BKINSCDI.RVW 20041222 "The Information Security Dictionary", Urs E. Gattiker, 2004, 1-4020-7889-7, U$145.00/C$203.50 %A Urs E. Gattiker dictionary@weburb.com %C 233 Spring St., New York, NY 10013 %D 2004 %G 1-4020-7889-7 %I Springer-Verlag/Kluwer %O U$145.00/C$203.50 212-460-1500 800-777-4643 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402078897/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402078897/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402078897/robsladesin03-20 %O tl n rl 1 tc 0 ta 2 tv 1 wq 0 %P 411 p. %T "The Information Security Dictionary" A good dictionary of information security terms is seriously needed by the security community, and by the computer and communications industry as a whole. The "Internet Security Dictionary" (cf. BKINSCDC.RVW), by Phoha, was a good start, but needs to be expanded and updated. I have been working on a security glossary myself, so this might be yet another case of bias or conflict of interest. I should also note that, although it is widely believed that I enjoy trashing books, I am actively looking for works that I can recommend. Oh, it's easier to point out flaws in a work than it is to say why someone writes well. However, I take no particular pleasure in having to savage a work as thoroughly as this one requires. Far too many of the definitions contain misleading, incomplete, or outright false information. Anomaly-Based Intrusion Detection Systems are said to discover known attacks, which might be true, but signature-based systems would normally be considered better for that purpose: you want anomaly-based detection to discover previously unknown attacks. The entry for Authentication does not list the standard factors of something you know, have, or are. The definition for the Bell-La Padula security model doesn't provide any details of the pattern itself, does not mention confidentiality (a central concept), and does not refer to the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria and other outcomes of the paradigm. The Biba integrity model is listed as "Bibra." Patent mentions the ability of the patent holder to restrict use, but doesn't mention that patent is only applicable to devices and that the device must be novel, useful, and non-obvious. Reference is made to copyright (the definition of which is equally flawed) and to Tables 16A and B, neither of which alludes to intellectual property laws. No listing is given for trade secrets or trade marks. Both the entry for patent and the account of copyright state that patents protect ideas, which is specifically untrue. There is a listing for Illegal Software (software used without a licence), although there isn't one for piracy. There is one for Software Piracy, but neither of the two cross-references points to Illegal Software. There is an entry for Cable, as in cable TV, but nothing for cabling as in network media, which has much greater importance in terms of information security. Challenge Handshake points to Handshake (there is no listing for challenge/response) and, for some completely inexplicable reason, also to Circuit-Level Gateway. The sub-listing for Content Filtering (which comes under filtering, rather than content) makes no mention of the origin of the practice in restricting access to objectionable material. "DoS on the 13 Internet Root Servers" is not the title of a famous Cultural Revolution artwork, but a reference to the October, 2002 attack against the top-level DNS servers. Almost no details of the event are provided (and this was actually a *distributed* denial of service attack). Digital Versatile Disk (generally used as an update to Digital Video Disk, the original expansion of the DVD acronym) is defined as using both sides of the disk (almost unknown in commercial DVDs) and also notes a capacity of 17 gigabytes, which would actually require both sides and both depths. One of the sub-entries under Disinfection is Generic Scan String, which has nothing to do with disinfection of computer viruses. "Activity monitor" is defined solely in terms of employee surveillance, and ignores the specialized use in malware detection. The entry for Cookies states (incorrectly) that they can only be used by the originating site. However, there is a cross-reference to table 18A (a mere 140 pages from the entry). Table 18A has no mention of the term. Table 18B does have a listing for Java Cookies--which contradicts the earlier assertion, and says that other parties can read cookies. Defence-In-Depth has a reference to Table 6A. There is no 6A, although there is a 6. Table 6 contains no reference to defence-in-depth. Urs isn't always certain of his definitions: an Application Level Gateway "could" be a type of firewall. However, in that case, he is certain that it re-addresses traffic--which is actually the function of network address translation (NAT), generally considered a type of circuit-level proxy firewall. Phishing is equated with "carding" (obtaining or trading in credit card numbers for fraudulent use) while the more definitive practice of obtaining banking information is ignored. (We are told that avoiding the running of attachments prevents phishing. Phishing scams seldom make use of attachments or executable code.) Cross references are not always accurate. On page 12 the listing for "Anti-Virus Researcher" points to the entry for "Research." There is no material for Anti-Virus Researcher in that entry, but there is in the later entry for "Researcher." Ethics points to Justice, which doesn't say anything about ethics. Some of the terms included are rather odd. "Binders" are supposed to be utilities that bind multiple code modules together. Most people refer to these utilities as linkers. "Derf" was used as a term for hijacking sessions on logged in terminals, but in a limited setting and quite a while back: the term is pretty much unknown today. The definitions given for some entries don't seem to have any real meaning. For example, "Virus Algorithm means a set of operations or a procedure designed to create a virus problem." Many long definitions appear to have been patched together from disparate and unrelated sources, not listing additional meanings, just appending disjointed verbiage. Some of the definitions given are correct. Heck, some