5 ms·
A briefcase full of cash could easily get a "bug" like this introduced into a security package. I'm not saying this is the case, but given the current climate,
by astrodust 10y ago
A briefcase full of cash could easily get a "bug" like this introduced into a security package.
I'm not saying this is the case, but given the current climate, it's hard to say it isn't.
- tptacek 10y agoYou can say that about any kind of product that everyone deploys. All software has bugs, most bugs are exploitable. So, no, it's easy to say that it isn't.
- astrodust 10y agoThis bug is so shockingly stupid you have to wonder if it's malice or staggering incompetence, so either we must admit that Kapersky has no business staying in business, or they're willing to overlook little "mistakes" like this.
- tptacek 10y agoThis is exactly what people said about the Apple "goto fail" bug. The conspiracy theories were silly then and they're silly now.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoIf you are knowledgable enough to MITM SSL then you should definitely be knowledgable enough to know how stupid this is, and - frankly - knowledgable enough not to fucking MITM SSL. I would attribute it to malice, assume it's malice, fire the developer, and contact the authorities. Of course, that's moot if the authorities are the ones who asked for the bug.
- tptacek 10y agoLet's try a little exercise here. Stipulate that it's malice, and then generate the narrative in which malice makes sense. Specifically: You are whatever entity (I assume the FSB?) that can demand Kaspersky implant backdoors into its desktop antivirus software. You decide to target that backdoor at the component of Kaspersky's software that gets, by design, unrestricted access to the plaintext of all TLS sessions on the machine, in addition to practically unrestricted access to every file on machine itself, and to the machine's memory in cpl0 and cpl3. From that vantage point, you decide to... ... collide certificates? Remember, your evil backdoor only impacts machines running your software already. From this thread, I'm wondering if that's maybe unclear to people.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoDid you read the link? It describes an attack where you only need to have access to the same network as the target. Perhaps through that smart lightbulb they just installed?
- tptacek 10y agoYes, I did read the link. Do you understand the thread? The proposal is that this bug in Kaspersky's kernel code is a backdoor in Kaspersky's kernel code --- that is: an attacker that already owns your OS kernel is backdooring it to come up with an extremely convoluted and noisy way to get access to your TLS sessions --- by backdooring the part of their kernel code that already has access to every TLS session on the machine.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoThe described attack doesn't sound convoluted at all, it seems very practical.
- tptacek 10y agoOnce again: the attacker here already controls TLS on the machines that are affected. They don't need to collide certificates. By design, they not only have the plaintext of every TLS session on the machine, but they are also the client side of every TLS session originating from the machine (they terminate TLS locally and proxy it over a new connection they control). I feel like the people claiming this is a smoking gun backdoor don't really understand what it means that Kaspersky's software is designed to proxy TLS. Yes: it is batshit that they proxy TLS. It's so batshit that this particular bug makes absolutely no sense as a backdoor. That idea is Xzibit-level crazy.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoI see what you mean now. If you wanted to make a backdoor and have plausable deniability, you'd make it a bug.
- astrodust 10y agoIt used to be a "conspiracy theory" that the government was reading all your email, but it's turned out to be a fact. It's worth noting the "goto fail" bug was likely exploited, so it had value to someone. As has been shown through various leaks, the NSA and other entities like it have a war-chest of these toys. Things that used to be "you're just being paranoid" type concerns are now "we may never know" ones. Regardless of the origin or intent, it still paints Kapersky in a very, very bad light. There's no escaping that.
- tptacek 10y agoIt's still a conspiracy theory that the government is reading all your email!
- throwaway91111 10y agoI'm not sure you can call government itself a conspiracy.
- tptacek 10y agoThere is in fact no evidence that the government (any government) is "reading all our emails", or has had the access to do that. There is, on the other hand, a virulent conspiracy theory that the PRISM disclosures from Snowden revealed NSA's ability to do that; that claim was so false that Greenwald now (somewhat deceptively) denies he even acknowledged it.
- throwaway91111 10y agoUnless I'm missing something, the national security letters allow just that. My point stands.
- madgar 10y agoNational security letters target individuals and aren't sent in enough volume to cover more than 0.01% of "everyone's emails".
