La Mort de la vie Privée →
Marc Arment sums-it-up, succintly.
Infographica, The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act →
Timothy D. Cook, Apple Inc.'s highly respected Chief Executive Officer
Cook's Battles →
Prævaricator →
Or, how interweb-ensconced journalists complain about user tracking, yet the companies they toil under (sometimes their own sites) utilize tracking... Written by Quinn Norton, on a Medium blog, adroitly monikered The Message.
IETF RFC 7258, Pervasive Monitoring Is An Attack →
Quite likely, the most important document published this week on Infosecurity.US, now over a half-year old, [released during the month of May, 2014]. In accordance with the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of publication of this document, this RFC is published in it's entirety, without modification. Further information and Feedback opportunities can be found at the RFC Editor / RFC Database. The following information is the accurate content of RFC 7258. Enjoy!
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BEST CURRENT PRACTICE
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Farrell Request for Comments: 7258 Trinity College Dublin BCP: 188 H. Tschofenig Category: Best Current Practice ARM Ltd. ISSN: 2070-1721 May 2014
Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
Abstract Pervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 1]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
1. Pervasive Monitoring Is a Widespread Attack on Privacy
Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise. The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting [IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and establishes the technical nature of PM. The term "attack" is used here in a technical sense that differs somewhat from common English usage. In common English usage, an attack is an aggressive action perpetrated by an opponent, intended to enforce the opponent's will on the attacked party. The term is used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An attack may change the content of the communication, record the content or external characteristics of the communication, or through correlation with other communication events, reveal information the parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator. [RFC4949] contains a more complete definition for the term "attack". We also use the term in the singular here, even though PM in reality may consist of a multifaceted set of coordinated attacks. In particular, the term "attack", used technically, implies nothing about the motivation of the actor mounting the attack. The motivation for PM can range from non-targeted nation-state surveillance, to legal but privacy-unfriendly purposes by commercial enterprises, to illegal actions by criminals. The same techniques to achieve PM can be used regardless of motivation. Thus, we cannot defend against the most nefarious actors while allowing monitoring by other actors no matter how benevolent some might consider them to be, since the actions required of the attacker are indistinguishable from other attacks. The motivation for PM is, therefore, not relevant for how PM is mitigated in IETF protocols. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
2. The IETF Will Work to Mitigate Pervasive Monitoring
"Mitigation" is a technical term that does not imply an ability to completely prevent or thwart an attack. Protocols that mitigate PM will not prevent the attack but can significantly change the threat. (See the diagram on page 24 of RFC 4949 for how the terms "attack" and "threat" are related.) This can significantly increase the cost of attacking, force what was covert to be overt, or make the attack more likely to be detected, possibly later. IETF standards already provide mechanisms to protect Internet communications and there are guidelines [RFC3552] for applying these in protocol design. But those standards generally do not address PM, the confidentiality of protocol metadata, countering traffic analysis, or data minimisation. In all cases, there will remain some privacy-relevant information that is inevitably disclosed by protocols. As technology advances, techniques that were once only available to extremely well-funded actors become more widely accessible. Mitigating PM is therefore a protection against a wide range of similar attacks. It is therefore timely to revisit the security and privacy properties of our standards. The IETF will work to mitigate the technical aspects of PM, just as we do for protocol vulnerabilities in general. The ways in which IETF protocols mitigate PM will change over time as mitigation and attack techniques evolve and so are not described here. Those developing IETF specifications need to be able to describe how they have considered PM, and, if the attack is relevant to the work to be published, be able to justify related design decisions. This does not mean a new "pervasive monitoring considerations" section is needed in IETF documentation. It means that, if asked, there needs to be a good answer to the question "Is pervasive monitoring relevant to this work and if so, how has it been considered?" In particular, architectural decisions, including which existing technology is reused, may significantly impact the vulnerability of a protocol to PM. Those developing IETF specifications therefore need to consider mitigating PM when making architectural decisions. Getting adequate, early review of architectural decisions including whether appropriate mitigation of PM can be made is important. Revisiting these architectural decisions late in the process is very costly. While PM is an attack, other forms of monitoring that might fit the definition of PM can be beneficial and not part of any attack, e.g., network management functions monitor packets or flows and anti-spam Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 3]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014 mechanisms need to see mail message content. Some monitoring can even be part of the mitigation for PM, for example, certificate transparency [RFC6962] involves monitoring Public Key Infrastructure in ways that could detect some PM attack techniques. However, there is clear potential for monitoring mechanisms to be abused for PM, so this tension needs careful consideration in protocol design. Making networks unmanageable to mitigate PM is not an acceptable outcome, but ignoring PM would go against the consensus documented here. An appropriate balance will emerge over time as real instances of this tension are considered. Finally, the IETF, as a standards development organisation, does not control the implementation or deployment of our specifications (though IETF participants do develop many implementations), nor does the IETF standardise all layers of the protocol stack. Moreover, the non-technical (e.g., legal and political) aspects of mitigating pervasive monitoring are outside of the scope of the IETF. The broader Internet community will need to step forward to tackle PM, if it is to be fully addressed. To summarise: current capabilities permit some actors to monitor content and metadata across the Internet at a scale never before seen. This pervasive monitoring is an attack on Internet privacy. The IETF will strive to produce specifications that mitigate pervasive monitoring attacks.
