5 ms·

Are Your Devices Hardwired for Betrayal?

190 points by sinak 12y ago

ams6110 12y ago
I'm going back to pencil and paper.
- _cudgel 12y ago
  Let's get this Butlerian Jihad started already!
sitkack 12y ago
Everything needs a firewall. I'd like my own local wifi MiTM proxy that my devices connect to, running privoxy all of the time. Those devices should run inside of a VPN, they run inside of the matrix. IoT is both wonderful and scarily dystopian. I'd like my eeproms on those devices to have their write enable pins snipped, I'd like to know when someone attempts to reprogram it. I'd also like hashes of my firmware compared globally so I knew my firmware isn't special. Fuck serial numbers. Root yourself before you are rooted. Backdoor yourself so their firmware hacks fail. I have > 10 mems microphones within 20 feet of me. So probably do you. How many gates does http://opus-codec.org/ http://opus-codec.org/ require? 600GB stores 5 years of continuous audio @ 32kbits. Serial EEPROMS already in your devices can store 10s of hours of audio, recording while suspended, while _off_. Nothing is ever off anymore. Instant on, soft switches, privacy traded so we don't have to watch dmesg. http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Spansion/S25FL512SAGMFI011/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtI%252bQ06EiAoG1RQFMcWZI18i1xIhD%2fuMH8%3d http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Spansion/S25FL512SAGMFI0... I'd like all sensors to have an on-off switch that I control. I'd like phone to turn off when I tell it to, not just sleep. I'd like my batteries to have bluetooth connection that forces devices to be off, not just the power button I do not control. We should assume every piece of hardware we own is backdoored and remotely controllable by any state level actor.
- bronson 12y ago
  > Root yourself before you are rooted. Too true. I want this on a T-shirt.
- Scoundreller 12y ago
  > I'd like my eeproms on those devices to have their write enable pins snipped, I'd like to know when someone attempts to reprogram it Better, I'd like my WE pin to be connected to a latch and a piezo electric buzzer, so I know that a write that I didn't expect took place, and I get to know about it to investigate. I'm thinking of doing this for some SOHO routers. In the satelite piracy days, it wasn't unusual for people to MITM their WE pins on their firmware chips and put them on a switch to protect against updates. When the satelite providers reconfigured their firmwares to do a test function that utilized the WE line (but didn't actually perform a write) to disable if a lock was detected, the pirates dreamed up a new EEPROM lock design that only prevented real writes and let the WE line test go through. Here's one example: http://digitallock.tripod.com/1000digilock.htm http://digitallock.tripod.com/1000digilock.htm
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Use an FPGA and much larger eeprom to implement CoW, writes succeed, but the user can switch back to an earlier version. Pair it with a Nordic chip, https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products and get your own short range OtA update/diff.
- aortega 12y ago
  >I'd also like hashes of my firmware compared globally so I knew my firmware isn't special. And how do you know what is your firmware? surely you don't ask the suspected firmware for a copy of itself. Do you extract from memory? how? maybe you can't. Anyway memory (flash, DRAM) controllers also are controlled via firmware. Do you trust your memory controller firmware to deliver the real firmware? Do you compare it in your computer? do you trust it? do you trust the central hash database computer? do you trust the computers among the path? Why comparing with others? you assume your firmware is special, but many firmware backdoors (I.E. home routers) affects all devices. What you need is absolute control of the whole hardware manufacture and software chain, if you can pay a few millions for every computer like the military, then you can do it.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    We all know security isn't a binary relation. Step one is to know you aren't specifically targeted and keep your attack surface low. Your analysis leads to a paralyzing fatalism, which might have been your intent.
Rumford 12y ago
I don't know, but the FCC sure is.
azinman2 12y ago
Oh so all that needs to happen is: Everyone that makes anything hardware related hires security people full time plus audits. > So cost $$$ when you can just ship to market anyway since no one thinks about this for a $10 mouse Have all firmware signed > Because surely there won't be a cryptographic flaw in signature verification that the NSA can find, or keys to be stolen Have devices report back > Because once it's compromised I'm sure the NSA can't figure out how to report back otherwise, despite having already done so for the HDs. Yah so umm, good luck with this one world. The only hope we have is that firmware is far harder and a giant diversity of devices generally exist...
- navait 12y ago
  Hardware manufacturers actually do pay money to try and prevent some attacks(the main problem of course is that preventing side-channel attacks has a performance cost) The article even notes hardware manufacturers worry about firmware attacks. Admittedly, a lot don't, and the race to the bottom on commodity hardware only encourages cutting corners on something customers don't pay more for. But just because flaws in security are inevitable, that doesn't mean they aren't worth considering. It's some protection - it may be too expensive to break for all firmware. The NSA is hardly the only organization with an interest in doing so. Even if the NSA can break verification in it for no cost, it's better than NSA + criminals being able to.
