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RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest Saturday, 26 September 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 39

FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

Contents: Another Australian ATM Card Snatch (Dave Horsfall) AT&T Computers Penetrated (Joe Morris) On-line Robotic Repair of Software (Maj. Doug Hardie) Re: An Aporkriffle Tail (Michael Wagner) Risks in the Misuse of Databases? (Brint Cooper) SDI Simulation (Steve Schlesinger) Ethical dilemmas and all that... (Herb Lin)

The RISKS Forum is moderated. Contributions should be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, coherent, concise, nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome. Contributions to RISKS@CSL.SRI.COM, Requests to RISKS-Request@CSL.SRI.COM. FTP back issues Vol i Issue j from F4.CSL.SRI.COM:<RISKS>RISKS-i.j. Volume summaries for each i in max j: (i,j) = (1,46),(2,57),(3,92),(4,97).

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Date: 16 Sep 87 13:55:24 +1000 (Wed) From: munnari!astra.necisa.oz!dave@uunet.UU.NET (Dave Horsfall) To: risks@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Another Australian ATM Card Snatch

>From the Sydney edition of "The Australian", Tue Sep 15:

``Human error blamed in great ATM card snatch

A fault in the Commonwealth Bank automatic teller machine on Saturday - which impounded more than 900 Mastercards - has been attributed to human error. But technicians are continuing to investigate the system's software.

Mastercard users were confronted with "No account, card retained" messages on Saturday morning when they attempted to use their cards in Commonwealth Bank or Westpac ATM's, and 921 cards were impounded.

The Commonwealth Bank's acting general manager for retail banking, Mr John Koch, said that although the Mastercard reference file had been loaded into the system on Friday, "it did not take". "Every night the Mastercard file is updated and loaded ... but as the computer did not take the Mastercard file on Friday night it had no record of the accounts. The next step was for the ATM's to impound the cards, which is a very desirable security feature. The principle of the system is fine, it's just the practical application that went wrong." ''

Went wrong indeed! It left hundreds of customers without cash for the weekend. The article went on to say that it was "almost certain the fault lay with incorrect loading commands by a human operator".

Readers will recall a previous snafu with Westpac ATM's, when they went live with a new version of software. The repercussions are still rippling...

Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) ACSnet/CSNET: dave@astra.necisa.OZ NEC Information Systems Aust. ARPA: dave%astra.necisa.oz@uunet.UU.NET 3rd Floor, 99 Nicholson St JANET: astra.necisa.OZ!dave@ukc St. Leonards 2064 AUSTRALIA UUCP: {enea,hplabs,mcvax,uunet,ukc}!\ TEL: +61 2 438-3544 FAX: 439-7036 munnari!astra.necisa.OZ!dave

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To: risks@csl.sri.com Subject: AT&T Computers Penetrated [More] Date: Fri, 18 Sep 87 12:24:43 EDT From: Joe Morris (jcmorris@mitre.arpa) Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C.

Washington Post, 18 September 1987, p. F1, ff., (C) [filtered by Joe]

YOUTH ACCESSES AT&T'S COMPUTERS

A 17-year-old Chicago high school student using a personal computer in his bedroom broke into AT&T's computer systems around the country, stole $1 million worth of sophisticated software and was "on the verge" of being able to disrupt the company's telephone network, according to federal prosecutors.

The youth also appears to have gained access to AT&T computers at two military bases: the NATO Maintenance and Supply Headquarters in Burlington, N.C., and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, an Air Force logistics command center, according to prosecutors. The computers did not store classified or sensitive material, they said.

[Comments on other attempted penetrations, including the Washington Post's own computer system.]

[...AT&T says: ] "We view this as a kind of Yuppie vandalism [...].

[The investigation involved] agents from the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Defence Criminal Investigative Service [...].

[The youth's lawyer] said yesterday that the youth "categorically denies doing anything that he should not have been doing. I can assure you that my client had absolutely no sinister motives in terms of stealing property. Right now we're very much in the dark as to what this is all about."

[...] several persons familiar with the case said the incident was highly embarrassed [sic] AT&T and showed potentially serious lapses in its security. [...] AT&T officials believe the incident does not demonstrate flaws in the company's security system but in the failure of its employees to follow proper security procedures. [...] "We're saying the locks are pretty damn good, but we need to remind people to close the door."

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Date: Tue, 15 Sep 87 12:27 EDT From: "Maj. Doug Hardie" <Hardie@DOCKMASTER.ARPA> Subject: On-line Robotic Repair of Software To: risks@csl.sri.com

The following is taken from Business Week, Sep 7, 87 page 113.

THIS SOFTWARE ROBOT FIXES SYSTEMS - WHILE THEY'RE RUNNING

With computer systems growing more pervasive and complex, maintenance is a mounting headache - especially as networks rope together more unrelated brands of equipment. Finding and fixing problems too often turns into a finger-pointing contest among vendors.

But suppose there were a robot technician residing in software that could worm its way freely through the system, periodically "exercising" the diagnostic programs provided for each piece of equipment. Imagine that this software robot is "smart" enough, when it discovers problems, to run the applicable repair routines. Command Technologies Inc., a Boston startup, claims its SoftRobot software does this and more. For example, if a hard disk crashes, the SoftRobot might move data to another system, restart the first drive, and restore the data. The program, says Command President Franco Vitaliano, "fools the system into thinking that a person is doing the work." As a last resort, the system summons a human. SoftRobots, which cost about $2,500 for workstation-level systems, are being evaluated by a dozen computer companies.

