Computer Ethics, Fall 2010 Week 13

December 6
Corboy Law Room 523
4:15-6:45 Mondays


paper 2:
Just because it's free doesn't mean that we have to let FB do anything with our data.
Facebook provides no way to select which of your friends is to see what.
One concern is information available to advertisers. It is not clear that any information is released directly to advertisers.
Another, though, is information made available to Friends: through mini-feeds, Beacon, like buttons, and other tools FB introduces that have unanticipated side effects.
Perhaps Facebook should be prepared to outline potential consequences of changes.
Are there different kinds of change: eg new "technical" rules, new information-availability pathways, new rules on what must be world-viewable.


A brief history of hacking
    TJX attack
    Identity theft
Legal tools
    Bidders' Edge
    Citrin
Felony prosecutions
    Kutztown 13
    Randall Schwartz
    Terry Childs
    Julie Amero
Zero-day exploits
    cisco & Mike Lynn
    MBTA & MIT

Jurisdiction
    eHarmony
    Blue Note case
    Zippo v Zippo
    LICRA v Yahoo & Yahoo v LICRA
    David Carruthers

Hacking

Stage 3: even now, not all attacks are about money.

Baase, p 259:
"In 1998, the US Deputy defense secretary desribed a series of attacks on US military computers as 'the most organized and systematic attack the Pentagon has seen to date.' Two boys, aged 16 and 17, had carried them out."
   
What about the London attack of about the same era on air-traffic control?

2000: the "Love Bug" or ILOVEYOU virus, by someone named de Guzman. If you read the subject and opened the document, an MS-word macro launched the payload.

MS-word macros were (and are) an appallingly and obviously bad idea. Should people be punished for demonstrating this in such a public way? Was there a time when such a demonstration might have been legitimate?


Yahoo ddos attack & mafiaboy, aka Michael Calce
The attack was launched in February 2000. Calce got discovered by bragging about the attack pseudonymously on chatrooms. Alas for him, he'd previously used his pseudonym "mafiaboy" in posts that contained more-identifying information.

Conficker worm, April 1, 2009, apparently about creating a network of email 'bots.

Putting a dollar value on indirect attacks

This is notoriously hard. One of Mitnick's colleagues (Phiber Optik?) was facing damage claims from one of the Baby Bell companies in excess of $100,000, when it was pointed out that the stolen document was in fact for sale for under $25.

Mark Abene (Phiber Optik) was imprisoned for a year. That was rather long for the actual charge. Mitnick himself spent nearly five years in prison, 4.5 of which were pre-trial. That situation is similar to that of Terry Childs in San Francisco, who is still in prison.


Calce, Abene & Mitnick now both work in computer security. Is this appropriate?

One theory is that gaining notoriety for an exploit is the way to get a security job. Is that appropriate?

If not, what could be done differently?


Modern phishing attacks (also DNS attacks)


Stealing credit-card numbers from stores. (Note: stores are not supposed to retain these at all. However, many do.)

Boeing attack, Baase p 262: how much should Boeing pay to make sure no files were changed?

TJX attack: Baase p 87 and p 271

The breakin was discovered in December 2006, but may have gone back to 2005.

40 million credit-card numbers were stolen! And 400,000 SSNs, and a large number of drivers-license numbers.

Hackers apparently cracked the obsolete WEP encryption on wi-fi networks to get in, using a "cantenna" from outside the building. Once in, they accessed and downloaded files. There are some reports that they eavesdropped on data streaming in from stores, but it seems likely thatdirect downloads of files was also involved.

Six suspects were eventually arrested. I believe they have all now been convicted; there's more information in the privacyrights.org page below (which also pegs the cost to TJX at $500-1,000 million).

For a case at CardSystems Solutions, see http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/cardsystems_exp.html. Here the leak was not due to wi-fi problems, but lack of compliance with standards was apparently involved. Schneier does a good job explaining the purely contractual security requirements involved, and potential outcomes. Schneier also points out

Every credit card company is terrified that people will reduce their credit card usage. They're worried that all of this press about stolen personal data, as well as actual identity theft and other types of credit card fraud, will scare shoppers off the Internet. They're worried about how their brands are perceived by the public.

The TJX and CardSystems attacks were intentional, not just data gone missing.

When attacks ARE about money, often the direct dollar value is huge. And tracing what happened can be difficult. An entire bank account may be gone. Thousands of dollars may be charged against EVERY stolen credit-card number.


Here's a summary of several incidents: http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm#CP.

