When I posted earlier about passwords and best practices, I had no idea it would elicit such a response!  So, now that my class’s final exams and papers are graded, I will return to the topic and attempt to address some of the points raised in comments—or, at least those comments that were related to the original blog entry.
[tags] best practices, passwords, awareness, general security[/tags]

Best Practices
It was certainly not my intent to disparage all best practices.  I was merely observing that sometimes best practices are viewed as a panacea.  It is important for people to understand the origins of the best practices they espouse, and whether they are indeed “best”!  Sometimes, excellent practices are adopted outside their realm of proper application, or are used too long without proper (re)evaluation of the underlying conditions.  “Best practices” are designed for the average case, but are not meant to be blindly applied in every case—reason should be applied to the situation, but isn’t.  And all too often, folklore and superstition are accepted as “best practice”  because they “seem” correct, or coincidentally produce desired results.

Consider an example of the first of these (understanding the realm of application): showing an ID to get inside a closed facility, proving that you are a current employee of the company or agency.  That is excellent security practice…until you move it to the lobby of every office building!.  At that point, too many guards aren’t really checking the cards to see if someone is really who they claim to be.  Instead of watching for suspicious behavior, many guards now simply look for a laminated card with a picture on it, and something that looks like an official seal.  Security in many places has degraded by accepting what “best practice” is without understanding where it is really best.

The second case (blind application without reasoning) is illustrated by many of the things that TSA does in airline passenger screening.  One example, told to me by a Federal law enforcement agent, is when he showed his badge and papers while passing though security.  They didn’t make him take out his weapon when going through the metal detector…but then they insisted that he run his shoes through the X-ray machine!  They had rules that allowed them to let a law enforcement agent with a semiautomatic handgun through the checkpoint, but they couldn’t appropriately reason about why they had a rule about screening shoes and apply it to this case!  (Of course, several aspects of TSA screening are poorly considered, but that may be a topic for a later post.)

The third case—folklore and superstition accepted as best practice—is rampant in information security, and I intend to say more about this in later postings.

My post about password security was based on the fact that the “change passwords once a month” rule is based on very old practice, and doesn’t really help now in many real-world environments.  In fact, it may result in weaker security in many cases, as users try to find a way around the rules.  At the least, the average user will have the impression reinforced that “Those security guys are idiots and their goal seems to be to make my life more difficult.”  That doesn’t help build a cooperative working environment where the user population is part of the security infrasrtructure!

Risk Assessment
Donn Parker was one of the first people to argue persuasively that traditional risk assessment would not work in modern IT, and that sound design and best practice would have to do.  I greatly respect Donn’s long experience and opinions, but I don’t completely agree.  In many cases it is possible, using recent experience and expert knowledge, to appropriately estimate risk and loss to quartiles or deciles.  Although imperfect, it can help in making choices and understanding priorities.  When there is insufficient experience and knowledge, I agree with Donn that relying on sound practice is the next best thing; of course, sound design should be used at all times!

Some readers commented that they didn’t have the money to do a risk evaluation. Resolving a question such as password change frequency does not require a full-blown audit and risk analysis.  But, as with my previous comment, if you don’t have the resources, experience or knowledge, then pick sound practice—but put in some effort to understand what is sound!

Password Vaults
A number of responses (including several private responses) were directed to the growing number of passwords, PINs, serial numbers and employee IDs we are expected to remember.  Good security practice suggests that authenticators used in different realms of privilege be unique and uncorrelated.  Good privacy practice suggests that we develop independent identifiers for different uses to prevent correlation.  The two combined result in too many things to remember for those of us whose brains are full (to indirectly pay homage to an old Larson cartoon), and especially for the average person who is overly-taxed when remembering anything beyond who was voted off of American Idol this week.  Now, add frequent requirements to change some of those values, and the situation becomes well-nigh impossible.

Several readers mentioned password vault programs that they use, either on PDAs or the WWW.  I was asked my opinion of some of these.

