[liberationtech] Lawful Hacking: Using Existing Vulnerabilities for Wiretapping on the Internet

[James S. Tyre]

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2312107

Lawful Hacking: Using Existing Vulnerabilities for Wiretapping on the Internet


Steven M. Bellovin 
Columbia University - Department of Computer Science

Matt Blaze 
University of Pennsylvania - School of Engineering & Applied Science

Sandy Clark 
University of Pennsylvania - School of Engineering & Applied Science

Susan Landau 
Harvard University; Sun Microsystems, Inc.

August 18, 2013

Privacy Legal Scholars Conference, June 2013 

Abstract:      
For years, legal wiretapping was straightforward: the officer doing the intercept
connected a tape recorder or the like to a single pair of wires. By the 1990s, though, the
changing structure of telecommunications - there was no longer just "Ma Bell" to talk to -
and new technologies such as ISDN and cellular telephony made executing a wiretap more
complicated for law enforcement. Simple technologies would no longer suffice. In response,
Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which
mandated a standardized lawful intercept interface on all local phone switches. Technology
has continued to progress, and in the face of new forms of communication - Skype, voice
chat during multi-player online games, many forms of instant messaging, etc.- law
enforcement is again experiencing problems. The FBI has called this "Going Dark": their
loss of access to suspects' communication. According to news reports, they want changes to
the wiretap laws to require a CALEA--like interface in Internet software. 

CALEA, though, has its own issues: it is complex software specifically intended to create
a security hole - eavesdropping capability - in the already--complex environment of a
phone switch. It has unfortunately made wiretapping easier for everyone, not just law
enforcement. Congress failed to heed experts' warnings of the danger posed by this
mandated vulnerability, but time has proven the experts right. The so--called "Athens
Affair", where someone used the built--in lawful intercept mechanism to listen to the cell
phone calls of high Greek officials, including the Prime Minister, is but one example. In
an earlier work, we showed why extending CALEA to the Internet would create very serious
problems, including the security problems it has visited on the phone system.

In this paper, we explore the viability and implications of an alternative method for
addressing law enforcement's need to access communications: legalized hacking of target
devices through existing vulnerabilities in end--user software and platforms. The FBI
already uses this approach on a small scale; we expect that its use will increase,
especially as centralized wiretapping capabilities become less viable.

Relying on vulnerabilities and hacking poses a large set of legal and policy questions,
some practical and some normative. Among these are:

. Will it create disincentives to patching?

. Will there be a negative effect on innovation? (Lessons from the so--called "Crypto
Wars" of the 1990s, and, in particular, the debate over export controls on cryptography,
are instructive here.)

. Will law enforcement's participation in vulnerabilities purchasing skew the market?

. Do local and even state law enforcement agencies have the technical sophistication to
develop and use exploits? If not, how should this be handled? A larger FBI role?

. Should law enforcement even be participating in a market where many of the sellers and
other buyers are themselves criminals?

. What happens if these tools are captured and re-purposed by miscreants?

. Should we sanction otherwise--illegal network activity to aid law enforcement?

. Is the probability of success from such an approach too low for it to be useful?

As we will show, though, these issues are indeed challenging. We regard them, on balance,
as preferable to adding more complexity and insecurity to online systems.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 70

Keywords: wiretap, CALEA, surveillance, hacking, vulnerabilities, cyber-security, law
enforcement

working papers series 


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Date posted: August 19, 2013  

--
James S. Tyre
Law Offices of James S. Tyre
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512
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310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
jstyre at jstyre.com
Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org