Steven J. Murdoch

Dr Steven J. Murdoch is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Information Security Research Group of University College London, working on banking security, authentication and developing metrics for security and privacy. His research interests also include anonymous communications, censorship resistance and covert channels. He has worked with the OpenNet Initiative, investigating Internet censorship, and for the Tor Project, on improving the security and usability of the Tor anonymity system. He is Innovation Security Architect at OneSpan, an online security technology provider.

Strong Customer Authentication in the Payment Services Directive 2

Within the European Union, since 2007, banks are regulated by the Payment Services Directive. This directive sets out which types of institutions can offer payment services, and what rules they must follow. Importantly for customers, these rules include in what circumstances a fraud victim is entitled to a refund. In 2015 the European Parliament adopted a substantial revision to the directive, the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), and it will soon be implemented by EU member states. One of the major changes in PSD2 is the requirement for banks to implement Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for transactions, more commonly known as two-factor authentication – authentication codes based on two or more elements selected from something only the user knows, something only the user possesses, and something the user is. Moreover, the authentication codes must be linked to the recipient and amount of the transaction, which the customer must be made aware of.

The PSD2 does not detail the requirements of Strong Customer Authentication, nor the permitted exemptions to this rule. Instead, these decisions are to be made by the European Banking Authority (EBA) through Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS). As part of the development of these technical standards the EBA opened an initial discussion, to which we submitted a response based on our research on the security usability of banking authentication. Based on the discussion, the EBA produced a consultation paper incorporating a set of draft technical standards. In our response to this consultation paper, included below, we detailed how research both on security usability and banking authentication more broadly should guide the assessment of Strong Customer Authentication. Specifically we point out that there is an incorrect assumption of an inherent tradeoff between security and usability, that for a system to be secure it must be usable, and that evaluation of Strong Customer Authentication systems should be independent, transparent, and follow principles developed from latest research.

False trade-off between security and usability

In the reasoning presented in the consultation paper there is an assumption that a trade-off must be made between security and usability, e.g. paragraph 6 “Finally, the objective of ensuring a high degree of security and safety would suggest that the [European Banking Authority’s] Technical Standards should be onerous in terms of authentication, whereas the objective of user-friendliness would suggest that the [Regulatory Technical Standards] should rather promote the competing aim of customer convenience, such as one-click payments.”

This security/usability trade-off is not inherent to Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), and in fact the opposite is more commonly true: in order for SCA to be secure it must also be usable “because if the security is usable, users will do the security tasks, rather than ignore or circumvent them”. Also, SCA that is usable will make it more likely that customers will detect fraud because they will not have to expend their limited attention on just performing the actions required to make the SCA work. A small subset (10–15%) of participants in some studies reasoned that the fact that a security mechanism required a lot of effort from them meant it was secure. But that is a misconception that must not be used as an excuse for effortful authentication procedures.

Continue reading Strong Customer Authentication in the Payment Services Directive 2

Do you know what you’re paying for? How contactless cards are still vulnerable to relay attack

Contactless card payments are fast and convenient, but convenience comes at a price: they are vulnerable to fraud. Some of these vulnerabilities are unique to contactless payment cards, and others are shared with the Chip and PIN cards – those that must be plugged into a card reader – upon which they’re based. Both are vulnerable to what’s called a relay attack. The risk for contactless cards, however, is far higher because no PIN number is required to complete the transaction. Consequently, the card payments industry has been working on ways to solve this problem.

The relay attack is also known as the “chess grandmaster attack”, by analogy to the ruse in which someone who doesn’t know how to play chess can beat an expert: the player simultaneously challenges two grandmasters to an online game of chess, and uses the moves chosen by the first grandmaster in the game against the second grandmaster, and vice versa. By relaying the opponents’ moves between the games, the player appears to be a formidable opponent to both grandmasters, and will win (or at least force a draw) in one match.

