the public eye, you choose to sacrifice some if not all of your private life.  This choice extends in different degrees to your family, friends and anyone else connected to you.  Grasp, think about, and understand this concept.   Seriously consider it and the possible repercussions.  Now make your decision.  Choose wisely, because you, your family, and everyone involved with you will live with this decision.

While I understand the frustration this probably causes these people to feel, and I personally feel bad for Tiger’s daughter, I do, Tiger made that choice.  Consciously or not, when Tiger decided to pursue a career as a golf professional he made that choice for himself, his family, his daughter and anyone else involved in his private life.  Right or wrong that is what happened.

Especially in todays world of the Internet, blogging, twitter and other social media, the expectation of a private life that remains private is just silly.  Loosing some or all of your private life is part of the choice when you decide to do something that puts you more in the public eye, and it is not negotiable.   If you have made a choice to be in the public eye then when you apologize to the public, don’t expect a private life.  To me it shows a lack accepting responsibility for your choice and maybe a little bit of stupidity.  Instead, consider the public eye a risk factor when making decisions and give it the appropriate weight because it is a factor and this factor is not in your control.  Deciding where to go with your wife for dinner, where to take your family for vacation, what dentist to use, what school to send your daughter to, purchasing your son that Iphone, having an affair, or whatever the decision is, all require a risk assessment of the public eye factor.  Assess the risk and decide accordingly.  Yes, that probably sucks, but you chose that when you chose to be in the public eye.   Ignoring, downplaying, pleading or trying to control it won’t make it go away.  When you use your credit card, you accept the terms of service.  Even if you didn’t read them, they don’t go away.  The credit card company will still hold you to them.  It is the same when you choose something that will knowingly or not put you and your loved ones in the public eye.

I personally do not care about Tiger Woods’ private life.  I have enough trouble keeping up with my family and friends lives.  I typically don’t read gossip articles or posts.   I have no real interest in private lives of people that I do not have a relationship with.  I do feel bad for his daughter.  For her that must really suck.  I dislike the paparazzi and could never do that job and feel good about myself.  I hope Tiger as her dad has learned to factor his daughter into his decisions in the future.  But don’t expect a private life when you make a choice that puts you more in the public eye.  That is just silly and history shows that it never works.

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Once again I have been experimenting with the Tor network.  In doing so I have set up some Tor nodes. I have received a few notifications that my computer ‘may be infected’. Google for a brief period of time requested I enter a capcha to confirm I am human.  These are all expected minor nuisances when running Tor as an exit node. My main reason for setting up Tor this time, is to obtain a better understanding of what happens to behavioural and static detection when a Tor exit node is present.

If you want privacy or anonymity on the Internet, there are many things you can do. Proxies, Tor, encrypted tunnels, compromised systems, and many other techniques are available.  None of these will guarantee you anonymity or privacy, but they each help and the more you can do the better.  There are caveats of course and in several cases while consulting I have come across scenarios where a client thought they were being anonymous but were in fact not as anonymous as they thought.  When you are trying to be anonymous, use of monitoring techniques and system checks really help.

I’ve realized that running a Tor exit node but not using it yourself gives you anonymity.  I’ve always known this inherently, but I’ve realized that it is even better than I thought.  Say you are an evil person doing something evil on the Internet.  If your activities were being tracked by your service provider due to a warrant from law enforcement or laws were put in place that required all service providers to track and retain your Internet surfing activities for a period of time, they would be recording the surfing habits of every connection that selected your Tor node as its exit node.

If they accused you of illegal activity, you could easily say that was not me, it must have been someone using my Tor node.  While this is not a guarantee the criminal would not get caught, it would increase the cost of the investigation significantly.  More investigation time, more forensics to prove that the suspect is the criminal.  Add in anti-forensics on your terminals and systems you use for the crime and the costs for investigation again will increase, forcing them to assess if it is worth the time, money, and resources required.

If countries are going to deploy the retention laws similar to the above, it will only be a matter of time before they will have to outlaw services such as Tor in order to make them effective at catching the serious criminals.  From a Tor network perspective, these laws might help increase the node count of the Tor network on the Internet which is a good thing for them.

I wonder if law makers consider these questions when suggesting these laws?

There are some interesting events and decisions happening in the restaurant, finance, and healthcare industries.  These and similar events of course affect any companies in other countries such as Canada with international customers in these industries.  A part of me hates to say this, but these data breaches are a good thing.  Breaches force laws which in turn force companies to spend appropriate time and monies on security research, secure software development, secure network architecture, secure deployment and proactive monitoring that should be done.  It puts financial and legal obligations on private companies, which causes the risk factors to change when assessing security.  Far to often, security is one of the first things to be ‘adapted’ when costs get higher than expected or time lines become critical.  If you ask any company they will say security is a primary consideration at all points in the development and release process and in some cases they are being truthful.  However, in many cases the minimum bar with security needs to be raised significantly.  Simply running your code through some basic buffer overflow checks, installing a IPS or firewall, and checking off your ITIL checklist is not enough, not even close.

