6 ms·

US Emergency Alert System private SSH key mistakenly distributed

159 points by croikle 13y ago

betterunix 13y ago
This is why smart cards should be used. You should not be able to accidentally distribute a private key like this.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Yes Private keys without a passphrase are probably even riskier than passwords Private keys with a passphrase had better have a hard passphrase or they'll just be bruteforced offline
Locke1689 13y ago
>Stations that use vulnerable gear should upgrade to version 2.0-2, which is available by sending an e-mail to _suport@digitalalertsystems.com. Oh for fuck's sake. I hope Ars screwed up that email address. Sometimes I feel like regulatory capture has totally screwed our national defense. I'm from Maryland. I know a lot of defense/NSA people. Some are fantastic. Others... let's just say not everybody is the best and brightest.
- dfc 13y ago
  "The best and the brightest" is such a strange phrase. Whenever I read it I always think of Halberstam and assume the author is using the phrase pejoratively.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Yeah, I cannot help but hear that phrase sarcastically, sort of like "good enough for government work."
    - D9u 13y ago
      Outstanding Euphemism for "standing around outside - a lot"
      - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
        Like the joke about the farmer who won an award for being outstanding in his field.
      - emhart 13y ago
        Out standing in their field.
    - pja 13y ago
      It used to be a complement IIRC: the US government set standards which were much tighter than those which were usually acceptable in the commercial world at the time & enforced them. If your work was "good enough for government work" then you were holding yourself to a higher standard than the norm for commercial manufacturing at the time.
      - tcoppi 13y ago
        How long ago was this a complement? I've never heard that phrase used in such a manner.
        pja 13y ago
        WWII I believe: http://www.altus.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123266336 http://www.altus.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123266336 If you do a google ngram search on the phrase, you'll see a blip during WWII and then nothing until 1970. I'm guessing the use from 1970 onwards probably carried the negative connotation we're all familiar with.
    - VLM 13y ago
      From my machine shop background: 1) .gov aka "G-job" means you can't talk about it, maybe even to your boss. Maybe you're making the left support bracket for the Manhattan project, no one in 100 miles knows what you're actually building. Maybe no one knows everything about the whole program. So you're kinda on your own in the machine shop, kinda. 2) Wanna build a model steam engine at work? Tell them the crankshaft is a classified part for some contract you can't talk about and they're not cleared to even see the blueprint. 3) But screwing around for fun doesn't have to be made to the tolerances for real a-bomb parts... So "close enough for govt work" The other story I heard from oldtimers who were there, was there was an intense push in the early 40s to shovel as much out the door as possible. An automobile plant used to selling to rich dudes wouldn't dare ship a car with cosmetic issues, but tank crews don't care if there's a little weld splatter on the outside or runs in the paint, as long as it actually works in combat. And this created attitude issues when they converted back to making fancy cars for rich dudes after the war. "So there's a giant dent in the hood, the GIs don't care... Uh, yeah but we're not building jeeps anymore..."
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    " Congratulations gentleman - you're everything we've come to expect from years of Government training." -- Zed, in "Men in Black" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cflpNLjhi0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cflpNLjhi0s
  - jes5199 13y ago
    There's a nice explanation of the context around Halberstam, on wikipedia for those of us who aren't familiar with the story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest
- clarkm 13y ago
