STE WILLIAMS

South Korean police say they have arrested two malicious hackers that obtained personal details of 8.7 million KT mobile customers and on-selling the data to telemarketing firms.

The police accuse the pair of earning one billion won, which sounds a lot more than the roughly $US800,000 it converts to, in the scam. The data theft took place between February this year and early this month, when KT detected signs of intrusion on their networks.

Seven individuals have been charged over buying the data, according to AFP.

In the kind of apology you never get from Western companies suffering data breaches (or, for that matter, repeatedly and egregiously breaching their customers’ privacy – we know who we’re talking about), KT issued a statement to customers saying that “We deeply bow our head in apology” for the leaks.

This may, however, reflect KT’s humiliation at being still vulnerable to data leaks, following last year’s attack in which KT’s Cyworld social network site and Nate Web portal were infiltrated and personal data of 35 million customers copied. That attack was blamed on Chinese intruders.

Other major attacks on South Korean sites included a breach at game developer Nexon (13 million customers exposed), and retailer Shinsegae along with 24 other companies (20 million customers exposed). ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/29/kt_hackers_arrested/

A campaign using the name and much of the iconography of activist group Anonymous has released data it hopes will embarrass the Australian Government into backing away from even considering data retention laws.

Data has been posted to a number of file sharing sites and appears to have been released at around 2:00AM Sunday AEST.

The Register has visited three of the sites and the data concerned is far from explosive as it lists the addresses of government agencies and foreign embassies in Australia. Some lines of data reveal the first names of individuals. Some record hobbies. A field for mobile phone numbers and phone numbers that will reach individuals in the evening is also present in many records.

The group has described the attack and its motives in a blog post and video in which the group justifies the release by describing it as a “proof of concept attack” that used “the very same methods your government uses on the Australian population.” Those methods, Anonymous or those using that name assert, could mean any data held by the Australian Government could be exposed in similar ways, to the detriment of individuals’ liberty and privacy.

The attack is said to have exploited a flaw in an un-patched and forgotten AAPT ColdFusion server hosted at a third party, Melbourne IT. How that represents a method Australia’s government uses is not explained.

The speech accompanying the video diverges from the written text, and at around 2:25 in the video issues a threat of further action:

Do not underestimate what a nation settled by convicts can do. You must keep the people happy. Do that and there is no drama. Otherwise, you’d better expect us.

The soundtrack to the video is spoken in a mock Australian accent that even some anons, in a chat room the Anonymous’ Op_Australia twitter feed has promoted as a reliable source of information on its antipodean activities, found risible.

The decision to claim the video is spoken by a member of the Australian public is also noteworthy, as some people in the chat room appear not to reside in Australia. One has told The Reg he or she resides in France. Others keep hours that indicate they either have very unusual sleeping patterns or reside in time zones beyond Australia.

Chat in the room also indicated the group had difficulty preparing the data for release, as the size of the stolen data – 40 gigabytes and several hundred database tables – presented technical challenges. Banter also seemed to indicate that different opinions about what to release were being debated among activists. Some argued that AAPT’s confirmation of data loss achieved the group’s aims and that the eventual release therefore did not need to make additional revelations.

The eventual decision preserved some column headers, but the majority of cells are replaced with the word “NULL”.

On Saturday the blog post above was also, for a time, removed from the AnonPR.net site. Chat in the group also suggested activists were attacking the web site of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/anonymous_australia_posts_data/

A campaign using the name and much of the iconography of activist group Anonymous has released data it hopes will embarrass the Australian Government into backing away from even considering data retention laws.

Data has been posted to a number of file sharing sites and appears to have been released at around 2:00AM Sunday AEST.

The Register has visited three of the sites and the data concerned is far from explosive as it lists the addresses of government agencies and foreign embassies in Australia. Some lines of data reveal the first names of individuals. Some record hobbies. A field for mobile phone numbers and phone numbers that will reach individuals in the evening is also present in many records.

