Tag HTTPS

This story (below) gives a whole new meaning to the phrase No News is Good News:

The most popular news sites can be used to spy on you, research shows

Cale Guthrie Weissman

Over a year ago it was discovered that government surveillance programs can use digital ad tracking software to keep tabs on Internet users. Now it appears more widespread than most thought.

In fact, 100 popular news sites were found to be susceptible to security issues that could help spies learn about what websites you browse and the data you share.

The fact that the government uses ad tracking software to surveil citizens isn’t necessarily new, but recently published research shows just how widespread the issue is.

This is in the wake of the one the top ad organisations publically saying that the majority of its ad tracking programs are safe and secure. The truth is that almost half of the software used by the most popular global news websites are unsecure and provide an easy way for governments to snoop, according to the new research.

A Toronto-based researcher named Andrew Hilts performed his own audit of the 100 top media sites to see how secure data exchange really was. Hilt is a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, as well as the executive director of the nonprofit Open Effect.

Hilt decided to check out if ad trackers — third-party ad software that sends and receives data — were encrypted. If the trackers were found to be unencrypted, it meant that personal data was in plain sight and easy to hack. (In essence, ad trackers leave cookies on users’ browsers, which are used to remember information such as personal preferences and previous logins. If this data is not protected it’s ripe for the taking.)

Of the pages Hilt loaded, he discovered 47 different third parties that were transmitting data to and from the sites. Of those third parties, 19 of them left what’s called a “unique identifier.” Hilt explained to me that unique identifiers are basically used to compile “a profile of who you are and what you’re interested in.”

Now this is the important, albeit slightly complicated, part of Hilt’s analysis:

An average of 53% of the third party hosts transmitting data on top news websites support HTTPS. News websites, on average, initiated communications with 10 different third parties that led to transmissions of uniquely identifying cookies that could not be secured with HTTPS. An average of 9 unique ID transmissions were to servers that support HTTPS. In other words, network snoops can take advantage of many insecurely-transmitted unique identifiers to help them identify just who is reading what news.

In laymen terms this means that on average nearly half of all third-party data transfers happening on the most popular news websites are unencrypted. Hilt explained to me the ramifications: “If an ad tracking system is being done unencrypted, other actors like your ISP or the NSA can collected this data,” he said.

Looking at the analysis, you can see that websites like the New York Post and the Economist transmit myriad data through third parties. Both of which, according to his chart, transmit well over 20 unencrypted identifiers that could be used by hackers.

The discoveries began in 2013. One of the many Snowden documents described a program that “piggybacked” on internet advertising technologies, using ad tracking technology to keep tabs on people of interest. The NSA discovered a handy loophole; many trackers are unencrypted. Thus, the NSA could easily tap into a website’s data exchange and also collect the traffic data of users.

More than a year after this initial revelation the Internet Advertising Bureau wrote a blog post calling for more widespread ad tracker encryption. This organisation called for all ad companies to support the encrypted HTTPS protocol — even the ad trackers. A website that uses the HTTPS protocol communicates encrypted data, which makes external snooping much harder to do.

The problem is that all parts of the website need to use HTTPS, not just the website itself. So if a news organisation uses third-party ad software that doesn’t use HTTPS, the website could very easily be tapped by spies. That’s why the IAB called for more data security.

“Once a website decides to support HTTPS,” the IAB wrote, “they need to make sure that their primary ad server supports encryption.” This way a user can be sure that all information exchanged on the page is secure and invisible to any unwanted eyes. The IAB added in its post that “nearly 80% of [its] members ad delivery systems supported HTTPS.”

Hilt’s findings show that this may not be the case.

Privacy advocates freaked out yesterday over Hilt’s findings. “A dubious congratulations to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, topping the news charts with 168 tracking URLs per page load,” tweeted Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Parker Higgins.

While the IAB’s message to advertisers is a step in the right direction, the fact that it doesn’t seem aware of how prevalent unencrypted tracking is means there’s a huge problem. In order for a website to truly ensure that its users aren’t being tracked by unknown third parties, it must ensure that both it and all of its third parties are communicating using HTTPS.

Hilt said the he’s happy the IAB is working to correct this issue, but it also needs to be aware of the work that needs to be done.

“The findings show they still have a ways to go,” he said.

