[IP] Citibank tries to gag crypto bug disclosure

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:15:09 +0000
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Fwd: [open-source] Citibank tries to gag crypto bug disclosure

Dave:

I assume you've seen this, but just in case ...

cheers

Brian

PS I was at Monday's meeting at Microsoft research in Cambridge, in
honour of Roger Needham, at which Ross Anderson gave an excellent
about this work.



>To: open-source@csl.sri.com
>Subject: [open-source] Citibank tries to gag crypto bug disclosure
>Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:58:47 +0000
>From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk>
>X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.5 threshold=8.0
>X-Spam-Level: x
>Sender: open-source-owner@csl.sri.com
>Reply-To: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk>
>X-Newcastle-MailScanner: Found to be clean
>
>
>Citibank is trying to get an order in the High Court today gagging
>public disclosure of crypto vulnerabilities:
>
>     http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/citibank_gag.pdf
>
>I have written to the judge opposing the order:
>
>     http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/citibank_response.pdf
>
>The background is that my student Mike Bond has discovered some really
>horrendous vulnerabilities in the cryptographic equipment commonly
>used to protect the PINs used to identify customers to cash machines:
>
>     http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-560.pdf
>
>These vulnerabilities mean that bank insiders can almost trivially
>find out the PINs of any or all customers. The discoveries happened
>while Mike and I were working as expert witnesses on a `phantom
>withdrawal' case.
>
>The vulnerabilities are also scientifically interesting:
>
>     http://cryptome.org/pacc.htm
>
>For the last couple of years or so there has been a rising tide of
>phantoms. I get emails with increasing frequency from people all over
>the world whose banks have debited them for ATM withdrawals that they
>deny making. Banks in many countries simply claim that their systems
>are secure and so the customers must be responsible. It now looks like
>some of these vulnerabilities have also been discovered by the bad
>guys. Our courts and regulators should make the banks fix their
>systems, rather than just lying about security and dumping the costs
>on the customers.
>
>Curiously enough, Citi was also the bank in the case that set US law
>on phantom withdrawals from ATMs (Judd v Citibank). They lost. I hope
>that's an omen, if not a precedent ...
>
>Ross Anderson


-- 
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/