  Yeah, it looks like Ars messed it up: http://digitalalertsystems.com/contact.htm http://digitalalertsystems.com/contact.htm
waster 13y ago
National zombie attack alert... it's only a matter of time.
- akira2501 13y ago
  EAS has so many weaknesses, I'd actually qualify this as the least worrisome. The way we deploy any computerized equipment that is a part of our air-chain includes firewalls and only allowing connections to the necessary servers for CAP type alerts. Every EAS receiver is typically monitoring other stations in the area for EAS relay. We actually have a tuner tuned to another station in the market and if we hear an EAS alert go across the air on their station we simply relay it. Due to the FM capture effect, it's _very_ easy to attack this channel; especially because there's _zero_ authentication on these incoming "relay" messages. Even worse, some types of messages are setup for "national relay." This system was tested recently to ensure that a message could be relayed like this from one end of the country to the other -- and yes, it can. So, if you construct the right type of message, you can have it broadcast over _every_ station in america.
  - jevinskie 13y ago
    I wrote a SAME FSK encoder in Java. It was very straightforward. If I had a transmitter, I could have strolled by the local TV or radio station and caused the entire state of Indiana to declare a hurricane emergency. Relayed across radio stations, TV ticker, and your weather radio. Here is a bit of the specification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding#Header_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding...
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      Clearly, there should be laws mandating that everyone who knows Java, has visited that Wikipedia page, or walks outside radio stations be surveilled at all times, to ensure people's safety.
      - VLM 13y ago
contingencies 13y ago
What's the bet a whole bunch of people with false TV station emails just scored copies of the code?
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  What code ? It's more likely they just were given a new public key for an updated private key or something along this line.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  I have some four-letter domains that start with "w", should I try? =)
dave1010uk 13y ago
If you were building a system with legacy firmware (so, for examole you couldn't rotate keys in case of a breach), how would you mitigate against situations like this? Can anyone give a brief overview of how to architect a more secure system?
- rdl 13y ago
  When you build a public key into firmware which isn't easily updated, you need to put a lot of effort into securing the corresponding private key. The correct way to do this is to have a separate credential for your actual admin users who then use that to authenticate to an HSM or similar system which controls the actual widely-deployed keys. Humans should never be able to access the important private keys directly, and there should be a logging process which shows those keys have never been exported (and have technical and policy controls against being exported) without proper multi-party control (so, you back them up in k of n shares, and distribute those shares across corporate officers in multiple sites in the event you need to replace the HSM). Shorter lived keys and more frequent updates, provided you also have a secure way of authenticating the updates (hard) is often preferred.
- bdonlan 13y ago
  You can put the private key on a few HSMs, and have the HSM enforce a security policy (eg - access must be authorized by a quorum of operators). Never allow the private key to leave the HSM, ever again, except when initializing a new HSM (in which case, it had better be encrypted by the new HSM's unique key before leaving the old one). Then you go fix your legacy firmware.
- cnvogel 13y ago
