A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at OTTCon (the Over The Top Conference) in San Jose, California. What is "over the top"? The purest definition is multi-media (HD video, "television", and other media) delivered to your home through the internet. Over the top refers to working "around" the traditional "television" delivery channels to your home (broadband cable, airwave broadcast, and satellite).
The conference was over-subscribed and indicative of the tremendous foment in this technology, product and service area. As with any market with such dynamics and growth, the business opportunities are tremendous.
This market has large, well established vendors operating "walled garden" solutions with strong interest in expanding out from their now traditional music or DVD quality video distribution to high definition content. There are a large number of smaller niche players, and new entrants of varying types almost every day. Of course all the major consumer electronic brands and consumer media sales brands are jockeying for position as well.
The cable companies are highly involved, particularly as they strive for a larger business role than just as a bandwidth provider for "the last mile", which in turn has been and will continue to raise net neutrality issues.
There is tremendous product crossover, with gaming boxes serving as internet connected media access devices, smart phones and tablets operating as media access devices, set-top box functionality being integrated into traditional TV's and monitors, not to the mention the evolving role of the traditional PC as a multi-media hub.
There are platform wars erupting. The most interesting is Google's promotion of Android and Chrome as ubiquitous platforms to be used by all media oriented product vendors...which just happen to very easily integrate with Google's services and advertising.
Standardization is a major market force. Ultraviolet is an open standard in development with huge industry participation working to define and create a uniform and compatible system for purchasing, renting, accessing and viewing high definition video content on all owned Ultraviolet compatible devices.
Behind all of this are the studios, with their content and in particular with their high definition content, which they are being extremely careful with relative to distribution and monetization.
Overall, this is an incredibly complicated business and technology ecosystem, with participation by telcos, cable companies, satellite companies, consumer electronics companies, cell phone companies, microprocessor companies, computer companies, bricks and mortar and web only consumer sales companies, studios, and security companies. The corporate membership list of Ultraviolet, for example, is stunning in its breadth.
Michael Porter of the Stanford Business School is famous for (among other things) his promotion of a "force analysis" of industries. A comprehensive force analysis of the "over the top" market would be fascinating, revealing and extremely complex and rich.
I can't use the term "force" without bringing to mind the meme introduced into our social consciousness by George Lucas, "the Force". As we all know the Force has a light side and a dark side, and in this market area, the dark side centers around (no surprise!) digital media piracy.
Digital media piracy requires a legal basis for defining digital media as proprietary assets. This basis was all but non-existent only a few short years ago, as our large body of property law was primarily concerned with the physical plane. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is now the foundation on which digital media as proprietary property rests.
Intellectually, most of us understand and agree that media in digitized form is still property. However, sadly, our moral structure and cultural attitudes have not kept pace with the advancement of technology. There are huge numbers of people who would not steal a pack of gum from a store who can and do routinely access pirated digital content.
Why is that? I believe there are two fundamental reasons. The first is the lack of perception of "theft", because there is no overt loss of goods to the owner when the piracy occurs. The second is what I call "second order access": if it's available for free or low cost download, then "I am not stealing it". This is analogous to buying the fancy new watch from the back trunk of someone's car; we know they stole it, yet we are tempted to make the purchase of the stolen goods.
Morality in a society is nurtured and supported by simple acts of peer pressure, and I urge readers to engage in this relative to digital piracy: do not allow this to occur in your home, refuse to support it by saying "no" to offers to enjoy "free" movies by friends and neighbors, and in general stand up at the critical times for the property rights of those who labored to create the content that has been stolen. All the technology in the world will not make us a moral society and protect our interests from ourselves. Only we as a society can do that, and it truly starts with each of us taking simple daily stands on the issue.
There is an incredible essay written in the early 1990's by John Barlow (who later became a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) called "Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net". In this essay Barlow poses the following riddle: "if our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without it's even leaving our possession, how can we protect it?", which in turn leads to a fascinating observation: "A lot of protection technologies will develop rapidly in the obsessive competition which has always existed between lock makers and lock breakers."
Here at Arxan Technologies, we are deeply involved in this "obsessive competition" in the arena of propriety digital content lock making and breaking. Consistent with the vastness of the ecosystem involved in "over the top" media distribution is an alarmingly complex delivery value chain for the actual content. This in turn presents a vast "attack surface" for those who wish to steal the digital assets in motion. And the problem doesn't stop with merely the protection of the digital content: other elements of the environment are subject to tampering to effect different forms of piracy. For example, tampering with a retail node to enable "purchases" without any actual financial transaction, or tampering with policy code to disable the time period restrictions on content.
We at Arxan are members of the Ultraviolet organization and are deeply involved in protecting digital assets in both Ultraviolet and many other "over the top" media distribution channels through Digital Rights Management software protections, key hiding technologies and node locking technologies.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Android Marketplace Apps Removed by Google
For quite some time now I and others have been speaking out regarding the risks of the Android application marketplace, as an un-vetted "wild west" for software.
The essence of the problem is simple: any one can post software there, without any review of actual content and behavior. The overarching security model is that applications on installation must request and the user must approve certain capabilities (for example the right to access address book information, or to send text messages), and this then gives the user security control. The problem with this model is that broad capability requirements are very common on legitimate applications, and users become assumptive that the capabilities requested are both needed and will be used "appropriately" by the application. Neither is necessarily true, particularly with applications that are intentionally malignant.
Today we have the news of a significant number of applications with large #'s of download being, in fact, malware attempting to get device access at the root level, and stealing confidential information off the phone.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/03/02/google.malware.andriod/index.html?hpt=T2
It's important to keep in mind that there are three types of parties involved in Android security issues. The first is of course the consumer and individual business user, and their concern is the ability to utilize applications that provide incremental value without concerns about malware. The second is businesses themselves who must field these devices with their staff for productivity reasons, and have to balance between the need to enable them with productivity applications, while still ensuring device security. This is particularly needful given the business data likely to reside on the device. Lastly, there is the application developers (sometimes these same businesses fielding such devices), who have to be concerned about the risk of their software being compromised with malware, and potentially their brand compromised as a result of re-distribution with malware injected into their application.
The heart of the problem leading to this action by Google is first, the lack of any review practices for the Android marketplace. Some are suggesting a "vetted" Android marketplace as a solution; meanwhile, some larger enterprises are constructing their own "vetted and approved" download areas for Android applications for employee business devices. It's not hard given this recent action to see why such a methodology is needed for large corporate deployments of Android devices into the work force.
The second problem is the lack of any software protections in the application software itself. We at Arxan have been ringing this bell for some time, and while those with obvious code security concerns do take active steps to secure their application code with intrinsic security (media players, payment system software, banking software, etc.), others do not. This enables exactly the above situation to occur: hackers can casually lift an application, reuse/modify the binary level code, and republish. The result: rapid and effective malware distribution to a huge base of Android device users.
The solution isn't overly difficult: protect your applications from reverse engineering and tampering! Arxan and others provide powerful technologies to accomplish this. While this won't secure the Android marketplace itself, it will help to assure that YOUR software isn't cloned and published under a similar function or brand name with malware inserted.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
A New Decade of Computing!
2010 is over, and a new decade is beginning to unfold. We have a tidal wave of computing change occurring, indeed it is really just getting started.
"Smart phones", which I prefer to think of as hand held computers with cellular I/O support, are by far the fastest growing class of computer systems today. I've suggested it before and I'll suggest it again: what we are witnessing is the rise of a "fourth wave" of computing. The first wave was the mainframe, the second was the minicomputer, the third wave was the PC. Interestingly, the "personal" computer was personal only in the sense that you, as an individual, had your own. The rise of the truly "handheld" computing device, which also adds cell phone I/O (for both data and voice transmission, thus making them "smart phones"), is more accurately a "personal" computer, in that the computer generally stays in contact with your body. However, since "personal computer" isn't available as a moniker, I've suggested "intimate computer" as a more accurate and expansive name for this new computing class.
What can we learn from history, from the forces we see at work, from our own logical assessment, and even perhaps from our intuition, about how this new intimate computing wave will unfold?
First, as to form factor: I do not think we are anywhere near "done" with evolution of form factor in these new intimate computing devices. Just as the desk-side/desk-top PC fairly quickly evolved into a wildly popular "laptop" form, I predict that the current form factor of a rectangular hand held "bar" will evolve into yet more intimate forms. Generally I'd call this "wearable computers" and all that that implies. The specific forms that will be successful are hard to predict, but it's sure to be a fascinating arena with multiple audio and visual possibilities!
The challenge of new form factors will of course be I/O between us and the computer. While voice is an obvious possibility for input, voice strikes me as being problematic for the innumerable times you want to "use the computer" but speaking extensively is inappropriate or just not comfortable. Audio output is easily dealt with via the current forms of ear based speakers, but perhaps during the decade we will some something more subtle, a la bone induction or some other means of bypassing the need for external speaker based output.
Visual output requirements would seem to take us back to some kind of "hand held screen" form factor, but I think this leads to a very likely "wearable" form factor that can address multiple needs in an integrated manner. Glasses. Yes, glasses, where visual output is projected onto the inside of the glass and is seen as an "overlay" on the outside visible world, similar to heads up displays in aircraft. Such a form factor can easily include audio output via integrated ear buds. Voice input is obvious but as I said, not ideal, and the human input side is probably the area I am least able to see what innovations might develop. Sensors on finger tips that allow some kind of finger movement based textual input? Perhaps we'll get to internet access and general computing paradigms where textual input is generally obsolete! Or perhaps some kind of "sub-vocal" input means will be created, allowing "voicing" that is performed silently relative to the outside world!
