Without trust, most prudent business operators and clients may decide to forgo use of the Internet and revert back to traditional methods of doing business. To counter this trend, the issues of network security at the ecommerce and customer sites must be constantly reviewed and appropriate countermeasures devised. These security measures must be implemented so that they do not inhibit or dissuade the intended e-commerce operation. This paper will discuss pertinent network and computer security issues and will present some of the threats to e-commerce and customer privacy. These threats originate from both hackers as well as the ecommerce site itself. A straightforward comparison could be made of the security weaknesses in the postal system vs. security weaknesses on the Net. The vulnerable spots in both cases are at the endpoints – the customer’s computer/network and the business’ servers/network.
Information flowing in the conduit (trucks/planes and wires) is relatively immune to everyday break-ins. Privacy issues are amongst the major drivers for improved network security along with the elimination of
theft, fraud and vandalism. Two major threats to customer privacy and confidence come from sources both hostile to the environment as well as sources seemingly friendly. Coordinated attacks on Yahoo, eBay, ZDNet, Buy.com (on their IPO day) and amazon.com generated a huge amount of publicity and a federal government response. A brief description of these attacks will be given in this paper. Another threat may originate at ostensibly friendly companies such as Double Click, Member Works and similar firms that collect customer information and route it to other firms. Much of this transaction information is able to be associated with a specific person making these seemingly friendly actions potential threats to consumer privacy.
The eradication of trust in Internet commerce applications may cause prudent business operators and clients to forgo use of the Internet for now and revert back to traditional methods of doing business. This loss of trust is being fueled by continued stories of hacker attacks on e-commerce sites and consumer data privacy abuse. Hackers demanding a ransom from an eCommerce site for not publishing customer credit card information have increased the visibility of the network security weaknesses in most business institutions. The conflict between convenience and ease-of-use vs. security has always been resolved in favor of convenience. However, recent virus attacks against Microsoft Outlook (The NIMDA, Code Red worms, the “ILOVEYOU”, “Resume” and KAK viruses) have demonstrated that convenience allows the rapid proliferation of viruses and worms throughout the Internet. Microsoft released a patch that disabled the feature that allows the “ILOVEYOU” virus to work. This is the first time a software vendor has released a patch that restricted a feature. Further, the success of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks against major e-commerce sites pointed out the importance of maintaining adequate security at sites not even remotely associated with the targeted e-commerce sites.
Not all of this is bad news. The majority of security breaches on the Internet occur at the endpoints, i.e., the local network, rather than the main “backbone” of the Internet. This situation allows us to make a comparison of the security weaknesses in the postal system and the Internet. The most vulnerable spots of the postal infrastructure are at the endpoints: the mailboxes at the sender and recipient sites. An example of abuse in the postal system was reported in a Roanoke Times newspaper reprint of a Los Angeles Times article that describes a thief stealing postal mail from mailboxes. The thieves were stealing bills, paychecks and other consumer identity related mail from the victim’s home mailboxes or from the postal system’s street mailboxes. This type of security breach happens much more often than one in which a thief steals directly from inside a post office. Security standards, controls and practices have been developed within the main trunks of the postal infrastructure to monitor and hopefully prevent mail interception or tampering when the letter is in the system. Similar controls are in place at the equivalent Internet network level. Controls at the endpoints on the other hand vary widely from very good (usually at the originating business) to non-existent (usually at the home computer). Consumer privacy is becoming the most publicized security issue replacing theft and fraud as top concerns in e-commerce. The DDOS attacks demonstrated that business sites did not maintain adequate security protection and intrusion detection measures. Some of the sites did not detect the compromise, which occurred months before the DDOS attacks. The hackers who penetrated these sites had the ability to deliver a data
integrity attack on the compromised business for the same amount of time. Businesses were spared simply because the hackers chose not to attack them in that manner. The recent NIMDA and Code Red worms succeeded in penetrating systems because sysadmins failed to installed vendor patches. No customer will want to use a business that distributes sensitive customer data such as credit card information, SSN information or credit limits without the knowledge or permission of the customer. Is this situation different from similar abuse in the phone or mail order business model? Not really but the major difference has to do with the speed of access to and dissemination of the sensitive data. User and system administrator awareness is becoming more important in the effort to counter eCommerce attacks. Consumers are slowly becoming aware of some security features such as encrypted WEB transactions, privacy statements by companies, etc. Internet service providers are becoming more responsive to complaints about Internet abuse originating from their sites.
E-commerce security needs to be addressed not only at the business site with its servers/network but also on the client side, which includes direct connected home computers. It is this group of computers that are the most vulnerable to attack because the level of user security training or awareness is not high at all.
E-Commerce Security Components
E-commerce security strategies deal with two issues:
protecting the integrity of the business network and its
internal systems; and with accomplishing transaction
security between the customer and the business.