  The "canonical" way of solving this is of course with a certificate hierarchy. You can configure your target system to allow authentication whenever your certificate is signed by the "golden" key, and by creating the certificates with expiration dates it's easy to restrict the time that a certificate (which maybe got stolen or was made public inadvertendly) can be used for login. Adding auxiliary data (comparable to X509 certificate usage restrictions only for code-signing or signing for emails) would allow you to have a (central hardened) machine hand out certificates to your "semi trusted" administrators that only allow login from a specific IP-address, to a specific target-system, up to a certain date or even time. Putting this functionality in a script (to acquire the certificate and login to a system) such a wrapper could most likely be used as a drop-in replacement for the normal ssh-client. If your restriction is to use only the default openssh already deployed to the target machines, one quick solution to hide the critical private key from the developer/admin/service machines would be to place it on a (hopefully somewhat hardened) machine running the ssh-agent, and access the agent by creative use of tunelling. In essence then the hardened machine would act as a kind of "smartcard" for all your admins.
glabifrons 13y ago
It's sad that it was abused to broadcast a prank (that might send phobics over the edge) rather than something to enlighten those who don't frequent sites like this one about the current situation with regard to SWIFT, the NSA, and the associated dangers of the situation. Most of the people either aren't aware of it at all, or are focused on Snowden (thanks to CNN, et al) and ignoring or are otherwise oblivious of the huge problem that he exposed. Far too many don't think for themselves and believe that it's actually a good thing, that it won't/can't be abused, and that it's entirely to fight terrorism. These same people believe that terrorism is an enormous threat (bigger than being killed by drunk drivers, smoking, and bathtub drowning). Sadly, I know plenty of people that fit into this category.
Fuxy 13y ago
Yay! The zombie apocalypse is upon us. How could they fk up so royally?
johnchristopher 13y ago
FTA: Stations that use vulnerable gear should upgrade to version 2.0-2, which is available by sending an e-mail to suport@digitalalertsystems.com. As a "broadcast-emitting-messages-company" admin: would I really upgrade a system, which functionalities include complete take-over of my broadcast equipment, that is vulnerable to someone mistaking the private and public ssh keys of his "taking-over-any-equipment" equipment ? I'd rather un-subscribe from that "service" in the limit of legality until that point of failure is fixed.
magoon 13y ago
Your medical records are somehow safe? It's only a matter of time before the govt mandated exchanges go "oops" in a similar way
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  My understanding of the exchanges is they're just a way to buy health insurance. They're not storing your medical records in the exchanges.
  - lettergram 13y ago
    Coming from a medical billing service which deals with this, yes they will keep your records as of 2014 I believe.
  - adolph 13y ago
    Exchanges may also refer to Health Information Exchanges (HIE). http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-information-exchange http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-infor...
- vertex-four 13y ago
  And yet somehow, in general, national health services with highly integrated medical data storage systems across Europe don't seem to lose data as often as you'd think.
- groby_b 13y ago
  As opposed to private providers, who are oh-so-safe? For breaches of private providers so far, see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachnotificationrule/breachtool.html http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachno... A quick sum of all the incidents in there adds up to 22 million health care records lost so far. It's hard to imagine the government could do much worse. In case you don't feel like importing the CSV file somewhere, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkJeZCqH2PsHdDZoSVJZdzR0ZmV6cm9Ndy1ON1VlRGc&usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkJeZCqH2PsHdDZ... (Not modified except for column width and a final tally)
deadreturns 13y ago
> US president to deliver speeches to the entire country within 10 minutes of a disaster occurring WTF? Doesn't he usually speech like the next day? What will he say within 10 minutes when there is very little information available? "Don't cry kids mommy is here"?

