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Securing National E-ID Infrastructures: Tor Networks As a Source of Threats

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Securing National E-ID Infrastructures: Tor Networks As a Source of Threats Securing national e-ID infrastructures: Tor networks as a source of threats Paolo Spagnoletti 1[0000-0003-1950-368X], Gianluigi Me 2[0000-0002-8805-2547], Federica Ceci 3[0000-0002-6998-8534] and Andrea Prencipe 4[0000-0002-5691-2290] 1 LUISS University, Rome, Italy 2 LUISS University, Rome, Italy 2 G. d’Annunzio University, Pescara, Italy 4 LUISS University, Rome, Italy Abstract. Securing national electronic identification (e-ID) systems requires an in depth understanding of the associated threats. The trade of identity related ar- tefacts in the darknet facilitates illegal activities such as identity theft in both physical and virtual worlds. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory analysis of identity trading in the darknet. We capture the key features of three major markets of fake IDs in Tor networks, and apply attack-defense trees to show how the security of an e-ID infrastructure is affected by this phenomenon. Keywords: Identity theft, Tor, attack tree, identity management, black market. 1 Introduction Electronic identification (e-ID) infrastructures are considered a key enabler for the development of e-services in both public and private sector. In the last decade, many European countries have started nation-wide initiatives to develop their own e-ID infrastructures [1]. Such infrastructures differ in terms of architectures, institutional actors involved, and on the range of services that can be accessed by citizens using digital identities. In some cases, e-ID can be seen as platforms enabling authenticated citizens to access online services provided both by public administrations and private companies. Such platforms are based on federated authentication and authorization architectures in which few certified companies act as Identity Providers (IdP) under the supervision of a governmental institution [2]. Identity Providers must guarantee the identification of citizens and securely manage their personal data while enabling access to Service Providers (SP) in the ecosystem, by the means of standardized pro- tocols. Alike e-payment systems, e-ID infrastructures can be considered as multi-sided platforms [3]. Depending on the policies defined by governmental sponsors, different strategies can be implemented at the level of provider, technology and users. For in- stance, in Italy a competitive strategy at the level of Identity Providers has been re- cently established by AGID, the Public Agency in charge of promoting digitalization. 2 At the moment, the governmental sponsors have accredited five Identity Providers and they are requested to manage citizens’ identities by opening the platform through APIs to any public and private e-service. Citizens can join the SPID (Digital Identity Public Service) at no charge and benefit of a Single-Sign-On service when accessing to e-services connected to the national e-ID infrastructure. The economic sustainabil- ity of the overall system relies on transaction fees payed by private companies to the Identity Provider that performs the authentication. Despite the huge market potential of e-ID platforms, which coincides with the whole state population, governments are struggling in developing e-ID infrastructures and attracting a critical mass of users and service providers [4]. Possible challenges in the development of such infrastructures are related to privacy concerns, lack of inter- governmental coordination, lack of private-public sector cooperation, and tensions such as the trade-off between usability and security. Among those issues, security plays a crucial role by enabling the development of trusted e-service ecosystems. Security is a multidimensional property of systems, data and information [5]. When referred to an IT infrastructure in a business context, information security is often intended as the organizational goal of mitigating operational risks by protecting in- formation from threats to confidentiality, integrity, availability and accountability [6]. However, today’s pervasiveness of digital technologies in both work practices and citizens’ private life, extends the scope of risk to safety and other human rights. Un- desired e-payment transactions, data breaches of healthcare and financial information, sabotage of critical infrastructures (e.g. transportation, electricity, oil and gas, etc.) and unauthorized access to e-voting systems are only few examples of serious viola- tions of rights such as ownership, privacy, safety and freedom [7]. Since e-ID infra- structures serve as a gateway to a vast array of services, their vulnerabilities can have a tremendous impact on organizations and society. In fact, systems integration and interoperability of services enable the propagation of security incidents well beyond the boundaries of a single service with potential effects on the performance of an entire ecosystem [8]. While previous studies have addressed the problem of e-ID security from a technical perspective, in this paper we focus on the risk