The group has described the attack and its motives in a blog post and video in which the group justifies the release by describing it as a “proof of concept attack” that used “the very same methods your government uses on the Australian population.” Those methods, Anonymous or those using that name assert, could mean any data held by the Australian Government could be exposed in similar ways, to the detriment of individuals’ liberty and privacy.

The attack is said to have exploited a flaw in an un-patched and forgotten AAPT ColdFusion server hosted at a third party, Melbourne IT. How that represents a method Australia’s government uses is not explained.

The speech accompanying the video diverges from the written text, and at around 2:25 in the video issues a threat of further action:

Do not underestimate what a nation settled by convicts can do. You must keep the people happy. Do that and there is no drama. Otherwise, you’d better expect us.

The soundtrack to the video is spoken in a mock Australian accent that even some anons, in a chat room the Anonymous’ Op_Australia twitter feed has promoted as a reliable source of information on its antipodean activities, found risible.

The decision to claim the video is spoken by a member of the Australian public is also noteworthy, as some people in the chat room appear not to reside in Australia. One has told The Reg he or she resides in France. Others keep hours that indicate they either have very unusual sleeping patterns or reside in time zones beyond Australia.

Chat in the room also indicated the group had difficulty preparing the data for release, as the size of the stolen data – 40 gigabytes and several hundred database tables – presented technical challenges. Banter also seemed to indicate that different opinions about what to release were being debated among activists. Some argued that AAPT’s confirmation of data loss achieved the group’s aims and that the eventual release therefore did not need to make additional revelations.

The eventual decision preserved some column headers, but the majority of cells are replaced with the word “NULL”.

On Saturday the blog post above was also, for a time, removed from the AnonPR.net site. Chat in the group also suggested activists were attacking the web site of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/anonymous_australia_posts_data/

The lead author and editor of the OAuth 2.0 network authorization standard has stepped down from his role, withdrawn his name from the specification, and quit the working group, describing the current version of the spec as “the biggest professional disappointment of my career.”

Eran Hammer, who helped create the OAuth 1.0 spec, has been editing the evolving 2.0 spec for the last three years. He resigned from his role in June but only went public with his reasons in a blog post on Thursday.

“At the end, I reached the conclusion that OAuth 2.0 is a bad protocol,” Hammer writes. “WS-* bad. It is bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it.”

OAuth is an authorization protocol that allows users to share private resources stored on one site with applications running on another site, without handing out their usernames and passwords.

Its best-known proponent is Facebook, which has implemented a draft version of the OAuth 2.0 spec as part of its Open Graph set of social APIs. Other high-profile sites that have implemented OAuth to some degree include Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo!

But according to Hammer, none of these implementations is likely to be interoperable with any of the others, because the OAuth 2.0 specification has grown too broad and it allows for almost unlimited extensibility.

“It is this extensibility and required flexibility that destroyed the protocol,” Hammer writes. “With very little effort, pretty much anything can be called OAuth 2.0 compliant.”

The problem, in Hammer’s view, is that the OAuth 2.0 working group has catered far too much to the needs of the enterprise world, at the expense of important security features that are necessary if the protocol is to be used on the web.

Authorization tokens in OAuth 2.0 are inherently less secure than they were in OAuth 1.0, he says, as a direct result of a series of compromises that were made to address the demands of the enterprise community.

Even worse, Hammer says, the working group has been unable to reach a consensus on a long line of significant issues, resulting in a specification that fails to deliver on even its most basic goals and doesn’t achieve anything more than OAuth 1.0 did.

“I honestly don’t know what use cases OAuth 2.0 is trying to solve any more,” Hammer says.

Hammer believes the eventual breakdown of the OAuth specification effort was the direct result of its becoming a working group under the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2009, which he now feels was “a huge mistake.” The IETF, he believes, is institutionally incapable of producing a simple protocol that serves the needs of the web community, like OAuth 1.0.

Following Hammer’s post, the broader OAuth community chimed in to agree with many of his points.