Similarly, in a relay attack the fraudster’s fake card doesn’t know how to respond properly to the payment terminal because, unlike a genuine card, it doesn’t contain the cryptographic key known only to the card and the bank that verifies the card is genuine. But like the fake chess grandmaster, the fraudster can relay the communication of the genuine card in place of the fake card.

For example, the victim’s card (Alice, in the diagram below) would be in a fake or hacked card payment terminal (Bob) and the criminal would use the fake card (Carol) to attempt a purchase in a genuine terminal (Dave). The bank would challenge the fake card to prove its identity, this challenge is then relayed to the genuine card in the hacked terminal, and the genuine card’s response is relayed back on behalf of the fake card to the bank for verification. The end result is that the terminal used for the real purchase sees the fake card as genuine, and the victim later finds an unexpected and expensive purchase on their statement.

A rigged payment terminal capable of performing the relay attack can be made from off-the-shelf components — The relay attack, where the cards and terminals can be at any distance from each other

Demonstrating the grandmaster attack

I first demonstrated that this vulnerability was real with my colleague Saar Drimer at Cambridge, showing on television how the attack could work in Britain in 2007 and in the Netherlands in 2009.

In our scenario, the victim put their card in a fake terminal thinking they were buying a coffee when in fact their card details were relayed by a radio link to another shop, where the criminal used a fake card to buy something far more expensive. The fake terminal showed the victim only the price of a cup of coffee, but when the bank statement arrives later the victim has an unpleasant surprise.

At the time, the banking industry agreed that the vulnerability was real, but argued that as it was difficult to carry out in practice it was not a serious risk. It’s true that, to avoid suspicion, the fraudulent purchase must take place within a few tens of seconds of the victim putting their card into the fake terminal. But this restriction only applies to the Chip and PIN contact cards available at the time. The same vulnerability applies to today’s contactless cards, only now the fraudster need only be physically near the victim at the time – contactless cards can communicate at a distance, even while the card is in the victim’s pocket or bag.

Continue reading Do you know what you’re paying for? How contactless cards are still vulnerable to relay attack

Microsoft Ireland: winning the battle for privacy but losing the war

On Thursday, Microsoft won an important federal appeals court case against the US government. The case centres on a warrant issued in December 2013, requiring Microsoft to disclose emails and other records for a particular msn.com email address which was related to a narcotics investigation. It transpired that these emails were stored in a Microsoft datacenter in Ireland, but the US government argued that, since Microsoft is a US company and can easily copy the data into the US, a US warrant would suffice. Microsoft argued that the proper way for the US government to obtain the data is through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) between the US and Ireland, where an Irish court would decide, according to Irish law, whether the data should be handed over to US authorities. Part of the US government’s objection to this approach was that the MLAT process is sometimes very slow, although though the Irish government has committed to consider any such request “expeditiously”.

The appeal court decision is an important victory for Microsoft (following two lower courts ruling against them) because they sell their european datacenters as giving their european customers confidence that their data will be subject to the more stringent european privacy laws. Microsoft’s case was understandably supported by other technology companies in the same position, as well as civil liberties organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US and the Open Rights Group in the UK. However, I have mixed opinions about the outcome: while probably the right decision in this case, the wider consequences could be detrimental to privacy.

Both sides of the case wanted to set a precedent (if not legally, at least in practice). The US government wanted US law to apply to data held by US companies, wherever in the world the data resides. Microsoft wanted the location of the data to imply which legal regime applied, and so their customers could be confident that their own country’s laws will be respected, provided Microsoft have a datacenter in their own country (or at least one with compatible laws). My concern is that this ruling will give false assurance to customers of US companies, because in other circumstances a different decision could quite easily be taken.

We know about this case because Microsoft chose to challenge it in court, and were able to do so. This is the first time Microsoft has challenged a US warrant for data stored in their Irish datacenter despite it being in operation for three years prior to the case. Had the email address been associated with a more serious crime, or the demand for emails accompanied by a gagging order, it may not have been challenged. Microsoft and other technology companies may still choose to accept, or may even be forced to accept, the applicability of future US warrants to data they control, regardless of the court decision last week. One extreme approach to compel this approach would be for the US to jail employees until their demands are complied with.