An emerging standard is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), supported by MasterCard, Visa, Discover, American Express, and others. See http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php for some particulars; a more official site is https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org. Note that PCI DSS is not a law, but is "private regulation". Once upon a time, the most effective regulators of steam-powered ships were insurance companies [reference?]. This is similar, but MasterCard and Visa are not quite the same as insurers. From the FAQ above:

Q: What are the penalties for noncompliance?
A: The payment brands may, at their discretion, fine an acquiring bank $5,000 to $100,000 per month for PCI compliance violations. The banks will most likely pass this fine on downstream till it eventually hits the merchant. Furthermore, the bank will also most likely either terminate your relationship or increase transaction fees.  Penalties are not openly discussed nor widely publicized, but they can catastrophic to a small business. 

It is important to be familiar with your merchant account agreement, which should outline your exposure.

If you are a store, you can refuse to pay the fine. But then you will lose the ability to accept credit cards. This is extremely bad!

Visa's CISP program is described at http://www.visa.com/cisp.

The PCI standards do allow merchants to store the name and account-number data. However, this is strongly discouraged. Sites that keep this information are required by PCI to have it encrypted. CardSystems was keeping this data because they were having a higher-than-expected rate of problems with transactions, and they were trying to figure out why.

To some extent, PCI DSS compliance is an example of how ethical behavior is in your own long-term best interest.

Identity Theft

what is it? What can be done?

And WHO IS RESPONSIBLE??

The most common form of identity theft is someone posing as you in order to borrow money in your name, by obtaining a loan, checking account, or credit card. When someone poses as you to empty your bank account, that's generally known as "just plain theft".

Note that most "official" explanations of identity theft describe it as something that is stolen from you; that is, something bad that has happened to you. In fact, it is probably more accurate to describe "identity theft" as a validation error made by banks and other lenders; that is, as a lender problem.

This is a good example of nontechnical people framing the discourse to make it look like your identity was stolen from you, and that you are the victim, rather than the banks for making loans without appropriate checks. And note that banks make loans without requiring a personal appearance by the borrower (which would give the bank a chance to check the drivers-license picture, if nothing else) because that way they can make more loans and thus be more profitable.

Hacking and probing

Is it ok to be "testing their security"?
What if it's a government site?

Should you be allowed to run a security scanner against other sites?

What if the security in question is APPALLINGLY BAD?

What if you have some relationship to the other host?
 
Baase, p 270:
"The Defense Information Systems Agency estimated that there were 500,000 hacker attacks on Defense Department networks in 1996, that 65% of them were successful, and that the Dept detected fewer than 1%". But 1996 was a long long time ago.

Do we as citizens have an obligation to hack into our government's computers, to help demonstrate how insecure they are?

What about hacking into Loyola's computers? Are we obligated to do that? What about Loyola's wireless network?

Ok, failing that, what is our obligation to prevent intrusions that are not likely to be directly harmful to us?


Hactivism


In 2006, Kevin Mitnick's sites were defaced by a group. There's some irony there.

Other Baase cases:
    several attacks against Chinese gov't sites, due to repressive policies
    pro-Zapatista groups defacing Mexican government sites
    US DoJ site changed to read "Department of Injustice"


Legal tools against hackers

Once upon a time, authorities debated charging a hacker for the value of electricity used; they had no other tools. The relative lack of legal tools for prosecution of computer breakins persisted for some time.

Computer Fraud & Abuse Act of 1986: made it illegal to access computers without authorization (or to commit fraud, or to get passwords)

USAP AT RIOT act:
extends CFAA, and provides that when totting up the cost of the attack, the victim may include all costs of response and recovery. Even unnecessary or irresponsible costs.
   
Trespassing?
"Trespass of Chattels": maybe. This is a legal doctrine in which one party intentionally interferes with another's chattels, essentially personal property (including computers). Often actual harm need not be proven, just that the other party interfered, and that the interference was intentional and without authorization.

In 2000 e-bay won a case against Bidder's Edge where the latter used search robots to get information on e-bay auctions. The bots used negligible computation resources. The idea was for Bidder's Edge to sell information to those participating in eBay auctions. In March 2001, Bidder's Edge settled as it went out of business.

Later court cases have often required proof of actual harm, though. In 1998 [?], Ken Hamadi used the Intel email system to contact all employees regarding Intel's allegedly abusive and discriminating employment policies. Intel sued, and won at the trial and appellate court levels. The California Supreme Court reversed in 2003, ruling that use alone was not sufficient for a trespass-of-chattels claim; there had to be "actual or threatened interference".

After reviewing the decisions analyzing unauthorized electronic contact with computer systems as potential trespasses to chattels, we conclude that under California law the tort does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning. Such an electronic communication does not constitute an actionable trespass to personal property, i.e., the computer system, because it does not interfere with the possessor’s use or possession of, or any other legally protected interest in, the personal property itself. [emphasis added]

How do you prosecute when there is no attempt to damage anything?

Part of the problem here is that trespass-of-chattels was a doctrine originally applied to intrusions, and was quickly seized on as a tool against those who were using a website in ways unanticipated by the creator (eg Bidder's Edge). Is that illegal? Should the law discourage that? Should website owners be able to dictate binding terms of use for publicly viewable pages (ie pages where a login is not required)?