If you think that I am alone or far fetched in my thinking, then perhaps you were not at the Open Mobile Summit late last year in San Francisco. I heard a few companies talking about these trends and sharing thoughts on concept products that might one day appear. One company showed a "mirror mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all" concept where as you brush you teeth in the morning, you engage in I/O activites from getting the weather, news and sports, and sending them on to friends. Another company decryied the current "heads down" paradigm of smart phone usage, promising to lift up the heads of people everywhere with use of their future products. I don't believe my ruminations are entirely speculative!
Of course where innovation goes, crime is sure to follow. It's an immutable law of nature. What might be the evolution of "computer viruses", and more generally, the entire arena of "cybercrime"? As noted in prior blogs, this area isn't just kid stuff or even just "malicious people" stuff anymore. This is hard core major organized crime stuff! Billions of $'s are being stolen, every year, both in outright cash and in more subtle economic forms (intellectual property in particular).
Even today, we already have examples of viruses infecting intimate computing devices. We have an example of malware hiding under a veneer of a legitimate application (watching a new movie trailer) directly monetizing its infection by making toll calls charged to the service plan of the owner of the smart phone. It's a safe bet that ALL the forms of viruses, malware, bots and botnets, and the like will move through the intimate computing landscape.
Do the specifics of intimate computers enable new and different forms of malware? Note: I'm not referring to the detailed level of "yes there will be differences because it's Linux or Symbian or XX underneath not Windows or OS/X". Are there new and unique attributes of intimate computers that will enable whole new classes of malware? If so, what are those unique attributes?
First, the "universal" connectivity of intimate computing devices to the cellular infrastructure is a unique attribute. Second, the popularity of mobile apps (downloaded to and run as independent programs) as the basis for functionality extension is rather unique. Yes we all have loaded applications onto our PC's, but in general we are rather selective and judicious about that, loading those apps from large well established and recognized legitimate vendors, and we generally load relatively few in number. The intimate computer world is shaping up very differently where loading many tens and even hundreds of little apps from all kinds of no-name vendors is business as usual!
Do the apps represent a new means of malware infection? Well, to a large extent the same issue was present in PC's. However, what we have here is a huge different in SCALE. BILLIONS of apps are being downloaded; Gartner is projecting approximately 30 BILLION app downloads into intimate computers by 2013. Is the opportunity for large scale infection substantially higher for these intimate computers? Clearly, it is.
What about the cellular I/O that is fundamental and pervasive on these devices? What can malware do with that? I truly don't know, but one thing I'm 100% certain of: there are some very smart minds out there, with advanced technology knowledge, getting paid by very evil minds with lots of money and no compunctions or morals, thinking about this as a tremendous (criminal) revenue generating opportunity. And that puts intellectual property at risk, not to mention business models and privacy.
So, how do we move forward in our mobile, connected, app-loaded world? With excitement and innovation, but also with consideration for the defenses required to safeguard assets in this brave new world (apologies to Aldous Huxley). If this stirs your thinking a little as we march into the madness of a new decade, I've accomplished my goal for today. Happy New Year, and here's to an exciting second decade of the millenium!
"Smart phones", which I prefer to think of as hand held computers with cellular I/O support, are by far the fastest growing class of computer systems today. I've suggested it before and I'll suggest it again: what we are witnessing is the rise of a "fourth wave" of computing. The first wave was the mainframe, the second was the minicomputer, the third wave was the PC. Interestingly, the "personal" computer was personal only in the sense that you, as an individual, had your own. The rise of the truly "handheld" computing device, which also adds cell phone I/O (for both data and voice transmission, thus making them "smart phones"), is more accurately a "personal" computer, in that the computer generally stays in contact with your body. However, since "personal computer" isn't available as a moniker, I've suggested "intimate computer" as a more accurate and expansive name for this new computing class.
What can we learn from history, from the forces we see at work, from our own logical assessment, and even perhaps from our intuition, about how this new intimate computing wave will unfold?
First, as to form factor: I do not think we are anywhere near "done" with evolution of form factor in these new intimate computing devices. Just as the desk-side/desk-top PC fairly quickly evolved into a wildly popular "laptop" form, I predict that the current form factor of a rectangular hand held "bar" will evolve into yet more intimate forms. Generally I'd call this "wearable computers" and all that that implies. The specific forms that will be successful are hard to predict, but it's sure to be a fascinating arena with multiple audio and visual possibilities!
The challenge of new form factors will of course be I/O between us and the computer. While voice is an obvious possibility for input, voice strikes me as being problematic for the innumerable times you want to "use the computer" but speaking extensively is inappropriate or just not comfortable. Audio output is easily dealt with via the current forms of ear based speakers, but perhaps during the decade we will some something more subtle, a la bone induction or some other means of bypassing the need for external speaker based output.
Visual output requirements would seem to take us back to some kind of "hand held screen" form factor, but I think this leads to a very likely "wearable" form factor that can address multiple needs in an integrated manner. Glasses. Yes, glasses, where visual output is projected onto the inside of the glass and is seen as an "overlay" on the outside visible world, similar to heads up displays in aircraft. Such a form factor can easily include audio output via integrated ear buds. Voice input is obvious but as I said, not ideal, and the human input side is probably the area I am least able to see what innovations might develop. Sensors on finger tips that allow some kind of finger movement based textual input? Perhaps we'll get to internet access and general computing paradigms where textual input is generally obsolete! Or perhaps some kind of "sub-vocal" input means will be created, allowing "voicing" that is performed silently relative to the outside world!
If you think that I am alone or far fetched in my thinking, then perhaps you were not at the Open Mobile Summit late last year in San Francisco. I heard a few companies talking about these trends and sharing thoughts on concept products that might one day appear. One company showed a "mirror mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all" concept where as you brush you teeth in the morning, you engage in I/O activites from getting the weather, news and sports, and sending them on to friends. Another company decryied the current "heads down" paradigm of smart phone usage, promising to lift up the heads of people everywhere with use of their future products. I don't believe my ruminations are entirely speculative!
Of course where innovation goes, crime is sure to follow. It's an immutable law of nature. What might be the evolution of "computer viruses", and more generally, the entire arena of "cybercrime"? As noted in prior blogs, this area isn't just kid stuff or even just "malicious people" stuff anymore. This is hard core major organized crime stuff! Billions of $'s are being stolen, every year, both in outright cash and in more subtle economic forms (intellectual property in particular).
Even today, we already have examples of viruses infecting intimate computing devices. We have an example of malware hiding under a veneer of a legitimate application (watching a new movie trailer) directly monetizing its infection by making toll calls charged to the service plan of the owner of the smart phone. It's a safe bet that ALL the forms of viruses, malware, bots and botnets, and the like will move through the intimate computing landscape.
Do the specifics of intimate computers enable new and different forms of malware? Note: I'm not referring to the detailed level of "yes there will be differences because it's Linux or Symbian or XX underneath not Windows or OS/X". Are there new and unique attributes of intimate computers that will enable whole new classes of malware? If so, what are those unique attributes?
First, the "universal" connectivity of intimate computing devices to the cellular infrastructure is a unique attribute. Second, the popularity of mobile apps (downloaded to and run as independent programs) as the basis for functionality extension is rather unique. Yes we all have loaded applications onto our PC's, but in general we are rather selective and judicious about that, loading those apps from large well established and recognized legitimate vendors, and we generally load relatively few in number. The intimate computer world is shaping up very differently where loading many tens and even hundreds of little apps from all kinds of no-name vendors is business as usual!
Do the apps represent a new means of malware infection? Well, to a large extent the same issue was present in PC's. However, what we have here is a huge different in SCALE. BILLIONS of apps are being downloaded; Gartner is projecting approximately 30 BILLION app downloads into intimate computers by 2013. Is the opportunity for large scale infection substantially higher for these intimate computers? Clearly, it is.
What about the cellular I/O that is fundamental and pervasive on these devices? What can malware do with that? I truly don't know, but one thing I'm 100% certain of: there are some very smart minds out there, with advanced technology knowledge, getting paid by very evil minds with lots of money and no compunctions or morals, thinking about this as a tremendous (criminal) revenue generating opportunity. And that puts intellectual property at risk, not to mention business models and privacy.
So, how do we move forward in our mobile, connected, app-loaded world? With excitement and innovation, but also with consideration for the defenses required to safeguard assets in this brave new world (apologies to Aldous Huxley). If this stirs your thinking a little as we march into the madness of a new decade, I've accomplished my goal for today. Happy New Year, and here's to an exciting second decade of the millenium!
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Anti-Piracy Fiscal Maelstrom
There are recent reports of Microsoft spending upwards of $200M (yes, million!) a year on anti-piracy technology. See the New York Times feature article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/technology/07piracy.html?scp=4&sq=microsoft&st=cse
This is an astounding figure, particularly given that in general, Microsoft software is available at vastly reduced costs from the pirates.
While it may be tempting to conclude from this that software piracy is unstoppable, I thought I would share my perspective based on my company, Arxan’s, experience. Frankly, we've seen time and again that our technology (for instance), properly applied on top of a thoughtful design from a security perspective can and does stop piracy. We've had major successes in a wide variety of market segments, from low end extremely high volume gaming software, to very low volume but extremely high value geophysical software, and all kinds of interesting applications between those two extremes.
We are also familiar with failure. That's right, I'm not here to claim our solution is a panacea. It doesn't work that way. It's a continuous arms race in general, and on a software title by software title basis, it sometimes feels like hand to hand combat.
What we have learned is that a solid design in the security dimension is critical. A weak security design can't be easily "protected" later! A design that seriously considers the threats to the software in general, how those threats are directly mitigated by the design, and then on top of that, how the design and implementation itself is protected from undermining through reverse engineering and code tampering, is required.
Secondly, we've learned that you have to stay right on top of latest technique used by the cracking community. As an example, we are now to "anti-anti-anti-debug" techniques. That's right, we deploy anti-debug techniques...and the crackers have deployed anti-anti-debug techniques...and we are deploying techniques to detect those, hence "anti-anti-anti-debug".