“I can’t decide if I should feel guilty for dropping out immediately after IETF San Francisco, or if I should feel grateful I didn’t waste any time on the OAuth 2.0 fight,” writes Mark Atwood in a comment on Hammer’s original post.

Others disagreed with Hammer’s assertion that OAuth 2.0 was a failure, and said that the problems with the standardization process were more organizational.

“I’ve built client libraries for both OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 and I can tell you hands down that OAuth 2.0 is much easier to implement than OAuth 1.0,” writes Joe Gregorio in a post on Google+. He adds, “The IETF process isn’t really broken, but it really only works with good working group chairs in place.”

What Hammer’s departure will mean for the OAuth 2.0 standard remains to be seen. But Hammer himself is not optimistic.

“I think the OAuth brand is in decline,” he writes. “This framework will live for a while, and given the lack of alternatives, it will gain widespread adoption. But we are also likely to see major security failures in the next couple of years and the slow but steady devaluation of the brand. It will be another hated protocol you are stuck with.” ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/oauth_editor_quits/

The lead author and editor of the OAuth 2.0 network authorization standard has stepped down from his role, withdrawn his name from the specification, and quit the working group, describing the current version of the spec as “the biggest professional disappointment of my career.”

Eran Hammer, who helped create the OAuth 1.0 spec, has been editing the evolving 2.0 spec for the last three years. He resigned from his role in June but only went public with his reasons in a blog post on Thursday.

“At the end, I reached the conclusion that OAuth 2.0 is a bad protocol,” Hammer writes. “WS-* bad. It is bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it.”

OAuth is an authorization protocol that allows users to share private resources stored on one site with applications running on another site, without handing out their usernames and passwords.

Its best-known proponent is Facebook, which has implemented a draft version of the OAuth 2.0 spec as part of its Open Graph set of social APIs. Other high-profile sites that have implemented OAuth to some degree include Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo!

But according to Hammer, none of these implementations is likely to be interoperable with any of the others, because the OAuth 2.0 specification has grown too broad and it allows for almost unlimited extensibility.

“It is this extensibility and required flexibility that destroyed the protocol,” Hammer writes. “With very little effort, pretty much anything can be called OAuth 2.0 compliant.”

The problem, in Hammer’s view, is that the OAuth 2.0 working group has catered far too much to the needs of the enterprise world, at the expense of important security features that are necessary if the protocol is to be used on the web.

Authorization tokens in OAuth 2.0 are inherently less secure than they were in OAuth 1.0, he says, as a direct result of a series of compromises that were made to address the demands of the enterprise community.

Even worse, Hammer says, the working group has been unable to reach a consensus on a long line of significant issues, resulting in a specification that fails to deliver on even its most basic goals and doesn’t achieve anything more than OAuth 1.0 did.

“I honestly don’t know what use cases OAuth 2.0 is trying to solve any more,” Hammer says.

Hammer believes the eventual breakdown of the OAuth specification effort was the direct result of its becoming a working group under the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2009, which he now feels was “a huge mistake.” The IETF, he believes, is institutionally incapable of producing a simple protocol that serves the needs of the web community, like OAuth 1.0.

Following Hammer’s post, the broader OAuth community chimed in to agree with many of his points.

“I can’t decide if I should feel guilty for dropping out immediately after IETF San Francisco, or if I should feel grateful I didn’t waste any time on the OAuth 2.0 fight,” writes Mark Atwood in a comment on Hammer’s original post.

Others disagreed with Hammer’s assertion that OAuth 2.0 was a failure, and said that the problems with the standardization process were more organizational.

“I’ve built client libraries for both OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 and I can tell you hands down that OAuth 2.0 is much easier to implement than OAuth 1.0,” writes Joe Gregorio in a post on Google+. He adds, “The IETF process isn’t really broken, but it really only works with good working group chairs in place.”

What Hammer’s departure will mean for the OAuth 2.0 standard remains to be seen. But Hammer himself is not optimistic.

