4 ms·

Decades-old GnuPG bug allowed hackers to spoof just about anyone’s signature

44 points by mikece 8y ago

jchanimal 8y ago
Can someone explain how bad this is in multiples of Heartbleed? Any big time automated processes with decades of dubious history now, etc?
- kingofhdds 8y ago
  The attack can only succeed when victim's gpg is run with 'verbose' option turned on. Which is rather unusual situation.
- jerf 8y ago
  It's difficult to be precise, but I'd bid it out as a minimum of 6 orders of magnitude less, and if someone wanted to bid out 8 or 9 I wouldn't fight them. It's not a zero-impact issue, but there's so many differences between this and Heartbleed that it just can't be that large. For one thing, there's several orders of magnitude fewer users of GPG than SSL. Then you need a vulnerable configuration. Then you need to have been exploited. Those three things multiply out to quite a few orders of magnitude.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  Approximately 0 Heartbleeds. A Heartbleed-level vulnerability means "everyone is vulnerable, exploitation is trivial, consequences of exploitation are severe" so therefore you need to a) update yesterday and b) assume that the fact you haven't updated yet (because you just found out) means you've already been screwed. These kind of bugs are very rare, and the only comparable one I can think of is Debian's OpenSSL bug.
exabrial 8y ago
Sorry to be pedantic, but it appears to be a bug in GPG, not the PGP spec.
- Zamicol 8y ago
  That's not pedantic, that's pointing out a terrible headline.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Seems like it's even a bug in how GPG is used (verbose mode, etc) instead of GPG itself. I'm surprised those software actually use GPG by parsing its output instead of as a library.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    It's not possible to use GPG as a library - the libraries that exist just shell out to the command and parse its output.
    - xnyanta 8y ago
      I'm shocked to hear that. What exactly is preventing it from be used as a real library?
      - binarycrusader 8y ago
        Probably the license and/or lack of an appropriate licensing exception.
        DSMan195276 8y ago
        Another posted indicate code issues, but I think you're right this is at least a big reason. GPG is GPL licensed, but GPGME is LGPL licensed. A library version of GPG would have to be GPL licensed as well, which would require any programs linking to it to also be GPL. With that, for GPGME to be LPGL there can't be an actual coupling of code between the two or else GPGME would have to be GPL licensed itself. (Though you could argue the distinction here a bit murky)
      - vertex-four 8y ago
        I believe that it's primarily that GPG has been implemented in such a way that console concerns invade most of the program, but I've never actually looked to verify.
tedunangst 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309987

44 points by mikece 8y ago

Can someone explain how bad this is in multiples of Heartbleed? Any big time automated processes with decades of dubious history now, etc?

kingofhdds 8y ago
The attack can only succeed when victim's gpg is run with 'verbose' option turned on. Which is rather unusual situation.
jerf 8y ago
It's difficult to be precise, but I'd bid it out as a minimum of 6 orders of magnitude less, and if someone wanted to bid out 8 or 9 I wouldn't fight them. It's not a zero-impact issue, but there's so many differences between this and Heartbleed that it just can't be that large. For one thing, there's several orders of magnitude fewer users of GPG than SSL. Then you need a vulnerable configuration. Then you need to have been exploited. Those three things multiply out to quite a few orders of magnitude.
jcranmer 8y ago
Approximately 0 Heartbleeds. A Heartbleed-level vulnerability means "everyone is vulnerable, exploitation is trivial, consequences of exploitation are severe" so therefore you need to a) update yesterday and b) assume that the fact you haven't updated yet (because you just found out) means you've already been screwed. These kind of bugs are very rare, and the only comparable one I can think of is Debian's OpenSSL bug.

exabrial 8y ago

Sorry to be pedantic, but it appears to be a bug in GPG, not the PGP spec.

Zamicol 8y ago
That's not pedantic, that's pointing out a terrible headline.
Rjevski 8y ago
Seems like it's even a bug in how GPG is used (verbose mode, etc) instead of GPG itself. I'm surprised those software actually use GPG by parsing its output instead of as a library.
- vertex-four 8y ago
  It's not possible to use GPG as a library - the libraries that exist just shell out to the command and parse its output.
  - xnyanta 8y ago
    I'm shocked to hear that. What exactly is preventing it from be used as a real library?
    - binarycrusader 8y ago
      Probably the license and/or lack of an appropriate licensing exception.
      - DSMan195276 8y ago
        Another posted indicate code issues, but I think you're right this is at least a big reason. GPG is GPL licensed, but GPGME is LGPL licensed. A library version of GPG would have to be GPL licensed as well, which would require any programs linking to it to also be GPL. With that, for GPGME to be LPGL there can't be an actual coupling of code between the two or else GPGME would have to be GPL licensed itself. (Though you could argue the distinction here a bit murky)
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      I believe that it's primarily that GPG has been implemented in such a way that console concerns invade most of the program, but I've never actually looked to verify.

tedunangst 8y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309987