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ICANN Says No to .xxx

May 16, 2006 by

Susan Crawford reports that the ICANN board has voted not to proceed with creation of the .xxx domain. Susan, who is on ICANN’s board but voted against the decision, calls it a “low point” in ICANN’s history.

[Background: ICANN is a nonprofit organization that administers the Domain Name System (DNS), which translates human-readable Internet names like “www.freedom-to-tinker.com” into the numeric IP addresses like 192.168.1.4 that are actually used by the Internet Protocol. Accordingly, part of ICANN’s job is to decide on the creation and management of new top-level domains like .info, .travel, and so on.]

ICANN had decided, some time back, to move toward a .xxx domain for adult content. The arrangements for .xxx seemed to be ready, but now ICANN has pulled the plug. The reason, apparently, is that the ICANN board was worried that ICM, the company that would have run .xxx, could not ensure that sites in the domain complied with all applicable laws. Note that this is a different standard than other domain managers would have to meet – nobody expects the managers of .com to ensure, proactively, that .com sites obey all of the national laws that might apply to them. And of course we all know why the standard was different: governments are touchy about porn.

Susan argues that the .xxx decision is a departure from ICANN’s proper role.

ICANN’s mission is to coordinate the allocation of domain names and numbers, while preserving the operational stability, reliability, and global interoperability of the Internet. The vision of a non-governmental body managing key (but narrow) technical coordination functions for the Internet remains in my view the approach most likely to reflect the needs of the Internet community.

[…]

I am not persuaded that there is any good technical-competency or financial-competency reason not to [proceed with .xxx].

The vision here is of ICANN as a technocratic standard-setter, not a policy-maker. But ICANN, in setting the .xxx process in motion, had already made a policy decision. As I wrote last year, ICANN had decided to create a top-level domain for adult content, when there wasn’t one for (say) religious organizations, or science institutes. ICANN has put itself in the position of choosing which kinds of domains will exist, and for what purposes. Here is Susan again:

ICANN’s current process for selecting new [top-level domains], and the artificial scarcity this process creates, continues to raise procedural concerns that should be avoided in the future. I am not in favor of the “beauty contest” approach taken by ICANN thus far, which relies heavily on relatively subjective and arbitrary criteria, and not enough on the technical merits of the applications. I believe this subjective approach generates conflict and is damaging to the technically-focused, non-governmental, bottom-up vision of ICANN activity. Additionally, both XXX and TEL raise substantial concerns about the merits of continuing to believe that ICANN has the ability to choose who should “sponsor” a particular domain or indeed that “sponsorship” is a meaningful concept in a diverse world. These are strings we are considering, and how they are used at the second level in the future and by whom should not be our concern, provided the entity responsible for running them continues to comply with global consensus policies and is technically competent.

We need to adopt an objective system for the selection of new [top-level domains], through creating minimum technical and financial requirements for registries. Good proposals have been put forward for improving this process, including the selection of a fixed number annually by lottery or auction from among technically-competent bidders.

One wonders what ICANN was thinking when it set off down the .xxx path in the first place. Creating .xxx was pretty clearly a public policy decision – though one might argue about that decision’s likely effects, it was clearly not a neutral standards decision. The result, inevitably, was pressure from governments to reverse course, and a lose-lose choice between losing face by giving in to government pressure, on the one hand, and ignoring governments’ objections and thereby strengthening the forces that would replace ICANN with some kind of government-based policy agency, on the other.

We can only hope that ICANN will learn from its .xxx mistake and think hard about what it is for and how it can pursue its legitimate goals.

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Report Claims Very Serious Diebold Voting Machine Flaws

May 11, 2006 by

[This entry was written by Avi Rubin and Ed Felten.]

A report by Harri Hursti, released today at BlackBoxVoting, describes some very serious security flaws in Diebold voting machines. These are easily the most serious voting machine flaws we have seen to date – so serious that Hursti and BlackBoxVoting decided to redact some of the details in the reports. (We know most or all of the redacted information.) Now that the report has been released, we want to help people understand its implications.

Replicating the report’s findings would require access to a Diebold voting machine, and some time, so we are not in a position to replicate the findings at this time. However, the report is consistent with everything we know about how these voting machines work, and we find it very plausible. Assuming the report is accurate, we want to summarize its lessons for voters and election administrators.

Implications of the Report’s Findings

The attacks described in Hursti’s report would allow anyone who had physical access to a voting machine for a few minutes to install malicious software code on that machine, using simple, widely available tools. The malicious code, once installed, would control all of the functions of the voting machine, including the counting of votes.

Hursti’s findings suggest the possibililty of other attacks, not described in his report, that are even more worrisome.

In addition, compromised machines would be very difficult to detect or to repair. The normal procedure for installing software updates on the machines could not be trusted, because malicious code could cause that procedure to report success, without actually installing any updates. A technician who tried to update the machine’s software would be misled into thinking the update had been installed, when it actually had not.

On election day, malicious software could refuse to function, or it could silently miscount votes.

What can we do now?