“I think the OAuth brand is in decline,” he writes. “This framework will live for a while, and given the lack of alternatives, it will gain widespread adoption. But we are also likely to see major security failures in the next couple of years and the slow but steady devaluation of the brand. It will be another hated protocol you are stuck with.” ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/oauth_editor_quits/

The lead author and editor of the OAuth 2.0 network authorization standard has stepped down from his role, withdrawn his name from the specification, and quit the working group, describing the current version of the spec as “the biggest professional disappointment of my career.”

Eran Hammer, who helped create the OAuth 1.0 spec, has been editing the evolving 2.0 spec for the last three years. He resigned from his role in June but only went public with his reasons in a blog post on Thursday.

“At the end, I reached the conclusion that OAuth 2.0 is a bad protocol,” Hammer writes. “WS-* bad. It is bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it.”

OAuth is an authorization protocol that allows users to share private resources stored on one site with applications running on another site, without handing out their usernames and passwords.

Its best-known proponent is Facebook, which has implemented a draft version of the OAuth 2.0 spec as part of its Open Graph set of social APIs. Other high-profile sites that have implemented OAuth to some degree include Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo!

But according to Hammer, none of these implementations is likely to be interoperable with any of the others, because the OAuth 2.0 specification has grown too broad and it allows for almost unlimited extensibility.

“It is this extensibility and required flexibility that destroyed the protocol,” Hammer writes. “With very little effort, pretty much anything can be called OAuth 2.0 compliant.”

The problem, in Hammer’s view, is that the OAuth 2.0 working group has catered far too much to the needs of the enterprise world, at the expense of important security features that are necessary if the protocol is to be used on the web.

Authorization tokens in OAuth 2.0 are inherently less secure than they were in OAuth 1.0, he says, as a direct result of a series of compromises that were made to address the demands of the enterprise community.

Even worse, Hammer says, the working group has been unable to reach a consensus on a long line of significant issues, resulting in a specification that fails to deliver on even its most basic goals and doesn’t achieve anything more than OAuth 1.0 did.

“I honestly don’t know what use cases OAuth 2.0 is trying to solve any more,” Hammer says.

Hammer believes the eventual breakdown of the OAuth specification effort was the direct result of its becoming a working group under the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2009, which he now feels was “a huge mistake.” The IETF, he believes, is institutionally incapable of producing a simple protocol that serves the needs of the web community, like OAuth 1.0.

Following Hammer’s post, the broader OAuth community chimed in to agree with many of his points.

“I can’t decide if I should feel guilty for dropping out immediately after IETF San Francisco, or if I should feel grateful I didn’t waste any time on the OAuth 2.0 fight,” writes Mark Atwood in a comment on Hammer’s original post.

Others disagreed with Hammer’s assertion that OAuth 2.0 was a failure, and said that the problems with the standardization process were more organizational.

“I’ve built client libraries for both OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 and I can tell you hands down that OAuth 2.0 is much easier to implement than OAuth 1.0,” writes Joe Gregorio in a post on Google+. He adds, “The IETF process isn’t really broken, but it really only works with good working group chairs in place.”

What Hammer’s departure will mean for the OAuth 2.0 standard remains to be seen. But Hammer himself is not optimistic.

“I think the OAuth brand is in decline,” he writes. “This framework will live for a while, and given the lack of alternatives, it will gain widespread adoption. But we are also likely to see major security failures in the next couple of years and the slow but steady devaluation of the brand. It will be another hated protocol you are stuck with.” ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/oauth_editor_quits/

Apple has forked out about $350m in cash for a security company that makes embedded security solutions for mobile devices, according to an SEC filing.

The buyout of AuthenTec drops a few hints about where Apple might take its fondleslab and mini fondleslab ranges in the future.

AuthenTec is a public company so the buyout was listed on the SEC site yesterday. Apple is paying $8 a share to AuthenTec shareholders – a 58 per cent premium on the closing share price the day before the acquisition, according to Bloomberg.

