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EFF To Appeal Court Order Vs. Subway Hack Demo
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Aug 11, 2008 05:09 PM
from the tell-no-one dept.
from the tell-no-one dept.
snydeq sends along InfoWorld coverage of the EFF's plans to appeal a US District Court order that kept three MIT students from presenting detailed flaws in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority e-ticketing system at Defcon. And an anonymous reader points out that the MBTA, in addition to triggering the Streisand Effect, released in open court more information on vulnerabilities (PDF) than the students had any intention of presenting. See Exhibit 1 to this court filing.
Related Stories
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Your Rights Online: Massachusetts Sues to Halt Defcon Subway Hacking Talk 270 comments
According to CNET, "The state of Massachusetts has asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from giving a presentation on Sunday about hacking smartcards used in the Boston subway system." It'll be interesting to see whether Dutch-style openness or Soviet-style secrecy prevails in Las Vegas. Update: 08/09 20:57 GMT by T : "Too late," says reader Bluey: "Injunction was already granted."
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Gag Order Fuels Responsible Disclosure Debate 113 comments
jvatcw writes "The Boston subway hack case has exposed a familiar rift in the security industry over responsible disclosure standards. Many see the temporary restraining order preventing three MIT undergrads from publicly discussing vulnerabilities they discovered in Boston's mass transit system as a violation of their First Amendment rights. Others, though, see the entire episode as yet another example of irresponsible, publicity-hungry security researchers trying to grab a few headlines."
We discussed the temporary restraining order last weekend, and later the EFF's plans to fight it. CNet reports that another judge has reviewed the order and left it intact. Reader canuck57 contributes a related story about recent comments by Linus Torvalds concerning his frustration over the issue of security disclosure.
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Your Rights Online: MIT Students' Gag Order Lifted 160 comments
mytrip and several other readers let us know that a judge in Boston has lifted the gag order — actually let it expire — against three MIT students who discovered flaws in the security of the local transit system, the MBTA. We've discussed the case over the last 10 days. "Judge O'Toole said he disagreed with the basic premise of the MBTA's argument: That the students' presentation was a likely violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 federal law meant to protect computers from malicious attacks such as worms and viruses. Many had expected Tuesday's hearing to hinge on First Amendment issues and what amounts to responsible disclosure on the part of computer security researchers. Instead, O'Toole based his ruling on the narrow grounds of what constitutes a violation of the CFAA. On that basis, he said MBTA lawyers failed to convince him on two points: The students' presentation was meant to be delivered to people, and was not a computer-to-computer 'transmission.' Second, the MBTA couldn't prove the students had caused at least $5,000 damage to the transit system."
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First amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there were some branch of the government whose job it was to ensure that people's constitutional rights were protected!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thankfully there -isn't- a Department of Constitutional Rights. If such a thing existed, we could expect the same bureaucracy and red tape to drown any chance it has at reasonably protecting Americans against broad violations of their rights.
Additionally, you can bet that if such a department existed, laws like the USA PATRIOT Act would serve to maim or gag it in order to perpetuate even greater crimes while people are none the wiser.
No, I'm glad we live in a country where our rights are defended by regular
Re:First amendment (Score:4, Informative)
There is a branch of government that is in charge of this. It's called the judicial branch. In fact private civil rights organizations only exist to bring problems the courts' attention.
Now with respect to government being dysfunctional -- it is only so to the degree we tolerate it and even require it to be so.
The reason for bureaucracy and red tape is because we the people insist upon it. In the private sector if I hire my cousin Vinny to do a job, if this gets the job done fast at a reasonable price, my boss is happy. And this is right, because the company probably saves money in the end. In the public sector, my department pays more than the private sector does to get the job done, because of the documentation needed to show that I'm not hiring Vinny because he's my cousin, and that other vendors in Vinny's business got a fair shot at the job. And Vinny has to charge more because he has to prove that he isn't charging Uncle Sam more than private sector customers, although this is usually solved by spinning off groups that only sell to Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam ends up buying from vendors who specialize in meeting his unique contracting process needs.