3. Process Note
In the past, architectural statements of this sort, e.g., [RFC1984] and [RFC2804], have been published as joint products of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). However, since those documents were published, the IETF and IAB have separated their publication "streams" as described in [RFC4844] and [RFC5741]. This document was initiated after discussions in both the IESG and IAB, but is published as an IETF- stream consensus document, in order to ensure that it properly reflects the consensus of the IETF community as a whole.
4. Security Considerations
This document is entirely about privacy. More information about the relationship between security and privacy threats can be found in [RFC6973]. Section 5.1.1 of [RFC6973] specifically addresses surveillance as a combined security-privacy threat. Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 4]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
5. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants of the IETF 88 technical plenary for their feedback. Thanks in particular to the following for useful suggestions or comments: Jari Arkko, Fred Baker, Marc Blanchet, Tim Bray, Scott Brim, Randy Bush, Brian Carpenter, Benoit Claise, Alissa Cooper, Dave Crocker, Spencer Dawkins, Avri Doria, Wesley Eddy, Adrian Farrel, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Phillip Hallam-Baker, Ted Hardie, Sam Hartmann, Paul Hoffman, Bjoern Hoehrmann, Russ Housley, Joel Jaeggli, Stephen Kent, Eliot Lear, Barry Leiba, Ted Lemon, Subramanian Moonesamy, Erik Nordmark, Pete Resnick, Peter Saint-Andre, Andrew Sullivan, Sean Turner, Nicholas Weaver, Stefan Winter, and Lloyd Wood. Additionally, we would like to thank all those who contributed suggestions on how to improve Internet security and privacy or who commented on this on various IETF mailing lists, such as the ietf@ietf.org and the perpass@ietf.org lists.
6. Informative References
[IETF88Plenary] IETF, "IETF 88 Plenary Meeting Materials", November 2013, <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/88/>. [RFC1984] IAB, IESG, Carpenter, B., and F. Baker, "IAB and IESG Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet", RFC 1984, August 1996. [RFC2804] IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804, May 2000. [RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552, July 2003. [RFC4844] Daigle, L. and Internet Architecture Board, "The RFC Series and RFC Editor", RFC 4844, July 2007. [RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", RFC 4949, August 2007. [RFC5741] Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers, and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009. [RFC6962] Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate Transparency", RFC 6962, June 2013 Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 5]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014 [RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J., Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, July 2013. Authors' Addresses Stephen Farrell Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland Phone: +353-1-896-2354 EMail: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie Hannes Tschofenig ARM Ltd. 6060 Hall in Tirol Austria EMail: Hannes.tschofenig@gmx.net URI: http://www.tschofenig.priv.at Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 6] Html markup produced by rfcmarkup 1.109, available from https://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcmarkup/
DeepFace and the End of Privacy
In a new series (typically, behind Science Magazines' pay-wall, but free access to February 5th, 2015), comes this particularly disturbing revelation of Facebook Inc.'s (NasdaqGS: FB) DeepFace system which is now, apparently, as accurate as human's at facial recognition.
Turn's Undead Cookie
In a posting published by ProPublica, online advertising leviathan TURN is utilizing the dreaded zombie cookie, pioneered by those friendly folks at Verizon Wireless. ProPublica is also reporting that TURN's actions were originally discovered by Stanford University computer scientist and attorney Jonathan Mayer, and then tested by ProPublica staffers.
Pew's Privacy →
Pew Research Center has published a new privacy related report titled 'Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era'; in which, the Center details the current perception of Americans when cogitating on the Demise of Privacy.