For this reason, I have argued that control over data is more important than where data resides. If a company does not have the technical capability to comply with an order, it is easier for them to defend their case, and so protects both the company’s customers and staff. Microsoft have taken precisely this approach for their new German datacenters, which will be operated by staff in Germany working for a German “data trustee” (Deutsche Telekom). In contrast to their Irish datacenter, Microsoft staff will be unable to access customer data, except with the permission of and oversight from the data trustee.

While the data trustee model resists information being obtained through improper legal means, a malicious employee could still break rules for personal gain, or the systems designed to process legal requests could be hacked into. With modern security techniques it is possible to do better. End-to-end encryption for instant messaging is one such example, because (if designed properly) the communications provider does not have access to messages they carry. A more sophisticated approach is “distributed consensus”, where a decision is only taken if a majority of participants agree. The consensus process is automated and enforced through cryptography, ensuring that rules are respected even if some participants are malicious. Critical decisions in the Tor network and in Bitcoin are taken this way. More generally, there is a growing recognition that purely legal or procedural mechanisms are insufficient to protect privacy. This is one of the common threads present in much of the research presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, being held this week in Darmstadt: recognising that there will always be imperfections in software, people and procedures and showing that nevertheless individual’s privacy can still be protected.

Cybersecurity: Supporting a Resilient and Trustworthy System for the UK

Yesterday, the Royal Society published their report on cybersecurity policy, practice and research – Progress and Research in Cybersecurity: Supporting a Resilient and Trustworthy System for the UK. The report includes 10 recommendations for government, industry, universities and research funders, covering the topics of trust, resilience, research and translation. This major report was written based on evidence gathered from an open call, as well as meetings with key stakeholders, guided by a steering committee which included UCL members M. Angela Sasse and Steven Murdoch. Here, we summarise what we think are the most important signposts for cybersecurity research and practice.

The report points out that, as online technology and services touches nearly everyone’s lives, the role of cybersecurity is to support a resilient digital economy and society in the UK. Previously, the government focus was very much on national security – but it is just as important that we are able to secure our personal data, financial assets and homes, and that our decisions as consumers and citizens are not manipulated or subverted. The report rightly states that the national authority for cybersecurity needs to be transparent, expert and have a clear and widely-understood remit. The creation of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) may be a first step towards this, but the report also points out that currently, it is to be under control of GCHQ – and this is bound to be a problem given the lack of trust they have from parts of industry and civil society, as a result of their role in subverting the development of security standards in order to make surveillance easier.

The report furthermore recommends that the government preserves the robustness of encryption, including end-to-end encryption and promotes its widespread use. Encryption and other computer security measures provides the foundation that allows individuals to trust organisations and attempts to weaken these measures in order to facilitate surveillance will create security risks and reduce robustness. Whether weaknesses are created by requiring fragile encryption algorithms or mandating exceptional access, these attempts increase the risk of unauthorised parties gaining access to sensitive computer systems.

The report also rightly says that companies need to take more responsibility for cyber security: to be a trustworthy business partner or service provider, they need to be competent, and have the correct motivation. “Dumping” the risks associated with online transactions on customers or business partners who don’t have skills and resources to deal with them, and hiding this in complex terms and conditions, is not trustworthy behaviour. Making companies take liability for the security failures will likely play a part in improving trustworthiness, but needs to be done carefully. Important open source software such as OpenSSL is developed by a handful of people in their spare time. When something goes wrong (such as Heartbleed), multi-billion dollar companies who built their business around open source software without contributing or even properly evaluating the risk, should not be able to assign liability to the volunteer developers. Companies should also be transparent and be required to disclose vulnerabilities and breaches. The report calls for such disclosures to be made to a central body, but we would go further and recommend that they be disclosed to the customers exposed to risks as a result of the security failures.