I use several password vaults myself.  They have 4 characteristics that I believe are important:

1. The programs use published, strong ciphers to encrypt the contents. (e.g., AES). I don’t need to worry about some random person getting the encrypted database and then decrypting all my keys.
2. The programs are cross-platform so that I can use the same program on my PDA, my laptop, and my home system.  This keeps me from creating keys and passwords then forgetting them because I don’t have the vault program at hand.
3. The different versions of the program sync with each other, and allow the database to be backed up.  If I lose my PDA, I’m not completely locked out of everything—I can do a restore, unencrypt, and carry on as before.
4. I don’t store the database and the encryption routines on someone else’s machine.  That way, I don’t have to worry about the owner of a remote site altering the encryption routines, or making a surreptitious copy of my keys.  It is still possible for someone to intercept my interaction with the program on my local machine, but I have other mechanisms in place to monitor and verify those.

Needless to say, I don’t use a web-based password vault service, nor would I necessarily recommend it to anyone who has sensitive passwords.

One other thing—I escrow some of my passwords.  No, I’m not talking about the ill-fated government key escrow scheme that gave the idea a bad name.  I am referring to self-escrow.  Some of my important passwords at work, which would need to be recovered by the staff if I were to be abducted (again ) by a UFO crew, have been encrypted and escrowed in a safe place that can be accessed in an emergency.  As more things get locked up with extreme encryption, it is all the more critical that we each consider self-escrow.

So, What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
How often should passwords be changed?  Many of you asked that, and many of you volunteered your own experience, ranging from monthly to “hardly ever.”  These times were backed up with anecdotes.  Of course, this simply serves to reinforce my comment that the time period should be based on risk assessment of your particular, including access to the system, strength of mechanism, usage, sensitivity of protected information, security of the underlying system, and sophistication of the users…to name a few factors.

Basically, I would suggest you start with an assumption that passwords should be changed every quarter.  If the passwords are used over a lightly protected communications link, then change them more often.  If someone could break the password and use the account without being noticed, then further accelerate the change interval.  If users get guidance on strong password selection, and are motivated to help ensure good security, then maybe you can extend the time period.  In many cases, without due care, you realize that any reuse of passwords is risky.  Instead of dismissing that and imposing monthly password changes, use that knowledge to address the underlying problems.

Several of you mentioned the problem of people sharing passwords and only finding out about it after a mandatory password change.  If that’s the case, you have deeper problems than stale passwords!

I continue to advocate use of a one-time password token for highly sensitive or at-risk resources.  Otherwise, use your judgement and professional evaluation of the risks and benefits of change frequencies.

[posted with ecto]

(This is an updated version of a contribution I made to the Educause security mailing list last week.)

In the practice of security we have accumulated a number of “rules of thumb” that many people accept without careful consideration.  Some of these get included in policies, and thus may get propagated to environments they were not meant to address.  It is also the case that as technology changes, the underlying (and unstated) assumptions underlying these bits of conventional wisdom also change.  The result is a stale policy that may no longer be effective…or possibly even dangerous.

Policies requiring regular password changes (e.g., monthly) are an example of exactly this form of infosec folk wisdom.

From a high-level perspective, let me observe that one problem with any widespread change policy is that it fails to take into account the various threats and other defenses that may be in place.  Policies should always be based on a sound understanding of risks, vulnerabilities, and defenses.  “Best practice” is intended as a default policy for those who don’t have the necessary data or training to do a reasonable risk assessment.

Consider the underlying role of passwords: authentication.  Good authentication is intended to support access control, accountability and (in some cases) accounting.  Passwords provide a cost-effective and user-familiar form of authentication.  However, they have a number of failure modes depending on where they are used and the threats arrayed against them.  Failure modes include disclosure, inference, exposure, loss, guessing, cracking, and snooping.  In the most general case, passwords (such as the security numbers on credit cards, or mother’s maiden name) are not sufficiently secret and are simply too weak to use as strong authenticators.  I’ll skip this case, although it is far too pervasive to actually ignore.

