LAS VEGAS, July 29, (AFP): The Internet has undergone a key upgrade that promises to stop cyber criminals from using fake websites that dupe people into downloading viruses or revealing personal data.
The agency in charge of managing Internet addresses teamed with online security services firm VeriSign and the US Department of Commerce to give websites encrypted identification to prove they are legitimate.
“This is, by any measure, an historic development,” ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom said while breaking the news at a premier Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
“This security upgrade matters to everyone who uses a computer, and that means most of us.”
The Domain Name System Security Extensions, referred to as DNSSEC, basically adds a secret, identifying code to each website address.
The domain name system is where the world’s Internet addresses are registered and plays a key role in enabling computers around the world to speak with one another online.
Applications commonly used on the Internet can be tailored to essentially check the ID of a website to make certain it is what it claims to be, according to Dan Kaminsky, a hacker turned computer security specialist.
For example, web browser software such as Google or Bing could be adapted to tell whether a bank log-in page is authentic.
“When a user receives an email from a bank they should know it came from a bank,” Kaminsky said. “This is something we needed as engineers to make this a reality.”
A frightening structural flaw in the foundation of the Internet revealed by Kaminsky at Black Hat here two years earlier led to the “biggest structural” upgrade to Web in decades, according to Beckstrom.
“I can’t say I really knew what I was getting into when I broke that whole DNS thing,” Kaminsky quipped as he took part in a press conference announcing the Internet improvement.
Kaminsky is chief scientist at New York start-up Recursion Ventures and worked with ICANN and VeriSign on the the Internet upgrade.
Meanwhile, a hacker has discovered a way to force ATMs to disgorge their cash by hijacking the computers inside them.
The attacks demonstrated Wednesday targeted standalone ATMs. But they could potentially be used against the ATMs operated by mainstream banks.
Criminals have long known that ATMs aren’t tamperproof.
There are many types of attacks in use today, ranging from sophisticated to foolhardy: installing fake card readers to steal card numbers, hiding tiny surveillance cameras to capture PIN codes, covering the dispensing slot to intercept money and even hauling the ATMs away with trucks in hopes of cracking them open later.
Computer hacker Barnaby Jack spent two years tinkering in his Silicon Valley apartment with ATMs he bought online. These were standalone machines, the type seen in front of convenience stores, rather than the ones in bank branches.
His goal was to find ways to take control of ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the computers that run the machines.
He showed off his results here at the Black Hat conference, an annual gathering devoted to exposing the latest computer-security vulnerabilities.
His attacks have wide implications because they affect multiple types of ATMs and exploit weaknesses in software and security measures that are used throughout the industry.
His talk was one of the conference’s most widely anticipated, as it had been pulled a year ago over concerns that fixes for the ATMs wouldn’t be in place in time. He used the extra year to craft more dangerous attacks.
Jack, who works as director of security research for Seattle-based IOActive Inc., showed in a theatrical demonstration two ways he can get ATMs to spit out money:
n Jack found that the physical keys that came with his machines were the same for all ATMs of that type made by that manufacturer. He figured this out by ordering three ATMs from different manufacturers for a few thousand dollars each. Then he compared the keys he got to pictures of other keys, found on the Internet.
He used his key to unlock a compartment in the ATM that had standard USB slots. He then inserted a program he had written into one of them, commanding the ATM to dump its vaults.
n Jack also hacked into ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the way ATM makers communicate with the machines over the Internet. Jack said the problem is that outsiders are permitted to bypass the need for a password. He didn’t go into much more detail because he said the goal of his talk “isn’t to teach everybody how to hack ATMs. It’s to raise the issue and have ATM manufacturers be proactive about implementing fixes.”
The remote style of attack is more dangerous because an attacker doesn’t need to open up the ATMs.
It allows an attacker to gain full control of the ATMs. Besides ordering it to spit out money, attackers can silently harvest account data from anyone who uses the machines. It also affects more than just the standalone ATMs vulnerable to the physical attack; the method could potentially be used against the kinds of ATMs used by mainstream banks.