In order to improve and demonstrate competence in cybersecurity, we need evidence-based guidance on state-of-the-art cybersecurity principles, standards and practices. These go further than just following widely used industry practice, or following craft knowledge based on expert opinion, but should be an an ambitious set of criteria which have been demonstrated to make a pronounced improvement in security. A significant effort is required to transform what is currently a set of common practices (the term “best practice” is a misnomer) through empirical tests and measurements into a set of practices and tools that we know to be effective and efficient under real-world conditions (this is the mission of The Research Institute in Science of Cyber Security (RISCS), which has just started a new 5 year phase). The report in particular calls for research on ways to quantify the security offered by anonymization algorithms and anonymous communication techniques, as these perform an critical role in supporting privacy by design.

The report calls for more research, and new means to assess and support research. Cybersecurity is an international field, and research funders should seek for peer-review to be performed by the best expertise available internationally and to remove barriers to international and multidisciplinary research. However, supporting multidisciplinary research should not be at the expense of addressing the many hard technical problems which remain. The report also identifies the benefits of challenge-led funding, where a research programme is led by a world-leading expert with substantial freedom in how research funds are distributed. For this model to work it is critical to create the right environment for recruiting international experts to both lead and participate in such challenges, which as fellow steering-group member Ross Anderson has pointed out, the vote to leave the EU has seriously harmed. Finally, the report calls for improvements to the research commercialisation process, including that universities priorities getting research out into the real world over trying to extract as much money as possible, and that new investment sources are developed to fill in the gaps left by traditional venture capital, such as for software developed for the public good.

Exceptional access provisions in the Investigatory Powers Bill

The Investigatory Powers Bill, being debated in Parliament this week, proposes the first wide-scale update in 15 years to the surveillance powers of the UK law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The Bill has several goals: to consolidate some existing surveillance powers currently either scattered throughout other legislation or not even publicly disclosed, to create a wide range of new surveillance powers, and to change the process of authorisation and oversight surrounding the use of surveillance powers. The Bill is complex and, at 245 pages long, makes scrutiny challenging.

The Bill has had its first and second readings in the House of Commons, and has been examined by relevant committees in the Commons. The Bill will now be debated in the ‘report stage’, where MPs will have the chance to propose amendments following committee scrutiny. After this it will progress to a third reading, and then to the House of Lords for further debate, followed by final agreement by both Houses.

So far, four committee reports have been published examining the draft Bill, from the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, the joint House of Lords/House of Commons committee specifically set up to examine the draft Bill, the House of Commons Science and Technology committee (to which I served as technical advisor) and the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

These committees were faced with a difficult task of meeting an accelerated timetable for the Bill, with the government aiming to have it become law by the end of 2016. The reason for the haste is that the Bill would re-instate and extend the ability of the government to compel companies to collect data about their users, even without there being any suspicion of wrongdoing, known as “data retention”. This power was previously set out in the EU Data Retention Directive, but in 2014 the European Court of Justice found it be unlawful.

Emergency legislation passed to temporarily permit the government to continue their activities will expire in December 2016 (but may be repealed earlier if an appeal to the European Court of Justice succeeds).

The four committees which examined the Bill together made 130 recommendations but since the draft was published, the government only slightly changed the Bill, and only a few minor amendments were accepted by the Public Bills committee.

Many questions remain about whether the powers granted by the Bill are justifiable and subject to adequate oversight, but where insights from computer security research are particularly relevant is on the powers to grant law enforcement the ability to bypass normal security mechanisms, sometimes termed “exceptional access”.

Continue reading Exceptional access provisions in the Investigatory Powers Bill

Are Payment Card Contracts Unfair?