International Airport Centers v Citrin

Generally the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA) is viewed as being directed at "hackers" who break in to computer systems. However, nothing in the act requires that a network breakin be involved, and it is clear that Congress understood internal breakins to be a threat as well.

Just when is internal access a violation of the CFAA? Internal access is what Terry Childs is accused of.

In the 2006 Citrin case, the defendant deleted files from his company-provided laptop before quitting his job and going to work for himself. From http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/01033/009953.html:

Citrin ultimately decided to quit and go into business for himself, apparently in breach of his employment contract with the companies. Before returning the laptop to the companies, Citrin deleted all of the data in it, including not only the data he had collected [and had apparently never turned over to his employer -- pld], but also data that would have revealed to the companies improper conduct he had engaged in before he decided to quit. He caused this deletion using a secure-erasure program, such that it would be impossible to recover the deleted information.

His previous employer sued under the CFAA, noting that the latter contained a provision allowing suits against anyone who "intentionally causes damage without authorization to a protected computer". Citrin argued that he had authorization to use his company-provided laptop. The District Court agreed. The Seventh Circuit reversed, however, arguing in essence that once Citrin had decided to leave the company, and was not acting on the company's behalf, his authorization ended. Or (some guesswork here), Citrin's authorization was only for work done on behalf of his employer; work done against the interests of his employer was clearly not authorized.

Once again, the court looked at Citrin's actions in broad context, rather than in narrow technological terms.

Note that Citrin's specific act of deleting the files was pretty clearly an act that everybody involved understood as not what his employer wanted. This is not a grey-area case.

Compare this to the Terry Childs or Randall Schwartz cases. below. We don't have all the facts yet on Childs, but on a black-and-white scale these cases would seem at worst to be pale eggshell (that is, almost white). It seems very likely that Schwartz's intent was always to improve security at Intel; it seems equally likely that at least in the three modem-related charges against Childs there was absolutely no intent to undermine city security, or to act in any way contrary to what the city would have wanted if it had in fact any clue.

Felony prosecutions: Kutztown 13, Randall Schwartz, Terry Childs, Julie Amero

Kutztown 13
Students were issued 600 apple ibooks in 2004
The admin password was part of school address, taped to the back! The password was changed, but the new one was cracked too. Some of the students got admin privileges and:
                bypassed browser filtering
                installed chat/IM software, maybe others
                disabled monitoring software
The students were accused of monitoring teachers or staff, but that seems unlikely.

The school's security model was hopelessly flawed. Who is responsible for that?
The school simply did not have the resources to proceed properly.
       
The offenders were warned repeatedly. But why didn't the schools simply take the iBooks away? Why were felony charges pursued? The charge was for felony computer trespass.

The school argued that the charges were filed because the students signed an "acceptable use" policy. But why should that make any difference in whether felony charges were pursued?
      
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68480,00.html
cutusabreak.org: now gone
Wikipedia: Kutztown_Area_high_School
       


Randall Schwarz
    http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors

Oregon made it a FELONY to do anything UNAUTHORIZED.
Also, taking a file without authorization was declared to be THEFT.

Schwartz faced three counts:

  1. Installation of an email backdoor at Intel (he thought he had some kind of permission)
  2. Taking password file
  3. Taking individual passwords

These he did as a former sysadmin, now assigned to other duties, but still concerned about password security. All he did was to run the "crack" program to guess passwords. This involved copying the public /etc/passwd file, which at that time contained the encrypted passwords, and to this day contains the username-to-userid mapping used every time you run ls -l.

The appeals court argued that although "authorization" wasn't spelled out in the law, Schwartz did things without authorization as narrowly interpreted. The appellate court also upheld the trial court's interpretation of "theft": taking anything without permission, even if the thing is essentially useless or if the taking is implicitly authorized.

The appellate court also seemed to believe that Schwartz might have been looking for flaws to take credit for them, and that such personal aggrandizement was inappropriate. But employees all the time look for problems at work and try to fix them, hoping to receive workplace recognition.


Schwartz and Kutztown 13 cases have in common the idea that sometimes the law makes rather mundane things into felonies. For Schwartz, it is very clear that he had no "criminal" intent in the usual sense, although he did "intend" to do the actions he was charged with.

Felony prosecutions: Kutztown 13, Randall Schwartz, Terry Childs, Julie Amero

What do you do if you are a system administrator, or a database administrator, and your nontechnical supervisor wants the root password?

Terry Childs

Childs was a Cisco-certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) working for San Francisco; he was the only one with the router passwords for the city's fiberWAN network.

He was suspended for insubordination on July 9, 2008, apparently for refusing to turn over router passwords. There are GOOD reasons for limiting access to such passwords on a need-to-know basis, BUT refusing to turn them over might be going pretty far. Especially when this locks the owners of the system out.