And most of this is right too. Private enterprise is all about private benefit. People make deals and if the deals are profitable then there are no questions asked. Public enterprise is more ethically complicated. For one thing it is not voluntarily funded. You don't have a personal choice about how much tax and how much public benefit you're going to receive this year. This means things like fairness are a lot more important. And time consuming.
Nonetheless, government can do things effectively, if people care enough about them. It just can't do them without employing more red tape than the private sector would. The US military is a case in point. The US has a military that can kick the crap out of any other military in the world. It's highly effective, but it's not particularly financially efficient or red-tape free. The reason is that we the people care about assuring successful military outcomes. In fact we care enough that we're not exactly sharp consumers when it comes to military systems.
It's not so clear that we care about achieving successful outcomes when it comes to our legal and civil rights.
The main problem with the judicial branch is that it can't initiate anything. You have to have money and time to get it moving on a problem, which means that the courts are only for those who have money and time on their hands: the wealthy and organizations like ACLU.
The Justice Department should safeguard American citizens who don't have the money or power to insist upon their rights as individuals. But if we elect a President who thinks he has the power to detain and torture anybody based on suspicion, and let him appoint SC justices that are deferential to these claims, the JD is not much use. I'd say that this is because we the people don't really care about our rights.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not the job of the first amendment to *prevent* this from happening.
its job is to protect us by striking it down once heard by the courts.
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, under constitutional law, the preferred situation is to let the speech happen and hash out any legal issues later. The term for preventing a publication is "prior restraint", and it's very much frowned upon compared to going to court over speech that's already been published.
In this case the judge used a computer intrusion statute. I don't know the terms of it, but some such laws do prohibit trading in passwords or other access devices. Seems like a stretch, and I don't consider it justified, but that might be the reasoning. I'm not a lawyer, but if I were them I'd look out for the highly abusable conspiracy laws.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Informative)
In this case the judge used a computer intrusion statute. I don't know the terms of it, but some such laws do prohibit trading in passwords or other access devices. Seems like a stretch, and I don't consider it justified, but that might be the reasoning.
According to the complaint [mit.edu] the MBTA is calling the CharlieCard and even the CharlieTicket a "computer." Understanding how the "computer" works and disseminating that information constitutes fraud.
According to the referenced US Code [cornell.edu], a "computer" is:
the term "computer" means an electronic, magnetic, optical, electrochemical, or other high speed data processing device performing logical, arithmetic, or storage functions, and includes any data storage facility or communications facility directly related to or operating in conjunction with such device, but such term does not include an automated typewriter or typesetter, a portable hand held calculator, or other similar device;
Parent
le sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
data processing device performing logical, arithmetic, or storage functions,
Note the "OR". The magstripe card is storage. The -card- does logical, arithmetic, AND storage functions- it's an intelligent device.
Furthermore, they openly admit to trespassing both physically (at stations, offices, AND networks they knew were private.)
Frankly, I'm astounded they're not sitting in a jail cell right now. Chances are that right now the MBTA are going through CCTV footage looking for them trespassing, and o
Re:First amendment (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe im not understand the situation, but if you attempt to release information that can cause harm to a business or person or society. that speech can definitely be limited. Its like calling fire in a building with no fire and someone getting hurt. It seems like in this case, if this information got mass attention there might be some way to construe harm. I mean I can think of allot of ways to fabricate the perception of harm, even though it is unlikely.
Im trying to put myself in their shoes, someone or someones do not want to have to deal with this if people start mass circumventing the system... money loss, reputations, and the like are surely involved. it doesn't matter if it has been done before, this particular event makes stuff like this a hot topic, because people that build or manage insecure systems look really, really stupid to the professional community.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple comments:
First, the information was already released. The entire presentation was handed out on CDs at the beginning of the conference. All the court order did was prevent a true dialog about the hack.
Second, it could be construed that not releasing the information also has a negative cost. As a public entitiy, the transit agency has a duty to look after the system. The hack points out a flaw in the system. Was the system design opened to public scrutiny prior to its use in an attempt to prevent such a hack? If the hack were not widely known would the agency be working dilligently to fix the flaws?
This is not much different than the "print your own bogus boarding pass" hack. The big worry wasn't really that loved ones could see you off at the gate, but that "bad guys" could go through security, metal detectors and such only to swap tickets with someone who wasn't on the no-fly list. What the release of that hack did was point out a flaw that already existed and provide incentive to fix it, or to drop the whole boarding pass as security sham in the first place.
