Washington, DC 09/22/97 - WirelessNOW Breaking News provided by Inside Paging's Geoff Livingston - A member of Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) released a transcript of pager messages that the President's entourage used to report his location during a trip last April. The move unveiled a glaring flaw in the way the White House conducts security for the President and the First Family. The messages show the Chief Executive's movements and messages as he traveled to the Philadelphia Convention Center to deliver a keynote speech, alongside former Presidents Carter, Ford, and Bush. The messages detail, step by step, the President's movements along the route to the stadium and include messages from the press and daughter Chelsea Clinton awaiting him at the White House switchboard. The messages were conveyed on the old outdated technology GOLAY, as opposed to POCSAG or the new defacto world standard for high-speed paging, FLEX.

The White House admitted that it was very possible that its paging communications were hacked into and stated that it encourages its employees to not use wireless communications to convey mission critical data. "If these pagers were common carrier pagers it is quite possible that someone within an organization leaked the information," said a paging industry source. "Possibilities of that are very remote. The systems are most likely private," said the source.

Inside Paging took the time to discuss wireless communications security with a former Reagan Administration staffer. "It's easy to hack into communications," Jim Opfer, currently chairman of Farcast Business Intelligence News Service and formerly a White House communications officer in charge of mobile communications systems for the Reagan Administration. "There's a reason to communicate. It's about president security. We were always trying to secure free lines to make sure everything's private. It's about not wanting to let people know where the president was before he was there," Opfer said.

White House Communications Agency uses GOLAY to transmit paging messages. The older signaling method has largely been abandoned by commercial paging

Carriers in favor of POCSAG or FLEX. GOLAY is named after the scientist who invented it. While POCSAG and FLEX are not secure, they are newer and more complicated transmitting technologies that are harder to hack.

"It's easy to intercept one-way messages because of their very nature," said a second industry source. "There is no second party--like wireless telephony has--to verify encrypted messages. They are simply sent in one quick burst to the pager," the source said.

The anonymous hacker used Universal Radio equipment to intercept the gear. Universal Radio manufactures three universal decoders that will decode GOLAY as well as numerous other digital radio signals including the M-1200. Universal Radio equipment is available to anyone who can afford to purchase the equipment.

"Intelligent people can use [intercept] technology to intercept messages if they have a cable and a computer," said Pamela Finkel, a lead spokesperson for HOPE. "Even without the computer, they could probably intercept messages for display on their radio receiver."

As a result of the intercepted messages, the paging industry is now faced with its second embarrassing security breach within a month. As reported by WirelessNOW on August 28, according to a complaint unsealed in a federal court, Breaking News Network (BNN) intercepted pager messages sent to New York City officials and sold the information to reporters and news agencies including the Associated Press. The company allegedly cloned a special police-department pager, provided by PageNet, that receives internal messages, including information too sensitive to broadcast over police radio. The pages included information about the location of high-level government officials, crime witnesses and arrests and suspensions of police-department employees. Three people at BNN were arrested, and face up to five years in prison and fines of $250,000 for each count.

HOPE's goal in releasing the information is to highlight encryption and security problems within the wireless telecommunications and larger information technology industries. "We are publicizing this flaw in the hopes that it will finally be fixed," said Finkel. "I'd like to see the same kind of peer review and discussion of 'What is wrong with the technology, how do we secure it', just as is now common in the computer industry."

The backlash from the paging intercepts has several possible far reaching repercussions. The Clinton Administration has two major problems as a result of the hacked communications; security leaks and encryption policy weaknesses.

HOPE released the information at a time when the Clinton Administration's encryption policy has come under a great deal of criticism from congressional, information technology industry and international business sources. Currently the administration via the Commerce Department limits the export of encryption to 56 Kbit and domestic use to 128 Kbit. In addition, exporters have to register a key escrow to unlock encrypted documents, transmissions, etc. with a third party. The key escrow system was evolved from the Administrations controversial first-term clipper chip policy. The Administration has repeatedly argues that encryption control is vital to national security and law enforcement efforts.

"Wireless communications are open to intercepts anyway, but the current Administration's anti-encryption for the masses policies preclude the ability for everyone to transmit as securely as possible," said HOPE's Finkel. "[And] commonly-available technology, when used by the White House, can potentially endanger the President and those around him. This administration's stance on limiting encryption weakens their own security capabilities," Finkel said.

Another party that could be affected by the security break through is ham radio operators. "Some friends of mine who are avid radio hobbyists believe I should not have spoken up on this issue - they're worried that they will no longer be allowed to buy radios," said Finkel.

Copyright 1997 by CommunicationsNOW

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