username223 12y ago
I guess I'm much more worried about "the cloud" aggregating lots of people's data on connected machines where hackers can score big with a single vulnerability. The recently-exposed NSA firmware hacks seem like they require per-target effort, and since I'm neither wealthy nor wanted by Mossad, I don't see myself being worth that effort. (EDIT: e.g. stealing $20 apiece from everyone affected by the Target data breach equals big bucks, much more than bugging the firmware in my laptop and trying to clean out my bank account.) OTA firmware updates being signed would be a good thing, but I'd rather spend the time and energy keeping more things local, and avoiding the "internet of (broken) things."
effdee 12y ago
> 1. Firmware must be properly audited. > 2. Firmware updates must be signed. > 3. We need a mechanism for verifying the integrity of installed firmware. I wonder how many bricked devices (or devices malfunctioning in a creative way) it would take to convince hardware manufacturers that these are good ideas?
jordigh 12y ago
What, no free software? We don't need source code? We don't need GPLv3? None of this is important to truly own our computing? "Hardware manufacturers could also release the source code", almost as an afterthought? Isn't this a "must", not a "could"?
- moyix 12y ago
  What good is the source code if you can't build it and flash it to your device? What good is it if you can't verify that the binary firmware was built from the source you have?
  - jordigh 12y ago
    That's what GPLv3 is for. 1) GPLv3 defines all build scripts as part of the source code. 2) GPLv3 ensures that you can install the software you built yourself. Signing is also useful, of course, but source code and free software seem like a more primitive prerequisite before code signing. What good is signing if we are merely verifying the signature of malicious software? With source code, you can just build it yourself and don't need to trust any signature.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- geekingfrog 12y ago
  what? off topic
Animats 12y ago
For an outline of how to secure embedded devices, see the technical standards of the Nevada Gaming Commission.[1] They've faced these problems for years, with the opposition being organized crime and gambling cheats. Typical rule: Interactive gaming systems must be capable of verifying that all control programs contained on the interactive gaming system are authentic copies of approved components of the interactive gaming system automatically, at least once every 24 hours, and on demand using a method approved by the chairman. Unless otherwise approved by the chairman, the authentication mechanism must employ a hashing algorithm which produces a message digest of at least 128 bits. The results of the authentication must be retained and be accessible for a period of 90 days. The interactive gaming system must provide a mechanism to visually notify the operator of any control program that fails an authentication. This mechanism must also require that an administrator of the interactive gaming system confirm any failed authentication with the system within 72 hours. Failure to confirm a failed authentication must require the interactive gaming system to automatically stop any gaming related functions. Interactive gaming systems must provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for verifying all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. Unless otherwise approved by the chairman, this mechanism must employ a hashing algorithm which produces a message digest of at least 128 bits and must be designed to accept a user selected authentication key or seed to be used as part of the mechanism (e.g. HMAC SHA-1). The first stage of this mechanism must allow for verification of control programs. The second stage must allow for verification of all program components, including graphics and data components. The interactive gaming system must also provide the same two-stage mechanism for verifying all program components on demand via an operator user interface where the results are displayed on that interface. [1] http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=269#techpolicies http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=269#techpolicies
- schoen 12y ago
  How is that actually implemented? The hashing algorithm is running on a microcontroller, right? What is it implemented in, and how is it loaded?
  - suraj 12y ago
    The firmware image is present on the computer requesting authentication. So the seed is sent to gaming machine to calculate digest at the same time the server requesting authentication runs the same algo on stored firmware image. Provided the initial seed is random, barring weakness in the hashing algo, there is no way to beat this check. This is same process as you computing SHA1 of a file you downloaded and comparing it with the SHA1 provided on the website, if you could also provide a 128 bit number as seed of the SAH1 to the website.
pain 12y ago
I love you are talking about it as betrayal, terms of emotional security/emosec that feel human and even compassionate, common parts of speech lost to technical difficulties to explain. War habits throw words around about sensitive information but barely begin to describe the emotional depth of domestic-international relations, violence, and abuse.
codeshaman 12y ago
A hardware R/W switch on the components like the ones on floppy disks should do the trick.
nullc 12y ago
> Firmware updates must be signed. Firmware updates should be signed by the manufacturers so that we can be sure we are installing ... ... NSA provided backdoors and are prevented from writing our own firmware to run on our own systems.