As to the yelling Fire! in the theater analogy: If there's really a fire, it's Ok to yell.
This is another situation the 1st ammendment was designed to protect. Annoying, painful, expensive, dangerous speech might need to be protected.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Im with you on that, im just saying that their is a difference between reality (which we know what that is) and the perceived reality. And the perception is that its possible the transit authority probably has some people that manage or have a stake in creating that system and are trying to do damage control. Its not based in reality, but its better to know what you are dealing with, because the people involved in the insecure transit system are not going to think like rational people if heads are going to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad thing is that judges are always supposed to be rational people, or at least hand down rational decisions while on the clock. The judge should have called them on this, but didn't, and issued the order. I at least hope they had to shop around to several judges before they found one their lawyers could snooker.
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
Then would you also like to allow the people who said "some toys in Wal-Mart have lead in them" to also have their speech limited?
The critical part of rights like the freedom of speech is that if it excludes stuff you don't like, then it is worthless.
"You can say whatever you want, as long as nobody is offended" doesn't really work.
Personally I don't see how any possible exclusions to freedom of speech can be obtained from "Congress shall make no law ... or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;", and so libel and slander can't be made illegal as the first amendment is currently written. Neither do I think that it should be possible to make obscene or offensive speech, books, or printings illegal.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe im not understand the situation, but if you attempt to release information that can cause harm to a business or person or society. that speech can definitely be limited.
That is a pretty general, and pretty wrong, statement. I can voice my opinion on a business all day long, even if that harms the business. I can voice my opinion on public figures all day long, even if their polling numbers decline as a result.
There are certain limitations, sure, but merely bringing an undesired effect to the affected party is not enough.
Its like calling fire in a building with no fire and someone getting hurt.
No, it's not. These students are not putting people's life in jeopardy.
It seems like in this case, if this information got mass attention there might be some way to construe harm.
There is ALWAYS some way to construe harm. The question is whether it's reasonable.
I mean I can think of allot of ways to fabricate the perception of harm, even though it is unlikely.
And this is the kicker. The MBTA is trying to sweep this under the carpet by claiming outlandish claims of public safety and harm -- when it is plain to see that this presentation poses no such threat.
Im trying to put myself in their shoes, someone or someones do not want to have to deal with this if people start mass circumventing the system...
Too freaking bad, use a more secure system. The undergrads even made suggestions as to how to go about it (which they are not obligated to), and are generally behaving responsibly enough (they are not / were not going to release the checksum algorithm or the keys they found).
money loss, reputations, and the like are surely involved.
And rightly so. You see, it's not the undergrads' fault that the system is shoddy. They did not make it shoddy, they did not do the evaluation before buying it, they were not the implementers, and they do not leave network switches unattended behnind open doors. Somebody else is doing that. The undergrads are just pointing out that somebody else is doing that. If that somebody else loses money, reputation, and the like over this incident, then it is their own fault.
it doesn't matter if it has been done before, this particular event makes stuff like this a hot topic, because people that build or manage insecure systems look really, really stupid to the professional community.
This is no reason, at all, to curtail the freedom of speech of these undergrads. Don't like the criticism ? Don't fuck up like that. If you do, take the criticism.
The whole handling of the matter reeks of incompetence, anyway. Apparently these people never heard of the Streisand-effect (seriously, how many more people now know about these weaknesses, in detail, since the MBTA began to sue ?), have never heard about court documents being on the public record (everything they submit as "evidence" is forever in the public eye), have not even researched whether the materials they are trying to suppress have already been circulated (hint: yes, they have), and likely just encouraged others to re-engineer the reverse-engineering. Those others may not be as responsible as these undergrads and release full details, including encryption keys, checksumming algorithms, ready-made software, etc.
A+.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
The judge is an idiot. Prior restraint is unconstitutional. This will not survive the appeal.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
Because; "You have the right to freedom of speech as long as your not dumb enough to use it".
Freedom of speech, like just about all our supposed freedoms, is only available to those that can afford to defend it in court. The contrapositive of this fact is of course that the ability to take away freedoms from someone is available to those that can afford to attack them in court.