However, there are some mitigating factors, including the fact that there was an open speakerphone call in progress at the time Childs was asked for the passwords. We do not know if Childs was given another chance to turn over the passwords, or told to turn them over privately to his immediate supervisor, or to create another account. There were allegations at the trial that Childs knew he was expected to turn over the passwords, after the confrontation, but did not do so. However, it seems plausible that if Childs had turned over the passwords at the initial conference, he might have been prosecuted for doing so.

At the trial, Childs claimed he was only asked (by his supervisors and by the police) for his username and password, not for access to the systems in question (which he could have granted by creating another account). Other accounts claim that Childs clearly knew what his supervisors wanted, and refused to give it to him.

Most accounts describe the July 9 meeting as a "confrontation", ultimately as much due to poor San Francisco management as Childs' behavior.

Note that the password in question was not a personal password, but rather an administrative password for a set of Cisco routers. The routers had been configured so as to be difficult to update without the password.

He was arrested by SF police on Saturday, July 12, 2008 on four counts of computer tampering. He was never granted bail, and he remained in prison through his April 27, 2010 conviction. (As of December 2010, he is still in prison.)

He refused to give the police valid passwords at his arrest (such refusal without having the opportunity to consult with a lawyer is protected by the 5th Amendment, although it is not clear whether he continued to refuse). He did give the passwords to then-mayor Gavin Newsom of SF, on July 21, 2008, while in prison.

It seems likely that Childs would have had opportunities to negotiate with his supervisors for the handover of the passwords between the July 9 confrontation and his arrest, though he was suspended.

At no point did Childs do anything to damage the network, and the network was never down at any time.

Childs had some past history: he committed a burglary at age 17 and spent 4 years in prison. This apparently has no bearing on the present case.

The city's main claim is that Childs was arrested because he placed the city systems in jeapordy. However:

  1. Refusal to share passwords is complicated to see as a criminal act. After all, Childs could always quit. Or, for that matter, die.
  2. The city knowingly created and encouraged the environment in which Childs was the only one with the passwords.
  3. No working systems were ever at risk.

The biggest concern to computing professionals is that San Francisco then created a laundry list of criminal allegations against Childs that in fact are standard practices:

  1. Childs knew several other people's passwords. (A list of 150 such was found in Child's house, and entered into evidence at his bail hearing without redacting the passwords themselves.)
  2. He had network sniffers in place
  3. He had "back-door" access to the routers, through several modems (three in the final criminal count). But these were pretty clearly for emergency access.
  4. Routers were configured to resist password recovery (this is standard practice when the physical security of the device is in question).
  5. Configurations were not written to flash memory (same as 4)
  6. Childs' pager was sent a page by one of the routers (duh)

Childs seems to have been "security-conscious to the point of paranoia". But most good computer-security people are!

In opposing bail reduction for Childs, the city's attorneys wrote in July 2008:

In the training room locked by the Defendant, they discovered two modems that allowed access to the City's network from unauthorized locations. A further analysis of the network by Principle Security Consultant Anthony Maupin determined that the Defendant had configured multiple Cisco network devices with a command that erases all configurations and data in the event somone tried to recover the password. Further, the Defendant had created his own private network that bypassed all City monitoring and security systems. He had programs that monitored and detected any intrusions and notified the Defendant if others were monitoring or trying to access his information. The Defendant had implemented his own email server and had multiple remote access systems, some which [sic] were hidden in locked storage cabinets and connected to modems. This permitted the Defendant to access the City's network infrastructure undetected. An additional modem was discovered in a locked cabinet near his cubicle that was connected to a phone line and had access to the network.

... There are over 1100 different devices, routers, switches, modems, etc, scattered throughout the  city's offices that the Defendant may have configured and even locked with his own passwords.  ... there is a serious threat to the City's network system if the Defendant was out of custody without the City having full control over all the 1100 devices as the Defendant may have access any of these devices [sic].

The final four charges (pretty close to the original, but none of the tantalizing allegations of the bail-reduction motion making it in): one of "disrupting or denying computer services" (by not revealing the passwords) and three of "providing a means of accessing a computer, computer system, or computer network" (one for each of the three modems).

The latter three charges were finally dropped on August 21, 2009, over a year later. Bail remained at $5 million, even though the state's original argument against bail reduction was based on the three dropped charges and the idea that the "unauthorized" modems might mean that Childs had other backdoors into the city network. Also, San Francisco had plenty of time to tighten up security. It is possible that the three dropped "unauthorized modem" charges were dropped because of the impossibility of proving that they were in fact unauthorized, though that is to some extent exactly the defense's point.

Childs is charged with "disrupting or denying computer services". However,

Note that in the first "disrupting or denying computer services" charge, no computer services were actually disrupted. The only thing denied was the password.

