[117127] in Cypherpunks
Beware men with black bags
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Zombie Cow)
Thu Aug 26 21:43:33 1999
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 02:10:53 +0300 (EEST)
From: Zombie Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/238/business/Beware_men_with_black_bags+.shtml
Beware men with black bags
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Columnist, 08/26/99
Soon, every well-dressed hoodlum may be carrying a laptop computer. It
may be the only way to keep their criminal enterprises safe from the
scrutiny of Uncle Sam.
By now you've heard that the Clinton administration wants Congress to
grant federal law enforcement agents the power to break into the homes
and businesses of criminal suspects and plant digital bugs in their
computers. These devices would bypass encryption programs that can be
used to scramble data. As a result of such ''black-bag jobs,'' the
Feds would be able to acquire all manner of useful evidence that is
presently beyond their reach.
Computer-industry officials, members of Congress, and Internet
activists have denounced the idea. With good reason, they fret about
privacy, free speech, unreasonable searches and seizures, and so on.
My doubts were of a more technical nature. Can you really bug
somebody's computer without the user noticing? I mean, a room can't
tell you it's been bugged, but a computer will tell you quite a lot
about what it's doing, if you run the right kind of diagnostic
software.
Say the government wants to read my encrypted e-mails. John McCown,
technical director for network security at ICSA Inc. in Reston, Va.,
says agents could subtly alter my encryption software to make messages
much easier to crack. Suddenly, secret messages become easy prey.
OK, but to do that, the spies would have to change at least one file
on my computer. Couldn't I just run a search to see if any files have
been modified? You can do that with the Find feature in Windows 95,
and there are more sophisticated programs that will check every sector
of the disk for alterations. Run such a check every day and I'm safe,
right?
Wrong, says Bruce Schneier, inventor of the Blowfish encryption
algorithm and president of Counterpane Systems, a computer security
firm in Minneapolis. If the FBI got hold of your computer, they could
rig it so that none of these tests would work any more.
For instance, snoops could alter the operating system so that it no
longer displays evidence of a tampered file. And if you try to load a
specialized disk-checking program, the tampered computer could be set
up to load its own phony version of the software instead - a version
that would tell you all is well. Because the computer's been
compromised, you can't rely on any test results. ''The thing being
modified can't check itself,'' Schneier said.
The cops might not even need to enter your home. Richard Smith,
security expert and president of Phar Lap Software in Cambridge, says
some Internet software contains security holes that'll let skilled
programmers install software on distant computers, without the user
knowing. ''The feds can try that first,'' says Smith, ''and then in a
couple of days, if that doesn't work, try a break-in.''
And as long as the federal agents are in your house, why should they
stop at altering your software? They've got the entire computer to
play with. ''You could insert devices that would attach to the
motherboard, that the software wouldn't even see,'' says Phil
Zimmermann, inventor of the legendary Pretty Good Privacy encryption
program.
A spy could insert a gadget that would keep a record of every button
you push on the keyboard. The data could be transmitted over a
wiretap, or squirted over the Internet the next time you log on. Or
the device could simply record your typing for later retrieval by the
black-bag squad. ''It would work all too well,'' says Zimmermann.
There is an upside to all this. The Clinton administration has
previously sought to stop everybody from using high-quality encryption
software. At least the new plan targets suspected criminals, and in
theory leaves the rest of us alone. Federal judges would have to sign
off on the break-ins, just as they do with phone wiretaps. The feds
seem to have been fairly responsible in their use of phone-tapping, so
there's reason to hope that they'd show the same restraint with our
computers.
But just in case, you might want to start using a ThinkPad or
PowerBook as the nerve center of your criminal empire. Carry it with
you when you leave the house, to frustrate visitors wearing gloves and
black sneakers. And remember what they used to say at Apple Computer
Inc.: Never trust a computer you can't lift.
E-mail Hiawatha Bray at bray@globe.com.