Companies, etc, apply for injunctions and by Gods they get them. Do you think if you, whatever your grievance, applied for an injunction against a major company that it would be awarded? Money talks. Judges listen. It's not necessarily something as base as bribes. Just high class laywers gaming a system that puts up with being gamed.
These three hackers should not have appealed this order. They should have ignored it. Defcon should have ignored it. Why obey an order that is going to be struck down anyway? Threat of censure? The court can only censure you if it's oder was legal in the first place.
If more people stood up to, and openly defied the courts; we'd have a better court system.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If more people stood up to, and openly defied the courts; we'd have a better court system.
If more people stood up to, and openly defied the courts, we'd have more people in jail - and a court system with less credibility. If an average citizen can shrug off a court order, what use do are the courts? No, instead, the companies/corporations gaming the system should be held responsible. Honestly, I don't have a solution for this problem, but I can't find a justification for destroying the credibility of our judicial institution - what good could come of that?
How? (Score:3, Informative)
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
Because all speech isn't protected. The First Ammendment isn't a blanket guarantee to say or do anything. There are limits on speech, and always have been, from the time the Constitution was ratified to today.
You can argue on technical grounds that "security by obscurity" is a stupid idea, but I think the EFF lost here for a reason... we've always balanced speech that can have a direct impact on public safety against the relative risks of that speech. You can't email classified blueprints of an AEGIS radar
Re:First amendment (Score:4, Informative)
For commentary by an expert on First Amendment law, see Eugene Volokh's post [volokh.com].
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:4, Informative)
How can any such order be justified in the light of the first amendment protection of free speech?
Because it is not absolute. It has never been absolute. It is balanced against other interests. A prior restraint of speech is legal if it is a proportionate response to a "clear and present danger". I can assure you that much less threatening 'speech' has been held to represent a "clear and present danger".
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you justify the hack? Showing people how to ripoff the subway would seem to be a criminal act.
No... RIPPING OFF THE SUBWAY is the criminal act.
By your logic everyone in the military should go to jail for teaching or learning how to kill.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
By a governmental (or quasi-governmental) agency, who is therefore bound by the First Amendment.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Informative)
And hopefully that means that they will lose the case. (Actually, I'd hope that anyone bringing such a suit would lose, not just governmental entities.) But this is just an injunction. An injunction is temporary, and is only intended to prevent potential damage from being done until the true merits of the case can be assessed. An injunction doesn't require a good case, it just requires a case that has sufficient merit to go to court.
Personally I don't think this injunction should have been granted, but it's not nearly the slam dunk obvious thing that many people here think it is.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
The First Amendment doesn't mean that the government can't regulate speech, particularly the timing and method of speech, but even in some cases the content of the speech. However, such regulations must be narrowly tailored to fulfill a legitimate public purpose, such as national defense.
Addressing the vulnerabilities before they become widely exploited is obviously a legitimate public purpose. A restraining order delaying temporarily the release of the details of the vulnerabilities (not the fact of their existence) while they do this would be narrowly tailored to serve that purpose.
I'm not saying it's right, but you should know what your rights actually are. They don't include the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want without fear of punishment, and they never have.
The important points to remember are (a) legitimate public purpose and (b) narrow tailoring. The narrow tailoring requirement is probably the tougher of the two requirements to meet. In this case, since the details of the problems are in the wild, in part because of the authority's own actions (although this doesn't really matter), any further restriction doesn't serve the purpose of allowing the authority to respond in a timely fashion.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
What bothers me about this comment isn't that you trivialize terrorism. Yes, it does exist (read on before you mod, please). It doesn't even bother me that it's modded funny.
What bothers me is the "cry wolf" tactics our media and politicians use whenever something happens they don't like. It's because of terrorism that people can't bring their own coke to a plane anymore (it's not that we want airlines to get additional revenue from selling their drinks). P2P fuels terrorism (not that we want to prop up an outdated business model). It's terrorism why we are forced to reliinquish our essential rights (not because our politicians don't want us to say things they don't want the public to know).