that malicious users get unauthorized access to federated services by acting on behalf of another user. In order to access e- services, users are requested to demonstrate their identity in the enrolment phase and then to perform an authentication process every time they need to enter the system. The ways in which these activities are performed is defined by IdPs and SPs and regu- lated by contracts. Every time a successful authentication is performed, users can act by the means of a digital identity, a set of attributes that are exchanged with the SP. Therefore, authorization and authentication processes transfer the user agency to digi- tal identity (e.g. password, scanned documents, e-card, etc.) whose theft and illegal exchange threatens the accountability and hence the security of the overall system. The risks of identity theft are today amplified by the availability of online markets in the Deep Web that allow users to exchange goods anonymously. Within such mar- kets, digital identities can be exchanged like many other illegal goods thus potentially reaching every Internet user. The goal of this study is to explore the emerging risks of 3 identity theft in the cyberspace and to discuss implications on the design and govern- ance of e-ID infrastructures. Although some empirical studies have emphasized the business potential of the Deep Web as an intelligence tool [9], it is commonly accepted that the presence of a cyberinfrastructure ensuring anonymity generates new threats for both businesses and citizens. The rise of black markets in the darknet is in fact transforming the ways in which criminals interact in trading illegal products and services [10–12]. These mar- kets are also used to sell identity related goods either in the form of digital infor- mation or as physical artefacts such as for instance ID cards and driving licences. We argue that the trade of identity related artefacts in the darknet represents a new source of risk for trusted e-service environments. When federated e-ID infrastructures are in place, fake identities provide criminals with unprecedented capabilities of harvesting private data and acting on behalf of others. Our goal is to shed light on this phenome- non by showing how the illegal trade of identity related product and services on the darknet pave the way to new forms of attacks to e-ID infrastructures. In this paper, we address this issue by exploring the market of identity documents in the darknet and identifying attack scenarios emerging in the new cybercrime eco- system. We conduct a case study on the black market of Italian citizens’ identities in Tor networks and discuss the implications for the development of secure e-ID infra- structures. The paper is structured as follows. We first illustrate some key features of black markets in the dark net based on findings from previous studies. Then, we formulate our research question by focusing on the market of illegal identities in the darknet and on the potential risks for e-ID infrastructures. In the third section, we describe the research methodology and the data collection process. In the fourth section, the results of our empirical analysis are presented and the implications of emerging attack sce- narios on the development of e-ID infrastructures is discussed. 2 Related works 2.1 Black markets in the darknet A darknet is an overlay network that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, often using non-standard communications protocols and ports. Contents of the darknet are not indexed by common search engines such as Google. Black markets existing within the dark net present unique features that make them extremely interesting. For our purposes, we find three particularly interesting features: anonymity of users, anonymity of payments, and resilience. The first aspect relates to the choice of communities who use and manage black markets to keep their identities secret [13]. The main motivation for anonymity is the illegal nature of the activities carried out by vendors and buyers [14, 15]. However, in some cases, the use of anonymity is chosen to avoid stigma or limit liability, as in the case of purchasing of drugs or political manuals [16, 17]. The need for anonymity has important impact on the organizational choices of markets and communities that man- 4 age them: research has shown that criminals often design their organizations not to maximize efficiency but to be able to better hide their activities [18] and to limit the dissemination of potentially incriminating information [19]. From a technical view- point, the anonymity is guaranteed by protocols that establish end-to-end circuits in which data are tunnelled using public-key cryptography. In these networks, each node only knows its predecessor and successor. New generation anonymity systems, such as Onion Routing networks handle a variety of bidirectional TCP-based applications like web browsing, secure shell, and instant messages. The Tor package is a set of free software tools implementing the Onion Routing network design. Tor users can therefore browse the web, publish web sites and other services without revealing their identity and the location of the site.
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