190 points by sinak 12y ago

ams6110 12y ago

I'm going back to pencil and paper.

_cudgel 12y ago
Let's get this Butlerian Jihad started already!

sitkack 12y ago

Everything needs a firewall. I'd like my own local wifi MiTM proxy that my devices connect to, running privoxy all of the time. Those devices should run inside of a VPN, they run inside of the matrix. IoT is both wonderful and scarily dystopian. I'd like my eeproms on those devices to have their write enable pins snipped, I'd like to know when someone attempts to reprogram it. I'd also like hashes of my firmware compared globally so I knew my firmware isn't special. Fuck serial numbers. Root yourself before you are rooted. Backdoor yourself so their firmware hacks fail. I have > 10 mems microphones within 20 feet of me. So probably do you. How many gates does http://opus-codec.org/ http://opus-codec.org/ require? 600GB stores 5 years of continuous audio @ 32kbits. Serial EEPROMS already in your devices can store 10s of hours of audio, recording while suspended, while _off_. Nothing is ever off anymore. Instant on, soft switches, privacy traded so we don't have to watch dmesg. http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Spansion/S25FL512SAGMFI011/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtI%252bQ06EiAoG1RQFMcWZI18i1xIhD%2fuMH8%3d http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Spansion/S25FL512SAGMFI0... I'd like all sensors to have an on-off switch that I control. I'd like phone to turn off when I tell it to, not just sleep. I'd like my batteries to have bluetooth connection that forces devices to be off, not just the power button I do not control. We should assume every piece of hardware we own is backdoored and remotely controllable by any state level actor.

bronson 12y ago
> Root yourself before you are rooted. Too true. I want this on a T-shirt.
Scoundreller 12y ago
> I'd like my eeproms on those devices to have their write enable pins snipped, I'd like to know when someone attempts to reprogram it Better, I'd like my WE pin to be connected to a latch and a piezo electric buzzer, so I know that a write that I didn't expect took place, and I get to know about it to investigate. I'm thinking of doing this for some SOHO routers. In the satelite piracy days, it wasn't unusual for people to MITM their WE pins on their firmware chips and put them on a switch to protect against updates. When the satelite providers reconfigured their firmwares to do a test function that utilized the WE line (but didn't actually perform a write) to disable if a lock was detected, the pirates dreamed up a new EEPROM lock design that only prevented real writes and let the WE line test go through. Here's one example: http://digitallock.tripod.com/1000digilock.htm http://digitallock.tripod.com/1000digilock.htm
- sitkack 12y ago
  Use an FPGA and much larger eeprom to implement CoW, writes succeed, but the user can switch back to an earlier version. Pair it with a Nordic chip, https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products and get your own short range OtA update/diff.
aortega 12y ago
>I'd also like hashes of my firmware compared globally so I knew my firmware isn't special. And how do you know what is your firmware? surely you don't ask the suspected firmware for a copy of itself. Do you extract from memory? how? maybe you can't. Anyway memory (flash, DRAM) controllers also are controlled via firmware. Do you trust your memory controller firmware to deliver the real firmware? Do you compare it in your computer? do you trust it? do you trust the central hash database computer? do you trust the computers among the path? Why comparing with others? you assume your firmware is special, but many firmware backdoors (I.E. home routers) affects all devices. What you need is absolute control of the whole hardware manufacture and software chain, if you can pay a few millions for every computer like the military, then you can do it.
- sitkack 12y ago
  We all know security isn't a binary relation. Step one is to know you aren't specifically targeted and keep your attack surface low. Your analysis leads to a paralyzing fatalism, which might have been your intent.

Rumford 12y ago

I don't know, but the FCC sure is.

azinman2 12y ago

Oh so all that needs to happen is: Everyone that makes anything hardware related hires security people full time plus audits. > So cost $$$ when you can just ship to market anyway since no one thinks about this for a $10 mouse Have all firmware signed > Because surely there won't be a cryptographic flaw in signature verification that the NSA can find, or keys to be stolen Have devices report back > Because once it's compromised I'm sure the NSA can't figure out how to report back otherwise, despite having already done so for the HDs. Yah so umm, good luck with this one world. The only hope we have is that firmware is far harder and a giant diversity of devices generally exist...

navait 12y ago
Hardware manufacturers actually do pay money to try and prevent some attacks(the main problem of course is that preventing side-channel attacks has a performance cost) The article even notes hardware manufacturers worry about firmware attacks. Admittedly, a lot don't, and the race to the bottom on commodity hardware only encourages cutting corners on something customers don't pay more for. But just because flaws in security are inevitable, that doesn't mean they aren't worth considering. It's some protection - it may be too expensive to break for all firmware. The NSA is hardly the only organization with an interest in doing so. Even if the NSA can break verification in it for no cost, it's better than NSA + criminals being able to.

