UCOP Ordered Spyware Installed on UC Data Networks
So, I don&#x27;t want to defend UC entirely, because they appear to have seriously mishandled this in several ways. But I would like to share some information about this aspect of security.<p>Full packet captures of network traffic are extremely, extremely valuable in post-compromise incident investigation and in incident detection, as they allow for vastly more complex analysis of traffic (done post-hoc with more complicated logic) than is practical on the wire. There&#x27;s absolutely no need to invoke the NSA here: multiple private vendors offer these systems. It sounds like UC went with Fidelis, another major provider is RSA NetWitness (now part of EMC). These systems are fairly common on corporate networks, the main thing that limits their installation is cost: just the storage becomes rather costly at large scales.<p>Invoking attorney-client privilege on matters related to security is pretty common in the private world. The reason for this is that any security investigations and reports are subject to legal discovery and may be used to establish liability in the event that someone sues you for a matter related to a cybersecurity incident. The primary way to protect this information is to place the cybersecurity function under legal counsel so that all security work is work-product of an attorney and so under privilege. This is a recommended best practice in the security compliance community. Public institutions do this less frequently for the reason that it is often prevented or superseded by the relevant public record&#x2F;accountability law, or unnecessary due to some type of immunity for example, but this may not be the case in California.<p>All in all, nothing here strikes me as particularly unusual practice for a large organization. What I do see is that UC has made several massive mistakes in implementation:<p>1. It must be completely clear to users that they have no expectation of privacy when using organizational networks. Unfortunately, many users do not realize this, and many organizations do not sufficiently communicate it. All users of organizational networks should sign an agreement to ensure that they are aware that they have no expectation of privacy. This is already legally true in as far as I know all cases, but there is an ethical obligation, I think, to ensure further than that.<p>2. Universities present a particularly tricky situation because there is a captive audience of users who rely on the university network for their personal usage. Ideally this should be 100% segregated from the institutional network, I believe, but I have work experience in a small university&#x27;s IT and I can tell you how difficult this is to manage - and I can imagine that the problems at the scale of even a single UC campus are so much greater. They can and definitely should work harder to balance network management against the privacy of their captive users.<p>3. It appears that there are inadequate controls in place (or at least disclosed) to protect this data. I am very uncomfortable with the involvement of a third-party without thorough documentation of their controls in place and their liability in the event of misuse. There must also be further internal controls - both technical and administrative - to guard against misuses. Simply asserting that the data is only used for security is not sufficient, set actual controls to ensure this and establish how violations will be handled.<p>4. Creating fragmentation within the IT org is very common in universities but still a terrible idea. All levels of IT and security operations should be 100% on board with security mechanisms used, which appears to not be the case here.<p>A couple of auxiliary thoughts:<p>- If they are intercepting SSL (which may be a good idea for a corporate network, there are several factors to weigh against each other) this will of course be limited to computers that they manage.<p>- Tivoli BigFix, as mentioned elsewhere, is a common and rather good endpoint security solution. A similar competitor is Cisco NAC. These aren&#x27;t scary NSA codewords, they&#x27;re commercial products that many corporations use to ensure that all computers on a protected network meet a minimum security configuration. Whether or not they are appropriate in the ways that some universities use them is a very touchy issue, I don&#x27;t think that they are, but that means that potentially much more costly (and inconvenient) controls will need to be in place.<p>- Universities need to carefully manage the fact that they are often not perceived as corporate orgs in terms of their network practices, although they usually behave like them. There are certainly complications at universities. Open communication of policies and procedures will help to alleviate this, as well as good network management (once again, complete isolation of residential and administrative networks should be the goal).