- jamesrom 10y agoApple's "goto fail" bug is completely different: it was not a design flaw, but a merge error. Hanlon's razor applies sufficiently. But anyone with a basic understanding of information security would know that keying by truncated MD5 is certainly a bad idea. This is not just stupidity. This is not accidental. This design not only flies in the face of everything you want from a cert store, but is so blatantly bad that surely more than one person at Kaspersky was in on it.
- tptacek 10y agoI don't know why you're operating from the presumption that most security people know anything at all about basic cryptography, because practically none of them do. Cryptography seems like it should be a general topic in information security, but it isn't; it's very much a specialist topic. This is far, far from the dumbest crypto bug I've seen in a security product. You're simply wrong about this. If you'll take a second to look at the "goto fail" threads on HN, by the way, you'll see people every bit as committed to the idea that "goto fail was an inside job" as you are to this bug being enemy action. Have you taken a second to even think about how this precise bug even makes sense as an implant? Hint: it does not make sense as an implant.
- jamesrom 10y ago> I don't know why you're operating from the presumption that most security people know anything at all about basic cryptography I don't know why you're operating from the presumption I'm talking about security people in general. I'm talking about the people at Kaspersky who were tasked with writing a SSL certificate store. I will also quote the bug report: "You don't have to be a cryptographer to understand a 32bit key is not enough to prevent brute-forcing a collision in seconds. In fact, producing a collision with any other certificate is trivial." > Have you taken a second to even think about how this precise bug even makes sense as an implant? Hint: it does not make sense as an implant. Hint: Pair this with a DNS spoof and you can pretend to be whatever website you want.
- tptacek 10y ago
- sigmar 10y agoConcocting theories as to intended malice based on this bug alone would be ridiculous. But it isn't dificult to imagine malice if you frame this with the history Kaspersky has Particularly when they have a history of remote access "bugs"[1], insecure broadcasting of user-agent info[2], and a cozy relationship with the Kremlin[3]. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/flaw-found-in-kaspersky-antivirus/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/flaw-found-in-kaspersky-antivir... [2] https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/nsa-gchq-targeted-kaspersky/ https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/nsa-gchq-targeted-kasper... [3]https://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/ https://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/
- tptacek 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313794
- b2600 10y agoI don't know if comparing "bugs" from AV software and OSs is apples to apples. Also, goto followed by erroneous goto looks like an error (I know) but "keys are generated, they're inserted using the first 32 bits of MD5(serialNumber||issuer) as the key. If a match is found for a key, they just pull the previously generated certificate and key out of the binary tree" doesn't
- tptacek 10y agoWhy not? Caching certificate chains makes sense. Bad hash functions are the norm in systems code, not the exception.
- b2600 10y agoI guess I'm reading these two examples as: 1. an extra goto and 2. a strategy dealing with creating an ssl store that uses a 32(!) bit key. I'm not implying malice but they seem fundamentally different type of errors.
- hughw 10y agoWouldn't it be fair to say that a vulnerability in software you willingly bless to install a MITM, is worthy of more distrust (as to whether it's a deliberate vulnerability) than a similar error in an office productivity program?
- tptacek 10y agoI don't know. Aren't you asking whether I should be more worried about Microsoft Office or AV software? That's a tough choice to have to make. Productivity software file-based vulnerabilities compromise orders of magnitude more computers than MITM vulnerabilities do.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- btilly 10y agoSo, no, it's easy to say that it isn't. It is easy to say whatever you want, but impossible to prove either way. Kaspersky comes from Russia, and has high level connections within the Russian government. Past actions (eg their analysis of Stuxnet) have been in line with Russian foreign policy goals. Everything that they do is easily explained by their being a normal company. But multiple things that they have done fit very well with their working for Russian policy goals in a smart way. Which theory you find more plausible depends on your level of paranoia about Russia, and how much pressure you think that Putin would bring to bear behind the scenes to force cooperation. And even if they are subject to state backdoors, any particular one might or might not be one. I personally am inclined towards paranoia. Russia using Kaspersky would be perfectly in line with standard fare in lots of countries. For example here in the USA look at how the NSA created the FREAK attack. Or look at Lenovo's use of Superfish in their BIOS. Why would we expect Russia to be more restrained than other state actors with as tempting a channel as Kaspersky? I see no reason to expect that. No reason at all.
- throwaway91111 10y agoThis is true of virtually any exploit.