Talking to investors, the AuthenTec CEO said he couldn’t comment on particular details – but the buyout deal transfers all AuthenTec hardware to Apple and exclusive licences for AuthenTec’s Intellectual Property. Apple will own all future tech developed by the AuthenTec team.

AuthenTec’s key technology is fingerprint identification intended to replace passwords on touchscreen devices. The tech works even if your skin is oily and calloused, the site claims:

Our] swipe sensors use a patented sub-surface technology to read the live layer of skin beneath the skin’s surface where the fingerprint is first formed.  This allows AuthenTec sensors to read through worn, damaged, calloused or oily skin to ensure that they provide very accurate fingerprint imaging for everyone, every time.

AuthenTec also produces the software and hardware that backs up their smart sensors and sells bread-and-butter security products like secure Virtual Private Networks, which could go a long way to reassuring enterprise bods planning to buy the kit in bulk.

The amount of money that will shift hands could vary as Apple have promised to pay more for certain licences depending on use.

The Florida-based company lost money last year – filing a loss of $6.78m on revenue of $71.77m. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/27/apple_buy_up_fingerprint_scanners_authentec/

Skype has issued a formal denial to reports that it has been allowing law enforcement to listen in on users’ calls following a change in its system architecture.

“Some media stories recently have suggested Skype may be acting improperly or based on ulterior motives against our users’ interests. Nothing could be more contrary to the Skype philosophy,” said Mark Gillett, Skype’s chief development and operations officer in a blog post.

The allegations came after Skype reconfigured its system architecture so that some of the supernodes on its peer to peer network were moved inside Microsoft’s data centers. This shift, coupled with a patent for “legal intercept” systems Microsoft was granted shortly after taking over the company, caused concern among some that Skype was selling out its users to the Feds.

Gillett categorically denied this was the case, saying that shifting the supernodes was begun before Microsoft bought out Skype, and that it is being done purely to improve service and make it more reliable and easier to upgrade in the future.

While Skype has had a policy of working with law enforcement on monitoring in exceptional circumstances he said, the rules of engagement for such a tactic are clearly stated on its website and Skype hasn’t changed its position. Calls are fully encrypted and information on users is not being kept.

“The enhancements we have been making to our software and infrastructure have been to improve user experience and reliability. Period,” he said.

In El Reg‘s opinion, Skype appears to be talking sense on this. Shifting part of the VoIP provider’s backbone into Microsoft data centers makes a lot of sense for Redmond, as it is looking to integrate Skype more deeply into its cloud offerings as it tries to make money on its $8.5bn purchase. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/27/skype_denies_spying/

Teen hacker Junaid Hussain was sentenced to six months in a youth detention lock-up today for breaking into an email account linked to Tony Blair among other attacks.

His defence barrister had attempted to pass his actions off as no worse than anything Prime Minister David Cameron or London Mayor Boris Johnson might have done in their youth.

Hussain, 18, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crookery back in July: for hacking into the email account of an aide to former UK premier Tony Blair and flooding the anti-terror hotline with nuisance calls. He was sentenced to three months in a youth detention facility for each offence in Southwark Crown Court.

Ben Cooper, speaking for the defence, said that Hussain had been a young teenager when he committed the offences, between the ages of 13 and 17, and had shown a lack of judgement typical for his age.

As an example, he said that Cameron and Johnson had been involved in a number of shenanigans in their youth, referring to the infamous Bullingdon Club. The pair were allegedly involved in all sorts of antics when they were students at Oxford University, including smashing up restaurants.

Prosecution barrister Richard Milne went through the charges again for the sentencing hearing, including explaining the consequences of Hussain’s offences.

The Katie Kay hack

The first offence was his hack into the Gmail account of one of Blair’s advisors, Katie Kay. After gaining access to the account, Hussain, also known by the handle TriCK, posted contact details from the account’s address book and other personal information online. The info included the former prime minister’s national insurance number.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told the court Kay had said in her statement that the hack was an invasion of her privacy.

“I was upset and embarrassed that my details and personal details of friends had been made public because of who I worked for,” she said. “I felt I or my friends could be targeted by abuse or worse.”

