Monthly Archives: March 2011

Energy, Security

GE Mark 1 Reactor Safety Design and Fukushima

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Robert Reich brings up whether GE was cutting corners with security controls within the Mark 1 Reactor, but he does not address why and how regulators failed to stop a 90% failure calculation from widespread adoption. Did they accept compensating controls? Liability offset? Low probability of melt?

The New York Times reports that G.E. marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.

Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. (By the way, the same design is used in 23 American nuclear reactors at 16 plants.)

In the mid-1980s, Harold Denton, then an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Mark 1 reactors had a 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident. A follow-up report from a study group convened by the Commission concluded that “Mark 1 failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely.”

History, Security

Visualizing American Tax Inequality

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Stephen Von Worley has an interesting graphic posted in a blog entry called “Shifting Burdens” that illustrates how the American tax burden has changed over time at different levels of income:

…Reagan entered office and…rich were now on tax vacation, at the expense of the poor and middle class.

[…]

…the people at our economy’s core – the full-time workers earning between $20,000 and $150,000 a year – still pay at up to double the rate of the ultra-wealthy, relative to what history suggests they should.

About this, I’ve got mixed feelings. More than a few of my friends have hit the dot-com-Web-2.0 jackpot, and every spring, they enjoy a fresh tax windfall. And why not?

[…]

On the other hand, so that the American Dream doesn’t degenerate further into a have-or-have-not nightmare, perhaps some social pragmatism is in order. Via a small dose of fiscal self-sacrifice, the fat cats can maintain their grip on the reins. Or, they can stay the course – and keep on partying like it’s 1999 – until an angry mob bursts through the front door, drags them down to the town square, and lops their wealth off.

US Tax Inequality

What I see in the graph is that those who make over $200,000 a year saw a sharp decline in tax in the 80s, which continues to today. There also is a blue blip for tax relief for those earning around $10,000, but that was gone by 1981. More red at the bottom of the chart would make more sense if the current deficit problem, or even critical infrastructure, is meant to be a shared burden.

A lack of constant color is the signal of inequality.

The government today thus leaves high income earners (blue on the right) with a lower share of taxes. While taxes are not high for most people today compared to prior levels, those who earn over $1 million now have the lowest burden of anyone relative to history. Those who earn $50,000 to $150,000 — the middle class — carry the highest burden.

The wave shape suggests to me that the middle class have been affected first by tax changes. It is a prediction wave. Their level of burden eventually spreads to higher and lower income levels…perhaps that’s what Stephen Von Worley meant by “until an angry mob”.

Security

Using Music to Hack Cars

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Several people have pointed me to the news about the car hacked with a music file

But their most interesting attack focused on the car stereo. By adding extra code to a digital music file, they were able to turn a song burned to CD into a Trojan horse. When played on the car’s stereo, this song could alter the firmware of the car’s stereo system, giving attackers an entry point to change other components on the car. This type of attack could be spread on file-sharing networks without arousing suspicion, they believe.

My question would be why try to spread it via file-sharing networks to a CD (or USB for some stereos)? How about figuring out the a station (e.g. SATCOM hacking, XM/Sirius) that a car listens to; then get within range of the car and overpower/interrupt the signal with your own?

Will a malicious digital music file fed to the stereo via satellite download have the same effect as a CD but without the need for physical access?

Security

Pwn2Own Winner Criticizes Event

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Dr. Charlie Miller says the Pwn2Own event is managed in a way that has dangerous exploits “left over”

Q: A recent article in Computerworld quoted you as being critical of the competition for encouraging the “weaponization” of exploits en masse – can you briefly reiterate your concerns?

A: This is still a concern for me. There is a difference between vulnerabilities and exploits. The former are problems that need to be patched. But an exploit is something that can actually take advantage of the vulnerability to get code running on the system. The biggest difference is that a bad guy can’t do anything with knowledge of a vulnerability by itself, a bad guy needs an exploit.

Normally, researchers report vulnerabilities and don’t bother to actually write exploits. Writing an exploit is hard, time consuming work and doesn’t help the vendor’s patch the bug, so isn’t necessary to make.

However, at pwn2own, you need an exploit that works reasonably well if you hope to win. But, not everyone get’s a chance to win, even if they have an exploit. For each target the names of the people who want to compete are drawn at random. For example, for Safari on OS X this year, 4 people signed up.

After the random drawing, I was fourth in line. So, four of us showed up with Safari exploits, but the first team won (from VUPEN). Now, the contest is over for that target and there are three of us with exploits but nothing to do with them.

I see his point but it is interesting to think that winning somehow de-“weaponizes” an exploit. Even if all the exploits brought to the contest are used in the contest they still would be left over — researchers could say they have “nothing to do with them” afterwards whether they are used or not. The question I would ask is whether they always report the vulnerabilities related to an exploit, even if they do not use the exploit. Perhaps he is really saying that the lottery — not allowing all exploits the chance to win a prize — discourages contestants from disclosing all known vulnerabilities.

Update: Vendor announces fixes for vulnerabilities that were not selected in the lottery:

Apple on Monday patched 56 vulnerabilities, most of them critical flaws that could be used to hijack machines, as part of 2011’s first broad update of Mac OS X.

Among the fixes was one for a vulnerability that four-time Pwn2Own winner Charlie Miller didn’t get a chance to use at the hacking contest earlier this month.