Lawful Hacking: Using Existing Vulnerabilities for Wiretapping on the Internet

For years, legal wiretapping was straightforward: the officer doing the intercept connected a tape recorder or the like to a single pair of wires. By the 1990s, however, the changing structure of telecommunications—there was no longer just “Ma Bell” to talk to—and new technologies such as ISDN and cellular telephony made executing a wiretap more complicated for law enforcement. Simple technologies would no longer suffice. In response, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which mandated a standardized lawful intercept interface on all local phone switches. Since its passage, technology has continued to progress, and in the face of new forms of communication—Skype, voice chat during multiplayer online games, instant messaging, etc.—law enforcement is again experiencing problems. The FBI has called this “Going Dark”: their loss of access to suspects’ communication. According to news reports, law enforcement wants changes to the wiretap laws to require a CALEA-like interface in Internet software. CALEA, though, has its own issues: it is complex software specifically intended to create a security hole—eavesdropping capability—in the already-complex environment of a phone switch. It has unfortunately made wiretapping easier for everyone, not just law enforcement. Congress failed to heed experts’ warnings of the danger posed by this mandated vulnerability, and time has proven the experts right. The so-called “Athens Affair,” where someone used the built-in lawful intercept mechanism to listen to the cell phone calls of high Greek officials, including the Prime Minister, is but one example. In an earlier work, we showed why extending CALEA to the Internet would create very serious problems, including the security problems it has visited on the phone system. In this paper, we explore the viability and implications of an alternative method for addressing law enforcements need to access communications: legalized hacking of target devices through existing vulnerabilities in end-user software and platforms. The FBI already uses this approach on a small scale; we expect that its use will increase, especially as centralized wiretapping capabilities become less viable. Relying on vulnerabilities and hacking poses a large set of legal and policy questions, some practical and some normative. Among these are: (1) Will it create disincentives to patching? (2) Will there be a negative effect on innovation? (Lessons from the so-called “Crypto Wars” of the 1990s, and in particular the debate over export controls on cryptography, are instructive here.) (3) Will law enforcement’s participation in vulnerabilities purchasing skew the market? (4) Do local and even state law enforcement agencies have the technical sophistication to develop and use exploits? If not, how should this be handled? A larger FBI role? (5) Should law enforcement even be participating in a market where many of the sellers and other buyers are themselves criminals? (6) What happens if these tools are captured and repurposed by miscreants? (7) Should we sanction otherwise illegal network activity to aid law enforcement? (8) Is the probability of success from such an approach too low for it to be useful? As we will show, these issues are indeed challenging. We regard the issues raised by using vulnerabilities as, on balance, preferable to adding more complexity and insecurity to online systems

Plugging Presence Awareness into Mozilla Thunderbird

Presence awareness, that is the awareness of what distant colleagues are doing and their availability for interaction, plays a key role for coping with the lack of physical proximity and improving multi-site work. Despite its limited potential for signaling awareness and availability for interaction, email is the form of computer-mediated communication in widest use today and often the place where collaboration emerges. In this paper we present a plugin that uses the XMPP protocol to augment Mozilla Thunderbird mail client with presence awareness, thus reducing the friction of also running an IM system for signaling presence and availability

Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Organisations: The Case of Open Source Software Communities

The knowledge-based economy, where everything and everybody is just one click away, has formed the foundation for a new organisational form. The term ‘virtual organisation’ (VO) reflects the emergence of a new organisational form with a record of success in the modern business environment, where knowledge has become a key component. Managing knowledge is the main driver in the knowledge-based economy. One of the best examples of such organisational forms with successful knowledge sharing processes is open source software (OSS) communities. This justifies my thesis, which undertakes primary research in OSS communities via qualitative and quantitative studies to find out how and to what extent knowledge is shared in those communities, in order to develop a Model for successful knowledge sharing processes in the VOs. The following factors in the Model, which influence the level of personal contribution in the OSS communities, were found. The level of personal contribution as an indicator to knowledge sharing for product innovation is a result of a combination of individual factors as well as individual opinion on the organisational factors. Factors such as an education level/explicit knowledge, incentives/benefits for the future and monetary reward do not play a role on their own, but they influence the level of roles and the level of activeness, which in turn influence the level of knowledge sharing, which is important for the level of personal contribution on product innovation. Personal and work related motivations are important factors to successful knowledge sharing inside OSS communities. However, most importantly, the level of personal contribution towards product innovation is a result of the satisfaction of individuals by the management of the OSS communities, identification with these communities and trust inside of these communities. The developed Model shows that organisational factors are more important than individual factors for successful knowledge sharing inside OSS communities from an individual’s perspective

PLUGGING PRESENCE AWARENESS INTO MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD

Presence awareness, that is the awareness of what distant colleagues are doing and their availability for interaction, plays a key role for coping with the lack of physical proximity and improving multi-site work. Despite its limited potential for signaling awareness and availability for interaction, email is the form of computer-mediated communication in widest use today and often the place where collaboration emerges. In this paper we present a plugin that uses the XMPP protocol to augment Mozilla Thunderbird mail client with presence awareness, thus reducing the friction of also running an IM system for signaling presence and availability

