Re: Jaron Lanier and "The Ideology of Violation"

[Dancing Dan <d4ncingd4n () gmail com>]

I disagree with his statements. The security issues being identified are
design flaws. Identification and correction of design flaws are necessary to
improve the overall quality of the devices (pacemakers or other)

Yes, it took the researchers two years to identify this new class of issue
using the proprietary information. But don't assume that only malicious
people could generate "death signals."  Radio waves are all around us and
come from a variety of both natural and man-made sources. Chaos can be
terribly creative. How many other conditions can cause the units to
malfunction?

As far as the risk mitigation issues requiring the removal of pacemakers.
Risk mitigation requires the analysis of the risk. If the risk of replacing
a pacemaker is greater than the reduction of risk obtained by the removal
process, it is better to accept the risk (and leave the pacemaker in place).
New designs should incorporate the improvements. The probability of the
average person being targeted by a "death signal" from a malicious person is
probably fairly low. However, it could be significant for government or
military leaders. For these people, it might make sense to use other
mitigations. (TEMPEST shirt?)

I do not want people to run around with radio weapons shorting out the
pacemakers that keep loved ones alive. I do hope the research being
performed will improve the overall quality so they will be more reliable if
I ever need one.

My $.02 worth...

Bart

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Adrian Crenshaw <irongeek () irongeek com>wrote:

>    In his book "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto" Jaron Lanier mentions
> the concept of "The Ideology of Violation". The section can be read here:
>
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=9i1WgopfVToC&lpg=PA65&ots=&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
>
>     I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
>
>     While I might agree the possible harmful knowledge that takes a lot or
> resources to gain perhaps should not be exposed, I'm not sure where to draw
> the line. If an exploit is truly something hard to pull off it probably
> should not be weaponized, but I'd not comfortable defining when it is hard
> enough. If something is weak, it should be know and efforts should be taken
> to harden it and raise the bar. Just because it took 2 years and university
> resources for two researchers to figure out a possible way to kill people
> with pace makers using cell phones does not mean it would take others that
> long (most academic research I've seen is not really geared towards
> implementation, and universities can be quite wasteful).
>
>     The 6th paragraph seems to oversimplify the responsible disclosure
> debate to my mind. A research may get sued for example, and how might
> incentives be put in place to reward the finding of shallow bugs?
>
>     The line "New designs of pacemakers will only inspire new exploits.
> There will always be a new exploit, because there is no such thing as
> perfect security." does not ring completely true to me. I don't think there
> always have to be a new exploits, and you can pursue securing things to the
> point that it take enough force to make countermeasures moot (In this case
> cutting the guy open and pulling the battery out of the pace maker, in which
> case the pace maker's security is moot. A more common example would be if
> the attacker has physical access, network security is mostly moot.).
>
>    The thought "Surely obscurity is the only fundamental form of security
> that exists, and the internet by itself doesn't make it obsolete." is true
> to a extent, the best encryption algorithm in the world is only secure
> because the key is obscure. But how obscure should we aim for?
>
>    We end up in my mind with a "fallacy of the beard" sort of problem.
> Where along the line is something secure/obscure enough?
>
> Other notes:
>
> I'm not sure Defcon and Blackhat can be called "respectable academic
> conferences", they are likely far more useful than the average academic
> conference.
>
> Adrian
>
> --
> "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." ~ W. Somerset
> Maugham
>
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