It's a brave new world indeed!
Microsoft's piracy problems are complicated by the fact that they have such a broad array of products, from multiple disparate design and development teams, with different licensing schemes, different distribution models and a wide diversity of distribution channels. As anyone who attempts to run their business on Microsoft software knows, Microsoft does NOT look like "one company" when viewed through the lens of purchasing and licensing their software!
Few companies have the financial wherewithal for this level of security investment, both in absolute terms and even in 'relative to revenues" terms. For these companies, it's critical that application security be integrated into their product lifecycle, as a "must" design attribute. Letting a team rip on a major product development program, then starting to think about "how do we address this piracy problem?" after the product has been shipping for a few days, weeks or months is to take a step in the direction of Microsoft levels of relative spend. Don't do that! Just as reliability, usability, and supportability are, these days, critical requirements that are considered through the software product lifecycle, so must software security be considered and addressed.
The end result can be a secure, un-pirated product. We know this for a fact, we've succeeded with many customers in achieving this result. So don't end up staring down the tunnel of extravagant anti-piracy costs: think application security early, and often.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Digital Media Security
The HDCP copy protection technology has been successfully hacked, through the generation and publication of the overall master key:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Intel-Investigating-HDCP-Master-Key-Exposure-384053/
What does this really mean? It is in fact a bit complicated. The content on Blu-Ray disks is protected with something called AACS, and optionally with additional technology called BD+. The Blu-Ray player itself decrypts the content, de-compresses it, and re-scales it as needed for the target display device. Then this content is re-encrypted using HDCP and sent through HDMI to the target display. The display device decrypts the HDCP encrypted content for presentation on the monitor.
With this master key, it is possible to build external devices that will appear as legitimate recipients of HDCP encrypted content with an ability to decode that content, and then do whatever is desired with it (such as re-compress it and make it available through download sites). Will someone do this? It's a good bet; where's there's money to be made via piracy, people will take advantage.
How did this happen? After all, isn't encryption based security supposed to be based on an "ultimate level of obscurity", namely, the problem of "can you figure out which # of our 100 billion possibilities I'm using?".
Yes but...in this case the overall system had a flaw, that allows someone to use some heavy math to "back compute" the master key from a sufficiently sized (but still small, somewhere between 30 and 50) set of "device keys", which get generated through use of the master key.
Overall, what does this say about our digital media security systems?
The answer is a hard pill to swallow: our digital media security system can't really be trusted. Nothing about their basis on "hard cryptography" makes them immune from cracking, and nothing about their implementation directly in custom hardware makes them immune.
So what's needed? What is needed is multiple layers of defense, ideally implemented with both hardware and software mechanisms. Arxan Technologies is predicated on the exponentially increasing difficulty of fully cracking a protected system, when that system is protected by multiple layers of relatively independent security mechanisms. Additionally, the overall architecture should be designed with not just the concept of stopping cracking, but also of anticipating and detecting a cracked environment...and them compromising that environment in a new, subtle but pernicious way.
Always seek to detect and create trouble for the cracker and/or for the user of the crack. I recommend an approach of multiple layers of defense, with both crack blocking strategies and crack detection strategies, all coupled to overt and subtle response strategies.
Intel, in response to this crack, has said they will sue anyone using the master key. Legal solutions to piracy historically have had very limited success. Our technology can and should do better in presenting very difficult barriers to those willing to act outside of the law.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Intel-Investigating-HDCP-Master-Key-Exposure-384053/
What does this really mean? It is in fact a bit complicated. The content on Blu-Ray disks is protected with something called AACS, and optionally with additional technology called BD+. The Blu-Ray player itself decrypts the content, de-compresses it, and re-scales it as needed for the target display device. Then this content is re-encrypted using HDCP and sent through HDMI to the target display. The display device decrypts the HDCP encrypted content for presentation on the monitor.
With this master key, it is possible to build external devices that will appear as legitimate recipients of HDCP encrypted content with an ability to decode that content, and then do whatever is desired with it (such as re-compress it and make it available through download sites). Will someone do this? It's a good bet; where's there's money to be made via piracy, people will take advantage.
How did this happen? After all, isn't encryption based security supposed to be based on an "ultimate level of obscurity", namely, the problem of "can you figure out which # of our 100 billion possibilities I'm using?".
Yes but...in this case the overall system had a flaw, that allows someone to use some heavy math to "back compute" the master key from a sufficiently sized (but still small, somewhere between 30 and 50) set of "device keys", which get generated through use of the master key.
Overall, what does this say about our digital media security systems?
The answer is a hard pill to swallow: our digital media security system can't really be trusted. Nothing about their basis on "hard cryptography" makes them immune from cracking, and nothing about their implementation directly in custom hardware makes them immune.
So what's needed? What is needed is multiple layers of defense, ideally implemented with both hardware and software mechanisms. Arxan Technologies is predicated on the exponentially increasing difficulty of fully cracking a protected system, when that system is protected by multiple layers of relatively independent security mechanisms. Additionally, the overall architecture should be designed with not just the concept of stopping cracking, but also of anticipating and detecting a cracked environment...and them compromising that environment in a new, subtle but pernicious way.
Always seek to detect and create trouble for the cracker and/or for the user of the crack. I recommend an approach of multiple layers of defense, with both crack blocking strategies and crack detection strategies, all coupled to overt and subtle response strategies.
Intel, in response to this crack, has said they will sue anyone using the master key. Legal solutions to piracy historically have had very limited success. Our technology can and should do better in presenting very difficult barriers to those willing to act outside of the law.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Apple vs. Open: Doomed to Repeat History?
Continuing this recent theme of Android specific blog posts, I'd like to point out the remarkable repeat of history we have going on here.
Consider Apple and their "market creation" and "market leader" position they've achieved with the iPhone. Consider its key attributes: a closed system environment in every respect: closed operating system, a tightly controlled 3rd party application solution set, strict limitations on what software is allowed on the devices, and a supporting Apple proprietary media solution (iTunes).
On the scene arrives Android, an open operating platform available to all. And quickly a new business ecology is born, consisting of a myriad of companies building Android/ARM based devices to rival Apple's, all similar but all unique as well.
Does any of this sound familiar? I hope at least a few readers are old enough to remember Apple's position in "personal computing" in the early 1980's with the Apple II (and later MacIntosh) computer. They were "dominant", with their closed proprietary technology. Along came IBM with an open component approach, with all the critical components (DOS, Intel x86 microprocessors, and boot loaders, backplane and I/O specifications), generally available to all comers. I remember the full page "welcome" add put out by Apple, welcoming IBM to the party, and of course the "once only" Super Bowl ad announcing the Mac a few years later.
So what happened back then? We all know the story: the IBM PC "clone" business got rocking, and soon Apple's share in the market dropped to less than 20%. Open, clone-able, with lots of choice and variety from a multitude of vendors won out handily over single vendor, closed, more expensive and arguably "better".
The story is repeating with the iPhone and Android, and in my opinion, the story will continue to repeat. In three years, Apple smart phone share is likely to be down to a fraction of their current leadership share, and you will see massive innovation, variety and choice in the Android based product field. Apple's closed "complete ecosystem" solution will be better...and still won't win.
A side note to all of this is the question of where is Microsoft? Here we have what I believe is a fundamental shift in the computing paradigm for the masses, from personal computers to "intimate computers", computers that stay yet closer at all times to your body than those big and bulky "personal" computers. Where is Microsoft in this transition? Answer: nowhere in sight, at least thus far. The Windows environment has failed to be successful in the multiple attempts to adapt it to the smart phone form factor. The Kin product was a complete disaster and potentially reflective of a real inability to innovate successfully inside Microsoft. Apparently they will be making a fresh try soon with a "Window 7 phone"; it will be fascinating to see if they can recover and establish a serious market position.
In the meantime, the Apple vs. Android wars heat up. Apple yesterday announced a loosening of restrictions on iPhone developers, and everyone thinks this change is a function of competitive pressure from Android, and I'd have to agree. Competition is fundamental to successful capitalism and generally promoting market openness and freedom, and while I am a happy iPhone user, I like to see competition, choice and a lessening of market controlling restrictions.
To sum it up, if I was a betting man, I'd put my personal bet on Android to be the winner here. History tells us it's the likely outcome --- unless Apple will challenge that outcome by signficiantly opening up their walled garden.
Consider Apple and their "market creation" and "market leader" position they've achieved with the iPhone. Consider its key attributes: a closed system environment in every respect: closed operating system, a tightly controlled 3rd party application solution set, strict limitations on what software is allowed on the devices, and a supporting Apple proprietary media solution (iTunes).
On the scene arrives Android, an open operating platform available to all. And quickly a new business ecology is born, consisting of a myriad of companies building Android/ARM based devices to rival Apple's, all similar but all unique as well.
Does any of this sound familiar? I hope at least a few readers are old enough to remember Apple's position in "personal computing" in the early 1980's with the Apple II (and later MacIntosh) computer. They were "dominant", with their closed proprietary technology. Along came IBM with an open component approach, with all the critical components (DOS, Intel x86 microprocessors, and boot loaders, backplane and I/O specifications), generally available to all comers. I remember the full page "welcome" add put out by Apple, welcoming IBM to the party, and of course the "once only" Super Bowl ad announcing the Mac a few years later.
So what happened back then? We all know the story: the IBM PC "clone" business got rocking, and soon Apple's share in the market dropped to less than 20%. Open, clone-able, with lots of choice and variety from a multitude of vendors won out handily over single vendor, closed, more expensive and arguably "better".
The story is repeating with the iPhone and Android, and in my opinion, the story will continue to repeat. In three years, Apple smart phone share is likely to be down to a fraction of their current leadership share, and you will see massive innovation, variety and choice in the Android based product field. Apple's closed "complete ecosystem" solution will be better...and still won't win.