While US bank customers are almost completely protected against fraudulent transactions, in Europe banks are entitled to refuse to reimburse victims of fraud under certain circumstances. The EU Payment Services Directive (PSD) is supposed to protect customers but if the bank can show that the customer has been “grossly negligent” in following the terms and conditions associated with their account then the PSD permits the bank to pass the cost of any fraud on to the customer. The bank doesn’t have to show how the fraud happened, just that the most likely explanation for the fraud is that the customer failed to follow one of the rules set out by the bank on how to protect the account. To be certain of obtaining a refund, a customer must be able to show that he or she complied with every security-related clause of the terms and conditions, or show that the fraud was a result of a flaw in the bank’s security.

The bank terms and conditions, and how customers comply with them, are therefore of critical importance for consumer protection. We set out to answer the question: are these terms and conditions fair, taking into account how customers use their banking facilities? We focussed on ATM payments and in particular how customers manage PINs because ATM fraud losses are paid for by the banks and not retailers, so there is more incentive for the bank to pass losses on to the customer. In our paper – “Are Payment Card Contracts Unfair?” – published at Financial Cryptography 2016 we show that customers have too many PINs to remember them unaided and therefore it is unrealistic to expect customers to comply with all the rules banks set: to choose unguessable PINs, not write them down, and not use them elsewhere (even with different banks). We find that, as a result of these unrealistic expectations, customers do indeed make use of coping mechanisms which reduce security and violate terms and conditions, which puts them in a weak position should they be the victim of fraud.

We surveyed 241 UK bank customers and found that 19% of customers have four or more PINs and 48% of PINs are used at most once a month. As a result of interference (one memory being confused with another) and forgetting over time (if a memory is not exercised frequently it will be lost) it is infeasible for typical customers to remember all their bank PINs unaided. It is therefore inevitable that customers forget PINs (a quarter of our participants had forgot a 4-digit PIN at least once) and take steps to help them recall PINs. Of our participants, 33% recorded their PIN (most commonly in a mobile phone, notebook or diary) and 23% re-used their PIN elsewhere (most commonly to unlock their mobile phone). Both of these coping mechanisms would leave customers at risk of being found liable for fraud.

Customers also use the same PIN on several cards to reduce the burden of remembering PINs – 16% of our participants stated they used this technique, with the same PIN being used on up to 9 cards. Because each card allows the criminal 6 guesses at a PIN (3 on the card itself, and 3 at an ATM) this gives criminals an excellent opportunity to guess PINs and again leave the customer responsible for the losses. Such attacks are made easier by the fact that customers can change their PIN to one which is easier to remember, but also probably easier for criminals to guess (13% of our participants used a mnemonic, most commonly deriving the PIN from a specific date). Bonneau et al. studied in more detail exactly how bank customers select PINs.

Finally we found that PINs are regularly shared with other people, most commonly with a spouse or partner (32% of our participants). Again this violates bank terms and conditions and so puts customers at risk of being held liable for fraud.

Holding customers liable for not being able to follow unrealistic, vague and contradictory advice is grossly unfair to fraud victims. The Payment Services Directive is being revised, and in our submission to the consultation by the European Banking Authority we ask that banks only be permitted to pass fraud losses on to customers if they use authentication mechanisms which are feasible to use without undue effort, given the context of how people actually use banking facilities in normal life. Alternatively, regulators could adopt the tried and tested US model of strong consumer protection, and allow banks to manage risks through fraud detection. The increased trust from this approach might increase transaction volumes and profit for the industry overall.

“Are Payment Card Contracts Unfair?” by Steven J. Murdoch, Ingolf Becker, Ruba Abu-Salma, Ross Anderson, Nicholas Bohm, Alice Hutchings, M. Angela Sasse, and Gianluca Stringhini will be presented at Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Barbados, 22–26 February 2016.

Insecure by design: protocols for encrypted phone calls

The MIKEY-SAKKE protocol is being promoted by the UK government as a better way to secure phone calls. The reality is that MIKEY-SAKKE is designed to offer minimal security while allowing undetectable mass surveillance, through the introduction a backdoor based around mandatory key-escrow. This weakness has implications which go further than just the security of phone calls.