username223 12y ago

I guess I'm much more worried about "the cloud" aggregating lots of people's data on connected machines where hackers can score big with a single vulnerability. The recently-exposed NSA firmware hacks seem like they require per-target effort, and since I'm neither wealthy nor wanted by Mossad, I don't see myself being worth that effort. (EDIT: e.g. stealing $20 apiece from everyone affected by the Target data breach equals big bucks, much more than bugging the firmware in my laptop and trying to clean out my bank account.) OTA firmware updates being signed would be a good thing, but I'd rather spend the time and energy keeping more things local, and avoiding the "internet of (broken) things."

effdee 12y ago

> 1. Firmware must be properly audited. > 2. Firmware updates must be signed. > 3. We need a mechanism for verifying the integrity of installed firmware. I wonder how many bricked devices (or devices malfunctioning in a creative way) it would take to convince hardware manufacturers that these are good ideas?

jordigh 12y ago

What, no free software? We don't need source code? We don't need GPLv3? None of this is important to truly own our computing? "Hardware manufacturers could also release the source code", almost as an afterthought? Isn't this a "must", not a "could"?

moyix 12y ago
What good is the source code if you can't build it and flash it to your device? What good is it if you can't verify that the binary firmware was built from the source you have?
- jordigh 12y ago
  That's what GPLv3 is for. 1) GPLv3 defines all build scripts as part of the source code. 2) GPLv3 ensures that you can install the software you built yourself. Signing is also useful, of course, but source code and free software seem like a more primitive prerequisite before code signing. What good is signing if we are merely verifying the signature of malicious software? With source code, you can just build it yourself and don't need to trust any signature.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

geekingfrog 12y ago
what? off topic

Animats 12y ago

For an outline of how to secure embedded devices, see the technical standards of the Nevada Gaming Commission.[1] They've faced these problems for years, with the opposition being organized crime and gambling cheats. Typical rule: Interactive gaming systems must be capable of verifying that all control programs contained on the interactive gaming system are authentic copies of approved components of the interactive gaming system automatically, at least once every 24 hours, and on demand using a method approved by the chairman. Unless otherwise approved by the chairman, the authentication mechanism must employ a hashing algorithm which produces a message digest of at least 128 bits. The results of the authentication must be retained and be accessible for a period of 90 days. The interactive gaming system must provide a mechanism to visually notify the operator of any control program that fails an authentication. This mechanism must also require that an administrator of the interactive gaming system confirm any failed authentication with the system within 72 hours. Failure to confirm a failed authentication must require the interactive gaming system to automatically stop any gaming related functions. Interactive gaming systems must provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for verifying all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. Unless otherwise approved by the chairman, this mechanism must employ a hashing algorithm which produces a message digest of at least 128 bits and must be designed to accept a user selected authentication key or seed to be used as part of the mechanism (e.g. HMAC SHA-1). The first stage of this mechanism must allow for verification of control programs. The second stage must allow for verification of all program components, including graphics and data components. The interactive gaming system must also provide the same two-stage mechanism for verifying all program components on demand via an operator user interface where the results are displayed on that interface. [1] http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=269#techpolicies http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=269#techpolicies

schoen 12y ago
How is that actually implemented? The hashing algorithm is running on a microcontroller, right? What is it implemented in, and how is it loaded?
- suraj 12y ago
  The firmware image is present on the computer requesting authentication. So the seed is sent to gaming machine to calculate digest at the same time the server requesting authentication runs the same algo on stored firmware image. Provided the initial seed is random, barring weakness in the hashing algo, there is no way to beat this check. This is same process as you computing SHA1 of a file you downloaded and comparing it with the SHA1 provided on the website, if you could also provide a 128 bit number as seed of the SAH1 to the website.

pain 12y ago

I love you are talking about it as betrayal, terms of emotional security/emosec that feel human and even compassionate, common parts of speech lost to technical difficulties to explain. War habits throw words around about sensitive information but barely begin to describe the emotional depth of domestic-international relations, violence, and abuse.

codeshaman 12y ago

A hardware R/W switch on the components like the ones on floppy disks should do the trick.

nullc 12y ago

> Firmware updates must be signed. Firmware updates should be signed by the manufacturers so that we can be sure we are installing ... ... NSA provided backdoors and are prevented from writing our own firmware to run on our own systems.