31–40 of 82 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may underestimate the capabilities of a portable drill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyq7xBUhsAo Hell, depending on the gauge you could probably carve out a 3" hole with a dremel tool and a diamond bit in a reasonable amount of time.
there's no comparing brick with composite/hard plate steel
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why we can find whole ATMs at junkyards is beyond me: there are many easy to spot flaws. If there are many easy to spot flaws, I don't think finding them in a junkyard is the root of the problem here. This is good old security by obscurity. As Bruce Schneier says (at least about safes), you should be able to publish the blueprints and source code for the machines, then maybe they'll be secure. There should be enoug…
It's a false dichotomy. Your private keys are just "obscure" information that requires some effort to find too. And security protocols can be designed so the keys aren't enough. At the end of the day it's an arms race, and you're just trying to slow attackers down.
What part of the parent are you responding to here?
> Your private keys are just "obscure" information that requires some effort to find too.
I think this is highly misleading. There is nothing "just" or "some" about it. Your private keys are "obscured" information that requires a (mostly) specific and quantifiably very large amount of effort to find, and which if it were to become exposed, can be changed without requiring any new design to restore security.
Blueprints and wiring diagrams are "barely if at all obscured" information that requires vague, hard-to-quantify, and often trivially little amount of effort to find, and if exposed, can't be easily changed without requiring entirely new designs, manufacturing, and engineering.
> They found that the machine’s only encryption was a weak XOR cipher they were able to easily break, and that there was no real authentication between the machine’s modules. This reminds me of many many years ago some guy in a bimmer forum figured out BMW's iDriver music file formats (BR3/BR4/BR5) were simply DRM'd via XOR.[1] I was able to verify it via a simple script. Kudos to the reverse engineering masters! [1]…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why we can find whole ATMs at junkyards is beyond me: there are many easy to spot flaws. If there are many easy to spot flaws, I don't think finding them in a junkyard is the root of the problem here. This is good old security by obscurity. As Bruce Schneier says (at least about safes), you should be able to publish the blueprints and source code for the machines, then maybe they'll be secure. There should be enoug…
It's a false dichotomy. Your private keys are just "obscure" information that requires some effort to find too. And security protocols can be designed so the keys aren't enough. At the end of the day it's an arms race, and you're just trying to slow attackers down.
Security by obscurity tends to refer to measures which can be broken once, and thereafter opened trivially. It sounds like the article is about one of these trivial openings.
Everything can be broken; the goal is to move it or arrest them before they can get in, physically or virtually. It just so happens that, virtually, the time required to brute force it can, at times, be on heat-death-of-the-universe scales. Safes tend to rely on men with guns following soon after alarms trigger.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's no comparing brick with composite/hard plate steel
It's not fast but it's possible to cut steel too with cordless drill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj12WdVhOCc
I'm not terribly shocked. Most communication happens either at serial, SPI, or i2c busses. If it's cars, CAN. And if you can plug in a wire somewhere, you can damage or pwn it. Most things don't have security, other than software security and physical locks. And even when there is other types of security, like cryptokeys and such, physical wires can usually bypass even those. If they wanted something that was secure,…
I wonder how many older models of ATMs are still in service and what the process for "updating" them would be like, or perhaps that it wouldn't be realistic at all. I see a lot of small family-owned corner stores with very old machines.
>Computer security experts have long warned that no computer should be considered secure if an attacker takes physical control of it. I think the lack of physical security is more surprising than the lack of electronic security. A three-inch hole is pretty big, all things considered. I have to imagine that ATMs are designed to resist drilling three inch holes through to the money or the dispenser mechanism. Why isn't…
"I have to imagine that ATMs are designed to resist drilling three inch holes through to the money or the dispenser mechanism" I would use a hole saw ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_saw ), and would think it fairly hard to protect a large enclosure against that. Locally strengthening the enclosure might be enough, but chances are thieves would start drilling around it to remove a larger patch or start employing…
Making a hole in hardened steel is not easy. If you use a hole saw, it will either need to have diamond abrasive, or you will need carbide bits. If you don't use a hole saw, you are going to be using an angle grinder or a plasma torch.
Getting in fast will either generate a ton of heat or a ton of noise, or both. Plus, carbide and diamond tools are super expensive. Angle grinders, not as much, but I'd notice someone with a 3 foot trail of sparks behind them before I'd notice someone running a drill at a few hundred rpm.
Anyways, I do think they probably used a hole saw, which leads me to believe the computer was located behind some combination of aluminum/plastic/ordinary steel. Which is pretty ridiculous
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why we can find whole ATMs at junkyards is beyond me: there are many easy to spot flaws. If there are many easy to spot flaws, I don't think finding them in a junkyard is the root of the problem here. This is good old security by obscurity. As Bruce Schneier says (at least about safes), you should be able to publish the blueprints and source code for the machines, then maybe they'll be secure. There should be enoug…
It's a false dichotomy. Your private keys are just "obscure" information that requires some effort to find too. And security protocols can be designed so the keys aren't enough. At the end of the day it's an arms race, and you're just trying to slow attackers down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a false dichotomy. Your private keys are just "obscure" information that requires some effort to find too. And security protocols can be designed so the keys aren't enough. At the end of the day it's an arms race, and you're just trying to slow attackers down.
Well, they're provably secure for some (mind-bogingly massive) search space. Security by obscurity tends to refer to measures which can be broken once, and thereafter opened trivially. It sounds like the article is about one of these trivial openings. Everything can be broken; the goal is to move it or arrest them before they can get in, physically or virtually. It just so happens that, virtually, the time required t…