How to be safe in the cloud

How to be safe
in the cloud
• “Facts” about NSA/Snowden/Prism
• data classification
Guideline to Safe use of “Cloud”:
• choosing and using Cloud
• open source, alternative services
• what Aalto can offer for cloud users
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
Without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of
speech or freedom of opinion, and so there is no actual
democracy,”
Tomi Järvinen – IT-Security specialist
Aalto IT
https://twitter.com/tomppaj
Snowden’s bomb 6/5/2013 ”Prism”
Facts are based on several news papers, Financial
2 times, Guardian, New york times, collection of all major news stories:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Al2LIEgoNIx2dFNCb3dTS1c5Y2ZkQWNzVUc5UkNFeEE&output=html
Hot topic 2013, Snowden & NSA
Claim: Only to prevent terrorism..
Nonsense..
Snowden:these programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic
spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.
So, who are the targets?
Angela Merkel, Israeli PM, EU's competition commissioner, UN headquarter,
German government buildings, Brazillian oil company Petrobras, heads of
institutions that provide humanitarian and financial help to Africa, Médecins du
Monde, energy and finance ministries..
And naturally all internet users..(Facebook, Google, Yahoo..)
Doesn’t sound like terrorists..
Facts are based on several news papers, Financial times, Guardian, New york times, collection of all major news stories:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Al2LIEgoNIx2dFNCb3dTS1c5Y2ZkQWNzVUc5UkNFeEE&output=html
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Hot topic 2013, Snowden & NSA
Claim: Only few people have access to confidential data
Nonsense..
CIA official and principal at Booz Allen:
Of the 4.9 million people (government, organizations, contractors) with clearance
to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21
percent, work for outside contractors, according to a report from Clapper's office.
Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 %,
work for contractors.
Facts are based on several news papers, Financial times, Guardian, New york times, collection of all major news stories:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Al2LIEgoNIx2dFNCb3dTS1c5Y2ZkQWNzVUc5UkNFeEE&output=html
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Hot topic 2013, Snowden & NSA
Claim: They cannot collect all traffic from all users and keep it
Nonsense
For example NSA Utah data center (estimations):
5 million storage systems running roughly 1.25 billion, 4-terabyte hard drives,” .
Latest estimation 5 Zettabytes (1 Zettabyte whole world one year internet use)
1 Gb = 960 minutes of music, 1 Zettabyte = 2 billion years of music.
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/06/07/how-much-zettabyte-nsa-utah-facility-can-hold-immense-amount-data
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Hot topic 2013, Snowden & NSA
Claim: It is just Metadata
Nonsense (US persons it seems to be mostly just metadata)
120 billion cellular calls from all over the world every month, Email, Chat - video,
voice, Videos, Stored data, VoIP, Filer transfers, Video Conferencing, Notifications
of target activity, logins, Online Social Networking, etc.
From US legal point of view there is nothing wrong with this, if target is non-US
person. (FISA Amendments Act, Patriot Act)
------Few academic researchers using Intelius, Google search, and three initial sources
associated 91% of the "metadata" to real persons.
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/11/what%27s-in-your-metadata
http://webpolicy.org/2013/12/23/metaphone-the-nsas-got-your-number/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#Extent_of_surveillance
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Why should I care about NSA etc?
• presumption of guilt vs. modern law presumption of innocence.
• false positives
• nobody knows about future, Bruce Schneir: it is not about “nothing to hide” – it’s
that we have everything to lose
• transferring power to security organisations
• the loss of personal data control
• misuse, enormous overcollecting will lead to misuse, sooner or later. By
government or individuals. There is huge money making possibilities
One false positive case,
David Mery entered to the subway wearing a jacket in warm weather, an algorithm
monitoring the CCTV Dacid suspicious. The police arrested him, and checked his
flat. Though he was never convicted of a crime, Mery is still on file as a potential
terrorist eight years later, and can't get a visa to travel abroad.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism
big question, do you need to trust over 1 M
persons? or just very few
Sweden FRA
700 employees
A”
UK GCHQ
4000 employees
USA NSA
40 000 own employees
483,000 Contractor employees
Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
Facebook, Dropbox…and their
contractors.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america
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http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/08/09/what-nsa-can-learn-sweden
http://www.designbuild-network.com/projects/gchq/
http://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Third_Parties.htm
Summary about revelations,
Think about you and your work
•
•
•
•
•
Some nationalities might be interesting
If you are travelling a lot
If you work with military projects or something innovative, or valuable
Political reasons
Co-operation with external corporations
If you are planning to be politician, nobel winner or some other ”VIP” take
into consider that lot of people might have access to your whole online life.
