• I T Assistant
• Technical Analyst - Level 2 / 3...
• Infrastructure Project Manager
• Program Director - VOIP Program
• Sales & Business Development...

Internet security: just wishful thinking?

Information Age staff, Information Age

19/02/2008 11:37:09

Security predictions for 2008

By Roger A Grimes

At the beginning of each year I like to talk about what did or didn't happen during the past year, and what to expect in the year ahead. Unlike past years, I'll try not to get too emotionally ramped up on all the failures.

First, the good news Overall, compliance laws (and years of bad press) finally forced most organisations to encrypt more data and laptops by default. Chances are these days that if a thief steals a laptop it will be password protected and its data encrypted. More developers are utilising SDL (secure design lifecycle) in their programming, taking into account from the beginning the malicious risks posed to and by their applications.

Overall, exploits aren't down significantly, but they are in the software where SDL is used. In addition, more organisations are using stronger password policies and two-factor authentication. The number of identity thefts has levelled out or even begun to drop. All of these trends are good.

Now, the bad news Sadly, the overall computer security picture hasn't changed much. The Internet is still a very dangerous place to compute. Malware, adware and spam still make up a very large portion of Internet traffic.

Professional criminals control millions of computers turning our futuristic superhighway into the wild, wild, west.

Personally, nearly every PC I investigate is filled with worms, spyware, and adware. Antivirus software continues to be embarrassingly inaccurate against the newly created malware churned out each day. Distributed Denial of Service attacks still go on unabated and are very hard to defend against.

We still aren't catching many criminals. Sure, there are headlines about a few people here and there getting arrested, but apparently those being caught aren't making a dent in the real problem.

It's like the war on drugs in the US: we've spent billions of dollars over three decades and drugs are still just as plentiful as when we began the war. In both cases we don't seem to change course even though the current strategy isn't working.

There were no promising wide-scope, technological advances in the computer security arena to give me hope that this year will be any better. There are no leaders or groups with significant power stepping up to lead us into a more secure future. The malware writers and criminals are all smiling into the new year and sleeping well.

The future Predicting the future of malware is actually pretty easy. All you have to do is look at the increasing trends and figure out what technologies and platforms will be hot in the next year or so. Hackers hack what is hot.

If Apple computers gain market share as I'm sure they will do in 2008, then you can expect more Mac malware. Mac malware is showing up in greater numbers, and Apple already has its hands full patching and re-patching the Mac OS, Quicktime and other related software.

Apple patched more than 200 vulnerabilities in 2007. If history is a good judge of future behaviour, then Apple will suffer through a few widespread exploits in 2008.

Windows Vista will continue to be attacked and exploited. In 2007, the number of publicly known exploits of Vista was down compared to those of XP (as predicted by many observers), but the numbers weren't down significantly enough to make anyone feel like they could compute in relative safety.

It will be nice if the number of Microsoft Office-related exploits goes down. 2006 and 2007 were banner years for Microsoft Office exploits. [Disclosure: I work full-time for Microsoft]. Because of SDL, I expect exploits in XP, Vista and Office to go down in 2008.

Of course, no matter how secure an operating system is, most exploits will continue to rely on social engineering users to install things they otherwise shouldn't; client-side attackers make up more than 90 per cent of all malicious compromises. I don't see that changing; user behaviour is tough to alter.

Last year I predicted a decrease in malware spread using e-mail vectors and an increase in exploits using Web sites. The only real surprise was the sheer number of completely innocent, commercial Web sites used to spread malware.

Application-side vulnerabilities will continue to grow. Quicktime, RealPlayer, Flash and Windows Media Player all had significant exploits in 2007, and the numbers are still trending upward. Exploits will continue to target VoIP (Skype and the like) and social portals (YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and others), as rootkit Trojans continue to grow in prevalence.

Will 2008 finally be the Year of the Massive Mobile Phone Exploit? The popularity of the iPhone would almost dictate that it will be, but if that was the case I would have expected a major iPod exploit by now. Every year dozens of computer security prognosticators predict a mobile phone virus will panic the world.