A side note to all of this is the question of where is Microsoft? Here we have what I believe is a fundamental shift in the computing paradigm for the masses, from personal computers to "intimate computers", computers that stay yet closer at all times to your body than those big and bulky "personal" computers. Where is Microsoft in this transition? Answer: nowhere in sight, at least thus far. The Windows environment has failed to be successful in the multiple attempts to adapt it to the smart phone form factor. The Kin product was a complete disaster and potentially reflective of a real inability to innovate successfully inside Microsoft. Apparently they will be making a fresh try soon with a "Window 7 phone"; it will be fascinating to see if they can recover and establish a serious market position.
In the meantime, the Apple vs. Android wars heat up. Apple yesterday announced a loosening of restrictions on iPhone developers, and everyone thinks this change is a function of competitive pressure from Android, and I'd have to agree. Competition is fundamental to successful capitalism and generally promoting market openness and freedom, and while I am a happy iPhone user, I like to see competition, choice and a lessening of market controlling restrictions.
To sum it up, if I was a betting man, I'd put my personal bet on Android to be the winner here. History tells us it's the likely outcome --- unless Apple will challenge that outcome by signficiantly opening up their walled garden.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Android Application Security
Android based devices are exploding onto our consumer products scene. By my recent count at the wikipedia list of Android devices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices), there are 97 devices shipping today, and another 57 in the delivery pipeline.
On the volume side, Android devices are also showing rampaging growth. Gartner numbers show Android smart phones at 1.8% market share in Q209, rising to an astounding 17.2% share in Q210. While I don't have "smart devices (not phones)" figures, I'd expect even larger percentages for Android. (Who are the big losers of smart phone share you wonder? No surprises there: Windows Mobile and Symbian.).
Yet the Android model is fundamentally suspect at the level of 3rd party applications. Why? Simple: the bulk of these applications are from "boutique" developers or development shops, and there is absolutely no vetting of what exactly these applications do. The potential for malware in these applications is enormous.
Android does have a mechanism that requires applications "request" capabilities at installation time. However, it appears few pay much attention to that. A few million downloads of wallpaper applications that requested sufficient capabilities to send phone specific information (SIM ID, phone #'s, etc.) to a server in China certainly proved that point (why would you grant your wallpaper application internet access? Because it asks for it and you want the wallpaper, so..."yes" you click!). A security researcher, Jon Oberheide, demonstrated the potentially malicious application "Rootstrap", which bootstrapped a rootkit on an Android device. The app, (a preview of the popular movie Twilight Eclipse) routinely polled a server to see if new Android exploit code was available, and if so would download it into the application and execute it. About 200 people installed this app, and while in this case the compromised app didn't inject malware, it's a sober reminder of how you really have no clue what you are getting when dealing with Android applications.
Is the iPhone model better? From a security perspective, absolutely. Apple is doing something with apps to vet them. What exactly they do in this vetting process they don't share (and I like many others would like them to be much more transparent about this), but personally I'm reasonably comfortable loading an iPhone app onto my phone, but would hesitate long and hard before loading any application written by any unknown publisher onto my Android device.
Don't get me wrong, I do like the broader openness that Android devices offer. After all, it's my device is it not? I should have the right to load any software I want, in my opinion. At the same time, the marketplace needs to provide me with options for ensuring or identifying problems with the security of my choices. Those options don't exist today.
This leads different parties involved with the Android device phenomena to different (sometimes overlapped) sets of requirements.
First, for the consumer, there's an enormous need for Android application vetting, some high quality "seal of goodness" that is arrived at through a reasonably thorough review of the actual code in the app and what it is doing.
For the enterprise IT professional, there's a need for the same vetting service, and of course some device management services. Corporate phones should not be allowed to be loaded with arbitrary applications; all apps should be required to come from a secure enterprise location that holds only vetted (and dare I say business appropriate?) applications, or alternatively, a vetting service can offer a means for particular enterprise phones to only download applications marked as appropriate by that same enterprise's IT organization.
For the application developer, whether a small shop or an enterprise, there is another critical need. While Android applications are signed, they are self-signed. It is not difficult to take (as an example) a well known bank's application, insert into it high value malware, re-sign it, and publish it in way that gives an illusion that it is still from or works with the original bank. Applications need protection from this kind of malware insertion. Additionally there is the usual piracy problem. Recently Google initiated an attempted solution to this, with a licensing service. However, that led to immediately demonstrated trivial cracks allowing applications to run without licensing. In response, Google has said "oh, you need to obfuscate your application code". Why, thank you Google! What have I been prattling on about in this blog for the last year? Guard your application software folks, because if you don't, others will open it and have a field day stealing and modifying it to serve their own economic agendas.
Did I mention that Arxan is announcing support for guarding of native code in Android applications yet? Yes indeed: watch for our announcement this week.
On the volume side, Android devices are also showing rampaging growth. Gartner numbers show Android smart phones at 1.8% market share in Q209, rising to an astounding 17.2% share in Q210. While I don't have "smart devices (not phones)" figures, I'd expect even larger percentages for Android. (Who are the big losers of smart phone share you wonder? No surprises there: Windows Mobile and Symbian.).
Yet the Android model is fundamentally suspect at the level of 3rd party applications. Why? Simple: the bulk of these applications are from "boutique" developers or development shops, and there is absolutely no vetting of what exactly these applications do. The potential for malware in these applications is enormous.
Android does have a mechanism that requires applications "request" capabilities at installation time. However, it appears few pay much attention to that. A few million downloads of wallpaper applications that requested sufficient capabilities to send phone specific information (SIM ID, phone #'s, etc.) to a server in China certainly proved that point (why would you grant your wallpaper application internet access? Because it asks for it and you want the wallpaper, so..."yes" you click!). A security researcher, Jon Oberheide, demonstrated the potentially malicious application "Rootstrap", which bootstrapped a rootkit on an Android device. The app, (a preview of the popular movie Twilight Eclipse) routinely polled a server to see if new Android exploit code was available, and if so would download it into the application and execute it. About 200 people installed this app, and while in this case the compromised app didn't inject malware, it's a sober reminder of how you really have no clue what you are getting when dealing with Android applications.
Is the iPhone model better? From a security perspective, absolutely. Apple is doing something with apps to vet them. What exactly they do in this vetting process they don't share (and I like many others would like them to be much more transparent about this), but personally I'm reasonably comfortable loading an iPhone app onto my phone, but would hesitate long and hard before loading any application written by any unknown publisher onto my Android device.
Don't get me wrong, I do like the broader openness that Android devices offer. After all, it's my device is it not? I should have the right to load any software I want, in my opinion. At the same time, the marketplace needs to provide me with options for ensuring or identifying problems with the security of my choices. Those options don't exist today.
This leads different parties involved with the Android device phenomena to different (sometimes overlapped) sets of requirements.
First, for the consumer, there's an enormous need for Android application vetting, some high quality "seal of goodness" that is arrived at through a reasonably thorough review of the actual code in the app and what it is doing.
For the enterprise IT professional, there's a need for the same vetting service, and of course some device management services. Corporate phones should not be allowed to be loaded with arbitrary applications; all apps should be required to come from a secure enterprise location that holds only vetted (and dare I say business appropriate?) applications, or alternatively, a vetting service can offer a means for particular enterprise phones to only download applications marked as appropriate by that same enterprise's IT organization.
For the application developer, whether a small shop or an enterprise, there is another critical need. While Android applications are signed, they are self-signed. It is not difficult to take (as an example) a well known bank's application, insert into it high value malware, re-sign it, and publish it in way that gives an illusion that it is still from or works with the original bank. Applications need protection from this kind of malware insertion. Additionally there is the usual piracy problem. Recently Google initiated an attempted solution to this, with a licensing service. However, that led to immediately demonstrated trivial cracks allowing applications to run without licensing. In response, Google has said "oh, you need to obfuscate your application code". Why, thank you Google! What have I been prattling on about in this blog for the last year? Guard your application software folks, because if you don't, others will open it and have a field day stealing and modifying it to serve their own economic agendas.
Did I mention that Arxan is announcing support for guarding of native code in Android applications yet? Yes indeed: watch for our announcement this week.
Friday, August 27, 2010
DLL Hijacking Redux
Someone once suggested there is nothing new under the sun, and that's certainly true with this week's spate of reports about DLL hijacking attacks in Windows.
This is a well known vulnerability dating back many years. New reports that that specific Microsoft applications fall prey to this vulnerability are not at all surprising (http://tinyurl.com/33btjkh).
Microsoft is quoted by Computerworld (http://tinyurl.com/23ag8kb), saying:
"We're not talking about a vulnerability in a Microsoft product," said Christopher Budd, a senior communications manager with the company's MSRC, or Microsoft Security Response Center. "This is an attack vector that tricks an application into loading an untrusted library."
Assessing this statement requires a brief review of the facts. First, this is a vulnerability driven by the fact that Windows will search in all kinds of places to find a DLL that your application requests to be loaded, if you application is so "unsecure" as to identify that DLL only by file name instead of a fully specified pathname.
Why would applications fail to use a fully specified pathname? One good reason is compatibility: Microsoft DLL's are not consistently in the same location across different versions of Windows! Therefore software striving for compatibility needs to allow Windows to search for the DLL, or search itself. A second reason is simply because Windows allows it and thereby "it's easier".
Windows first looks for the DLL by name in the current process's current ("working") directory. That's where an attacker can easily load their own replacement DLL under the same DLL name (through a wide variety of means, none legitimate but all relatively easy to perpetrate), if (as is usually the case) the current directory is not where the named DLL resides. The next time the application runs, viola, they have their own software now running on the computer. What can it do? Literally, just about anything, including quickly load other more subtle and pernicious bot-ware, key loggers, system scanners, etcetera.
