3 ms·

SSH is also implemented by Golang, and Erlang (And probably a bunch of other languages). You're right that traditional SSH clients tend to need long-term storag

by sargun 11y ago

SSH is also implemented by Golang, and Erlang (And probably a bunch of other languages). You're right that traditional SSH clients tend to need long-term storage, but one could easily turn off host key caching, and look to SSHFP records (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4255.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4255.txt) instead. I'd actually argue that SSHFP records are analogous to DANE. Paired with DNSSEC, I'm not there there's a practical attack there. As far as the server side - apart from the storage of the keys (which is required with any cryptographic protocol), I'm not sure where the challenge comes in. Bootstrapping trust is a problem in any situation. SSH server keys paired with an out of band mechanism for distributing public keys or SSHFP can prove to be a fairly reasonable method. I'd say somewhat more reasonable than what we had with HTTP + TLS for the longest time (until say Let's Encrypt). Even with that, certificate stores aren't particularly easy to manage. Going back to the language-specific implementations of SSH. Those servers can be run without the necessary submodules to do shell-like stuff. I agree with you, it'd be crazy talk to use the system SSH daemon to do much of what's described by the author, but as a protocol, perhaps it is more reasonable.

tptacek 11y ago
By "no practical attack", you mean, "as long as you trust whichever government controls your TLD and whichever governments effectively control the global DNS root" --- which, for most of the hosts people on HN contact, means "as long as you trust the NSA". DNSSEC is a disaster. Avoid it. http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/
- dsl 11y ago
  I hate to add "me too" replies, but it is important to get the message out there that lots of really smart folks consider DNSSEC an absolute failure of such epic proportions that you shouldn't even joke about building something real on top of it. The only thing DNSSEC has given us is widespread DDoS amplification.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    What better option is there?
    - pferde 11y ago
      Not using DNSSEC and not having false sense of security. No sense of security is better than a false one.
    - dsl 11y ago
      https://dnscrypt.org/ https://dnscrypt.org/
- sargun 11y ago
  DNSSec is useless if TLS was implemented in the ideal way. But, unfortunately, TLS is far from ideal. The author states "For something as harebrained as the CA system, remarkably few criminal breaches trace back to it -- There have been many false CAs, and certificates issues. We have no idea what they've been used for (http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/google-warns-of-unauthorized-tls-certificates-trusted-by-almost-all-oses/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/google-warns-of-unau...). In addition to this, there exist many CAs whose primary purpose is to perform MITM-style attacks The author's points about DNSSec being expensive - somewhat, but more an more providers are offering DNSSec at the same price as normal DNS. Fedora is even enabling it on all their end hosts. As far as the "Government controlled PKI": 1. What's better? Some security, or no security? 2. If the government wanted to crack DNSSec, there still exists the fact that we can share KSKs out of band for verification. DNSSec is capable of providing better security than the current system. It does have some implementation gaps, but what do you propose alternatively?

by sargun 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

By "no practical attack", you mean, "as long as you trust whichever government controls your TLD and whichever governments effectively control the global DNS root" --- which, for most of the hosts people on HN contact, means "as long as you trust the NSA". DNSSEC is a disaster. Avoid it. http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/

dsl 11y ago
I hate to add "me too" replies, but it is important to get the message out there that lots of really smart folks consider DNSSEC an absolute failure of such epic proportions that you shouldn't even joke about building something real on top of it. The only thing DNSSEC has given us is widespread DDoS amplification.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  What better option is there?
  - pferde 11y ago
    Not using DNSSEC and not having false sense of security. No sense of security is better than a false one.
  - dsl 11y ago
    https://dnscrypt.org/ https://dnscrypt.org/
sargun 11y ago
DNSSec is useless if TLS was implemented in the ideal way. But, unfortunately, TLS is far from ideal. The author states "For something as harebrained as the CA system, remarkably few criminal breaches trace back to it -- There have been many false CAs, and certificates issues. We have no idea what they've been used for (http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/google-warns-of-unauthorized-tls-certificates-trusted-by-almost-all-oses/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/google-warns-of-unau...). In addition to this, there exist many CAs whose primary purpose is to perform MITM-style attacks The author's points about DNSSec being expensive - somewhat, but more an more providers are offering DNSSec at the same price as normal DNS. Fedora is even enabling it on all their end hosts. As far as the "Government controlled PKI": 1. What's better? Some security, or no security? 2. If the government wanted to crack DNSSec, there still exists the fact that we can share KSKs out of band for verification. DNSSec is capable of providing better security than the current system. It does have some implementation gaps, but what do you propose alternatively?