are copied straight out of government documents. But Gattiker has included a number of terms which are either generic, or have only the most tenuous of connections to security. There is an entry for Computer Mouse. There is a listing for the fictional cyberpunks, but no mention of the real-world cypherpunk community. The definition for Virology deals only with biology. The entry for Virus is only relevant to (pretty much obsolete) file infectors. As could be expected with a work of this calibre, a number of terms are simply missing. There are entries for false positive and false negative, but none for false acceptance or false rejection (the more widely known terms for similar concepts). It is difficult to give a complete picture of the unreliability of this text. It would be easy for me to simply do an exhaustive search of every minor error, and in a few pages collect all that might be wrong with an otherwise great work. But in this volume we have spurious listings, missing entries, definitions that make no sense to the reader, explanations that are erroneous, and even opinion stated as fact. (The man, or manual, pages of the UNIX system, incorrectly identified as "main" pages, are said to be technobabble, presumably because Urs doesn't understand their cryptic nature.) Slang is included and technical terms are left out. Probably the best way to give a flavour of the quality of this work is to reproduce some listings. (I have tried to be as careful as possible in copying the exact writing and punctuation of the entries as they appear in the book.) A listing that sounds good but makes no sense (as well as being a non- sequitur) provides a good feel for the quality of language and logic representative of the work as a whole: Homomorphic Encryption is a cryptographic technique in which the sum of two encrypted values is equal to the encrypted sum of the values. The signature operation in public key cryptography is an exponentiation operation using the private key as the exponent. According to "Algebraic Aspects of Cryptography" by Neal Koblitz (cf. BKALASCR.RVW), and a number of other references, homomorphism refers to groups or sets rather than express algorithms or techniques. Homomorphic encryption can be useful for signature or authentication systems where anonymity is important (such as in voting procedures) but it probably isn't necessary to specify exponentiation. The sub-entry for "Anti-Virus Researcher or Security Assurance Researcher" on page 270 is lengthier, and requires a bit more dissection: Anti-Virus Researcher or Security Assurance Researcher may conduct his or her research in many ways. An example might be a lawyer searching among old court cases for legal precedents regarding Privacy and Hacking. An epidemiologist studying age groups or cohorts and hip- fracture incidents to an Anti-Virus Researcher studying malicious code to discover programming patterns and characteristics (see Theory). Often Anti-Virus Researcher is used synonymously with "product development." Sometimes, a "bonafide antivirus researcher's" role within his or her organization might be documented by independent examination (see also Appendix 3 and badguys website). It should be reasonably obvious that the specialized activity of antivirus research and the more general undertaking of security assurance research are not exactly synonymous. In addition, very little antivirus research involves case law. If you are confused by the meaning of the sentence about an epidemiologist, you are not alone. Again, very little antivirus research involves hip-fractures. Some AV researchers are also product developers, but the two activities are hardly identical. The reference to "badguys website" is to the "Bad Guys" Website (www.badguys.org) run by Sarah Gordon, which does have some information about legitimate virus research, in opposition to the blackhats who write viruses and call themselves researchers. If, following the cross reference to Theory, we flip to page 324, we find a sub-entry for "Anti-Virus Theory": Anti-Virus Theory if it would exist would be based on Inductive or Deductive Research outline phenomena and their relationship to other issues. Hence, investigation of the subject aimed at uncovering new information in a systematic way, while permitting a group of statements about how some part of the world works, in this case Computer Viruses. A good Anti-Virus Theory would allow us to generalize from one virus to the next (see Tables 19A and 19B). The wording here would seem to imply that Anti-Virus Theory does not exist, which raises the immediate question of why you would include an entry for a non-existent entity. Induction and deduction are fairly broad tools: the first sentence doesn't really appear to say anything useful about the type of theory or research. Tables 19A and B are nowhere near that entry. In fact, you will find them on pages 207 and 209-11. Neither do the tables have anything to do with viruses: they talk about the costs and prevalence of various forms of Internet access. In any case, that entry doesn't appear to say anything about any theory to do with computer viruses, beyond the definition of a theory in general. (If we follow the further cross-reference to "Methodology," we find no allusion to antivirus research at all.) Errors in formatting (particularly indenting) are rife, and make it difficult to follow the structure of entries, or the book as a whole. Bold text sometimes means that the term is another entry, but sometimes it doesn't seem to mean anything. Sometimes the formatting problem might explain entries that appear to be out of place, but I'm not sure that they explain the sequential listings of Autopsy, Authorization, and Auto Dial-Back. There are numerous typographical errors, mistakes in spelling and grammar, and tremendous inconsistencies in capitalization. Even the most cursory copy and style edit would have improved things enormously. The security community and industry deserves better than this. Students of security need more accurate information than is provided in this work. Society as a whole is relying on information security and requires more credible content than this book contains. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004 BKINSCDI.RVW 20041222