But Cloud is Still Great!
Next, guideline to SafeCloud!
accessible
from
everywhere
“pay only
typically via
for what
browser
you use”
elastic
scalable
resources
There is a lot what you can do to keep yourself and
your data safe!
Data classification?
Data classification is mandatory when organization is moving to cloud
services in larger scale.
Aalto university has new data classification policy. (president decision
731/00.00.02/2013) Policy provide guideline for separating public data from
classified data and separate detailed handling guide. There is six month period
of transition, at the moment university IT is building new services for handling
classified data.
Data classification policy specifies all organization data, determining its
security class (public, internal, confidential or secret), and then assigning it to a
categories.
During spring 2014 there will be trainings about classification.
https://inside.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=30032716
First , think about your data
Basic rule is that cloud services are only for ”Public data”, meaning all the
data what is NOT ”Classified” (confidential, internal, ST levels) in the policy.
Examples of classified data:
• study attainments, student evaluations
• research plans, development work (unpublished)
• published intellectual property
• unpublished patents
• HR and employment
• medical
• financial
• technology and telecommunications data (usage, log data)
• security information
• confidential business information
• trade secrets
• financial, tax, and insurance records
Full list in Data Classification policy
https://inside.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=30032716
Second, your privacy?
Privacy, If you like to keep your privacy, hide yourself
and your device
• use "alias”, create web-identity, or several like :Teemu courseX2012,
• use Android device with “Anonymous” account, like
[email protected]
•
•
use anonymity services, VPN & Anonymous proxy
optimize your Browser privacy settings, (in any browser this doesn’t clear all)
• F-Secure Freedome, http://freedome.f-secure.com/en/home.html
• technical solution - https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Main_Page
Whonix is an operating system focused on anonymity, privacy and
security
You will lose a lot of functionality but think which one is more important for
you? Privacy or active online life with your real identity.
(In organization network and with organization device options are limited)
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Third, security (1)
• you cannot get anything “back”
• services may claim ownership of the information
• “free” services often collect and disclose information to
third parties such as advertisers or collaboration
Trend micro
partners. So, think what you share
• malicious links, think before clicking
• think where you buy from
• "fakeware / scareware“, think before buying
• be accurate, how and what you write
• please do not comment on behalf of
the University, unless it belongs to the job
description :)
• be careful, and specially with Android - >
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/reports/security-threat-report/androidmalware/android-risk-mitigation.aspx
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Third, security (2)
• keep your password / username combination in safe, if the worst
happens (serious illness, even death, or matters related to legislation)
• material may be financially or because of some other reason
valuable (university or relatives, e.g. script, photos, new 7
brothers:)
• use different password and user id, mnemonic?, software like "KeePass“
http://keepass.info/ for password management
• keep copies of everything on your own computer
• do not accept all friend requests!
• store files securely with encryption
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-to-securely-encrypt-your-files-in-thecloud/
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Fourth, choose the right service (1)
• three basic models: Free – Advertisement – Freemium (business)
• free service (often end up to advertisement or freemium model)
• advertisement:, what is the motivation of the service provider?
– money, money, money (Typical services, Google, Facebook)
• Freemium, light free version, full with paying something (example
Yammer)
• and, stay focused, service for one purpose usually fits the user needs
better and lasts longer
– users learn how to use
– service does what it is supposed to do
– probably easier to find alternative solution when needed
MIT Study: "free" is a special price that confuses peoples' thinking.
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/zero.pdf
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Fourth, choose the right service (2)
pay attention!
• documentation, widely used API:s
• standard and multiple formats
• anonymity (option to study without giving personal details to external
marketing company)
• EULA, terms of service, privacy policy (Good or Bad?)