159 points by croikle 13y ago

betterunix 13y ago

This is why smart cards should be used. You should not be able to accidentally distribute a private key like this.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
raverbashing 13y ago
Yes Private keys without a passphrase are probably even riskier than passwords Private keys with a passphrase had better have a hard passphrase or they'll just be bruteforced offline

Locke1689 13y ago

>Stations that use vulnerable gear should upgrade to version 2.0-2, which is available by sending an e-mail to _suport@digitalalertsystems.com. Oh for fuck's sake. I hope Ars screwed up that email address. Sometimes I feel like regulatory capture has totally screwed our national defense. I'm from Maryland. I know a lot of defense/NSA people. Some are fantastic. Others... let's just say not everybody is the best and brightest.

dfc 13y ago
"The best and the brightest" is such a strange phrase. Whenever I read it I always think of Halberstam and assume the author is using the phrase pejoratively.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Yeah, I cannot help but hear that phrase sarcastically, sort of like "good enough for government work."
  - D9u 13y ago
    Outstanding Euphemism for "standing around outside - a lot"
    - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      Like the joke about the farmer who won an award for being outstanding in his field.
    - emhart 13y ago
      Out standing in their field.
  - pja 13y ago
    It used to be a complement IIRC: the US government set standards which were much tighter than those which were usually acceptable in the commercial world at the time & enforced them. If your work was "good enough for government work" then you were holding yourself to a higher standard than the norm for commercial manufacturing at the time.
    - tcoppi 13y ago
      How long ago was this a complement? I've never heard that phrase used in such a manner.
      - pja 13y ago
        WWII I believe: http://www.altus.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123266336 http://www.altus.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123266336 If you do a google ngram search on the phrase, you'll see a blip during WWII and then nothing until 1970. I'm guessing the use from 1970 onwards probably carried the negative connotation we're all familiar with.
  - VLM 13y ago
    From my machine shop background: 1) .gov aka "G-job" means you can't talk about it, maybe even to your boss. Maybe you're making the left support bracket for the Manhattan project, no one in 100 miles knows what you're actually building. Maybe no one knows everything about the whole program. So you're kinda on your own in the machine shop, kinda. 2) Wanna build a model steam engine at work? Tell them the crankshaft is a classified part for some contract you can't talk about and they're not cleared to even see the blueprint. 3) But screwing around for fun doesn't have to be made to the tolerances for real a-bomb parts... So "close enough for govt work" The other story I heard from oldtimers who were there, was there was an intense push in the early 40s to shovel as much out the door as possible. An automobile plant used to selling to rich dudes wouldn't dare ship a car with cosmetic issues, but tank crews don't care if there's a little weld splatter on the outside or runs in the paint, as long as it actually works in combat. And this created attitude issues when they converted back to making fancy cars for rich dudes after the war. "So there's a giant dent in the hood, the GIs don't care... Uh, yeah but we're not building jeeps anymore..."
- ColinWright 13y ago
  " Congratulations gentleman - you're everything we've come to expect from years of Government training." -- Zed, in "Men in Black" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cflpNLjhi0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cflpNLjhi0s
- jes5199 13y ago
  There's a nice explanation of the context around Halberstam, on wikipedia for those of us who aren't familiar with the story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest
clarkm 13y ago
Yeah, it looks like Ars messed it up: http://digitalalertsystems.com/contact.htm http://digitalalertsystems.com/contact.htm

waster 13y ago

National zombie attack alert... it's only a matter of time.

akira2501 13y ago
EAS has so many weaknesses, I'd actually qualify this as the least worrisome. The way we deploy any computerized equipment that is a part of our air-chain includes firewalls and only allowing connections to the necessary servers for CAP type alerts. Every EAS receiver is typically monitoring other stations in the area for EAS relay. We actually have a tuner tuned to another station in the market and if we hear an EAS alert go across the air on their station we simply relay it. Due to the FM capture effect, it's _very_ easy to attack this channel; especially because there's _zero_ authentication on these incoming "relay" messages. Even worse, some types of messages are setup for "national relay." This system was tested recently to ensure that a message could be relayed like this from one end of the country to the other -- and yes, it can. So, if you construct the right type of message, you can have it broadcast over _every_ station in america.
- jevinskie 13y ago
  I wrote a SAME FSK encoder in Java. It was very straightforward. If I had a transmitter, I could have strolled by the local TV or radio station and caused the entire state of Indiana to declare a hurricane emergency. Relayed across radio stations, TV ticker, and your weather radio. Here is a bit of the specification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding#Header_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding...
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Clearly, there should be laws mandating that everyone who knows Java, has visited that Wikipedia page, or walks outside radio stations be surveilled at all times, to ensure people's safety.
    - VLM 13y ago

contingencies 13y ago

What's the bet a whole bunch of people with false TV station emails just scored copies of the code?

johnchristopher 13y ago
What code ? It's more likely they just were given a new public key for an updated private key or something along this line.
jlgaddis 13y ago
I have some four-letter domains that start with "w", should I try? =)

dave1010uk 13y ago

If you were building a system with legacy firmware (so, for examole you couldn't rotate keys in case of a breach), how would you mitigate against situations like this? Can anyone give a brief overview of how to architect a more secure system?