The private sector has a long way to go with security in software development, network infrastructure, and international laws.  Security breaches force laws and public scrutiny, which in turn holds corporations and individuals accountable.  They are a catalyst which unfortunately I believe is necessary for appropriate change to occur in this area.  What I sincerely hope is that these and similar events cause large corporations and software vendors become much more proactive when it comes to security than is currently the case.  If done properly and pro-actively, less government regulation will be required.   I believe the choice as to how this plays out is with the private sector.  If private sector companies continue doing the minimum, than I suspect regulation will eventually be forced upon us.  I hope that too much regulation is not required.

Does your company lessen security requirements due to costs or project time-lines?

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiffanyhoran/4288875968/

Most people have come to expect that when an email is sent it will arrive at it’s destination.  Over the last decade, email delivery has become much more reliable due to many factors such as better network architecture, better mail server design, load-balancing and fail over design, all driven by increased reliance on email in todays world.  There is also the ability to request a delivery receipt on most email clients although users typically disable this feature themselves, or the security policy of the organization disables it.  Email however is not a guaranteed delivery service.  The SMTP protocol as well as the process of email delivery on the Internet does not guarantee delivery.

One technique that I have used when someone has either not responded or indicated that they did not receive my email is to check the server delivery logs.  While this does not guarantee that the email was placed in the destination users mailbox, it does indicate acceptance at the mail exchanger of the ISP or company.

Above is an email I sent to a friend last week confirming plans for dinner.  By viewing the headers and looking for the SMTP “Message-ID” field, I can then search for that ID in the log files of the mail server.

# cat maillog | grep -i "4B618D6A.2070804"
Jan 28 08:13:19 mailsvr sendmail[20093]: o0SDDGVS020093: from=<xx@xxxxxxxxxx.org>, size=399,, nrcpts=1, msgid=<4B618D6A.2070804@xxxxxxxxx.org>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=eee.dddd.ca [216.bbb.ccc.12]
#
# cat maillog | grep -i "o0SDDGVS020093"
Jan 28 08:13:19 mailsvr sendmail[20093]: o0SDDGVS020093: from=<xx@xxxxxxxxxx.org>, size=399,, nrcpts=1, msgid=<4B618D6A.2070804@xxxxxxxxx.org>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=eee.dddd.ca [216.bbb.ccc.12]
Jan 28 08:13:20 mailsvr sendmail[20098]: o0SDDGVS020093: to=<yyyyyy@gggggggg.com>, ctladdr=<xx@xxxxxxxxxxx.org> (501/501), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=120399, relay=ttttttt.hhhhhhcom. [142.fff.rrr.227], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (Ok: queued as 51E02514002)
#

In this case the server logs are using Sendmail, so depending on your server, the procedure might be slightly different.  Using the SMTP Message-ID field as a search parameter, I obtain the entry of the unique ID of the Sendmail delivery process for that message, in this case “o0SDDGVS020093″.  Searching the log file for that unique ID, shows me the remote mail server that accepted the email for delivery.  The status is “sent” and confirmed by a Deliver Status Notification (dsn) of 2.0.0.

There are many other fields and status messages with server logs, some you can see above, which are useful resources when troubleshooting or doing forensic activity involving an email transmission in an investigation.   Although this might appear to be too technical for a general user, I have used the logs to confirm myself if email is getting to at least the mail exchanger.  These records can assist in determining if the email arrived.  At the very least, you can use it as evidence the email was received by the destination company.  While it is not 100% proof, it is typically a good indicator.

In one instance, I was not getting a response from my daughter’s school concerning a particular issue.  After several attempts, I sent a new email asking why they were not responding, as it appeared obvious the school board was receiving the emails and I attached the log.  I had a response within the hour.  I am sure the users didn’t fully understand each field, but it was enough to get a response.   I don’t know of any service providers or companies that provide an on-line interface to check status of messages, but it might not be a bad service to offer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarider/2255744829/

A few years ago, I was having a discussion with an acquaintance who was involved in an investigation.  One individual they were tracking kept changing his mobile phone every few days.  Each new mobile was typically pay as you go or stolen and personal information connected to the mobile was either false or not available.  Yet the investigators were able to very quickly determine the new number of the individual each time they switched mobile numbers.    How they did this at the time impressed me, and I use the logic to this day.