Election officials are in a very tough spot with this latest vulnerability. Since exploiting the weakness requires physical access to a machine, physical security is of the utmost importance. All Diebold Accuvote machines should be sequestered and kept under vigilant watch. This measure is not perfect because it is possible that the machines are already compromised, and if it was done by a clever attacker, there may be no way to determine whether or not this is the case. Worse yet, the usual method of patching software problems cannot be trusted in this case.

Where possible, precincts planning on using these machines should consider making paper backup systems available to prepare for the possibility of widespread failures on election day. The nature of this technology is that there is really no remedy from a denial of service attack, except to have a backup system in place. While voter verified paper trails and proper audit can be used to protect against incorrect results from corrupt machines, they cannot prevent an attack that renders the machines non-functional on election day.

Using general purpose computers as voting machines has long been criticized by computer scientists. This latest vulnerability highlights the reasoning behind this position. This attack is possible due to the very nature of the hardware on which the systems are running. Several high profile studies failed to uncover this. With the current technology, there is no way to account for all the ways that a system might be vulnerable, and the discovery of a problem of this magnitude in the midst of primary season is the kind of scenario we have feared all along.

Timeline and Perspective

This is not the first time Diebold has faced serious security issues – though this problem appears to be the worst of them all. Here is a capsule history of Diebold security studies:

2001: Doug Jones produces a report highlighting design flaws in the machines that became the Diebold touchscreen voting machines.
July 24, 2003: Hopkins/Rice study finds many security flaws in Diebold machines, including ones that were pointed out by Doug Jones.
September 24, 2003: SAIC study finds serious flaws in Diebold voting machines. 2/3 of the report is redacted by the state of Maryland.
November 21, 2003: Ohio’s Compuware and InfoSentry reports find critical flaws in Diebold touchscreen voting machines
January 20, 2004: RABA study finds serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold touchscreen voting machines.
November, 2004: 37 states use Diebold touchscreen voting machines in general election.
March, 2006: Harri Hursti reports the most serious vulnerabilities to date discovered.

None of the previously published studies uncovered this flaw. Did SAIC? It might exist in the unredacted report, but to date, nobody outside of Maryland officials and SAIC has been able to see that report.

We believe that the question of whether DREs based on commodity hardware and operating systems should ever be used in elections needs serious consideration by government and election officials. As computer security experts, we believe that the known dangers and potentially unknown vulnerabilities are too great. We should not put ourselves in a position where, in the middle of primary season, the security of our voting systems comes into credible and legitimate question.

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Twenty-First Century Wiretapping: Recording

May 9, 2006 by

Yesterday I started a thread on new wiretapping technologies, and their policy implications. Today I want to talk about how we should deal with the ability of governments to record and store huge numbers of intercepted messages.

In the old days, before there were huge, cheap digital storage devices, government would record an intercepted message only if it was likely to listen to that message eventually. Human analysts’ time was scarce, but recording media were relatively scarce too. The cost of storage tended to limit the amount of recording.

Before too much longer, Moore’s Law will enable government to record every email and phone call it knows about, and to keep the recordings forever. The cost of storage will no longer be a factor. Indeed, if storage is free but analysts’ time is costly, then the cost-minimizing strategy is to record everything and sort it out later, rather than spending analyst time figuring out what to record. Cost is minimized by doing lots of recording.

Of course the government’s cost is not the only criterion that wiretap policy should consider. We also need to consider the effect on citizens.

Any nontrivial wiretap policy will sometimes eavesdrop on innocent citizens. Indeed, there is a plausible argument that a well-designed wiretap policy will mostly eavesdrop on innocent citizens. If we knew in advance, with certainty, that a particular communication would be part of a terrorist plot, then of course we would let government listen to that communication. But such certainty only exists in hypotheticals. In practice, the best we can hope for is that, based on the best available information, there is some known probability that the message will be part of a terrorist plot. If that probability is just barely less than 100%, we’ll be comfortable allowing eavesdropping on that message. If the probability is infinitesimal, we won’t allow eavesdropping. Somewhere in the middle there is a threshold probability, just high enough that we’re willing to allow eavesdropping. We’ll make the decision by weighing the potential benefit of hearing the bad guys’ conversations, against the costs and harms imposed by wiretapping, in light of the probability that we’ll overhear real bad guys. The key point here is that even the best wiretap policy will sometimes listen in on innocent people.

(For now, I’m assuming that “we” have access to the best possible information, so that “we” can make these decisions. In practice the relevant information may be closely held (perhaps with good reason) and it matters greatly who does the deciding. I know these issues are important. But please humor me and let me set them aside for a bit longer.)

The drawbacks of wiretapping come in several flavors:
(1) Cost: Wiretapping costs money.
(2) Mission Creep: The scope of wiretapping programs (arguably) tends to increase over time, so today’s reasonable, well-balanced program will lead to tomorrow’s overreach.
(3) Abuse: Wiretaps can be (and have been) misused, by improperly spying on innocent people such as political opponents of the wiretappers, and by misusing information gleaned from wiretaps.
(4) Privacy Threat: Ordinary citizens will feel less comfortable and will feel compelled to speak more cautiously, due to the knowledge that wiretappers might be listening.