rdl 13y ago
When you build a public key into firmware which isn't easily updated, you need to put a lot of effort into securing the corresponding private key. The correct way to do this is to have a separate credential for your actual admin users who then use that to authenticate to an HSM or similar system which controls the actual widely-deployed keys. Humans should never be able to access the important private keys directly, and there should be a logging process which shows those keys have never been exported (and have technical and policy controls against being exported) without proper multi-party control (so, you back them up in k of n shares, and distribute those shares across corporate officers in multiple sites in the event you need to replace the HSM). Shorter lived keys and more frequent updates, provided you also have a secure way of authenticating the updates (hard) is often preferred.
bdonlan 13y ago
You can put the private key on a few HSMs, and have the HSM enforce a security policy (eg - access must be authorized by a quorum of operators). Never allow the private key to leave the HSM, ever again, except when initializing a new HSM (in which case, it had better be encrypted by the new HSM's unique key before leaving the old one). Then you go fix your legacy firmware.
cnvogel 13y ago
The "canonical" way of solving this is of course with a certificate hierarchy. You can configure your target system to allow authentication whenever your certificate is signed by the "golden" key, and by creating the certificates with expiration dates it's easy to restrict the time that a certificate (which maybe got stolen or was made public inadvertendly) can be used for login. Adding auxiliary data (comparable to X509 certificate usage restrictions only for code-signing or signing for emails) would allow you to have a (central hardened) machine hand out certificates to your "semi trusted" administrators that only allow login from a specific IP-address, to a specific target-system, up to a certain date or even time. Putting this functionality in a script (to acquire the certificate and login to a system) such a wrapper could most likely be used as a drop-in replacement for the normal ssh-client. If your restriction is to use only the default openssh already deployed to the target machines, one quick solution to hide the critical private key from the developer/admin/service machines would be to place it on a (hopefully somewhat hardened) machine running the ssh-agent, and access the agent by creative use of tunelling. In essence then the hardened machine would act as a kind of "smartcard" for all your admins.

glabifrons 13y ago

It's sad that it was abused to broadcast a prank (that might send phobics over the edge) rather than something to enlighten those who don't frequent sites like this one about the current situation with regard to SWIFT, the NSA, and the associated dangers of the situation. Most of the people either aren't aware of it at all, or are focused on Snowden (thanks to CNN, et al) and ignoring or are otherwise oblivious of the huge problem that he exposed. Far too many don't think for themselves and believe that it's actually a good thing, that it won't/can't be abused, and that it's entirely to fight terrorism. These same people believe that terrorism is an enormous threat (bigger than being killed by drunk drivers, smoking, and bathtub drowning). Sadly, I know plenty of people that fit into this category.

Fuxy 13y ago

Yay! The zombie apocalypse is upon us. How could they fk up so royally?

johnchristopher 13y ago

FTA: Stations that use vulnerable gear should upgrade to version 2.0-2, which is available by sending an e-mail to suport@digitalalertsystems.com. As a "broadcast-emitting-messages-company" admin: would I really upgrade a system, which functionalities include complete take-over of my broadcast equipment, that is vulnerable to someone mistaking the private and public ssh keys of his "taking-over-any-equipment" equipment ? I'd rather un-subscribe from that "service" in the limit of legality until that point of failure is fixed.

magoon 13y ago

Your medical records are somehow safe? It's only a matter of time before the govt mandated exchanges go "oops" in a similar way

ceejayoz 13y ago
My understanding of the exchanges is they're just a way to buy health insurance. They're not storing your medical records in the exchanges.
- lettergram 13y ago
  Coming from a medical billing service which deals with this, yes they will keep your records as of 2014 I believe.
- adolph 13y ago
  Exchanges may also refer to Health Information Exchanges (HIE). http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-information-exchange http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-infor...
vertex-four 13y ago
And yet somehow, in general, national health services with highly integrated medical data storage systems across Europe don't seem to lose data as often as you'd think.
groby_b 13y ago
As opposed to private providers, who are oh-so-safe? For breaches of private providers so far, see http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachnotificationrule/breachtool.html http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachno... A quick sum of all the incidents in there adds up to 22 million health care records lost so far. It's hard to imagine the government could do much worse. In case you don't feel like importing the CSV file somewhere, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkJeZCqH2PsHdDZoSVJZdzR0ZmV6cm9Ndy1ON1VlRGc&usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkJeZCqH2PsHdDZ... (Not modified except for column width and a final tally)

deadreturns 13y ago

> US president to deliver speeches to the entire country within 10 minutes of a disaster occurring WTF? Doesn't he usually speech like the next day? What will he say within 10 minutes when there is very little information available? "Don't cry kids mommy is here"?