"Terrorism" has been abused as the catch all argument whenever something is imposed upon us that goes against the interests of our politicians and their cronies. And people start to see through the thinly veiled egoistic goals, and start to mock it. As you would mock anyone who cries wolf as soon as something happens he doesn't like.
What bothers me most is that when the terrorists strike, we'll get told "see? We told you, it's terrorism!" Instead of them learning that their wolfcrying creates nothing but contempt and ridicule, they will point at us and blame us for not taking it serious, when it has been abused time and again.
Terrorism is a real threat to the US and the "western" world. Abusing it to cry wolf about everything you want to do against your people is not going to make them take it serious. Quite the opposite.
As can be seen in the parent posting.
Daimanta, not trying to belittle you. You're just the one that speaks what everyone was thinking. "Ok, how long 'til they claim terrorism is the reason?" It's not against you, again. It's against those that abuse the terrorist card for everything that goes against their interests.
Parent
Re:First amendment (Score:4, Funny)
It's because of terrorism that people can't bring their own coke to a plane anymore
I'm pretty sure that was illegal prior to 9-11.
Parent
Re:No. No it's not (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, it doesn't even matter whether the threat is real or imagined. Personally, I think 3000 people in 7 years (and counting) is peanuts. When that's what you're scared about, you shouldn't drive anymore or have an operation. The chances to die in a car accident or on the OP table are significantly higher.
If it is real, it would even increase the mark of shame on our politicians and media. If it's fake, they're just causing a hype to push their agenda. If it's real, they're crying wolf and abuse the "terrism" hype so far until nobody takes it serious anymore.
It's basically like it was in my school. We had fire drills every month or so. Net result? People didn't even bothing going out anymore when the alarm rang. It was known to be fake, so why bother listening to it?
When you overdo drills or abuse a warning system, people will stop taking them serious. It will just be another drill or another hype when you ring the alarm. And that could backfire badly should the threat be real one day again.
I predict a disaster should another terrorist strike happen one day. We'll then get to hear that some "threat level indicator" was at some nice, warm color anyway and "we warned you", but we won't hear that that indicator was about the same nice, warm color for years and we've been blitzed with fake warnings almost at a daily base. Warnings cease to create an elevated level of caution when they happen too often, especially if those warnings are abused to push completely unrelated agendas, just because "terrists" are a comfortable reason to abolish civil rights.
People aren't dumb. They see through it, and they will (and as you can see, do) ridicule those "warnings". It's way harder, though, to actually discriminate a real threat from one of those agenda-pushing fakes when you get told the same old lies over and over. Should a real threat be discovered and actually published, the first reaction most people have won't be "how can I avoid it?" but rather "what are they trying to do to my rights this time?"
Parent
Responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that the people who are bringing flaws to light are cast as the villains, while nobody even considers blaming or even questioning the people who selected a poorly-implemented system to run an entire city's public transit.
Re:Responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for free speech, but it seems like there are quite a few other alternatives other than basically making public the flaws in a massive public transportation system. If they really care about security, they should take measures to improve the security with the appropriate authorities.
Now, of course, if they've already tried this and they ignored these students, then I would arg
Re:Responsibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with you, had the MBTA actually taken the initiative to work on solving these issues. Instead their rep stated that if its not known, its not a problem.
Then they go and release more sensitive details in their court documents which are public record than the original presentation was to discuss.
Had the MBTA stated that "they are currently working on resolving the issues, and would want the talk delayed until they are solved" then you would be exactly correct that the presentation should wait. In the end, this is more about pointing out that the MBTA bureaucracy is being incredibly stupid as well as dangerous in their processes.
Parent
Re:Responsibility? (Score:5, Funny)
...Then they go and release more sensitive details in their court documents which are public record than the original presentation was to discuss.
It's not often you get to see someone step on their own pecker with both feet, while advertising the fact.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't agree to it being right to present how to break the system (except under special circumstances such as those you outlined), but I think it could be rather fun to make it illegal for either a government body or quango to set up or maintain a system in such a state that it poses undue burden on users, taxpayers, security, etc. Illegal as in prison illegal, not slap-on-the-wrist-see-you-at-golf-tomorrow illegal.
Governments are like all other organizations in that they will do the least possible to s
the public (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hi, I'm the public. Do I have a right to know about these flaws?"