Disclosure is a systemic threat on the platforms involved, as well as in the operational methods used to generate and transmit the passwords.  This cannot be addressed through changing the password.  Instead, the methods used to generate and distribute passwords needs to be examined to ensure that the passwords are not disclosed to the wrong parties.  Most operating systems are currently designed so that passwords are not stored “in the clear” and this reduces the chance of disclosure.  Unfortunately, some 3rd-party applications (including web-based systems) fail to adequately guard the passwords as they are entered, stored, or compared, resulting in potential disclosure.

Another form of disclosure is when the holder of the password discloses the password on purpose.  This is an education and enforcement issue.  (Anecdote:  at one location where a new policy was announced that passwords must be changed every month, a senior administrator was heard to moan “Do you know how much time I’m going to waste each month ensuring that everyone on my staff knows my new password?”)

Inference occurs when there is a pattern to the way the passwords are generated/chosen and thus can be inferred.  For instance, knowing that someone uses the same password with a different last character for each machine allows passwords to be inferred, especially if coupled with disclosure of one.  Another example is where generated passwords are employed and the generation algorithm is predictable.

Exposure is the case where accident or unintended behavior results in a sporadic release of a password.  As an example, think of someone accidentally typing her password as the user name in login, and it is captured in the audit trail.  Another example is when someone accidentally types his password during a demonstration and it is exposed on a projection screen to a class.

Loss is when someone forgets his or her password, or (otherwise) loses whatever is used to remind/recreate the password.  This introduces overhead to recover the password, and may induce the user to keep extra reminders/copies of the password around—leading to greater exposure—or to use more memorable passwords—leading to more effective guessing attacks.  It is also the case that frequent loss opens up opportunities for eavesdropping and social engineering attacks on the reset system as it becomes more frequently used: safeguards on reset may be relaxed because they introduce too much delay on a system under load.

Guessing is self-explanatory.  Guessing is limited to choices that can be guessed.  After a certain limited number of choices, the guessing can only transform into a cracking attempt.

Cracking is when an intermediate form of the password (e.g., an encrypted form stored in the authentication database) is captured and attacked algorithmically, or where iterated attempts are made to generate the password algorithmically.  The efficacy of this approach is determined by the strength of the obfuscation used (e.g., encryption), the checks on bad attempts, and the power and scope of the resources brought to bear (e.g., parallel computing, multi-lingual databases).

Snooping (eavesdropping) is when someone intercepts a communication employing the password, either in cleartext or in some intermediate form.  The password is then extracted.  Network sniffing and keyloggers are both forms of snooping.  Various technical measures, such as network encryption, can help reduce the threat.

Now, looking back over those, periodic password changing really only reduces the threats posed by guessing, and by weak cracking attempts.  If any of the other attack methods succeed, the password needs to be changed immediately to be protected—a periodic change is likely to be too late to effectively protect the target system.  Furthermore, the other attacks are not really blunted by periodic password changes.  Guessing can be countered by enforcing good password selection, but this then increases the likelihood of loss by users forgetting the passwords.  The only remaining threat is that periodic changes can negate cracking attempts, on average.  However, that assumes that the passwords choices are appropriately random, the algorithms used to obfuscate them (e.g., encryption) are appropriately strong, and that the attackers do not have adequate computing/algorithmic resources to break the passwords during the period of use.  This is not a sound assumption given the availability of large-scale bot nets, vector computers, grid computing, and so on—at least over any reasonable period of time.

In summary, forcing periodic password changes given today’s resources is unlikely to significantly reduce the overall threat—unless the password is immediately changed after each use.  This is precisely the nature of one-time passwords or tokens, and these are clearly the better method to use for authentication, although they do introduce additional cost and, in some cases, increase the chance of certain forms of lost “password.”