He did configure the network in a manner that made it difficult for coworkers to reconfiguring it. Was this about prudence, or job security? He apparently did not face day-to-day clear lines of authority; he definitely was not asked to make the master passwords available to supervisors until the Dispute.

There are no charges (as filed in February 2009) of network tampering; these appeared in court documents in July and August 2008 but were dropped. ("Network tampering" appears to have been replaced by the three modem charges.)

The modems were all apparently legitimate: the first was to dial Childs' pager if there was a problem (through the What's Up Gold monitoring package), the second was to allow immediate dialin access to some SF networks (not apparently the FiberWAN), and in addition was apparently installed before Childs was hired, and the third was to provide an alternative communications paths to emergency services across the San Andreas fault. (See http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/could-childs-case-put-all-network-admins-in-danger-979)
If there was any additional illegitimate purpose, it does not appear to be documented anywhere in any filings to date.

It is indeed possible that Childs decided not to have configurations written to flash memory for "job security"; ie so that, if there was a problem, he would be irreplaceable. Alternatively, it could have been because Childs was having conflicts with management and wanted them to know they couldn't work without him. There is no hard evidence, though, of this.

The formal allegation against Childs did not spell out any specific evidence of intent to disrupt the network (though it did not have to). There is considerable evidence, though, that Childs did indeed intend to give himself "job security" by making sure no one else could manage the network.

One possible reason Childs has been denied reasonable bail is the fact that a search of his residence just before his arrest turned up some 9mm ammunition, and Childs had in 1985 been convicted of a felony: armed robbery (with a knife). Possession of ammunition by a convicted felon is illegal in California (and many other states). Also, the fact that Childs had $10,000 in cash in his house was interpreted by the police as evidence that he was a flight risk. Finally, Childs lied to his supervisors when he said he had no past felony convictions, and lied again on the day of his management confrontation when he said his fiberWAN password no longer worked. Both of these are perhaps understandable, and in principle they shouldn't matter, but one doesn't know.

It does seem likely, however, that a big part of the reason Childs remains in jail is that the City keeps raising the specter that he could break in. But if he could, even a few months later, let alone close to two years, then so could anyone else, and the City's security is just plain negligent.

One plausible charge against Childs is the allegation that he configured the routers not to store their configurations, and that this was done in order that if the network crashed, only he could ressurect it. From the arrest-warrant affidavit of police officer James Ramsay:

Mr Maupin [the city's security consultant] was also able to determine and validate that Mr Childs had, in fact, intentionally configured multiple Cisco network devices with a command that erases all configuration and data in the event that someone tries to restore administrative access or tries to perform disaster recovery. This command was created for military applications that require the deployment of network devices in areas that may have the possibility of hostile forces that could get physical access to network devices.

Officer Ramsay also was the one to tell Childs initially that failure to divulge the passwords was "a denial of service as defined under Penal Code violation Section 502(c)(5)". This claim remains farfetched, at face value, given the lack of clear authority within DTIS, although it might apply if Childs had withheld the password with malicious intent.

Note that the quoted line "this command was created for military applications ..." is both misleading and a bit of a stretch. It seems likelier that the command was suggested for military applications, but even if it was created for that, so was GPS.

As for the configuration-to-erase claim, Childs' attorneys claimed in his bail-reduction motion that one of his colleagues, Carl Sian, intentionally kept (as for study) computer viruses, and later spread one to Childs (possibly accidentally). Somewhat later, Childs' supervisor Herb Tong made some technically inappropriate changes to the fiberWAN system. In light of those events, Childs may very well have felt that the "hardened" configuration of the routers was appropriate.

The early case documents are back online at http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/terry-childs-case-in-its-own-words-928.

Overall, it seems to me that people who work in very structured environments have no sympathy for Childs; he clearly broke the rules. Partly that is not the point; just about everyone agrees his firing was legitimate.

Here are a couple comments from one of the jurors, Jason Chilton, who, like Childs, was a CCIE.

The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN.

That was the first aspect of it, the second aspect was the denial to an authorized user. And for us that's what we really had to spend the most time on, defining who an authorized user was. Because that wasn't one of the definitions given to us.

From blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/terry_childs_sentenced_hacker.php:

It almost seemed like paranoia. Especially after he found out there would be some organizational changes, I believe the security he was putting in place wasn't to prevent attackers but to prevent people from getting rid of him. He would be needed because no one else could take care of this network. It was so secure, only he could have access.

On August 6, 2010, Childs was sentenced to four years in prison. It is likely that he will be released soon. This is an extraordinary sentence if you believe the case was the result of a workplace misunderstanding.


The Schwartz, Childs and Amero cases have in common the idea that behavior that some people might find well within the range of acceptable, while others might find seriously criminal. These aren't like banking-industry cases; none of the defendants was trying to push the envelope in terms of what they could "get away with". All three felt they were "just doing their jobs".