Grail of Tracking →
via ProPublica, comes word of a decision at AT&T, Incorporated (NYSE: T) ; of plans to drop the use of the dreaded Permacookie (fundamentally, a method to permanently track your web usage, regardless of the co-called browser do-not-track parameters). Certainly a first world problem, yet quite vexing, particularly for our right to privacy...
Pernicious privacy violators, permacookies are not the already aggravating cookies we all love to hate; as such, users can set browsers to delete normal cookies in a variety of ways and methods - yet not permacookies. As objects, co-called permanent cookies are are typically maintained and manipulated by the Carrier/ISP, and not the user, therefore not permitting deletion. Welcome to your new Surveillance Overlords.
Unfortunately, Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) users are not so lucky, as the company continues to utilize permacookies in daily operations... Our advice: Get thee to a VPN, why woulds't thou be an enabler of trackers?
Spotlight Privacy Fail
In a privacy reversal, Apple Inc.'s (NasdaqGS:AAPL) Spotlight search utility now mingles your search queries with millions of others, and forwards those sweet, sweet nuggets of data to Microsoft Corporations' (NasdaqGS: MSFT) Bing search engine.
While, on the surface, this data collection does not appear to violate any of http://www.apple.com/privacy, it is quite simply a terrible decision, and certainly muddies the waters for MAC OS X users world wide.. Simply astonishing...
Apple's statement, culled from the Spotlight application on Yosemite, otherwise known as Apple Mac OS X 10.10:
About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy
When you use Spotlight, your search queries, the Spotlight Suggestions you select, and related usage data will be sent to Apple. Search results found on your Mac will not be sent. If you have Location Services on your Mac turned on, when you make a search query to Spotlight the location of your Mac at that time will be sent to Apple. Searches for common words and phrases will be forwarded from Apple to Microsoft's Bing search engine. These searches are not stored by Microsoft. Location, search queries, and usage information sent to Apple will be used by Apple only to make Spotlight Suggestions more relevant and to improve other Apple products and services.If you do not want your Spotlight search queries and Spotlight Suggestions usage data sent to Apple, you can turn off Spotlight Suggestions. Simply deselect the checkboxes for both Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches in the Search Results tab in the Spotlight preference pane found within System Preferences on your Mac. If you turn off Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches, Spotlight will search the contents of only your Mac.
You can turn off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions in the Privacy pane of System Preferences on your Mac by clicking on “Details” next to System Services and then deselecting “Spotlight Suggestions”. If you turn off Location Services on your Mac, your precise location will not be sent to Apple. To deliver relevant search suggestions, Apple may use the IP address of your Internet connection to approximate your location by matching it to a geographic region.
Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.
Whisper, The Distortion Field →
Writing for The Guardian, Dominic Rushe and Paul Lewis have certainly embarked upon a problematic path to tread... Focusing their combinatorial scrutiny on the entity known as Whisper, we discover the kernel of truth denoting what the company is offering up.
Camel-Borne Google Street View
via Geekologie comes this look at Google Inc.'s (NasdaqGS: GOOG) street view in Abu Dhabi...
Cranky Devs
Evidently, crank developers are now targeting Cupertino, California based Apple, Inc.'s (NasdaqGS: AAPL) decision to out the utilization of location data by apps resident on iOS devices, even when an app is not running...
The company's own apps require authorization as well; perhaps the coming singularity is slowing down, just a tad, mind you... Certainly a contrarian view.
SwiftKey, iOS 8's Key Logger Extraordinaire
via MacDrifter's Gabe, revealing les couilles of the developers of SwiftKey. Evidently, a very popular iOS 8's key logger, for sale on the AppStore, mon Dieu.
Heart Rate →
Via MG Seigler...
NIST, IAPP Privacy Workshop Slated →
Maybe, just maybe, there is scientific hope for the Right to Privacy. At once, ruminating upon the Declaration of Universal Human Rights*** and the United State's 4th Amendment to the Constitution** , hope doth, truly spring eternal...
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced the second co-sponsored Privacy Engineering Workshop, slated for the 15th and 16th of September, 2014 in San Jose, California. Co-sponsored with the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the Workshops mandate is a focus on engineering objectives (in draft) and the necessitated Risk Model (that model was a key output of the first Privacy Workshop).
Constitution of the United States, Amendment IV**
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12***
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.