Design principles and patterns for computer systems that are simultaneously secure and usable

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 429-464) and index.It is widely believed that security and usability are two antagonistic goals in system design. This thesis argues that there are many instances in which security and usability can be synergistically improved by revising the way that specific functionality is implemented in many of today's operating systems and applications. Specific design principles and patterns are presented that can accomplish this goal. Patterns are presented that minimize the release of confidential information through remnant and remanent data left on hard drives, in web browsers, and in documents. These patterns are based on a study involving the purchase of 236 hard drives on the secondary market, interviews conducted with organizations whose drives had been acquired, and through a detailed examination of modern web browsers and reports of information leakage in documents. Patterns are presented that enable secure messaging through the adoption of new key management techniques. These patterns are supported through an analysis of S/MIME handling in modern email clients, a survey of 469 Amazon.com merchants, and a user study of 43 individuals. Patterns are presented for promoting secure operation and for reducing the danger of covert monitoring. These patterns are supported by the literature review and an analysis of current systems.(cont.) In every case considered, it is shown that the perceived antagonism of security and usability can be scaled back or eliminated by revising the underlying designs on which modern systems are conceived. In many cases these designs can be implemented without significant user interface changes. The patterns described in this thesis can be directly applied by today's software developers and used for educating the next generation of programmers so that longstanding usability problems in computer security can at last be addressed. It is very likely that additional patterns can be identified in other related areas.by Simson L. Garfinkel.Ph.D

A biography of open source software: community participation and individuation of open source code in the context of microfinance NGOs in North Africa and the Middle East

For many, microfinance is about building inclusive financial systems to help the poor gain direct access to financial services. Hundreds of grassroots have specialised in the provision of microfinance services worldwide. Most of them are adhoc organisations, which suffer severe organisational and informational deficiencies. Over the past decades, policy makers and consortia of microfinance experts have attempted to improve their capacity building through ICTs. In particular, there is strong emphasis on open source software (OSS) initiatives, as it is commonly believed that MFIs are uniquely positioned to benefit from the advantages of openness and free access. Furthermore, OSS approaches have recently become extremely popular. The OSS gurus are convinced there is a business case for a purely open source approach, especially across international development spheres. Nonetheless, getting people to agree on what is meant by OSS remains hard to achieve. On the one hand scholarly software research shows a lack of consensus and documents stories in which the OSS meaning is negotiated locally. On the other, the growing literature on ICT-for-international development does not provide answers as research, especially in the microfinance context, presents little empirical scrutiny. This thesis therefore critically explores the OSS in the microfinance context in order to understand itslong-term development and what might be some of the implications for MFIs. Theoretically I draw on the 3rd wave of research within the field of Science and Technology Studies –studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE). I couple the software ‘biography’ approach (Pollock and Williams 2009) with concepts from Simondon’s thesis on the individuation of technical beings (1958) as an integrated framework. I also design a single case study, which is supported by an extensive and longitudinal collection of data and a three-stage approach, including the analysis of sociograms, and email content. This case provides a rich empirical setting that challenges the current understanding of the ontology of software and goes beyond the instrumental views of design, building a comprehensive framework for community participation and software sustainability in the context of the microfinance global industry

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

Co-Evolution of Source Code and the Build System: Impact on the Introduction of AOSD in Legacy Systems

Software is omnipresent in our daily lives. As users demand ever more advanced features, software systems have to keep on evolving. In practice, this means that software developers need to adapt the description of a software application. Such a description not only consists of source code written down in a programming language, as a lot of knowledge is hidden in lesser known software development artifacts, like the build system. As its name suggests, the build system is responsible for building an executable program, ready for use, from the source code. There are various indications that the evolution of source code is strongly related to that of the build system. When the source code changes, the build system has to co-evolve to safeguard the ability to build an executable program. A rigid build system on the other hand limits software developers. This phenomenon especially surfaces when drastic changes in the source code are coupled with an inflexible build system, as is the case for the introduction of AOSD technology in legacy systems. AOSD is a young software development approach which enables developers to structure and compose source code in a better way. Legacy systems are old software systems which are still mission-critical, but of which the source code and the build system are no longer fully understood, and which typically make use of old(-fashioned) technology. This PhD dissertation focuses on finding an explanation for this co-evolution of source code and the build system, and on finding developer support to grasp and manage this phenomenon. We postulate four "roots of co-evolution" which represent four different ways in which source code and the build system interact with each other. Based on these roots, we have developed tool and aspect language support to understand and manage co-evolution. The roots and the tool support have been validated in case studies, both in the context of co-evolution in general and of the introduction of AOSD technology in legacy systems. The dissertation experimentally shows that co-evolution indeed is a real problem, but that specific software development and aspect language support enables developers to deal with it