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Date: Fri, 25 Sep 87 11:29 CET To: RISKS@csl.sri.com From: Michael Wagner +49 228 303 245 <WAGNER%DBNGMD21.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu> Subject: Re: An Aporkriffle Tail (RISKS-5.38)

> IPFRCVM - Iowa Pig Farm Research Center ...

What was not mentioned in RISKS is that this message strongly [and pungently] suggests that the site IPFRCVM is fictitious: it appears in none of the current tables for BITNET to which I have access.

[Note: APOCRYPHAL = of doubtful authenticity. Add this one to Chernenko@MOSKVAX. (I have edited Michael's note slightly.) PGN]

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Date: Fri, 25 Sep 87 0:45:15 EDT From: Brint Cooper <abc@BRL.ARPA> To: risks@csl.sri.com Subject: Risks in the Misuse of Databases? [RISKS-5.38]

> A (simple ?) diff operation between 2 databases and you have it: ... > Cliff Jones, Manchester

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this info used merely for the enforcement authorities to decide where to search for unlicensed TV receivers? They won't arrest you solely because you're not in the database, will they?

What's the alternative? When we uncover risks or abuses in the use of computer systems, we are obliged to compare these with the risks or abuses in accomplishing the same job without computer systems. The only effect of the automated databases is to help find unlicenced TV sets more quickly than by searching manually. In either case, some number of such sets will be found. Only the numbers differ.

[Cliff's notes that he is indeed paranoid and abviously STRANGE for not owning a TV, plus the statement that they have uncovered EVERY HOME WITHOUT A LICENCE -- irrespective of the presence of a TV -- are indeed illustrative of the more general problem of drawing inferences from information gathered out of context from networks of networks of databases. This is by no means a new problem, and has been discussed here in the past. It gets more difficult to control HUMAN misuse as the scope of the search widens. But the key point is that the linking together of databases for purposes other than their original intent does raise social questions. (Cliff and friends -- help! The network is suddenly no longer accepting your CS.UCL.AC.UK relay.) PGN]

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From: steves%ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (Steve Schlesinger) Subject: SDI Simulation Date: 21 Sep 87 16:34:20 GMT Organization: NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo

The following recently appeared on modsim distribution, a mailing list on issues in simulation. I thought RISKS would appreciate the point that the simulator understood the complexity of the simulation task, but not the fact that the simulation is easy compared to the real problem of SDI control.

I've deleted the name of the poster, but not his organization. Steve Schlesinger, NCR Corporation <Usual Disclaimer - I speak only for myself>

To: modsim-dist@sunset.prc.unisys.com From XXXX@mitre-bedford.ARPA Fri Sep 18 10:56:49 1987

This has been touched onb before but I'd like to see if some more discussion can be generated. I am involved in developing a distributed simulation of a large SDI communication network. The two approaches to distributed simulation are the roll-back, TimeWarp and the Chandra Misra message passing. I am leaning very heavily towards the Chandra Misra model mainly because of my misgivings about the TimeWarp model. These misgivings are

1) The amount of memory devoted to maintaining a history one can roll back to. The networks we will be modelling will consist of 500 to 1500 satellites, each with at least 10 queues and/or buffers. Checkpointing could be expensive.

2) The roll-back support would have to be developed from scratch. We would be building a complicated software support environment along with the simulation itself.

3) Debugging in such an environment would be a BEAR. We would be catching bugs in the roll back support, bugs in the simulation itself and bugs in the interaction between the support and the simulation, I can see us tracing a message, not being sure its valid or not and then seeing it being "taken back" and not being sure whether the "take back" is valid - oooh gives me chills.

I'd welcome some discussion on these points (or others)

[All articles for inclusion in modsim should be sent to ..!isdcrdcf!sdcjove!modsim OR "modsim@cam.unisys.com"]

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Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1987 15:37 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU To: RISKS@csl.sri.com Subject: Ethical dilemmas and all that..

All of us have been exposed to the question of whether or not an engineer should consider the implications of his or her work. The question is usually posed in the following way: Should an engineer work on certain projects if the social implications of that project are negative? Questions like "Can (or will) the project be used to do bad things?" become relevant. This is one kind of ethical dilemma.

Another type of ethical dilemma arises when a similar question is asked of policy makers. Do policy makers have an ethical responsibility to prevent engineers from having to confront ethical dilemmas?

At first, I thought the answer was clear -- Don't ask someone else to do something you wouldn`t do yourself. But that's insufficient. I am willing to pay someone to provide food for me (I'm not vegetarian), and that involves things I am unwilling to do myself.

The problem for a policy maker comes from the fact that he must plan for an uncertain future. That means hedging against the possibility that his judgments might be wrong. As a defense policy maker, for example, it may be that he cannot imagine any circumstances under which a certain weapon might be used. Should he then not think about how to use that weapon at all? Or should he spend a little bit of time, money, and energy thinking about possible ways it could be used in the event that his judgment is wrong? If the latter, that could mean that he would have to ask someone to think about doing things that he (the policy maker) would never want done and moreover could not imagine wanting done.

It is clear to me that the policy maker should not spend a lot of money etc and thus ask many people to confront ethical dilemmas. But should he ask a few? I invite comments.

[This could lead to an interesting, albeit rather free-form, discussion. Responses to Herb (cc: RISKS), please. PGN]

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest ************************