Julie Amero case

On October 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher (7th grade) at Kelly Middle School, Connecticut. At some point early in the school day, the teachers' desk computer started displaying an onstoppable stream of pornographic web pages. Clicking the close button on one simply brought up others. This is by now a well-known javascript vulnerability.

Amero had been explicitly told never to disturb anything in the classroom, and in particular not to turn the computer off. So she didn't. She had apparently no idea how to turn off just the monitor. She spent much of her day at her desk, trying to fix the problem by closing windows. She did not attempt to tape something over the monitor, or cover the monitor with something.

Someone apparently decided that she was actively surfing porn. Within two days, she was told she couldn't substitute at that school; she was arrested shortly thereafter.

Amero had complained to other teachers later that day. Why she didn't demand that something be done during the lunch hour is not clear. Why she didn't tape something over the screen is not clear. Amero claimed that two kids used the computer before the start of class, at a hairstyles site, but others claimed that could not have happened because it was not allowed.

It later turned out that the school's content-filter subscription had lapsed, and so the filter was out of date. Also, the computer had several viruses or "spyware" programs installed. In retrospect, some sort of javascript attack seems to have been the proximate cause.

In January 2007, she was convicted of impairing the morals of a child. This was despite computer-forensic evidence that a hairstyles site triggered a scripting attack that led to the Russian porn sites.

The prosecutor's closing arguments hinged on the idea that some of the links in question had "turned red", thus "proving" that they had been clicked on (ie deliberately by Amero) rather than having been activated via scripting. This is false at several levels: link colors for followed links can be any color at the discretion of the page, and if a page has been opened via a script, links to it are indistinguishable from links that were clicked on.

In June 2007 Amero was granted a new trial, and in November 2008 she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge and forfeited her teaching credentials.

Amero's failure to regard the computer problem as an emergency probably contributed to her situation.

I discussed her case with a School of Education class once, and the participants were unanimous in declaring that Amero was incredibly dense, at best.



zero-day exploits
Should they be tolerated? Encouraged?

  1. Sometimes vendors ignore exploit reports without the publicity.
  2. Sometimes users really need a script to tell them if they are vulnerable; such a script is typically tantamount to an exploit
  3. Sometimes announcing a flaw gives crackers all they need to exploit it; withholding details merely gives false security.


Consensus seems to be that zero-day exploits are a bad idea, that one has some responsibility to let vendors know about an exploit so a patch can be developed.

Patch Tuesday is now followed by Exploit Wednesday.

Cisco 2005 case involving Michael Lynn: see http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/cisco_harasses.html

Cisco threatened legal action to stop the [July 2005 Black Hat] conference's organizers from allowing a 24-year-old researcher for a rival tech firm to discuss how he says hackers could seize control of Cisco's Internet routers, which dominate the market.

Cisco called the disclosure "premature" and claimed Lynn had "illegally obtained" the information by reverse-engineering. Lynn acknowledged that he had disassembled some Cisco code, based on an announced Cisco patch, but found an additional problem that could allow an outsider to take over the router. Note that a patch had already been released by Cisco, but many customers had not installed it because Cisco had not indicated it was important.

Lynn demoed his findings to Cisco in June 2005. Initially there had been talk about a joint security presentation, but these broke down. The Black Hat conference was in late July 2005.

At the 2006 Black Hat conference, Cisco was a sponsor. Lynn was invited to the party the company sponsored.

Schneier also has a 2001 essay on full disclosure (with advance notice to the vendor) at http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0111.html.


MBTA Card

In 2008, three MIT students, Russell Ryan, Zack Anderson, and Alessandro Chiesa, developed Anatomy of a Subway Hack (see http://cs.luc.edu/pld/ethics/charlie_defcon.pdf (especially pages 5, 8, 11/12, 24ff, 41, 49, and 51)). One of the methods of attack was to take advantage of a vulnerability in the Mifare Classic RFID chip used by the MBTA's "Charlie Card". They intended to present their findings at the 2008 Defcon.

US District Judge George O'Toole granted a 10-day preliminary restraining order against the group, but then let it expire without granting the five-month injunction requested by the MBTA. The MBTA's legal argument was that the paper violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the problem is that the CFAA normally applies to worms and viruses themselves, and not to publishing information about them.

Much of the information in the report is highly embarrassing to the MBTA, such as the photographs of gates left unlocked. Should they be allowed to block that?

The MIT group apparently asked their professor, Ron Rivest (the R of RSA), to give the MBTA an advance heads-up, but it apparently did not happen immediately as Rivest was traveling at the time, and in any event would have amounted to just a week or so. The MBTA was eventually informed, and quickly pushed for an FBI investigation.