Can applications operate in a manner to avoid the vulnerability? Yes, they can, but doing so is more complicated for the application developer. The key is to always load a specific DLL in a specific directory using a fully specified pathname. This in turn can create its own application compatibility issues, as any given path name to a system DLL is not guaranteed to be the same from Windows version to version! This is the true heart of the design issue, because any attempt to deal with this multiplicity of DLL locations across Windows versions in a single version of an application requires the application perform a "search" for the DLL across different directories...which is exactly what Windows does automatically for you and which opens up the application to a replacement DLL attack!
We here at Arxan are looking at this problem in an orthogonal manner, by identifying opportunities to validate that the proper DLL was loaded, regardless of its originating location. Those are the kinds of application internal security features we are quite good at. Note the elegance of this kind of solution: it doesn't require any application source code changes (because our technology inserts such checks directly into the binary application code), it creates no new dependencies on Windows specifics such as specific DLL locations in this or that version of Windows, and it is a security solution that migrates with the application itself.
To end with another ancient aphorism, if you want a job done, best to do it yourself. If you want your applications secure, don’t trust in the operating system to provide that security: secure your applications yourself!
This is a well known vulnerability dating back many years. New reports that that specific Microsoft applications fall prey to this vulnerability are not at all surprising (http://tinyurl.com/33btjkh).
Microsoft is quoted by Computerworld (http://tinyurl.com/23ag8kb), saying:
"We're not talking about a vulnerability in a Microsoft product," said Christopher Budd, a senior communications manager with the company's MSRC, or Microsoft Security Response Center. "This is an attack vector that tricks an application into loading an untrusted library."
Assessing this statement requires a brief review of the facts. First, this is a vulnerability driven by the fact that Windows will search in all kinds of places to find a DLL that your application requests to be loaded, if you application is so "unsecure" as to identify that DLL only by file name instead of a fully specified pathname.
Why would applications fail to use a fully specified pathname? One good reason is compatibility: Microsoft DLL's are not consistently in the same location across different versions of Windows! Therefore software striving for compatibility needs to allow Windows to search for the DLL, or search itself. A second reason is simply because Windows allows it and thereby "it's easier".
Windows first looks for the DLL by name in the current process's current ("working") directory. That's where an attacker can easily load their own replacement DLL under the same DLL name (through a wide variety of means, none legitimate but all relatively easy to perpetrate), if (as is usually the case) the current directory is not where the named DLL resides. The next time the application runs, viola, they have their own software now running on the computer. What can it do? Literally, just about anything, including quickly load other more subtle and pernicious bot-ware, key loggers, system scanners, etcetera.
Can applications operate in a manner to avoid the vulnerability? Yes, they can, but doing so is more complicated for the application developer. The key is to always load a specific DLL in a specific directory using a fully specified pathname. This in turn can create its own application compatibility issues, as any given path name to a system DLL is not guaranteed to be the same from Windows version to version! This is the true heart of the design issue, because any attempt to deal with this multiplicity of DLL locations across Windows versions in a single version of an application requires the application perform a "search" for the DLL across different directories...which is exactly what Windows does automatically for you and which opens up the application to a replacement DLL attack!
We here at Arxan are looking at this problem in an orthogonal manner, by identifying opportunities to validate that the proper DLL was loaded, regardless of its originating location. Those are the kinds of application internal security features we are quite good at. Note the elegance of this kind of solution: it doesn't require any application source code changes (because our technology inserts such checks directly into the binary application code), it creates no new dependencies on Windows specifics such as specific DLL locations in this or that version of Windows, and it is a security solution that migrates with the application itself.
To end with another ancient aphorism, if you want a job done, best to do it yourself. If you want your applications secure, don’t trust in the operating system to provide that security: secure your applications yourself!
Friday, August 20, 2010
Smart Phones: The Fifth Wave of Computing!
Two recent analyst reports detail the proliferation of smartphone apps. ABI Research predicts that mobile application downloads from iOS and Android will account for 78% of all application downloads in 2010, with iOS (the iPhone's operating system) taking the lion's share of 52% of all applications. Meanwhile iSuppli predicts Android will be used in 75 million smartphones by 2012, up from 5 million in 2009. Meanwhile, iOS usage will amount to 62 million in 2012, up from 25 million in 2009. Sales of these multi-function hand-held internet connected computers are expected to pass up sales of traditional PC's and laptops well before the middle of this new decade.
Overall, I believe this represents a titanic shift in the computing industry. If we step back far enough we can see perhaps four massive waves in the evolution of computing: first, the custom/boutique computing period of 1940's and 1950's, then the mainframe period of the 1960's through 1970's, then the minicomputer period from the 1970's through the 1990's, and the PC period from the early 1980's to the 2010's. The fifth wave is upon us, and it is the "smartphone" period.
Note how with each wave, old winners faded away, and new winners emerged. Nowhere is this more stark today than the fading glory of Microsoft, huge winner in the PC wave...with virtually no technology or product position in the heart of the smartphone wave.
In this new wave, the iPhone is the front runner, and Android-based smartphones are gaining in what appears to be a two-horse race, as the overall smartphone market is poised for explosive growth. This is great news for the smartphone ecosystem, while at the same perhaps a "deer in the headlight" moment for enterprise security teams.
Today's smartphones continue to expand in functionality, driven by huge numbers of innovative applications and generally better performance as a computing device. The iPhone and Android-based phone is rapidly becoming a serious alternative as a general personal computing device offering unique value in terms of personal mobility.
This is leading to sticky issues for enterprise security teams. What applications are okay to download? Will any applications used for personal purposes create any security issues (i.e. malware) with applications to be used at work? Can third party "business" applications be generally trusted? What are the additional costs to add smartphones to the already broad mix of enterprise IT managed devices? Are the appropriate security policies and underlying practices, mechanisms and resources in place?
While no doubt a daunting task for the enterprise security teams, this is yet another reason why widely used data protection methods aimed at "defending the perimeter," are not enough in today's distributed computing world. Today, companies need to adopt new strategies aimed at integrating security into the software and application themselves. Given today's distributed enterprise computing model, a modern enterprise literally has no set network perimeter to defend. This was true with the laptop and home PC being used routinely as a corporate computing devices. But now with the smart phone filling the same role, the distributed computing nature of the modern enterprise reaches it ultimate manifestation: corporate computing is happening everywhere there are employees, everywhere they go, all the time.
Obviously the security industry must roll up its sleeves and expand the notion of enterprise security. In this process, the old models of "centralized everything" probably won't work. Individuals must broaden their awareness and their personal practices, because these are "personally managed" devices. Application providors must consider the risks and take appropriate actions to protect their applications from cloning and trojan insertion. Lastly, device and the system software providers must continue to enhance and refine the security attributes, features and functions of the devices themselves.
-------------------
Late breaking news: Intel, with a growing new focus on mobile computing, acquires McAfee, and the talk is all about...traditional PC anti-virus you say? No! Not a word! The talk is all about the need for Intel to get a position in mobile/wireless computing security. Just another indication that the fifth wave of computing is upon us.
Overall, I believe this represents a titanic shift in the computing industry. If we step back far enough we can see perhaps four massive waves in the evolution of computing: first, the custom/boutique computing period of 1940's and 1950's, then the mainframe period of the 1960's through 1970's, then the minicomputer period from the 1970's through the 1990's, and the PC period from the early 1980's to the 2010's. The fifth wave is upon us, and it is the "smartphone" period.
Note how with each wave, old winners faded away, and new winners emerged. Nowhere is this more stark today than the fading glory of Microsoft, huge winner in the PC wave...with virtually no technology or product position in the heart of the smartphone wave.
In this new wave, the iPhone is the front runner, and Android-based smartphones are gaining in what appears to be a two-horse race, as the overall smartphone market is poised for explosive growth. This is great news for the smartphone ecosystem, while at the same perhaps a "deer in the headlight" moment for enterprise security teams.
Today's smartphones continue to expand in functionality, driven by huge numbers of innovative applications and generally better performance as a computing device. The iPhone and Android-based phone is rapidly becoming a serious alternative as a general personal computing device offering unique value in terms of personal mobility.
This is leading to sticky issues for enterprise security teams. What applications are okay to download? Will any applications used for personal purposes create any security issues (i.e. malware) with applications to be used at work? Can third party "business" applications be generally trusted? What are the additional costs to add smartphones to the already broad mix of enterprise IT managed devices? Are the appropriate security policies and underlying practices, mechanisms and resources in place?
While no doubt a daunting task for the enterprise security teams, this is yet another reason why widely used data protection methods aimed at "defending the perimeter," are not enough in today's distributed computing world. Today, companies need to adopt new strategies aimed at integrating security into the software and application themselves. Given today's distributed enterprise computing model, a modern enterprise literally has no set network perimeter to defend. This was true with the laptop and home PC being used routinely as a corporate computing devices. But now with the smart phone filling the same role, the distributed computing nature of the modern enterprise reaches it ultimate manifestation: corporate computing is happening everywhere there are employees, everywhere they go, all the time.
Obviously the security industry must roll up its sleeves and expand the notion of enterprise security. In this process, the old models of "centralized everything" probably won't work. Individuals must broaden their awareness and their personal practices, because these are "personally managed" devices. Application providors must consider the risks and take appropriate actions to protect their applications from cloning and trojan insertion. Lastly, device and the system software providers must continue to enhance and refine the security attributes, features and functions of the devices themselves.
-------------------
Late breaking news: Intel, with a growing new focus on mobile computing, acquires McAfee, and the talk is all about...traditional PC anti-virus you say? No! Not a word! The talk is all about the need for Intel to get a position in mobile/wireless computing security. Just another indication that the fifth wave of computing is upon us.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Smart Phone Privacy?