Check out the related New York Times coverage and original Citizen Lab report.

Kudos to Google which made the right, prompt and decisive move to protect the security and authenticity of the entire internet ecosystem.

The setup of the security certificates like HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure – a more secure version of the original HTTP protocol and usually used to secure e-commerce transactions like online banking, email applications and e-commerce checkout areas) have been based on a system of trust placed on the issuers of those certificates. It takes just one breach to break down the entire system and China….. well, you know the rest of the story – Check out the video clip and TechDirt article below.

Google Completely Cuts Off Chinese Government’s Certificate Authority, CNNIC

from the wow dept

As you may have heard, last week, Google warned about an unauthorized HTTPS certificate being issued via CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center — which basically manages the Chinese internet, handling domain registration, security certificates and more). CNNIC blamed an Egyptian firm MCS Holdings, saying it had allowed MCS to issue security certificates for domains it had registered, but MCS had abused that power to issue bogus certificates.

Late on Wednesday, Google added a somewhat surprising update to its blog post about the matter, announcing that it was cutting off CNNIC certificates going forward:

As a result of a joint investigation of the events surrounding this incident by Google and CNNIC, we have decided that the CNNIC Root and EV CAs will no longer be recognized in Google products. This will take effect in a future Chrome update. To assist customers affected by this decision, for a limited time we will allow CNNIC’s existing certificates to continue to be marked as trusted in Chrome, through the use of a publicly disclosed whitelist. While neither we nor CNNIC believe any further unauthorized digital certificates have been issued, nor do we believe the misissued certificates were used outside the limited scope of MCS Holdings’ test network, CNNIC will be working to prevent any future incidents. CNNIC will implement Certificate Transparency for all of their certificates prior to any request for reinclusion. We applaud CNNIC on their proactive steps, and welcome them to reapply once suitable technical and procedural controls are in place.

This is a pretty big deal, but the right move for Google to make. It’s well known that the whole setup of security certificates is based on how much you trust the issuers of the certificates. If you can’t trust the certificate authorities the whole system breaks down. This has long been a problem that is going to require a very different security model in the future. But, while we still have that system, it’s of absolute importance that any breach of trust needs to be dealt with severely.

The newly announced internet-connected “Hello Barbie” (see video clip below) may be every girls’ dream but every parents’ nightmare.

The first-ever conversational doll (developed by ToyTalk in partnership with Mattel) will chat with the kids, record their conversations and transmit the recorded data to servers to be analyzed… and yes, risk being hacked and abused by pedophiles.

Think about it, it has all the hacking ingredients for any tech savvy blokes: wi-fi connection, speech-recognition software, phone apps (for kids?!), two-way conversations with kids and cloud storage.

Not convinced? Consider this: these capabilities mean these Barbies can also eavesdrop and record any conversation within the four-walls. Not much difference from the internet-connected spying Samsung smart TV.

“It wouldn’t take much for a malicious individual to intercept either the wi-fi communications from the phone or tablet, or connect to the doll over Bluetooth directly. These problems aren’t difficult to solve; the manufacturer needs to check the phone application carefully to make sure it’s secure. They also need to check that any information sent by the doll to their online systems is protected,” reportedly according to Ken Munro, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners, who has previously warned about the vulnerabilities in another doll called Cayla which uses speech-recognition and Google’s translation tools.

I’m a self-confessed hardcore fan of the good old IBM Thinkpad laptops but I’ve shied away from the black box ever since the Lenovo acquisition in 2005. And this (see video clips below) is one of those reasons. My tilt these days is towards those laptops with no parts made in China…

Photo (above) credit: http://thespecialhead.deviantart.com/art/Shadow-people-304525517

I found this excellent MyShadow website which not only explains what digital shadows mean but also provides a useful tool to check what traces one leaves online – by specifying the hardware and software one uses – and best of all, explores ways to mitigate them.

Have fun cleaning up your digital footprints.

The NSA may now be cracking on the Tor project after the forced shutdown of Lavabit, 2 of the many tools in the arsenal of Edward Snowden and the likes. But there are many other ways to secure your online activities, including secured phone calls in case you are also concerned about eavesdropping.

Here’s a handy list of 172 tools you can use, compiled by the folks at Backgroundchecks.org .