The MIT group's RFID hack was based on the work of Gans, Hoepman, and Garcia in finding flaws in the Mifare Classic chipset; see http://cs.luc.edu/pld/ethics/mifare-classic.pdf. This is a serious academic paper, as you can tell by the font. Their work is based on earlier work by Nohl and Plötz, which they cite. On page 4 of my copy the authors state

We would like to stress that we notified NXP of our findings before publishing our results. Moreover, we gave them the opportunity to discuss with us how to publish our results without damaging their (and their customers) immediate interests. They did not take advantage of this offer.

Note also that the attack is somewhat theoretical, but it does allow them to eavesdrop on the encrypted card-to-reader communications, and to read all of data-block 0 stored on the card (and other blocks, if the data is partially known).

Nohl has said, "It has been known for years that magnetic stripe cards can easily be tampered with and MBTA should not have relied on the obscurity of their data-format as a security measure".


Hacking

What legal responses are appropriate?
Should we criminalize having hacking tools?
What about magnetic-stripe readers? RFID readers?
Pringles cans (for use as cantennas)?
DVD players that bypass the region code?
What about c compilers?


Note that it is in fact already illegal to possess certain things that can have illegal uses, such as automotive dent pullers (used to pull cylinders out of locks) and tools that look like they might be lock picks.



Jurisdiction online

jurisdictional issues: where did the sale take place? This one is very important for e-commerce.

Traditional three rules for lawsuit jurisdiction:

  1. Purposeful availment: did defendant receive any benefit from the laws of the jurisdiction? If you're in South Dakota and you sell to someone in California, the laws of California would protect you if the buyer tried to cheat you. Generally, this is held to be the case even if you require payment upfront in all cases. The doctrine of purposeful availment means that, in exchange here for the benefits to you of California's laws, you submit to California's jurisdiction.
  2. Where the act was done.
  3. Whether the defendant has a reasonable expectation of being subject to that jurisdiction.


eHarmony lawsuits, for alleged discrimination against homosexuals

eHarmony is headquartered in California.

New Jersey lawsuit by Eric McKinley, 2005
California lawsuit by Linda Carlson, 2007

How does jurisdiction apply? Should it have applied in New Jersey?
Is the fact that users must enter their address the deciding factor?

Would it have mattered if eHarmony was a free service?

Could eHarmony simply have agreed not to do business in NJ and CA?

What if residents of Newark (or Princeton) simply gave NYC addresses?

sales

trademarks
libel/defamation
criminal law


laws governing sales: seller can sue in his home state/country
    This is more or less universal.
   

laws governing trademarks

Trademark scope
        The Blue Note Cafe was located in NYC
        The Blue Note, St Louis (actually Columbia, MO) was a club, sued for trademark infringement by Blue Note New York because they had a web site.
        The case: Bensusan Restaurant Corp v King, 937 F. Supp. 295 (SDNY 1996)
The case was brought in federal district court, which decided there was a lack of jurisdiction. Before that, however, note that the Missouri club began using the name in 1980, and the NYC club did not register the trademark until 1985. Note that, generally speaking, in this sort of situation the Missouri club retains the right to continue to use the name locally, while non-local use is reserved to the federal trademark-holder.

The district court did look at the "long-arm statute" of the "forum state", that is, New York. The New York law provides that

a New York court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a non-domiciliary who "in person or though an agent" commits a tortious act within the state.

The State-court interpretation of this was that the act had to be committed in New York State, and the federal court deferred to this interpretation.

Another part of the NY state law did provide for jurisdiction when the other party was outside the state. However, the law also

... restricted the exercise of jurisdiction under sub-paragraph (a)(3) to persons who expect or should reasonably expect the tortious act to have consequences in the state and in addition derive substantial revenue from interstate commerce

The second circuit decided that Blue Note Missouri did not derive revenue from interstate commerce. End of case.

Blue Note St Louis had a mostly passive web site, although they did advertise tickets online, to performances at the club itself. These tickets had to be picked up at the Missouri box office; they were never mailed. Does this matter? Does it matter that the tickets were technically not sold over the internet, but instead you had to call a phone number?

This case was decided on jurisdictional grounds: NY State did not have jurisdiction.
The second-circuit appellate decision is at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=2nd&navby=docket&no=969344.

This was a reasonable decision, but notice that it sure doesn't offer many guarantees that your website won't infringe on a trademark far far away.
              
Domain names

zippo v zippo, 1997

See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/dncases/zippo.htm
    zippo lighters v zippo.com
    trademark infringement filed under PA state law, but filed in federal district court.
    PA "long arm" statute
   
zippo.com was a news service. They had email customers in PA, and two ISP customers.
    (1) the defendant must have sufficient "minimum contacts" with the forum state,
    (2) the claim asserted against the defendant must arise out of those contacts, and
    (3) the exercise of jurisdiction must be reasonable.
   