The current state of security for phone calls leaves a lot to be desired. Land-line calls are almost entirely unencrypted, and cellphone calls are also unencrypted except for the radio link between the handset and the phone network. While the latest cryptography standards for cellphones (3G and 4G) are reasonably strong it is possible to force a phone to fall back to older standards with easy-to-break cryptography, if any. The vast majority of phones will not reveal to their user whether such an attack is under way.

The only reason that eavesdropping on land-line calls is not commonplace is that getting access to the closed phone networks is not as easy compared to the more open Internet, and cellphone cryptography designers relied on the equipment necessary to intercept the radio link being only affordable by well-funded government intelligence agencies, and not by criminals or for corporate espionage. That might have been true in the past but it certainly no longer the case with the necessary equipment now available for $1,500. Governments, companies and individuals are increasingly looking for better security.

A second driver for better phone call encryption is the convergence of Internet and phone networks. The LTE (Long-Term Evolution) 4G cellphone standard – under development by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) – carries voice calls over IP packets, and desktop phones in companies are increasingly carrying voice over IP (VoIP) too. Because voice calls may travel over the Internet, whatever security was offered by the closed phone networks is gone and so other security mechanisms are needed.

Like Internet data encryption, voice encryption can broadly be categorised as either link encryption, where each intermediary may encrypt data before passing it onto the next, or end-to-end encryption, where communications are encrypted such that only the legitimate end-points can have access to the unencrypted communication. End-to-end encryption is preferable for security because it avoids intermediaries being able to eavesdrop on communications and gives the end-points assurance that communications will indeed be encrypted all the way to their other communication partner.

Current cellphone encryption standards are link encryption: the phone encrypts calls between it and the phone network using cryptographic keys stored on the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). Within the phone network, encryption may also be present but the network provider still has access to unencrypted data, so even ignoring the vulnerability to fall-back attacks on the radio link, the network providers and their suppliers are weak points that are tempting for attackers to compromise. Recent examples of such attacks include the compromise of the phone networks of Vodafone in Greece (2004) and Belgacom in Belgium (2012), and the SIM card supplier Gemalto in France (2010). The identity of the Vodafone Greece hacker remains unknown (though the NSA is suspected) but the attacks against Belgacom and Gemalto were carried out by the UK signals intelligence agency – GCHQ – and only publicly revealed from the Snowden leaks, so it is quite possible there are others attacks which remain hidden.

Email is typically only secured by link encryption, if at all, with HTTPS encrypting access to most webmail and Transport Layer Security (TLS) sometimes encrypting other communication protocols that carry email (SMTP, IMAP and POP). Again, the fact that intermediaries have access to plaintext creates a vulnerability, as demonstrated by the 2009 hack of Google’s Gmail likely originating from China. End-to-end email encryption is possible using the OpenPGP or S/MIME protocols but their use is not common, primarily due to their poor usability, which in turn is at least partially a result of having to stay compatible with older insecure email standards.

In contrast, instant messaging applications had more opportunity to start with a clean-slate (because there is no expectation of compatibility among different networks) and so this is where much innovation in terms of end-to-end security has taken place. Secure voice communication however has had less attention than instant messaging so in the remainder of the article we shall examine what should be expected of a secure voice communication system, and in particular see how one of the latest and up-coming protocols, MIKEY-SAKKE, which comes with UK government backing, meets these criteria.

MIKEY-SAKKE and Secure Chorus

MIKEY-SAKKE is the security protocol behind the Secure Chorus voice (and also video) encryption standard, commissioned and designed by GCHQ through their information security arm, CESG. GCHQ have announced that they will only certify voice encryption products through their Commercial Product Assurance (CPA) security evaluation scheme if the product implements MIKEY-SAKKE and Secure Chorus. As a result, MIKEY-SAKKE has a monopoly over the vast majority of classified UK government voice communication and so companies developing secure voice communication systems must implement it in order to gain access to this market. GCHQ can also set requirements of what products are used in the public sector and as well as for companies operating critical national infrastructure.