Throughout the course of the investigation they were able to determine who this individual contacted.  A few of the mobiles that the individual contacted did not routinely change their mobile number.  As a result, by watching the calling patterns of the mobile phones where the numbers did not change, the investigators could quickly determine a new number that suddenly was calling each of the static numbers in a similar pattern.  This of course requires access to mobile network data, but it worked.  Even though this individual thought they were not being tracked,  their efforts to remain anonymous unknown to them were ineffective.   As a side note, there is software that will search for and detect these types of calling patterns automatically.  The same logic here can easily be applied to a Internet connection.

A more common example is when you are ever pulled over by a police officer and you don’t have your license.  Aside from them giving you a ticket for not having your license on your person, they will most likely ask you for your full name and birth date.  The reason for the birth date is to help assure them that when they go back to the cruiser to search on their laptop, the records they obtain are actually yours and not someone else with the same name.   How many Michael Dundas’ are there in Canada?  Not sure, but the number of Michael Dundas’ with the exact same birth date really lowers the probability of a false positive.  This same logic can be applied to social networking and there is interesting research in this area including twitter.

The EFF recently published a post on information theory and privacy.  In it they discuss the concept of Entropy and how it applies to information and privacy.  It touches a bit on some of the math behind it, but if you are interested it is a good explanation of why when you think you are anonymous you may not be, even when you take precautions.  If you skip the math, their example of how a ‘user-agent’ header transmitted by your browser can narrow you down to one of 1500 people can start to give people that are new to information and anonymity a good perspective.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/imuttoo/3935553419/

On the Securosis blog there has been two posts recently (here and here) about security and taking a default deny position as the best approach to securing a particular service or network.  At a high-level, you block every port / service / protocol that is not defined as being required and then wait to see who complains.  As people complain, you investigate the complaints and figure out what policy changes are required and make them.  The end result is a secure policy allowing only the required access.  At least that is the theory.

I believe that “default deny” is a excellent security goal.  That being said, obtaining that goal has to be weighed against other objectives.  Often, I find many security professionals proclaiming that ‘default deny’ must be deployed, everyone has to make it happen, regardless of the cost to the company, regardless of the risk to the project.  The general sense is that if default deny can not be completely reached, the project should not go forward or should be held up.

This sets a very adversarial tone for everyone involved in the project.  It creates a very binary choice, “you are either with us or against us”, there is no in between.  While this is great in the movies, for the most part, it is not real life.  That positioning breaks down communication, it puts the team on the defensive, and it creates a environment where the team does not want to talk, work, or involve the security experts.   They are seen as unreasonable and unrealistic.  Have you ever been ordered by law enforcement to “stand back”, “show me your driver’s license”, or told you can not cross this line with no explanation as to why?  How does it make you feel?  Did this attitude earn your respect or lessen your respect for them?

The default deny stance is easy, minimal work, and most importantly risk free for the security members of the team.  While that is not a bad thing, it often increases the amount of work for others on the team as well as their responsibility.  In a simple case, if on a project by blocking port 1234/tcp, I force the team to have to re-program the socket interface on the application, which in turn generates a code review, which then generate more work for the Q/A team.  If the team overrides the security experts and says we are not doing that work, the security members can now claim they did their part, the team did not listen and so if there is a breech it is not their fault.  This does not promote a collaborative team environment.

Humans naturally fear the unknown.  It explains why as a society we overreact to terrorists that attempt to blow up planes or all rush to get the latest vaccine for a new strain of bacteria.  In both cases we are more at risk of death from being hit by a car in our daily travels yet we show no fear that will occur.  This irrational fear is re-enforced in courses and books on security.  The result is we see “default deny” as a valid and only solution.   The result is security professionals promoting often with a very hard line just that.

“Default deny” ideally assumes that their is an understanding of a service or application in its entirety.  From the end user interface right down to the bits that traverse the wire  in detail under all conditions.  Years ago this was possible, however todays applications are rarely the result of one teams code from the ground up.  APIs of third party vendor systems are called, third party libraries are used for communication, storage, authentication and many other functions and features.   Today, it is unreasonable to assume that a particular team will understand everything at all levels given the nature of how services on the Internet are built and deployed.  Security professionals are correct in pointing out this is a risk, however it is a risk that is not going to go away and security models have to adapt to manage and minimize the risk.  A simplistic “Default deny” does not accomplish this.

I have consulted for several very large tier 1 service providers.  The default position tends to be a “Default permit”.  From there they determine what is ‘bad’ and craft security policies to deal with and minimize the risk.  While enterprises can afford to take a more “Default deny” approach, this will become more and more difficult.  As services are more and more build by external vendors, use third party APIs and libraries, interact more and more with cloud computing, permit access on PDA devices for services, and the many other services available and yet to be available a different approach is needed.   “Default deny” is a great goal for security of a project, however it needs to be prioritized with and assessed from a risk perspective with other goals of a project.

Do you think that the security community of today needs to change their approach, and behaviour?