So where did the “change passwords once a month” dictum come from?  Back in the days when people were using mainframes without networking, the biggest uncontrolled authentication concern was cracking.  Resources, however, were limited.  As best as I can find, some DoD contractors did some back-of-the-envelope calculation about how long it would take to run through all the possible passwords using their mainframe, and the result was several months.  So, they (somewhat reasonably) set a password change period of 1 month as a means to defeat systematic cracking attempts.  This was then enshrined in policy, which got published, and largely accepted by others over the years.  As time went on, auditors began to look for this and ended up building it into their “best practice” that they expected.  It also got written into several lists of security recommendations.

This is DESPITE the fact that any reasonable analysis shows that a monthly password change has little or no end impact on improving security!    It is a “best practice” based on experience 30 years ago with non-networked mainframes in a DoD environment—hardly a match for today’s systems, especially in academia!

The best approach is to determine where the threats are, and choose defenses accordingly.  Most important is to realize that all systems are not the same!  Some systems with very sensitive data should probably be protected with two-factor authentication: tokens and/or biometrics.  Other systems/accounts, with low value, can still be protected by plain passwords with a flexible period for change.  Of course, that assumes that the OS is strong enough to protect against overall compromise once a low-privilege account is compromised….not always a good bet in today’s operating environment!

And, btw, I’ve got some accounts where I’ve used the same password for several years with nary an incident.  But in the spirit of good practice, that’s all I’m going to say about the passwords, the accounts, or how I know they are still safe.

One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons (from 9/10/05) ends with the pointy-haired boss saying “...and starting today, all passwords must contain letters, numbers, doodles, sign language and squirrel noises.”  Sound familiar to anyone?

[A follow-up post is available.]

CNET has published an excellent resource for protecting oneself from identity theft.  The site includes an ID theft FAQ with many good tips, a roundtable debate, and a few little multimedia gems.

One of my favorite pieces is the pie graph in the sidebar that illustrates risks to ID theft.  The most prevalent risks still come from offline.

I gave an ID Theft talk several months ago, and the audience was looking for any way to protect themselves online, to the point of absurdity.  But when I suggested that they cut down on all the stuff they carry in their wallets and/or purses, they nearly revolted: “What if I need to do XYZ and don’t have my ID/credit card/library card/customer card/social security card/insurance card/etc.?”

To me, this illustrates that we have a long way to go in educating users about risks. It also illustrates that we need to push back from all the noise created in the infotainment industries, who are perpetuating the online myth and ignoring the brick-and-mortar threats.

According to the National Vulnerability Database (http://nvd.nist.gov), the number of vulnerabilities found every year increases:  1253 in 2003, 2343 in 2004, and 4734 in 2005.  We take security risks not only by choosing a specific operating system, but also by installing applications and services.  We take risks by browsing the web, because web sites insist on running code on our systems:  JavaScript, Flash (ActionScript), Java, ActiveX, VBscript, QuickTime, and all the plug-ins and browser extensions imaginable.  Applications we pay for want to probe the network to make sure there isn’t another copy running on another computer, creating a vector by which malicious replies could attack us.

  Games refuse to install in unprivileged accounts, so they can run their own integrity checkers with spyware qualities with full privileges (e.g., WoW, but others do the same, e.g., Lineage II), that in turn can even deny you the capability to terminate (kill) the game if it hangs (e.g., Lineage II).  This is done supposedly to prevent cheating, but allows the game companies full access and control of your machine, which is objectionable.  On top of that those games are networked applications, meaning that any vulnerability in them could result in a complete (i.e., root, LocalSystem) compromise. 

  It is common knowledge that if a worm like MyTob compromises your system, you need to wipe the drive and reinstall everything.  This is in part because these worms are so hard to remove, as they attack security software and will prevent firewalls and virus scanners from functioning properly.  However there is also a trust issue—a rootkit could have been installed, so you can’t trust that computer anymore.  So, if you do any sensitive work or are just afraid of losing your work in progress, you need a dedicated gaming or internet PC.  Or do you?