The media is in a minor uproar over (the lack of) phone privacy:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/apps-on-your-phone-putting-your-privacy-at-risk/2332?tag=nl.e550
The essence of the story is that (1) you don't really know or control what all those applications you are loading onto your "smart" phone really do, and (2) they do far more spying on your phone data than you realize.
If you think such hidden spyware in phone apps is uncommon, let me tell you about a presentation at last week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering reported in their session "Application Attack: Surviving Explosive Growth in Phone Applications" on an automated methodology called "Genome" in which they have downloaded and analyzed just about all the world's free applications for both the iPhone and Android phones.
Among their many interesting results, they found an abundance of "wallpaper" applications, all from the same author, that sent back to a server in China your phone's sim serial #, your subscriber ID, your phone line # and your voice mail #. Whoops, so much for phone privacy and application security. This news is now getting general media coverage:
http://www.tgdaily.com/security-brief/50862-as-many-as-4-million-people-downloaded-data-stealing-android-app.
These researchers also found that while it appeared that about 30% of smart phone applications "steal" your phone location information, in fact the bulk of that usage is by 3rd party adware software in those applications, which want to vend to you location targeted ads. So it's not necessarily as nefarious as it may seem, though just as with Google mail giving you targeted ads based on the content of your email, all kinds of interesting questions of appropriate bounds of privacy arise.
Before we run, scream and shout about the lack of smart phone privacy, let's acknowledge that there is nothing new here under the sun. The exact same issue presents itself on our PC's. We can and do download all kinds of apps, and they can (and do) gather and lift info.
One critical difference is that on our PC's, we don't have the same privilege management systems that at least give us the chance to know of and approve of the rights the app is requesting. So one could argue Android is superior to PC's in this regard. And on the iPhone, there is at least a minimal amount of vetting, again, an improvement vs. the PC.
A key difference here is that people have more sense of "privacy" related to a phone than to a PC. We've been inured to PC virus issues so we just assume that nothing's really safe or personal on a PC. Phone calls and phone specifics are viewed as private, so all the PC issues coming to roost on smart phones creates a media uproar.
What we need to understand and accept is that the "smart phone" device you have in your pocket (or are reading this blog post with) is not a phone! It's an extraordinarily powerful internet connected computer, with all the security issues such computers come with. All of them.
Downloading an application to a computer is a fundamentally dangerous proposition, just as wheeling in a large wooden horse into their city was a bit risky for the Greeks. The situation is worsened by the fact that the application arena for smart phones is a cottage industry. We are comfortable and reasonably safe when we load a PC application from a known business entity; when we load a wallpaper application written by "jackeey wallpaper", do we have any idea what we are really getting? Clearly not.
There is a business opportunity here, and that is to provide a technology/service that vets phone applications through internal code analysis (just as the Greeks should have first taken a look inside that wooden horse!). A "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", perhaps structured as a separate app store front or just as an informational service.
There is a corollary problem of how do I, as a "good guy" or "good company" publishing application software, protect my application from being trojanized and republished? If you've read any of my earlier blogs you'll find plenty of material on how to effectively deal with that.
So the next time you are about to casually download that nifty new game or whizzy app that makes your phone sing and dance...think about how much you really know about the software you will be unleashing on your "private" hand held computer, and the range of possible objectives of the person who wrote and published that software.
And beware Trojan's bearing application gifts.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/apps-on-your-phone-putting-your-privacy-at-risk/2332?tag=nl.e550
The essence of the story is that (1) you don't really know or control what all those applications you are loading onto your "smart" phone really do, and (2) they do far more spying on your phone data than you realize.
If you think such hidden spyware in phone apps is uncommon, let me tell you about a presentation at last week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering reported in their session "Application Attack: Surviving Explosive Growth in Phone Applications" on an automated methodology called "Genome" in which they have downloaded and analyzed just about all the world's free applications for both the iPhone and Android phones.
Among their many interesting results, they found an abundance of "wallpaper" applications, all from the same author, that sent back to a server in China your phone's sim serial #, your subscriber ID, your phone line # and your voice mail #. Whoops, so much for phone privacy and application security. This news is now getting general media coverage:
http://www.tgdaily.com/security-brief/50862-as-many-as-4-million-people-downloaded-data-stealing-android-app.
These researchers also found that while it appeared that about 30% of smart phone applications "steal" your phone location information, in fact the bulk of that usage is by 3rd party adware software in those applications, which want to vend to you location targeted ads. So it's not necessarily as nefarious as it may seem, though just as with Google mail giving you targeted ads based on the content of your email, all kinds of interesting questions of appropriate bounds of privacy arise.
Before we run, scream and shout about the lack of smart phone privacy, let's acknowledge that there is nothing new here under the sun. The exact same issue presents itself on our PC's. We can and do download all kinds of apps, and they can (and do) gather and lift info.
One critical difference is that on our PC's, we don't have the same privilege management systems that at least give us the chance to know of and approve of the rights the app is requesting. So one could argue Android is superior to PC's in this regard. And on the iPhone, there is at least a minimal amount of vetting, again, an improvement vs. the PC.
A key difference here is that people have more sense of "privacy" related to a phone than to a PC. We've been inured to PC virus issues so we just assume that nothing's really safe or personal on a PC. Phone calls and phone specifics are viewed as private, so all the PC issues coming to roost on smart phones creates a media uproar.
What we need to understand and accept is that the "smart phone" device you have in your pocket (or are reading this blog post with) is not a phone! It's an extraordinarily powerful internet connected computer, with all the security issues such computers come with. All of them.
Downloading an application to a computer is a fundamentally dangerous proposition, just as wheeling in a large wooden horse into their city was a bit risky for the Greeks. The situation is worsened by the fact that the application arena for smart phones is a cottage industry. We are comfortable and reasonably safe when we load a PC application from a known business entity; when we load a wallpaper application written by "jackeey wallpaper", do we have any idea what we are really getting? Clearly not.
There is a business opportunity here, and that is to provide a technology/service that vets phone applications through internal code analysis (just as the Greeks should have first taken a look inside that wooden horse!). A "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", perhaps structured as a separate app store front or just as an informational service.
There is a corollary problem of how do I, as a "good guy" or "good company" publishing application software, protect my application from being trojanized and republished? If you've read any of my earlier blogs you'll find plenty of material on how to effectively deal with that.
So the next time you are about to casually download that nifty new game or whizzy app that makes your phone sing and dance...think about how much you really know about the software you will be unleashing on your "private" hand held computer, and the range of possible objectives of the person who wrote and published that software.
And beware Trojan's bearing application gifts.
Electronic Espionage and Application Security
When it comes to cyber attacks, “the stakes are too high to ignore the problem,” according to InfoWorld (http://tinyurl.com/2fk3vt6) in an in-depth report on electronic espionage.
The attacks often bypass typical security tools that companies implement to protect their data assets. Once inside the system, the electronic spies quietly gather data over time without causing disruptions that could alert integrated security tools or draw suspicion from a company's IT security team.
Neil MacDonald, vice president at research firm Gartner, says, "as many as 75 percent of enterprises have been or are being infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted attacks that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses."
The simple fact is that widely used data protection methods aimed at "defending the perimeter," are not enough to protect against more and more sophisticated threats such as electronic espionage. There are far too many methods by which the perimeter can be penetrated, both through direct and indirect attack. Applications in the enterprise, in the cloud, distributed applications and applications in end point devices are the new focused target of attack by organized crime.
This is a good time to re-post what I call my "application commandments."
1.) Applications can and should detect and notify of debugger attachments.
2.) Applications can and should protect critically sensitive code through encryption and dynamic decrypt/execute/re-encrypt operations.
3.) Applications should utilize multiple levels of networks of self-guarding techniques, with a variety of overt and subtle response actions, to ensure that persistent attacks are foiled at some level.
4.) Enterprise applications should have these response actions wired into the security monitoring systems deployed by the enterprise.
These practices need to become commonplace and part of our general software lifecycles. We need to keep up with the organized criminals, and right now our software is falling woefully behind.
The attacks often bypass typical security tools that companies implement to protect their data assets. Once inside the system, the electronic spies quietly gather data over time without causing disruptions that could alert integrated security tools or draw suspicion from a company's IT security team.
Neil MacDonald, vice president at research firm Gartner, says, "as many as 75 percent of enterprises have been or are being infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted attacks that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses."
The simple fact is that widely used data protection methods aimed at "defending the perimeter," are not enough to protect against more and more sophisticated threats such as electronic espionage. There are far too many methods by which the perimeter can be penetrated, both through direct and indirect attack. Applications in the enterprise, in the cloud, distributed applications and applications in end point devices are the new focused target of attack by organized crime.
This is a good time to re-post what I call my "application commandments."
1.) Applications can and should detect and notify of debugger attachments.
2.) Applications can and should protect critically sensitive code through encryption and dynamic decrypt/execute/re-encrypt operations.
3.) Applications should utilize multiple levels of networks of self-guarding techniques, with a variety of overt and subtle response actions, to ensure that persistent attacks are foiled at some level.
4.) Enterprise applications should have these response actions wired into the security monitoring systems deployed by the enterprise.
These practices need to become commonplace and part of our general software lifecycles. We need to keep up with the organized criminals, and right now our software is falling woefully behind.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Happy Tenth Birthday, Microsoft .NET
The popular Microsoft framework celebrated an impressive milestone this past month - ten years ago, .NET arrived on the scene and with its debut, quickly became the development "framework of choice" for innovative software and a key framework enabling the evolution to Web 2.0 applications, including Silverlight.
Given the popularity of .NET applications, the issue of how best to protect the framework is one of vital importance. Software piracy is rampant around the world and .NET applications have unfortunately been among those most heavily targeted by hackers for reverse engineering. This is due at least in part to the comprehensive metadata included with .NET applications, which (in a manner similar to Java), enables easy software analysis, including comprehensive de-compiling (meaning, generation of near original source code).