UK government standards are also influential in guiding purchase decisions outside of government and we are already seeing MIKEY-SAKKE marketed commercially as “government-grade security” and capitalising on their approval for use in the UK government. For this reason, and also because GCHQ have provided implementers a free open source library to make it easier and cheaper to deploy Secure Chorus, we can expect wide use MIKEY-SAKKE in industry and possibly among the public. It is therefore important to consider whether MIKEY-SAKKE is appropriate for wide-scale use. For the reasons outlined in the remainder of this article, the answer is no – MIKEY-SAKKE is designed to offer minimal security while allowing undetectable mass surveillance though key-escrow, not to provide effective security.

Continue reading Insecure by design: protocols for encrypted phone calls

How Tor’s privacy was (momentarily) broken, and the questions it raises

Just how secure is Tor, one of the most widely used internet privacy tools? Court documents released from the Silk Road 2.0 trial suggest that a “university-based research institute” provided information that broke Tor’s privacy protections, helping identify the operator of the illicit online marketplace.

Silk Road and its successor Silk Road 2.0 were run as a Tor hidden service, an anonymised website accessible only over the Tor network which protects the identity of those running the site and those using it. The same technology is used to protect the privacy of visitors to other websites including journalists reporting on mafia activity, search engines and social networks, so the security of Tor is of critical importance to many.

How Tor’s privacy shield works

Almost 97% of Tor traffic is from those using Tor to anonymise their use of standard websites outside the network. To do so a path is created through the Tor network via three computers (nodes) selected at random: a first node entering the network, a middle node (or nodes), and a final node from which the communication exits the Tor network and passes to the destination website. The first node knows the user’s address, the last node knows the site being accessed, but no node knows both.

The remaining 3% of Tor traffic is to hidden services. These websites use “.onion” addresses stored in a hidden service directory. The user first requests information on how to contact the hidden service website, then both the user and the website make the three-hop path through the Tor network to a rendezvous point which joins the two connections and allows both parties to communicate.

In both cases, if a malicious operator simultaneously controls both the first and last nodes to the Tor network then it is possible to link the incoming and outgoing traffic and potentially identify the user. To prevent this, the Tor network is designed from the outset to have sufficient diversity in terms of who runs nodes and where they are located – and the way that nodes are selected will avoid choosing closely related nodes, so as to reduce the likelihood of a user’s privacy being compromised.

This type of design is known as distributed trust: compromising any single computer should not be enough to break the security the system offers (although compromising a large proportion of the network is still a problem). Distributed trust systems protect not only the users, but also the operators; because the operators cannot break the users’ anonymity – they do not have the “keys” themselves – they are less likely to be targeted by attackers.

Unpeeling the onion skin

With about 2m daily users Tor is by far the most widely used privacy system and is considered one of the most secure, so research that demonstrates the existence of a vulnerability is important. Most research examines how to increase the likelihood of an attacker controlling both the first and last node in a connection, or how to link incoming traffic to outgoing.

When the 2014 programme for the annual BlackHat conference was announced, it included a talk by a team of researchers from CERT, a Carnegie Mellon University research institute, claiming to have found a means to compromise Tor. But the talk was cancelled and, unusually, the researchers did not give advance notice of the vulnerability to the Tor Project in order for them to examine and fix it where necessary.

This decision was particularly strange given that CERT is worldwide coordinator for ensuring software vendors are notified of vulnerabilities in their products so they can fix them before criminals can exploit them. However, the CERT researchers gave enough hints that Tor developers were able to investigate what had happened. When they examined the network they found someone was indeed attacking Tor users using a technique that matched CERT’s description.

The multiple node attack

The attack turned on a means to tamper with a user’s traffic as they looked up the .onion address in the hidden service directory, or in the hidden service’s traffic as it uploaded the information to the directory.