We find Dot Com's efforts to characterize its conduct as falling short of purposeful availment of doing business in Pennsylvania wholly unpersuasive. At oral argument, Defendant repeatedly characterized its actions as merely "operating a Web site" or "advertising." Dot Com also cites to a number of cases from this Circuit which, it claims, stand for the proposition that merely advertising in a forum, without more, is not a sufficient minimal contact. [FN7] This argument is misplaced. Dot Com has done more than advertise on the Internet in Pennsylvania. Defendant has sold passwords to approximately 3,000 subscribers in Pennsylvania and entered into seven contracts with Internet access providers to furnish its services to their customers in Pennsylvania. [emphasis added]

     
Decided JURISDICTIONAL issue, plus others: PA did have jurisdiction


Note the gray area between a completely passive website, just an "electronic billboard", and “the knowing and repeated transmission of computer files over the Internet”. Usually the latter means subscriber-specific information.

What about google.com? Should Illinois courts have jurisdiction?

Internationally, we already looked at LICRA v Yahoo, filed in France (and won by LICRA) for Yahoo's selling of Nazi memorabilia on its auction site in the US. Yahoo had initially agreed to comply with the French order, and then later changed its mind, and filed suit in the US asking that the US court declare that the french court did not have jurisdiction. That case ended in a draw (specifically, in a declaration that the case was not "ripe").


Suppose your bank makes an error. Where do you sue them? What if their only presence in your state is online? Consider the case Soma Medical v Standard Chartered Bank. SCB is located in Hong Kong. Soma is in Utah. Soma did banking with SCB online. Some money disappeared. Soma lost their lawsuit in Utah, because the court ruled that the fact that SCB had a website accessible in Utah did not give the State of Utah personal jurisdiction. [Michael Shamos]

NTP v RIM: RIM's network hub was in Canada. RIM lost on that point, but there remain serious questions about whether US patent law extends to other countries.

Butler v Beer Across America
http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Butler_v._Beer_Across_America
BAA is an Illinois company selling beer over the internet. Butler's minor son ordered beer, and it was delivered to him despite rules that required an adult signature. Butler sued BAA under an Alabama law that makes it illegal to sell alcohol to minors. In this case, Butler lost her bid to get Alabama jurisdiction, though the case was transferred by the Alabama court to Illinois.

Deciding that the sale of beer by Illinois defendants to an Alabama minor on the Internet occurred in Illinois, the federal court held that a single sale was insufficient minimum contacts to establish personal jurisdiction over the defendants in Alabama.



Jurisdiction and criminal cases

The 6th amendment to the constitution requires that
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed

But what state and district are involved if you do something allegedly illegal online?

Venue is extremely important if "community standards" are at stake. Even if they are not, an inconvenient venue can be chosen by prosecutors to harass you or make your defense more expensive; alternatively, a venue can be selected where longer sentences are handed down or juries are less tolerant of social differences.

If you are selling something illegal, the feds may prosecute you in any state in which the material could be purchased. The Reagan administration did just that when attempting to crack down on pornography in the 1980's, often filing parallel lawsuits all over the country.

However, if you are just a buyer, the legal principle is still muddled. Just where were you in cyberspace when you were sitting in your living room buying tax-planning software? Delaware? California?

See Baase, §5.5.2.

International crime


Remember the case of Yahoo selling Nazi memorabilia in California, and being convicted of that by a French court?

In 2006 the US signed the so-called "cybercrime treaty", to encourage international cooperation in prosecuting computer crime. However, in an important area the treaty completely lacked the usual "dual-criminality" provision, that the action in question must be a crime in both nations for the treaty to apply. The consequence is that US ISPs may be required to assist in foreign-government investigations of events that are not illegal under US law, even when the events occurred within the US. Foreign governments may ask for electronic seizures and searches (eg of email records), and ISPs must cooperate promptly or face charges.

The treaty also not only permits but requires the FBI to engage in warrantless wiretapping of Americans if a foreign government claims that the wiretap is necessary for a cybercrime investigation.

In Baase §5.5.3, she speculates that the US may have agreed to this no-dual-criminality wording in order to be able to extend the reach of its own laws overseas.


British citizen and CEO of BETonSPORTS.com (no longer online) David Carruthers was arrested in Dallas in July 2006 when changing planes, because in the US online betting is illegal. He was sentenced on January 8, 2010 to 33 months in prison; apparently this does not include the 3 years already served under house arrest.

He conducted all his BETonSPORTS business while in England, and was just passing through the US when arrested. He was charged because some of BETonSPORTS's customers were allegedly US citizens.

Facing a potential 20-year sentence, he finally agreed to plead guilty in April 2009.

Carruthers is a major advocate of regulated internet gambling.

What else could have been done? The real issue with internet gambling is that it so frequently involves gambling on credit. (This would not be the case if customers sent in money in advance, but that greatly complicates use of the sites by impulse gamblers.)


A few other issues