As B2C client software with greater amounts of intelligence and interactivity with corporate back-end systems become more prevalent, we will see a higher volume of business client applications written in .NET and Silverlight. This code is highly vulnerable and generally needs strong anti-reverse engineering and anti-tamper properties. No one wants a trojan-ized version of your favorite banking client app available on the internet, indistinguishable (to the casual user) from the un-tampered version!
To address this risk in .NET applications, meta-data must be stripped, character strings in the code must be encrypted, the code in the application must be obfuscated, and internal detectors of code modifications must be installed. Without aggressive protections, client software produced by businesses for consumer usage is open to casual hacking for illicit and nefarious purposes.
Windows .NET introduced a new way to build rich software applications for Web 2.0, and this model now applies to applications for emerging Cloud platforms as well. To continue to expand the .NET usage footprint, particularly for commercial business application client software, it's critical that development teams be aware of the security issues implicit in .NET code, and how to address them.
Here's to a safe and secure next 10 years, .NET!
Given the popularity of .NET applications, the issue of how best to protect the framework is one of vital importance. Software piracy is rampant around the world and .NET applications have unfortunately been among those most heavily targeted by hackers for reverse engineering. This is due at least in part to the comprehensive metadata included with .NET applications, which (in a manner similar to Java), enables easy software analysis, including comprehensive de-compiling (meaning, generation of near original source code).
As B2C client software with greater amounts of intelligence and interactivity with corporate back-end systems become more prevalent, we will see a higher volume of business client applications written in .NET and Silverlight. This code is highly vulnerable and generally needs strong anti-reverse engineering and anti-tamper properties. No one wants a trojan-ized version of your favorite banking client app available on the internet, indistinguishable (to the casual user) from the un-tampered version!
To address this risk in .NET applications, meta-data must be stripped, character strings in the code must be encrypted, the code in the application must be obfuscated, and internal detectors of code modifications must be installed. Without aggressive protections, client software produced by businesses for consumer usage is open to casual hacking for illicit and nefarious purposes.
Windows .NET introduced a new way to build rich software applications for Web 2.0, and this model now applies to applications for emerging Cloud platforms as well. To continue to expand the .NET usage footprint, particularly for commercial business application client software, it's critical that development teams be aware of the security issues implicit in .NET code, and how to address them.
Here's to a safe and secure next 10 years, .NET!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Internet TV: The New Security Battlefield
The internet and the television are "converging". It's an exciting, transformative time in media delivery, consumption and business models.
The dark underside to this happy and expansive story are the security threats associated with these new and emerging business models. In order to be a winner in this space, not only does a company have to deliver new innovations or better performance, but it also has to be viable and sustainable from a content and application perspective. Where are the potential content leaks in the system? Can unscrupulous hackers compromise the integrity of the ecosystem such that content and IP are pirated, and the ssociated revenues jeopardized? If companies don't model these risks and mitigate them proactively, and invest in properly validating the security strength of their solution through red teaming efforts, history will repeat itself, and serious losses will ensue.
What is needed are content protection, conditional access and digital rights management systems that are hardened and validated to be very difficult to crack or circumvent. Much of this innovation will come from applications enabling digital entertainment access through new devices with relatively new softare platforms. Android is the best current example, a popular emerging platform that is completely open. Those developing applications and digitial media infrastructure and solutions for Android have to plan for and validate the security of those applications. Anything less and the internet/TV convergence will be slowed down quickly by content owners unwilling to distribute their assets via this new channel.
The dark underside to this happy and expansive story are the security threats associated with these new and emerging business models. In order to be a winner in this space, not only does a company have to deliver new innovations or better performance, but it also has to be viable and sustainable from a content and application perspective. Where are the potential content leaks in the system? Can unscrupulous hackers compromise the integrity of the ecosystem such that content and IP are pirated, and the ssociated revenues jeopardized? If companies don't model these risks and mitigate them proactively, and invest in properly validating the security strength of their solution through red teaming efforts, history will repeat itself, and serious losses will ensue.
What is needed are content protection, conditional access and digital rights management systems that are hardened and validated to be very difficult to crack or circumvent. Much of this innovation will come from applications enabling digital entertainment access through new devices with relatively new softare platforms. Android is the best current example, a popular emerging platform that is completely open. Those developing applications and digitial media infrastructure and solutions for Android have to plan for and validate the security of those applications. Anything less and the internet/TV convergence will be slowed down quickly by content owners unwilling to distribute their assets via this new channel.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Respecting Digital Property
In the landmark essay "Selling Wine Without Bottles, The Economy of Mind on the Global Net", written in 1992-1993 (http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/ElectronicFrontier/WineWithoutBottles.html), John Barlow anticipates and lays out the fundamental intellectual property issues that plague our current digital world. Barlow eloquently and precisely frames the core questions:
"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
Barlow concludes his insightful essay with an assertion that has clearly come to pass:
"Cryptography...is the "material" from which the walls, boundaries--and bottles--of Cyberspace will be fashioned."
Barlow also anticipated the rise of Arxan Technologies (and other similar companies)) when he stated that:
"Cryptography will enable a lot of protection technologies which will develop rapidly in the obsessive competition which has always existed between lock-makers and lock-breakers."
We here at Arxan can certainly attest to the "obsessive competition" as we engage in virtual and digital hand to hand combat with the crackers striving to steal our customer's software and/or data.
The fascinating point Barlow made in 1993 that I'd like to explore today is the following:
"A social over-reliance on protection by barricades rather than conscience will eventually wither the latter by turning intrusion and theft into a sport, rather than a crime. This is already occurring in the digital domain as is evident in the activities of computer crackers."
Let's turn now to some recent news about the movie Avatar and it's release on Blu Ray disc. This release was protected using a technology called BD+. Unfortunately, the cracking community managed to procure (read "steal") an early copy, successfully cracked the protection, and published the movie through bit torrent sites. Here's a fascinating "news" report on the availability of the movie "for free" as a torrent download (which occured within a day or two of the public release of the blu ray disks for purchase):
http://torrentfreak.com/avatar-most-pirated-blu-ray-film-ever-100427/
So within a matter of just a few weeks, Avatar has become the most pirated movie ever.
What does it require for this to occur? It requires exactly what Barlow predicted: a withering of basic personal ethics of property ownership at the individual level. We now have a culture where people view the casual theft of intellectual property as completely acceptable. The heart of it seems to be a vast difference in perspective in people's minds and ethics between a physical object and a digital object.
What drives this difference in perspective and behavior? Is it the removal of risk of "getting caught stealing"? I personally believe this is a significant enabling factor, yet not the fundamental driver of this widespread contagion of theft. I believe it is a subtle, and simple. People fundamentally do not view creation of a (perfect) copy of something as theft. Morals are still wrapped around the physical-ness of goods and physical-ness of possession. Stealing means taking something so that I have it and you no longer have it. This notion of physical theft being "wrong" is deeply rooted in most individual's ethical system. Hence, most people (including those illegally downloading Avatar) would not steal the Avatar blu ray disk from a store, even if they knew they could do so without risk of being caught. They would be taking a "real thing" that belongs to another (the store), and that violates their sense of morals and ethics. But download the same movie for free? Hey, no one has been ripped off! No one has "lost" anything! So "it isn't theft". And besides, if it's wrong (illegal) to download it for free, it wouldn't be available on the network for free would it? Once again, "it must not be theft". Of course, this entire line of thinking is dead wrong. Every aspect of it's free availability is illegal, and access of this stolen property is itself theft.
So while I and my colleagues toil and sweat to provide the "digital locks" that will help prevent (or perhaps more realistically, deferred for a longer period of time) the cracking of the high value digital content in our world, I think it's paramount that we as a society strive to re-tool our ethics and attitudes. This battle must be fought on all fronts, not purely a technology front. How does this kind of change occur? Simple: it changes when you and I put simple social pressure on our family and friends regarding this kind of theft. "Come watch Avatar tonight at my place?" "Hey yea; you got it on Blu Ray?" "Yea, I downloaded it last night, it's awesome." "Oh...well, hey, that's theft and it's wrong, I'm sorry, I can't watch that with you." For me, it's takes the form of remonstrating with my son when he tells me of a friend who is downloading this or that PC video game for free: "that's wrong son, it is theft, and you are not allowed to do the same nor are you allowed to play his stolen games".
Social pressure is that simple and I believe it can be very effective at evolving and shaping attitudes and behaviors. It's really up to us to drive change in our culture to respect these new forms of property. Just because the wine is available for the sipping because it's outside the old bottles, doesn't mean it's right to open our mouth and gulp...without compensating those who made that wine.
"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
Barlow concludes his insightful essay with an assertion that has clearly come to pass:
"Cryptography...is the "material" from which the walls, boundaries--and bottles--of Cyberspace will be fashioned."
Barlow also anticipated the rise of Arxan Technologies (and other similar companies)) when he stated that:
"Cryptography will enable a lot of protection technologies which will develop rapidly in the obsessive competition which has always existed between lock-makers and lock-breakers."
We here at Arxan can certainly attest to the "obsessive competition" as we engage in virtual and digital hand to hand combat with the crackers striving to steal our customer's software and/or data.
The fascinating point Barlow made in 1993 that I'd like to explore today is the following:
"A social over-reliance on protection by barricades rather than conscience will eventually wither the latter by turning intrusion and theft into a sport, rather than a crime. This is already occurring in the digital domain as is evident in the activities of computer crackers."