Continue reading How Tor’s privacy was (momentarily) broken, and the questions it raises

Forced authorisation chip and PIN scam hitting high-end retailers

Chip and PIN was designed to prevent fraud, but it also created a new opportunity for criminals that is taking retailers by surprise. Known as “forced authorisation”, committing the fraud requires no special equipment and when it works, it works big: in one transaction a jewellers store lost £20,500. This type of fraud is already a problem in the UK, and now that US retailers have made it through the first Black Friday since the Chip and PIN deadline, criminals there will be looking into what new fraud techniques are available.

The fraud works when the retailer has a one-piece Chip and PIN terminal that’s passed between the customer and retailer during the course of the transaction. This type of terminal is common, particularly in smaller shops and restaurants. They’re a cheaper option compared to terminals with a separate PIN pad (at least until a fraud happens).

The way forced authorisation fraud works is that the retailer sets up the terminal for a transaction by inserting the customer’s card and entering the amount, then hands the terminal over to the customer so they can type in the PIN. But the criminal has used a stolen or counterfeit card, and due to the high value of the transaction the terminal performs a “referral” — asking the retailer to call the bank to perform additional checks such as the customer answering a security question. If the security checks pass, the bank will give the retailer an authorisation code to enter into the terminal.

The problem is that when the terminal asks for these security checks, it’s still in the hands of the criminal, and it’s the criminal that follows the steps that the retailer should have. Since there’s no phone conversation with the bank, the criminal doesn’t know the correct authorisation code. But what surprises retailers is that the criminal can type in anything at this stage and the transaction will go through. The criminal might also be able to bypass other security features, for example they could override the checking of the PIN by following the steps the retailer would if the customer has forgotten the PIN.

By the time the terminal is passed back to the retailer, it looks like the transaction was completed successfully. The receipt will differ only very subtly from that of a normal transaction, if at all. The criminal walks off with the goods and it’s only at the end of the day that the authorisation code is checked by the bank. By that time, the criminal is long gone. Because some of the security checks the bank asked for weren’t completed, the retailer doesn’t get the money.

Continue reading Forced authorisation chip and PIN scam hitting high-end retailers

Just how sophisticated will card fraud techniques become?

In late 2009, my colleagues and I discovered a serious vulnerability in EMV, the most widely used standard for smart card payments, known as “Chip and PIN” in the UK. We showed that it was possible for criminals to use a stolen credit or debit card without knowing the PIN, by tricking the terminal into thinking that any PIN is correct. We gave the banking industry advance notice of our discovery in early December 2009, to give them time to fix the problem before we published our research. After this period expired (two months, in this case) we published our paper as well explaining our results to the public on BBC Newsnight. We demonstrated that this vulnerability was real using a proof-of-concept system built from equipment we had available (off-the shelf laptop and card reader, FPGA development board, and hand-made card emulator).

After the programme aired, the response from the banking industry dismissed the possibility that the vulnerability would be successfully exploited by criminals. The banking trade body, the UK Cards Association, said:

“We believe that this complicated method will never present a real threat to our customers’ cards. … Neither the banking industry nor the police have any evidence of criminals having the capability to deploy such sophisticated attacks.”

Similarly, EMVCo, who develop the EMV standards said:

“It is EMVCo’s view that when the full payment process is taken into account, suitable countermeasures to the attack described in the recent Cambridge Report are already available.”

It was therefore interesting to see that in May 2011, criminals were caught having stolen cards in France then exploiting a variant of this vulnerability to buy over €500,000 worth of goods in Belgium (which were then re-sold). At the time, not many details were available, but it seemed that the techniques the criminals used were much more sophisticated than our proof-of-concept demonstration.

We now know more about what actually happened, as well as the banks’ response, thanks to a paper by the researchers who performed the forensic analysis that formed part of the criminal investigation of this case. It shows just how sophisticated criminals could be, given sufficient motivation, contrary to the expectations in the original banking industry response.

Continue reading Just how sophisticated will card fraud techniques become?