Terror line DoS

Hussain and his hacktivist group TeaMp0isoN also flooded the UK’s national anti-terrorism hotline, which takes calls from the public for tips on terrorist activity, with automated calls. So-called call-bombs are similar to a denial-of-service attack on a computer, and aim to disrupt the offered service.

As well as the automated calls, callers from the group also phoned in to abuse the operators, recording the conversations and then posting them online as well. Hussain was adamant that he had not been one of the actual callers, but pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge over the calls.

TeaMp0isoN apparently believed they were disrupting MI6 operations rather than police activities. Although none of the recorded calls picked up any sensitive information or affected national security, they did stop genuine calls from coming through, any of which could have contained valuable information, Milne pointed out.

Defence team: ‘He’s matured’

Defence barrister Ben Cooper told the court that Hussain had grown up a lot since his arrest and prosecution, was successfully working full time over the summer and had finished his A levels and received offers to study at university.

He repeated a number of times that Hussain was very frightened of being locked up and asked the court to consider a suspended sentence.

But the judge wasn’t moved by the arguments. He pointed out that the offences started when Hussain was young, but they continued right up until he was caught.

“He’s told me in his letter and he’s told the probation officer that he’s very frightened of custody and I couldn’t understand that more,” Judge Nicholas Lorraine-Smith said.

Cooper also talked about Hussain’s commitment to education and bettering himself and his strong family background, supported by references from family members and others. However, the judge said there was more to consider than his good character.

“In sentencing cases such as this, there has to be an element of his past and his family and his future, but there has to be an aspect of deterrence,” he said. “I’ve been provided with an enormous amount of information about him, but I have a number of duties.”

After hearing both sides, the judge retired for 15 minutes before coming back with his sentencing decision.

Hussain has been out on bail on a restricted basis, including electronic tagging and a curfew between 7pm and 7am. As that curfew is longer than nine hours, it counts as a type of custody, so Hussain will have half of the days he’s been out on bail – 52 – counted as time served.

The judge said Hussain was likely to be freed in time to take up one of his university places in October. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/27/teen_hacker_six_months/

A cyberstalking computer science student who tricked women into taking computers with hacked webcams into steamy shower rooms has been jailed for 12 months.

Trevor Timothy Harwell, 21, of Fullerton in California, will be forced to spend five years on probation following his release and ordered to complete a sex offender treatment programme after he was convicted of illegally installing spyware on six women’s computers in order to capture images and videos for his “subsequent sexual gratification”. Fullerton pleaded guilty to six felony counts of computer access and fraud, a statement by Orange County prosecutors on the case explains.

Cyberstalkers have been getting their rocks off by secretly snooping on female victims via webcams for several years. In some case, young women and girls have been blackmailed into performing further nude poses and sex acts by hackers threatening to distribute the compromising images they had already captured of their victims via the internet.

Harwell added a twisted refinement to the basic scam by making sure infected computers displayed a bogus error message to increase the chances of capturing nude pictures and movies.

The bogus error message stated: “You should fix your internal sensor soon. If unsure what to do, try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor.”

Despite the implausibility of this message, several women were nonetheless tricked into taking their laptops into their bathroom while taking a steamy shower.

Harwell was able to install “CamCapture” spyware onto victims’ computers in the first place because he worked part time as a computer repairman, specialising in fixing Macs, starting in June 2009. Harwell met his six identified victims through friends and his church before gaining access to their computers under the pretense of providing computer support. The scheme was exposed after two of his victims, who happened to be sisters, observed that the computer camera was irregularly blinking and took it to be repaired at a different shop.

The presence of spyware was detected and the matter was reported to police who opened an investigation that identified four other victims as well as fingering Harwell as a prime suspect in the case. Thousands of secretly taken still images and videos were found on Harwell’s computer. He was charged in June 2009.

Additional commentary on the case can be found in a blog post by Graham Cluley of Sophos here. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/26/webcam_spyware_pervert_jailed/