Hacking Team: The True Culprit

In 1999 Mark Minasi wrote The Software Conspiracy: Why Companies Put Out Faulty Software, How They Can Hurt You and What You Can Do a book about.

In 2004 Alan Cooper wrote (and I translated the Italian version for Apogeo) The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.

There have been, and still are, countless warning about the careless attitude toward security of the software houses’ marketing strategies (take a beta, call it final and release it.)

So, why the “concerned” journalists and activists only blame Hacking Team and Hacking Team-like companies, instead of involving in their outcry those who sold the world a bunch of crappy and vulnerable software?Secure programming and security by design are not “options”: by refusing to incorporate security into the roots of a software project would be like designing a car without worrying about the functionality of the brakes.And now we are facing the consequences.

Hacking Team: Silence On The Wire

Sometimes, what isn’t told is more important then what actually is.

None of the Italian mainstream primetime talk shows, usually very fast in arrange a panel of “experts” to help Joe Sixpacks’ audience understanding what’s the fuss, spent a single second with the Hacking Team case. And the news already lost its momentum on the newspapers.

Next week, nobody will ever remember what happened and in a couple of months everything will be back to business as usual…

My Two Cents on the Hacking Team Hack

What happened to Hacking Team neither is the first nor will be the last time a security company that lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Neither this is the first nor will be the last time that huge quantity of critical data are made available through the Internet.

So, to some extent, there is actually nothing new under the sun in the fact itself. This is why – putting aside the legal issues involved – I can hardly understand all the rants aimed at Hacking Team.

It is interesting, though, analyze the “claims” that some “expert” did about the story. To make my points, instead of talking about someone in particular, I’d rather refer in general to the accusations made against HT, so:

  1. Hacking Team has been “unethical”. A company is just supposed to be legally compliant. Ethic is a horse of different colours: it’s a personal thing, is relative and – thank to the French Revolution – is not mixed with laws. As soon as Hacking Team didn’t break any law by selling its stuff, it can’t be blamed because “money doesn’t smell”.
  2. Hacking Team sold its technology to human-rights bashing countries. While I’m in the digital rights world since 1994, I wasn’t aware that there were so much human-rights (keybord) warriors… Anyway, as soon a state has a seat in UN, and the sell is compliant to international laws and treaties (such as the Wassenaar Agreement), doing business with it shouldn’t raise any concern (as international weapon dealers are well aware of.)
  3. Hacking Team has jeopardized investigations and covert activities all around the world. No, the investigation have been jeopardized by the choice made by governments of “going private” instead of developing in house its intelligence-gathering tools, and by the lack of a “Plan B” in case things – as just happened – screwed up. In particular, is rather curious that nobody checked the fact that the HT’slicense was associated to the customer identity in clear, instead of using a nickname or a cipher.
  4. There will soon be a “black” Hacking Team’s software clone that will be used against the “good guys”. This malware is far from being the “only kid in town” and the Internet is full of brilliant (rogue) programmers able to build a “HT-like” software. So this statement is just a nonsense.
  5. The are hints suggesting that ?Hacking Team’s malware has been exploited to plant fake evidence in the targeted computer. So what? Blackmailing is a standard tool-of-the-trade in the intelligence world and the way this is done is irrelevant. And to shut down the disturbing voice of a political opponent it’s easier to frame him with conventional means (drugs, sex) that are cheaper while very effective, then using a costly and complex to manage application.
  6. Hacking Teams’s software is untraceable and now can and will be used without control. No, HT malware is not invincible and while it is able to fly under the antivirus’ radars, it doesn’t mean that there are no defense. Guess how you can reduce its’ might? Use pure text emails, don’t click links and attachments, check your machines and data-traffic for odd behaviours… In other words, stop using ? wisthle&bell operating systems and fancy features and go back to basics. Ain’t no fancy, but is safer.
  7. Hacking Team helped intelligence agencies to gain access to everybody’s computer. Again, so what? Are intelligence agencies around the world supposed to play bridge, instead? As much as I dislike the fact, I cannot but pragmatically accept that the powers-that-be can do whatever they want, without actual accountability. They call it “democracy”.

Post Scriptum: Though I met David Vincenzetti about eighteen years ago at the Department of Computer Science in the Milan University and a couple of times in the following years, I never worked with or for him.

 

Does the French Intelligence Actually Have Such Big Gaps?

A significant part of the aftermath of an event is the so called “post mortem”: a thorough analysis of ? what went right, what wrong and why.

While “post-mortem” is a common practice within complex organizations and helps detecting flaws to be fixed or positive actions to be standardized, it must not be confused with the “rolling-barrell” attitude of putting the load of a (ex-post proven wrong) choice on somebody else’s shoulders.

As everybody outside the intelligence’s ? “inner circle” should, I neither claim to own the knowledge nor the expertise to assess the work’s quality and the assumed weakness of the French security system. But what I can say – relying upon my criminal trial lawyer experience – is that is always easier to find an explanation for something that happened once it happened, while it is very hard to “foresee” an event.

This is to say that once you know where to look for, the needle in the haystack is fairly easy to find. Or, put in other words, those who came late always look smarter than those who were there earlier: they already know where not to look at.

Whether the French intelligence services did a mistake or not, then, is of poor importance. Mistakes happens (much too) often and it wouldn’t be a surprise to discover that in the Charlie Hebdo massacre mistakes have been done.

But the best we can do is to learn from it, instead of publicly blaming people in the line of fire just for the sake of looking “smart”.

The Italian Home Affair Minister To Call For Another Internet Crackdown

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, as a way to improve the “safety” of the citizen, the Italian Home Ministry Affair, Alfano (a right-winger) ? called for:

  • a “registration” of “dangerous” websites,
  • a further enhancement of the ISPs duty to block access to
    (terrorism-related) Internet resources,
  • an exception to the data-protection regulation, to allow the law
    enforcement agencies to easily access “sensitive” data.

This is an exploitation of the recurring rhetorical locus: “enhance safety needs the fundamental rights to be weakened”.
It is easy to answer with an often quoted statement by Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

But this is not the point.

From a “terrorism” fighting point of view, what Alfano is calling for is simply useless.

If the target is to gather as much information as possible to prevent new attacks, blacklisting websites obviously doesn’t help. It neither stops terrorists from talking each-other, nor allows to spot upcoming threats.

If the target is to gather advance information to run “pre-emptive actions”, it is useless to “weaks” the data-protection regulation to ease the law enforcement agencies access to “sensitive” (i.e. political-related) information. Those who need a fast and direct access to such king of information, in fact, are the secret services (whose activities are neither handled nor reported to a magistrate) and not the law enforcement bodies, that can only act, in Italy, AFTER a crime has been committed (having, in this case, full access to everything they need, under the control of the public prosecutor.)

Then, a couple of questions:

  • why does Alfano calls for measures that don’t help fighting terrorism, but allow a crackdown against normal citizens?
  • why the ISPs should be burdened to act as censors and central scrutinizer on behalf of the government?