In the last few weeks, a prominent researcher, Dragos Ruiu (@dragosr) has put his neck out describing some interesting issues with a bunch of his computers. If his indicators of compromise are to be believed (and there is the first problem), we have a significant issue. The problem is the chorus of “It’s not real” “It’s impossible” “It’s fake” is becoming overwhelming without sufficient evidence one way or another. Why are so many folks in our community ready to jump on the negative bandwagon, even if they can’t prove it or simply don’t have enough evidence to say one way or another?
My issue is not “is it true” or “I think it’s true” or “I think it’s false”, it’s that so many info sec “professionals” are basically claiming:
- Because I personally can’t verify this issue is true, the issue must be false. QED.
This fails both Logic 101, class 1, and also the scientific method.
This is not a technical issue, it’s a people issue.
We must support all of our researchers, particularly the wrong ones. This is entirely obvious. If we eat our young and most venerable in front of the world’s media, we will be a laughing stock. Certain “researchers” are used by their journalist “friends” to say very publicly “I think X is a fool for thinking that his computers are suspect”. This is utterly wrong, foolhardy, and works for the click bait articles the J’s write and on their news cycle, not for us.
Not everybody is a viable candidate for having the sample. In my view, the only folks who should have a sample of this thing are those who have sufficient operational security and budget to brick and then utterly destroy at least two or twenty computers in a safe environment. That doesn’t describe many labs. And even then, you should have a good reason for having it. I consider the sample described to needing the electronic equivalent of Level PC4 bio labs. Most labs are not PC4, and I bet most of infosec computing labs are not anywhere near capable of hosting this sample.
Not one of us has all of the skills required to look at this thing. The only way this can be made to work is by working together, pulling together E.Eng folks with the sort of expensive equipment only a well funded organisation or a university lab might muster, microcontroller freaks, firmware folks, CPU microcode folks, USB folks, file system folks, assembly language folks, audio folks, forensic folks, malware folks, folks who are good at certain types of Windows font malware, and so on. There is not a single human being alive who can do it all. It’s no surprise to me that Dragos has struggled to get a reproducible but sterile sample out. I bet most of us would have failed, too.
We must respect and use the scientific method. The scientific method is well tested and true. We must rule out confirmation bias, we must rule out just “well, a $0.10 audio chip will do that as most of them are paired with $0.05 speakers and most of the time it doesn’t matter”. I actually don’t care if this thing is real or not. If it’s real, there will be patches. If it’s not real, it doesn’t matter. I do care about the scientific method, and it’s lack of application in our research community. We aren’t researchers for the most part, and I find it frustrating that most of us don’t seem to understand the very basic steps of careful lab work and repeating important experiments.
We must allow sufficient time to allow the researchers to collaborate and either have a positive or negative result, analyse their findings and report back to us. Again, I come back to our journalist “friends”, who can’t live without conflict. The 24 hour news cycle is their problem, not our problem. We have Twitter or Google Plus or conferences. Have some respect and wait a little before running to the nearest J “friends” and bleating “It’s an obvious fake”.
We owe a debt to folks like Dragos who have odd results, and who are brave enough to report them publicly. Odd results are what pushes us forward as an industry. Cryptoanalysis wouldn’t exist without them. If we make it hard or impossible for respected folks like Dragos to report odd results, imagine what will happen the next time? What happens if it’s someone without much of a reputation? We need a framework to collaborate, not to tear each other down.
Our industry’s story is not the story about the little boy who cried wolf. We are (or should be) more mature than a child’s nursery rhyme. Have some respect for our profession, and work with researchers, not sully their name (and yours and mine) by announcing before you have proof that something’s not quite right. If anything, we must celebrate negative results every bit as much as positive results, because I don’t know about you, but I work a lot harder when I know an app is hardened. I try every trick in the book, including the stuff that is bleeding edge as a virtual masterclass in our field. I bet Dragos has given this the sort of inspection that only the most ardent forensic researcher might have done. If he hasn’t gotten that far, it’s either sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, or he needs help to let us understand what is actually there. I bet that few of us could have gotten as far as Dragos has.
To me, we must step back, work together as an industry – ask Dragos: “What do you need?” “How can we help?” and if that’s “Give me time”, then let’s step back and give him time. If it’s a USB circuit analyser or a microcontroller dev system and plus some mad soldering skills, well, help him, not tear him down. Dragos has shown he has sufficient operational security to research another 12-24 months on this one. We don’t need to know now, now, or now. We gain nothing by trashing his name.
Just stop. Stop trashing our industry, and let’s work together.
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