Monthly Archives: June 2015

Insecurity in Depth

If I put a fence with a hole in it in front of a broken wall in front of a partly filled in moat, is my castle secure?

The answer is ‘No’.

On the other hand if the defects are not immediately visible and not lined up with each other, then having these three layers could stop some attackers completely, while others may need time to find the flaw in each. Thus it could require more time and effort on the part of an attacker.

If everyone in the village knows about the flaws, then there might as well not be any barriers. If every weekend they walk through the various openings to have a picnic on the castle grounds, then all know that these barriers are not meaningful, at least to those who are informed.

It is interesting that Defense in Depth was supposedly conceived by the NSA, or at least documented by them, the masters of penetrating systems. To be honest, security in depth has its place, since one of the rationales is that attackers may come from different points in the system, so different security measures may be needed to address different aspects of the overall concern. As the NSA notes, an understanding of the system, adversaries, risks etc is required. Thus “security in depth” has a place as part of a broader understanding but is not functional merely as a mantra.

Security in Depth is mentioned repeatedly in the OPM oversight hearing, an interesting view for both the questions and the answers or lack of answers. Mention of security in depth is usually followed by a statement that there is no security silver bullet (other than security in depth).

There is an alternative to security by depth which is security through simplicity.

Take the case of the OPM, where it is speculated that security clearance background check forms (form SF-86) were taken, each having a wealth of personal information about an individual and their contacts. Security technologies failed to prevent the breach or even detect it while it was in progress (while the OPM is not disclosing details, apparently there were first breaches of the contractors working for OPM, then at least two subsequent breaches. Information on one later breach was loaded into Einstein, an intrusion detection and analysis system , which then flagged a previously unknown earlier breach).

Rather than piling up all these questionable and complex technologies wouldn’t it have been simpler and safer to document and follow a single governance rule:

“All clearance forms and their related documentation, including backups, will be
immediately and completely destroyed following the decision whether to grant clearance on the basis of those forms.”

The principle here is that the information is collected to make a decision, so once the decision is made, get rid of the information. The only reason to keep the information is in the event that a mistaken decision was made, to go back and look for indications that could have indicated the mistake. Is the ability to go back worth the time, costs and risks of keeping the information? It seems not.

During the OPM hearings the question of priorities came up, with the theme of “Isn’t security your #1 priority, so why did you let this happen?”. There was no clear statement of the obvious, which might have been ‘No, security was not the only priority. The priority was the running of operational support systems for other functions, with security as an aspect of that.’

So if those in charge are not willing to destroy the records once a decision is made, what would be the next best alternative? Probably to keep those records on a machine without internet/network access in a locked room. This would raise the cost of adding or reviewing records. By why should they be online once a decision is made?

All of this leads to the question of whether the costs and risks of (in)security in depth are the primary concerns in this case when a policy decision to ‘Eliminate records that have served their purpose’ might have sufficed.

Technology mechanisms and the speed of deployment might not have been the core problem, but rather governance decisions.