Cheap, high capacity storage reduces the first drawback (cost) but increases all the others. The risk of abuse seems particularly serious. If government stores everything from now on, corrupt government officials, especially a few years down the road, will have tremendous power to peer into the lives of people they don’t like.

This risk is reason enough to insist that recording be limited, and that there be procedural safeguards against overzealous recording. What limits and safeguards are appropriate? That’s the topic of my next post.

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Twenty-First Century Wiretapping

May 8, 2006 by

The revelation that the National Security Agency has been wiretapping communications crossing the U.S. border (and possibly within the U.S.), without warrants, has started many angry conversations across the country, and rightly so. Here is an issue that challenges our most basic conception of the purposes of government and its relation to citizens.

Today I am starting a series of posts about this issue. Most discussions of the wiretap program focus on two questions: (1) Is the program legal? and (2) Regardless of its legality, does the program, as currently executed, serve our national interest (bearing in mind the national interest in both national security and citizens’ privacy)? These questions are surely important, but I want to set them aside here. I’m setting aside the legal question because it’s outside my expertise. I’m setting aside any evaluation of the current program for two reasons. First, we don’t know the exact scope of the current wiretap program. Second, most people – on both sides – think the second question is an easy one, and easy questions lead to boring conversations.

I want to focus instead on the more basic questions of what the extent of national security wiretapping should be, and why. The why question is especially important.

The first thing to realize is that this is not your parents’ wiretap debate. Though the use (and sometimes misuse) of wiretapping has long been a contentious issue, the terms of the debate have changed. I’m not referring here to the claim that 9/11 changed everything. What I mean is that wiretapping technology has changed in ways that ought to reframe the debate.

Two technology changes are important. The first is the dramatic drop in the cost of storage, making it economical to record vast amounts of communications traffic. The second technology change is the use of computer algorithms to analyze intercepted communications. Traditionally, a wiretap would be heard (or read) immediately by a person, or recorded for later listening by a person. Today computer algorithms can sift through intercepted communications, looking for sophisticated patterns, and can select certain items to be recorded or heard by a person.

Both changes are driven by Moore’s Law, the rule of thumb that the capability of digital technologies doubles every eighteen months or, equivalently, improves by a factor of 100 every ten years. This means that in 2016 government will be able to store 100 times more intercepted messages, and will be able to devote 100 times more computing capability to its analysis algorithms, compared to today. If the new world of wiretapping has not entirely arrived, it will be here before long.

So government will have greater eavesdropping capabilities and, more interestingly, it will have different capabilities. How should we respond? Surely it is not right simply to let government do whatever it wants – this has never been our policy. Nor can it be right to let government do no wiretapping at all – this has not been our policy either. What we need to understand is where to draw the line, and what kind of oversight and safeguards we need to keep our government near the line we have drawn. I hope that the next several posts can shed some small amount of light on these questions.

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Return to Monkey High

May 3, 2006 by

Newsweek has released its annual list of America’s top high schools, using the same flawed formula as last year. Here’s what I wrote then:

Here is Newsweek’s formula:
“Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 divided by the number of graduating seniors.”

Both parts of this ratio are suspect. In the numerator, they count the number of students who show up for AP/IB tests, not the number who get an acceptable score. Schools that require their students to take AP/IB tests will do well on this factor, regardless of how poorly they educate their students. In the denominator is the number of students who graduate. That’s right — every student who graduates lowers the school’s rating.

To see the problems with Newsweek’s formula, let’s consider a hypothetical school, Monkey High, where all of the students are monkeys. As principal of Monkey High, I require my students to take at least one AP test. (Attendance is enforced by zookeepers.) The monkeys do terribly on the test, but Newsweek gives them credit for showing up anyway. My monkey students don’t learn enough to earn a high school diploma — not to mention their behavioral problems — so I flunk them all out. Monkey High gets an infinite score on the Newsweek formula: many AP tests taken, divided by zero graduates. It’s the best high school in the universe!

[Note to math geeks annoyed by the division-by-zero: I can let one monkey graduate if that would make you happier.]

Though it didn’t change the formula this year, Newsweek did change which schools are eligible to appear on the list. In the past, schools with selective admission policies were not included, on the theory that they could boost their ratings by cherry-picking the best students. This year, selective schools are eligible, provided that their average SAT score is below 1300 (or their average ACT score is below 27).

This allows me to correct an error in last year’s post. Monkey High, with its selective monkeys-only admission policy, would have been barred from Newsweek’s list last year. But this year it qualifies, thanks to the monkeys’ low SAT scores.

Newsweek helpfully includes a list of selective schools that would have made the list but were barred due to SAT scores. This excluded-schools list is topped by a mind-bending caption:

Newsweek excluded these high performers from the list of Best High Schools because so many of their students score well above average on the SAT and ACT.

(If that doesn’t sound wrong to you, go back and read it again.) The excluded schools include, among others, the famous Thomas Jefferson H.S. for Science and Technology, in northern Virginia. Don’t lose heart, Jefferson teachers – with enough effort you can lower your students’ SAT scores and become one of America’s best high schools.

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