Let's turn now to some recent news about the movie Avatar and it's release on Blu Ray disc. This release was protected using a technology called BD+. Unfortunately, the cracking community managed to procure (read "steal") an early copy, successfully cracked the protection, and published the movie through bit torrent sites. Here's a fascinating "news" report on the availability of the movie "for free" as a torrent download (which occured within a day or two of the public release of the blu ray disks for purchase):
http://torrentfreak.com/avatar-most-pirated-blu-ray-film-ever-100427/
So within a matter of just a few weeks, Avatar has become the most pirated movie ever.
What does it require for this to occur? It requires exactly what Barlow predicted: a withering of basic personal ethics of property ownership at the individual level. We now have a culture where people view the casual theft of intellectual property as completely acceptable. The heart of it seems to be a vast difference in perspective in people's minds and ethics between a physical object and a digital object.
What drives this difference in perspective and behavior? Is it the removal of risk of "getting caught stealing"? I personally believe this is a significant enabling factor, yet not the fundamental driver of this widespread contagion of theft. I believe it is a subtle, and simple. People fundamentally do not view creation of a (perfect) copy of something as theft. Morals are still wrapped around the physical-ness of goods and physical-ness of possession. Stealing means taking something so that I have it and you no longer have it. This notion of physical theft being "wrong" is deeply rooted in most individual's ethical system. Hence, most people (including those illegally downloading Avatar) would not steal the Avatar blu ray disk from a store, even if they knew they could do so without risk of being caught. They would be taking a "real thing" that belongs to another (the store), and that violates their sense of morals and ethics. But download the same movie for free? Hey, no one has been ripped off! No one has "lost" anything! So "it isn't theft". And besides, if it's wrong (illegal) to download it for free, it wouldn't be available on the network for free would it? Once again, "it must not be theft". Of course, this entire line of thinking is dead wrong. Every aspect of it's free availability is illegal, and access of this stolen property is itself theft.
So while I and my colleagues toil and sweat to provide the "digital locks" that will help prevent (or perhaps more realistically, deferred for a longer period of time) the cracking of the high value digital content in our world, I think it's paramount that we as a society strive to re-tool our ethics and attitudes. This battle must be fought on all fronts, not purely a technology front. How does this kind of change occur? Simple: it changes when you and I put simple social pressure on our family and friends regarding this kind of theft. "Come watch Avatar tonight at my place?" "Hey yea; you got it on Blu Ray?" "Yea, I downloaded it last night, it's awesome." "Oh...well, hey, that's theft and it's wrong, I'm sorry, I can't watch that with you." For me, it's takes the form of remonstrating with my son when he tells me of a friend who is downloading this or that PC video game for free: "that's wrong son, it is theft, and you are not allowed to do the same nor are you allowed to play his stolen games".
Social pressure is that simple and I believe it can be very effective at evolving and shaping attitudes and behaviors. It's really up to us to drive change in our culture to respect these new forms of property. Just because the wine is available for the sipping because it's outside the old bottles, doesn't mean it's right to open our mouth and gulp...without compensating those who made that wine.
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Game Within the On-Line Game
Online gaming is a relatively new industry, and one with phenomenal growth over the last 15 years. The release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 late last year generated a stunning $550M in sales revenue in the first week alone, and overall the series has generated over $3B in sales for Activision, the publisher:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2009/1127/call-of-duty-series-sales-top-3-billion-activision-says
There is a fly in the ointment, however. As has been true forever, the larger the business, the larger the attraction for the criminal element. What's unique here is the nature of the crime, given that the essential product is that most intangible of assets, software.
There are two fundamental modes of online game play today: standalone mode, and multi-player mode. The latter can be more refined into two general categories, small group play and massively multi-player gaming.
Standalone commercial gaming software has suffered since it's inception from the problem of illicit copies in which the license protection has been "hacked". Simply put, someone has taken a version, analyzed the code internals, and modified the binary level code to disable or otherwise spoof the license checking code. The result: a "free" copy of the software, or at least a copy that won't generate any revenue for the publisher. And software being casually clone-able means this free copy can be and is distributable to as many people willing to pay for it (if required) and use it (illegally, of course).
The result of this common crime is a general axiom in the gaming industry for standalone games, namely that all the sales of significance happen in the first two weeks after release. After that, "cracked" copies are available on the cheap, and the revenue stream ramps down far more rapidly than normal sales dynamics and economics would indicate. As an example, a simple web search for "Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 download" will quickly find cracked versions of this product available for little to no direct cost.
Massively multi-player on-line role playing gaming (MMORPG) vendors had a solution to this problem...or so they thought. The very nature of MMORPG games required participation in a single unified "world" (virtual reality), implemented as a single world by a server (or server farm) operated by the game publisher. The client software operating on the gamer's computer communicates with the servers to participate in the single world with all the other gamers participating at the moment. The business model is based on ongoing subscription revenue for the privilege of continued participation in the virtual world enabled by the publisher's servers, rather than the licensed sale of a single copy of the game.
Not to be stopped, the criminal element went to work on this model as well. Careful analysis of the code within and the networking traffic to and from the client software on the gamer's personal computer enables these server applications to be "reverse engineered", meaning new software is developed from scratch the performs the same functions as the original publisher's gaming server software. Obviously this isn't cheap nor simple, but given the literally millions of players involved in these types of games, and the ability to operate "parallel worlds" with lower subscription costs, the economic returns of the criminal effort become quite attractive.
For those of us who believe that we have rights to our owned intellectual property and deserve to be compensated for it's usage, there is hope. The technologies to fight back are available today. I'm not referring to simple copy protection schemes that are relatively trivial for competent code hackers to analyze and disable. I am referring to technologies that approach military grade anti-tamper facilities, used to protect US military software assets ("critical program information").
Given the stakes in the gaming industry today, the industry would be remiss to not take advantage of such technologies. The days of accepting only two weeks of revenue for a game that takes years and many millions of dollars to develop, and the days of organized crime stealing massively from the game publishers, can and should be over. To not take advantage of these technologies would be a business management crime of a different sort.
Needless to say, Arxan Technologies is here to help turn the tables on the criminals. We vend these technologies, with easy to use tools to define and insert such protection networks into executable software ("binary code"). Here at Arxan, nothing gives us more joy than a famous "cracker" getting flamed on the the download bulletin boards for long delays in providing a functioning crack for a "new" release after three months...then six months...then twelve months. At which point, the war is won, because that version is now "old" and the process starts over with a new version from the publisher, with yet stronger, more robust and unique guard protections.
It's time to stop intellectual property theft, it's time to stop software business operations theft, it's time to stop piracy of software in general. Call Arxan and let us show you how.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2009/1127/call-of-duty-series-sales-top-3-billion-activision-says
There is a fly in the ointment, however. As has been true forever, the larger the business, the larger the attraction for the criminal element. What's unique here is the nature of the crime, given that the essential product is that most intangible of assets, software.
There are two fundamental modes of online game play today: standalone mode, and multi-player mode. The latter can be more refined into two general categories, small group play and massively multi-player gaming.
Standalone commercial gaming software has suffered since it's inception from the problem of illicit copies in which the license protection has been "hacked". Simply put, someone has taken a version, analyzed the code internals, and modified the binary level code to disable or otherwise spoof the license checking code. The result: a "free" copy of the software, or at least a copy that won't generate any revenue for the publisher. And software being casually clone-able means this free copy can be and is distributable to as many people willing to pay for it (if required) and use it (illegally, of course).
The result of this common crime is a general axiom in the gaming industry for standalone games, namely that all the sales of significance happen in the first two weeks after release. After that, "cracked" copies are available on the cheap, and the revenue stream ramps down far more rapidly than normal sales dynamics and economics would indicate. As an example, a simple web search for "Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 download" will quickly find cracked versions of this product available for little to no direct cost.
Massively multi-player on-line role playing gaming (MMORPG) vendors had a solution to this problem...or so they thought. The very nature of MMORPG games required participation in a single unified "world" (virtual reality), implemented as a single world by a server (or server farm) operated by the game publisher. The client software operating on the gamer's computer communicates with the servers to participate in the single world with all the other gamers participating at the moment. The business model is based on ongoing subscription revenue for the privilege of continued participation in the virtual world enabled by the publisher's servers, rather than the licensed sale of a single copy of the game.
Not to be stopped, the criminal element went to work on this model as well. Careful analysis of the code within and the networking traffic to and from the client software on the gamer's personal computer enables these server applications to be "reverse engineered", meaning new software is developed from scratch the performs the same functions as the original publisher's gaming server software. Obviously this isn't cheap nor simple, but given the literally millions of players involved in these types of games, and the ability to operate "parallel worlds" with lower subscription costs, the economic returns of the criminal effort become quite attractive.
For those of us who believe that we have rights to our owned intellectual property and deserve to be compensated for it's usage, there is hope. The technologies to fight back are available today. I'm not referring to simple copy protection schemes that are relatively trivial for competent code hackers to analyze and disable. I am referring to technologies that approach military grade anti-tamper facilities, used to protect US military software assets ("critical program information").
Given the stakes in the gaming industry today, the industry would be remiss to not take advantage of such technologies. The days of accepting only two weeks of revenue for a game that takes years and many millions of dollars to develop, and the days of organized crime stealing massively from the game publishers, can and should be over. To not take advantage of these technologies would be a business management crime of a different sort.
Needless to say, Arxan Technologies is here to help turn the tables on the criminals. We vend these technologies, with easy to use tools to define and insert such protection networks into executable software ("binary code"). Here at Arxan, nothing gives us more joy than a famous "cracker" getting flamed on the the download bulletin boards for long delays in providing a functioning crack for a "new" release after three months...then six months...then twelve months. At which point, the war is won, because that version is now "old" and the process starts over with a new version from the publisher, with yet stronger, more robust and unique guard protections.
It's time to stop intellectual property theft, it's time to stop software business operations theft, it's time to stop piracy of software in general. Call Arxan and let us show you how.
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