"No"
Re:Responsibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
If nobody knows where a door is the lock on it doesn't matter.
yes, maybe 99 times out of 100.
And then theres the other 1, like say when an idiot files more vulnerabilities in their court briefs which are public record than the original presentation was going to uncover.
Security through obscurity only works probabilistically, and given a long enough time frame it will always hit the P=1 where someone will have breached it and disseminated the information. This is exactly why security through obscurity is completely retarded when it involves systems intended to operate in any form of long term.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Most street hooligans aren't MIT trained computer scientists./quote>
I blame the American education system. In India street hooligans must have at least a masters degree while ruffians and ne'er-do-wells have doctorates.
Remove that link at once! (Score:4, Funny)
This reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what would rock, an infinite gift card to Wendy's.
Link to DefCon presentation (Score:5, Informative)
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/ [mit.edu]
Direct link to the presentation PDF:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf [mit.edu]
Not that impressive (Score:5, Informative)
At least from what's in the linked PDF, the undergrads' work is not all that impressive. They look at both the CharlieTicket (magstripe) and the CharlieCard (RFID).
Hacking the CharlieTicket sounds fairly trivial. Magstripe cards are extremely easy to read and write to, and documentation on how to do this with homemade equipment is all over the Internet. The undergrads' work essentially consists of figuring out how the 6-bit checksum is being calculated (though it's not disclosed in the linked documents). This is probably the most difficult thing that they did.
Hacking the CharlieCard, which is a MiFare Classic, is more involved, but the undergrads used a previously known attack, simply duplicating it. (Some might call that the behavior of a "script kiddie"?) There's hardly anything novel about this.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If true, one would think the MBTA would have little to back up an injunction.
I'd tend to agree. Though MBTA's argument is that the undergrads aren't disclosing everything, so MBTA can't assess the true threat to their systems, thus why they sought the injunction.
I'm kind of surprised the undergrads have not disclosed everything to the MBTA. Why wouldn't they? If they are truly interested in improving MBTA's security, they ought to.
On the other hand, they might be reluctant to do so because of the risk of legal action. I don't have a Charlie Card on me (haven't been in Boston recentl
Life imitating art. (Score:4, Informative)
Which is from Cory Doctorow's "Little Bother", and which from the court documents in this case?
"Just flash the firmware on a ten-dollar Radio Shack reader/writer and you're done. What we do is go around and randomly swap the tags on people, overwriting their Fast Passes and FasTraks with other people's codes. That'll make everyone skew all weird and screwy, and make everyone look guilty. Then: total gridlock."
vs.:
"An attacker uses RFID equipment purchased online to sniff communications between a legitimate CharlieCard and a turnstile. He takes the data back home and executes one of several attacks that exploit the weak Crypto-1 cipher to recover a key. Armed with this key, a high-gain antenna, and RFID equipment, he walks down a crowded street in boston remotely copying the CharlieCards in people's pockets."
Please, check out 'Little Brother'. FREE for download at http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ [craphound.com] , or available at fine bookstores everywhere.
Exhibit A (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy who put the report in Exhibit A, along with his email address, it could be added, really, REALLY underestimated the issue I think. Did he really think the public court records wouldn't get out?
Exhibit A will, I suspect, lead to many, MANY more compromises now then would have happened had they given their presentation.
What HE released had the specific vulnerabilities they found. He didn't want that data out, and then published it himself!
Has Boston's water supply been hacked? (Score:3, Funny)
Given the number of security idiocies committed publicly by the Boston authorities, I hope somebody is checking the water supplies in city buildings for some additive that induces mass stupidity.
Not Exactly Accurate Summary (warning, legalese) (Score:5, Informative)
The court issued a 'temporary restraining order', which is legal-jargon for "don't do anything until we can get a decent hearing". It does not mean that the court has accepted the MBTA's position or even jurisdiction over the case. It is merely a tool* to ensure that neither party can unilaterally change the status-quo just because the courts do not operate 24/7 and are sort of slow (making sure everyone has a chance to speak generally doesn't allow for fast decision making). Rarely does a TRO last more than a week until a preliminary hearing can be held.