  Company VMWare offers on their web site the free download of VMWare player, as well as a “browser appliance” based on Firefox and Ubuntu Linux.  The advantages are that you don’t need to install and *trust* Firefox.  Moreover, you don’t need to trust Internet Explorer or any other browser anymore.  If a worm compromises Firefox, or malicious JavaScripts change settings and take control of Firefox, you may simply trash the browser appliance and download a new copy.  I can’t overemphasize how much less work this is compared to reinstalling Windows XP for the nth time, possibly having to call the license validation phone line, and frantically trying to find a recent backup that works and isn’t infected too.  As long as VMWare player can contain the infection, your installation is preserved.  Also hosted on the VMWare site are various community-created images allowing you to test various software at essentially no risk, and no configuration work!

  After experiencing this, I am left to wonder, why aren’t all applications like a VMWare “appliance” image, and the operating system like VMWare player?  They should be.  Efforts to engineer software security have obviously failed to contain the growth of vulnerabilities and security problems.  Applying the same solutions the same problems will keep resulting in failures.  I’m not giving up on secure programming and secure software engineering, as I can see promising languages, development methods and technologies appearing, but at the same time I can’t trust my personal computers, and I need to compartmentalize by buying separate machines.  This is expensive and inconvenient.  Virtual machines provide us with an alternative.  In the past, storing entire images of operating systems for each application was unthinkable.  Nowadays, storage is so cheap and abundant that the size of “appliance” images is no longer an issue.  It is time to virtualize the entire machine;  all I now require from the base operating system is to manage a file system and be able to launch VMWare player, with at least a browser appliance to bootstrap…  Well, not quite.  Isolated appliances are not so useful;  I want to be able to transfer documents from appliance to appliance.  This is easily accomplished with a USB memory stick, or perhaps a virtual drive that I can mount when needed.  This shared storage could become a new propagation vector for viruses, but it would be very limited in scope.

  Virtual machine appliances, anyone?

Note (March13, 2006):  Virtual machines can’t defend against cross-site scripting vulnerabilities (XSS), so they are not a solution for all security problems.

We have had some success using domain name system lookups to block incoming mail messages that are likely to be junk mail.  While many people (including us) use DNS real-time black lists, the checks below are done against values returned by regular forward and reverse lookups on the connecting IP address.  We’ve stopped a large amount of traffic based on the name of the connecting host or due to “poorly” configured DNS without many complaints.  The number of false positives, while non-zero, have so far been at levels acceptable to us.

The first test is a sanity check of sorts on the name of the connecting host.  If no reverse lookup can be done on the IP address of the host, the message is blocked.  A forward lookup is then done on the just-returned host name.  If the forward and reverse lookups do not match, the message is blocked.

Then the hostname is checked against a regex that tries to match dial-up or home cable/DSL addresses.  If it matches that, the message is blocked.  The expectation is that this will help block the spam zombies on less than ideally maintained home machines out there.

These checks do generate false positives.  There are some domains where outgoing mail comes from hosts with no name in DNS or all hosts of the domain have names of the form ip-NNN-NNN-NNN-NNN.domain.  Some smaller companies or individuals are given addresses from their net providers of that form and are unable to change them.  Apparently many net providers think it’s a good idea to do a reverse lookup on an IP address but then not have a valid forward lookup for the just returned name.  To help with these cases, the SMTP rejection message includes a URL where one can request that their addresses be added to an exception list.

Now to numbers.  During the average day last week our SMTP server got 8719 connection requests.  The previously mentioned DNS tests resulted in the blocking of 4463 messages, or about 51% of all our incoming traffic.  Since this happens before any virus scanning or spam scanning on the content of the messages, it saves quite a bit of CPU and IO time on the server.  While this system isn’t perfect, it is so effective as a first pass filter that we put up with the few false positives that have been reported so far.