• integration to other same provider services (lock in vs. easy exit)
More information about EULAs:
open community http://tos-dr.info/ ”Terms of service - didn’t read”
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Winners and one looser
mobile network information,
details of how you use the
service, search queries,
phone number, calling-party
number, forwarding
numbers, time and date of
calls, duration of calls, SMS
routing information and types
of calls, system activity,
hardware settings, browser
type, browser language, the
date and time of your
request and referral URL..
one example:
USERS
DATA
WITH
LITTLE
COST
USERS
DATA NO
COST
SERVICE NO
COST
2013:
Profit
12 Billions
Turnover
60 Billions
MONEY
T-shirtsetc.com
BuyPosters.com
CheapCam.com
Onlinefurnitures.com
bikecarpart.com
cartyre.com
horseshoes.com
feathers.com
pillows.com
Bellswhistles.com
Acme.com….
”Bruce Schneier: users like free things, and don't realize how much value they're
giving away to get it. “
Matti Wiberg UTU: Consumers have to learn that the data is valuable. There is no sense
to give it away for free, even televisions are collecting data today.
Why not to try alternative solutions - >
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http://www.talouselama.fi/Tebatti/kysymykset/kuluttaja+ala+luovuta+dataa+ilmaiseksi/a2223878
https://www.schneier.com/about.html
Alternative Web-services & open source
WEB search
https://ixquick.com/ (https://startpage.com/)
ixQuick does not collect or share any personal information
based in New York and the Netherlands.
https://duckduckgo.com/
Anonymous and unlogged web searches.
There is also a DuckDuckGo hidden service for Tor users
https://safesearch-stg.f-secure.com/ F-Secure Beta service
https://disconnect.me/ Coming soon?
Proxy for other search engines
------------------Tools and methods for totally anonymous web use, ”TOR”
https://www.torproject.org/
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Alternative Web-services & open source
DISK & File Encryption
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Real-time disk (hard drive, USB etc) and partition encryption software.
http://www.axantum.com/axcrypt/
Open source Encryption tool with “wipe” option
https://diskcryptor.net/
Open source partition encryption solution
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Alternative Web-services & open source
Secure share and synchronise your data
www.bittorrent.com/sync
peer-to-peer file synchronization tool available for Windows, Mac, Linux..
http://www.younited.com/ F-Secure sync tool
http://sparkleshare.org/
Self-hosted version control and file sync.
https://git-annex.branchable.com/ git-annex
Synchronize folders on your computers and drives. “Guru tool”, good help
pages
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Alternative Web-services & open source
Email (naturally both communication parties must support technology)
https://bitmessage.org based on Bitcoin technology.
Bitmessage is a promising alternative to email, but it has not yet been audited
by security professionals.
http://www.autistici.org/
Italian based community, offers logging free email Accounts, Instant
Messaging, Web Hosting, etc.
http://www.gnupg.org/
Complete data encryption and decryption tool, texts, e-mails, files, directories,
and whole disk partitions. Plugin for Thunderbird
----Good to know, https://mykolab.com/ Email, File Storage & Sync accounts
hosted in Switzerland. Strong Swiss privacy laws but 10 CHF per month.
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Alternative Web-services & open source
Instant messaging
https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/index.php#faqs
Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations and
instant messaging
https://jitsi.org/
Encrypted text, voice, and video messaging for multiple platforms.
https://whispersystems.org/
encrypted end-to-end Android calls and txt
https://www.linphone.org/
Encrypted voice and video chat client for multiple platforms.
http://mumble.sourceforge.net/
Encrypted multi-user chat.
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Alternative Web-services & open source
Publishing & collaboration
https://mediacru.sh/
image, audio, video hosting. Note that it Includes Google Analytics and Google
Adsense if you do not have Do Not Track enabled.
https://img.bi/
Image hosting with in-browser AES-256 encryption.
https://foodl.org/
surveys or polls and for scheduling meetings
http://etherpad.org/
Self-hosted, real-time collaborative documents.
http://ethercalc.net/
Multi-user spreadsheet server.
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Alternative Web-services & open source
Publishing & social media
http://movim.eu/
Private, decentralized social network server.
https://diasporafoundation.org/
Community-run, distributed social network.
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
Serverless decentralised communication platform. IM, forums, VoIP, file
sharing, and more.
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Final words, if you have some need, check
always
Secure, reliable, in our own hands. Easy to solve
problems, ”no NSA”, daily full backup……..
And then - http://Pilvi.aalto.fi –
Recommended cloud services for light use
Need is something for light use or for
small group, just choose the
appropriate service and start using!
Grouped by Categories:
•”Web presence”
•collaboration
•file synchronising
•blogging
•media share...
You can also find:
•feedback page
•request form, for a new services
•list about recommended and
approved services
•instructions
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