But we've been predicting that since 1999 when a widespread Trojan hit Japan's DoCoMo mobile phone network. I'm not holding my breath. It will happen when mobile phones become more popular than computers for online banking and commercial transactions. (And that will happen -- I just don't think it will be this year).

So, expect more of the same this year. I don't see any paradigm shifts. Computer security vendors aren't likely to make you significantly safer, and what the criminals are already doing is working quite well for them, so there's no need for them to shift tactics.

There is a solution That doesn't mean there aren't solutions. Last year I detailed one of the ways that a more secure Internet might be forged in the future. It's my vision. And the more I think about it, it's the only way I can see the Internet becoming significantly more secure.

All other plans that I've come across break down under scrutiny or seem to rely on us becoming accustomed to a significant amount of computer crime. The other plans might reduce computer crime, but only temporarily, and by a small amount.

I'm far from a computer genius, but I have convinced myself, and a few others, that my plan is right and everyone else's plan is wrong. Boy, I love having my own column.

The perfect plan Here's my plan in a nutshell: all computer devices, users and transactions must be authenticated by default.

That's it.

Why do malicious hackers hack? Because we can't catch them. Until we put in place default mechanisms to ensure that most criminals are identified and caught (instead of the current tiny minority now apprehended), hacking will continue unabated.

Instead, we must make all computers, users, and their network communications authenticated and identifiable by default. We start by making hardware impervious to hardware hacks. If someone hacks the hardware, it will refuse to boot.

Personally, I don't want to stop hardware mods to iPhones and Xboxes. I just want to stop malicious hackers from modifying participating hardware in such a way that it bypasses all the other mechanisms I propose.

Like in the OSI model, if you compromise a lower layer, you can't trust the upper layers.

After verifying a hardware device's boot sequence, the firmware/software portion of the boot process would be verified and accomplished. Each device would have a unique hardware ID that specifically identifies the device and cannot be spoofed.

The user is authenticated using two-factor (or more) or biometric identifiers. Network administrators where the computing device originates, whether on a corporate network, an ISP, or a telco switch, would be held accountable for correctly authenticating the users on their networks.

All OSes and programs would be authenticated and approved before running. If the executable or supporting file isn't approved, it doesn't load into memory. If you allow users to install everything they want without some sort of security approval, then you will never stop bad things or bad people from abusing computers.

Because approved users can still do bad things using approved programs, it's essential that network packets be authenticated from source to destination, and traceable back to their originating point. This will prevent a user from creating malware and sending it to another location, or prevent a malicious user from using another innocent user's computer to do the same.

In my Internet world, if the bad guy "borrowed" someone else's computer, we'd always be able to trace the perpetrator back to their lair.

Routers and networks that carry our information from point A to point B would also be authenticated and their unique identities added to each passed packet. It wouldn't be as slow as you think -- network devices are working at electric speeds (the speed of light minus minor, unavoidable impedances). Tacking on a unique, authenticable identifier will not add that much overhead.

The downside Unfortunately, my brilliant idea (probably already thought of by a hundred other great minds decades ago) requires a complete rebuild of every involved component: hardware, software, and user logons. The good thing is that most of the technology and smarts to make it happen already exist. A tweak here or there is all that is needed...well, that and universal cooperation and planning.

Because we like to do things in evolution vs. revolution, my model proposes "rings of trust" where differing levels of trust can be defined by each participating party. Users and computers not up on the latest computer security checks will be assigned a lower level of trust and have to go through additional (traditional) layers of security checks (antivirus, antispam, and so on).

Traffic arriving from users and computers with higher levels of trust will go directly to their intended destination.

Yes, even this system will be hacked, but it will fix the discovered problem, and all malicious exploits of that vulnerability are prevented at once. This beats our current game of "whack-a-mole" security defence.

If you don't like my plan, stay with the current status quo or make up your own plan. Stay on your version of the Internet and compute away. I'm hoping that someone powerful enough, a consortium of enough interested people and companies, comes together to make my vision a reality. Dare to dream.

And if you can make up a better solution, the world should beat a path to your door. Until then I'll just continue to believe my solution is the only one.