Mitnick K.D., Simon V.L. - The Art of Deception (2003)(en)
.pdfoccasional highly charged conversations about a bank robbery in progress, an office building on fire, or a high-speed chase as the event unfolded. The radio frequencies used by law enforcement agencies and fire departments used to be available in books at the corner bookstore; today they're provided in listings on the Web, and from a book you can buy at Radio Shack frequencies for local, county, state, and, in some cases, even federal agencies.
Of course, it wasn't just the curious who were listening in. Crooks robbing a store in the middle of the night could tune in to hear if a police car was being dispatched to the location. Drug dealers could keep a check on activities of the local Drug Enforcement Agency agents. An arsonist could enhance his sick pleasure by lighting a blaze and then listening to all the radio traffic while firemen struggled to put it out.
Over recent years developments in computer technology have made it possible to encrypt voice messages. As engineers found ways to cram more and more computing power onto a single microchip, they began to build small, encrypted radios for law enforcement that kept the bad guys and the curious from listening in.
Danny the Eavesdropper
A scanner enthusiast and skilled hacker we'll call Danny decided to see if he couldn't find a way to get his hands on the super-secret encryption software - the source code - from one of the top manufacturers of secure radio systems. He was hoping a study of the code would enable him to learn how to eavesdrop on law enforcement, and possibly also use the technology so that even the most powerful government agencies would find it difficult to monitor his conversations with his friends.
The Dannys of the shadowy world of hackers belong to a special category that falls somewhere in between the merely-curious but-entirely- benign and the dangerous. Dannys have the knowledge of the expert, combined with the mischievous hacker's desire to break into systems and networks for the intellectual challenge and for the pleasure of gaining insight into how technology works. But their electronic breaking-and- entering stunts are just that--stunts. These folks, these benign hackers, illegally enter sites for the sheer fun and exhilaration of proving they can do it. They don't steal anything, they don't make any money from their exploits; they don't destroy any files, disrupt any network connections, or crash any computer system. The mere fact of their being there, snaring copies of files and
searching emails for passwords behind the backs of curity and network administrators, tweaks the noses of the people
responsible for keeping out intruders like them. The one-upmanship is a big part of the satisfaction.
In keeping with this profile, our Danny wanted to examine the details of his target company's most closely guarded product just to satisfy his own burning curiosity and to admire whatever clever innovations the manufacturer might have come up with.
The product designs were, needless to say, carefully guarded trade secrets, as precious and protected as just about anything in the company's possession. Danny knew that. And he didn’t care a bit. After all, it was just some big, nameless company.
But how to get the software source code? As it turned out, grabbing the crown jewels of the company's Secure Communications Group proved to be all too easy, even though the company was one of those that used twofactor authentication, an arrangement under which people are required to use not one but two separate identifiers to prove their identity.
Here's an example you're probably already familiar with. When your renewal credit card arrives, you're asked to phone the issuing company to let them know that the card is in possession of the intended customer, and not somebody who stole the envelope from the mail. The instructions with the card these days generally tell you to call from home. When you
call, software at the credit card company analyzes the ANI, the automatic number identification, which is provided by the telephone switch on tollfree calls that the credit card company is paying for.
A computer at the credit card company uses the calling party's number provided by the ANI, and matches that number against the company's database of cardholders. By the time the clerk comes on the line, her or his display shows information from the database giving details about the customer. So the clerk already knows the call is coming from the home of a customer; that's one form of authentication.
LINGO
TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION The use of two different types of authentication to verify identity. For example, a person might have to identify himself by calling from a certain identifiable location and knowing a password.
The clerk then picks an item from the information displayed about
you - most often social security number, date of birth, or mother's maiden name - and asks you for this piece of information. If you give the right
answer, that's a second form of authentication - based on information you should know.
At the company manufacturing the secure radio systems in our story, every employee with computer access had their usual account name and password, but in addition was provided with a small electronic device called Secure ID. This is what's called a time-based token. These devices come in two types: One is about half the size of a credit card but a little thicker; another is small enough that people simply attach it to their key chains.
Derived from the world of cryptography, this particular gadget has a small window that displays a series of six digits. Every sixty seconds, the display changes to show a different six-digit number. When an authorized person needs to access the network from offsite, she must first identify herself as an authorized user by typing in her secret PIN and the digits displayed on her token device. Once verified by the internal system, she then authenticates with her account name and password.
For the young hacker Danny to get at the source code he so coveted, he would have to not only compromise some employee's account name and password (not much of a challenge for the experienced social engineer) but also get around the time-based token.