The main tool businesses use to protect their internal network is the firewall. A firewall is a hardware and software system that allows only those external users with specific characteristics to access a protected network. The original design was supposed to allow only specific services (e.g., email, web access) between the Internet and the internal network. The firewall has now become
the main point of defense in the business security architecture. However, firewalls should a small part of the business security infrastructure. There are hacker tools such as SMTPTunnel and ICMP Tunnel that allow hackers to pass information through the allowed ports. The “ILOVEYOU” virus successfully penetrated fire walled networks because inbound and outbound email is allowed to pass through the firewall. The Code Red and NIMDA worms passed through firewalls because they accessed systems through the standard WEB server ports. Transaction security is critical to bolstering consumer confidence in a particular e-commerce site. Transaction security depends on the organization’s ability to ensure privacy, authenticity, integrity, availability and the blocking of unwanted intrusions. Transaction privacy can be threatened by unauthorized network monitoring by software devices called sniffer programs. These programs are most likely found at the endpoints of the network connection. There are a number of defenses against this threat such as encryption and switched network typologies. Transaction confidentiality requires the removal of any trace of the actual transaction data from intermediate sites. Records of its passage are a different thing and are required to verify the transaction actually took place. Intermediate nodes that handle the transaction data must not retain it except during the actual relaying of the data.
Encryption is the most common method of ensuring confidentiality. Transaction integrity requires methods that prevent the transactions from being modified in any way while it is in transit to or from the customer. Error checking codes are an example of such a method. Encryption techniques such as secret-key, public-key and digital signatures are the most common method of ensuring transaction privacy, confidentiality and integrity. The common weakness of these techniques is that they depend on the security of the endpoint systems to protect the keys from modification or misuse. The following paragraphs will discuss the vulnerabilities of this client-server model. Early hacker attacks were directed at the server systems because that’s where the access or data lived. As server system administrators became more experienced, it became harder for hackers to successfully penetrate the servers. The hackers then shifted their focus to the network feeding into the server. They were able to continue subverting the servers by intercepting the clear text traffic flowing in and out the server. Encrypting network traffic, converting the network to a switched topology and filtering unknown access were some of the countermeasures to this “sniffer” attack. In response to this, the hackers simply shifted to the client side and this is where most network security architectures collapse. Why? Looking at the OS architectures prevalent in the client side, we observe: an OS used in a server is also used on the client system or the PC/Macintosh OS is used on the client. If the client OS is the same as the server, then the same server defense mechanisms can be used on the client system. However, if the client OS architecture is based on Windows 9x or MacOs then there is no effective defense available. These OS platforms have no built-in security designed into them and allow anyone with access to the system to be able to gain control of it. These OS architectures will continue to be susceptible to virus and Trojan horse program attacks. The two main threats to the e-commerce client-server model are viruses and Trojan horse programs. Viruses are simply disruptive in nature but the Trojan horse programs are the more serious threat because they not only facilitate breaking into another system, they also permit data integrity attacks.
As I do my research I find this information, the points of attacker can target. It shows the vulnerability of a system exists at the entry and exit points within the system. The picture below will show an e-commerce system with several points that the attacker can target: the shopper, the shopper’s computer, the network connection between shopper and web site’s server, the web site’s server and the software vendor
As you can see, these are the target points and their exploits.
The illustration above shows the attacker is sniffing the network between client and the server. In this kind of attacking, the attacker monitors the data between the shopper’s computer and the server. He collects data about the shopper or steals personal information, such as credit card numbers.
Guessing passwords is the basic common attack of hackers. This kind of style of attack is manual or automated. Manual attack can be only successful if the attacker knows something about the shopper. If automated, there are tools exist that use all the words in the dictionary to test user ID/password combinations, or that attack popular user ID/password combinations. The attacker can automate to go against multiple sites at one time.
The illustration above shows the using of denial of service attacks. This kind of attack is one of the best examples of impacting site availability. It involves getting the server to perform a large number of ordinary tasks, exceeding the capacity of the server to cope with any other task. For example, if everyone in a large meeting asks you your name all at once, and every time you answer, they ask you again. You have experienced a personal denial of service attack. To ask a computer its name, you use ping. You can use ping to build an effective DoS attack. The smart hacker gets the server to use more computational resources in processing the request than the adversary does in generating the request.
How can we defend ourselves on this kind of attacks above mention, those attacks are the known ones, meaning there are many of types/kinds of attacks secretly doing those things. Despite of the existence of hackers and crackers, e-commerce remains a safe and secure activity. The resources available to large companies involved in e-commerce are enormous or let’s say it’s a very BIG part of it. These companies will pursue legal route to protect their customers. The following illustration will show the defenses available against attacks.
At the end of the day, your system is only as secure as the people who use it. Education is the best way to ensure that your customers take appropriate some precautions like, install personal firewalls for the client machines, store confidential information in encrypted form, encrypt the steam using the secure socket layer (SSL) protocol to protect information flowing between the client and the e-commerce web site, use appropriate password policies, firewalls and routine external security audits and use threat model analysis, strict development policies and external security audits to protect ISV software running the website. (Information and illustrations are being gathered by the website of IBM, I’m doing some paraphrasing but mostly copy paste)
The key features of safe and secure e-commerce life is to educate ourselves concerning this manner. We choose this kind of career dealing e-commerce, so we must do these things in order to prevent losses and early bankruptcy.
Source:
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_35/hicsspapers/pdfdocuments/inisc01.pdf
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