IMO, therefore, even if the MBTA has no case whatsoever (almost certainly true) they are entitled to a TRO for a few days until the court can read (and almost certainly deny) their application for a permanent injunction. I don't see any major damage from having a presentation delayed for all of 72 hours either (note, if we were talking permanent injunction, it would be totally bogus -- that's a different matter entirely).
* Yes, I'm aware the information was already published on the internet and that it cannot effectively be "recalled". That is not the point -- the MBTA, as any other litigant, has the right to have a court hear their case -- even if they really don't have one.
Re:Not Exactly Accurate Summary (warning, legalese (Score:4, Informative)
As pointed out, the purpose of a TRO is (was) to *temporarily* freeze the situation until the court can be briefed fully, and make a more reasoned decision.
But we're running on Internet time now, and Plaintiff did what defendant couldn't have done, which was to disseminate even more information to a wider forum, and generate orders of magnitude more interest in this information than defendant could have done on their own...
The other thing plaintiffs did in this action -- going for a TRO takes cojones, and a good reputation with the court. As plaintiff, you're going to the court asking them to act preemptively -- to restrain someone who has not yet acted. If the court doesn't believe you, they'll say, "Nah, if you're damaged, you can bring suit." Here, plaintiffs not only didn't understand the situation, but in their filings, they did orders of magnitude more damage to themselves than the action they got the court to enjoin.
Courts and judges tend to have long memories -- and in this case, they'll most likely remember that these guys were bozos, and evaluate their arguments accordingly.
Parent
Vague titles for security talks (Score:3, Insightful)
Screw the MBTA. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I actually have a little bit of sympathy for whichever public servant's ass is on the line right now, worrying he's going to get fired over this flap. Whatever idiots actually implemented the existing Charlie Card system we're stuck with right now might be long gone by now, along with the consultants that actually put this system in place.
However, as a Boston resident, it's pretty obvious the MBTA has been brought down recently by especially bad mismanagement. We switched 2 years or so ago from plain tokens (one token == one subway ride) to an overly complicated mix of magstripe cards (CharlieTickets) and RFID cards (CharlieCards).
There was a news story a while back in one of the little free Boston newspapers telling the cost of implementing this new system.. I think it was well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Enough to pay the existing salaries of the MBTA staff for several years.
To top it off, the new cards are really just a drag on everyone's time. Anyone who's had to wait 2 minutes in line while getting on a bus for some fool to fumble around trying to load up value onto one of the stored-value CharlieCards knows what I'm talking about.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that a "feature" of this horrendously expensive, overly complicated system was not only that it would save money through nebulous efficiency improvements (the Charlie Card machines are broken half the time for some reason...) but that it would allow them to make more money by more effectively manipulating the currency. You see, previously, when they would hike up the subway rates, they couldn't stop people from buying $100 of tokens at the old rates just before the rate switch. Now, they can jack up the rates and everyone's forced to pay the new rate.
So anyway, a little long-winded.. but I can see exactly why the MBTA officials are so worried about this. In addition to being stuck with this crazily complicated, expensive system that's run horrendously overbudget (in addition to the MBTA itself being $100M+ in the red every year somehow, despite having a government-funded monopoly and all sorts of advertising revenue flowing in..), they are now faced with the possibility of college students in Boston buying hacked Charlie Cards and not paying any fare. They're probably scared shitless of this. For the people that said they should just fix their system... I honestly doubt they could, even if they wanted to. We're talking about a system that cost several hundred million $ to put in place, with very little thought about security put in at the beginning. And these are government officials, using god-knows-who for contracting out the maintenance of this system. Working for an agency that's severely in the red, year after year. They don't have a snowball's chance in hell of fixing the system the right way, so they're abusing the courts to keep from being ridiculed in public and fired over the whole fiasco.
Re:Them again? (Score:5, Informative)
Why is it that every time I read about the EFF or Lesig I hear about how they are going down in flames in once case or another? Are we taking about the Washington generals here? Whats it going to take for them to actually win something for a change.
http://www.eff.org/victories [eff.org]
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Re:This case presents an example of pure censorshi (Score:3, Insightful)
"We're going to give a presentation on how to crack the MBTA passes" seems like a pretty good factual predicate.