Defeating the two-factor authentication of a time-based token combined with a user's secret PIN code sounds like a challenge right out of Mission Impossible. But for social engineers, the challenge is similar to that aced by a poker player who has more than the usual skill at reading his opponents. With a little luck, when he sits down at a table he knows he's likely to walk away with a large pile of other people's money.
Storming the Fortress
Danny began by doing his homework. Before long he had managed to put together enough pieces to masquerade as a real employee. He had an employee's name, department, phone number, and employee number, as well as the manager's name and phone number.
Now was the calm before the storm. Literally. Going by the plan he had worked out, Danny needed one more thing before he could take the next step, and it was something he had no control over: He needed a snowstorm. Danny needed a little help from Mother Nature in the form of
weather so bad that it would keep workers from getting into the office. In the winter in South Dakota, where the manufacturing plant in question was located, anyone hoping for bad weather did not have very long
to wait. On Friday night, a storm arrived. What had begun as snow quickly turned to freezing rain so that, by morning, the roads were coated with a slick, dangerous sheet of ice. For Danny, this was a perfect opportunity.
He telephoned the plant, asked for-the computer room and reached one of the worker bees of IT, a computer operator who announced himself as Roger Kowalski.
Giving the name of the real employee he had obtained, Danny said, "This is Bob Billings. I work in the Secure Communications Group. I'm at home right now and I can't drive in because of the storm. And the problem is that I need to access my workstation and the server from home, and I left my Secure ID in my desk. Can you go fetch it for me? Or can somebody? And then read off my code when I need to get in? Because my team has a critical deadline and there's no way I can get my work done. And there's no way I can get to the office--the roads are much too dangerous up my way.
The computer operator said, "I can't leave the Computer Center." Danny jumped right in: "Do you have a Secure ID yourself?."
"There's one here in the Computer Center," he said. "We keep one for the operators in case of an emergency."
"Listen," Danny said. "Can you do me a big favor? When I need to dial into the network, can you let me borrow your Secure ID? Just until it's safe to drive in."
"Who are you again?" Kowalski asked. "Who do you work for.
"For Ed Trenton."
"Oh, yeah, I know him."
When he's liable to be faced with tough sledding, a good social engineer does more than the usual amount of research. "I'm on the second floor," Danny went on. "Next to Roy Tucker."
He knew that name, as well. Danny went back to work on him. "It'd be much easier just to go to my desk and fetch my Secure ID for me."
Danny was pretty certain the guy would not buy into this. First of all, he would not want to leave in the middle of his shift to go traipsing down corridors and up staircases to some distant part of the building. He would also not want to have to paw through someone else's desk, violating somebody's personal space. No, it was a safe bet he wouldn't want to do that.
Kowalski didn't want to say no to a guy who needed some help, but he didn't want to say yes and get in trouble, either. So he sidestepped the decision: I'll have to ask my boss. Hang on." He put the phone down, and Danny could hear him pick up another phone, put in the call, and explain the request. Kowalski then did something unexplainable: He actually vouched for the man using the name Bob Billings. "I know him," he told his manager. "He works for Ed Trenton. Can we let him use the Secure ID in the Computer Center' Danny, holding on to the phone, was amazed to overhear this extraordinary and unexpected support for his cause. He couldn't believe his ears or his luck.
After another couple of moments, Kowalski came back on the line and said, "My manager wants to talk to you himself," and gave him the man's name and cell phone number.
Danny called the manager and went through the whole story one more time, adding details about the project he was working or and why his product team needed to meet a critical deadline. "It'd be easier if someone just goes and fetches my card," he said. "I don't think the desk is locked, it should be there in my upper left drawer."
"Well," said the manager, "just for the weekend, I think we can let you use the one in the Computer Center. I'll tell the guys on duty that when you call, they should read off the random-access code for you," and he gave him the PIN number to use with it.
For the whole weekend, every time Danny wanted to get into the corporate computer system, he only had to call the Computer Center and ask them to read off the six digits displayed on the Secure ID token.
An Inside Job
Once he was inside the company's computer system, then what? How would Danny find his way to the server with the software he wanted? He had already prepared for this.
Many computer users are familiar with newsgroups, that extensive set of electronic bulletin boards where people can post questions that other people answer, or find virtual companions who share an interest in music, computers, or any of hundreds of other topics.
What few people realize when they post any message on a newsgroup
site is that their message remains on line and available for years. Google, for example, now maintains an archive of seven hundred million messages,
some dating back twenty years! Danny started by going to the Web address
http://groups.google.com.