23 ms·
USB Type-C to Become More Secure with Authentication Standard
- nimish 8y agoWill most likely lead to Nintendo Switch style situations where the physical port is USB-C but in actuality it uses a proprietary charger. Now they can lock out third party docks/chargers. Not a great situation.
- subway 8y agoWas this applied in a later software update? I distinctly recall using my Thinkpad's charger with my Switch, prior to giving it to a friend. edit: Keep in mind that a charger meant for a phone is unlikely to provide anywhere enough power for the Switch. You likely need a charger that implements at least USB-C PD.
- Qwertystop 8y agoThe issue specifically arises when using third-party chargers and/or docks with the system docked. In docked mode, the Switch draws more power than when undocked, and requests an amount of power which is not the same as the amount of power that it actually expects, or that is delivered by the first-party charger and dock. This can result in bricking your system. In short, the Switch does not properly implement the USB-PD standard.
- Slix 8y agoI read that the situation is more nuanced than that. The Switch requests more power than expected because USB devices plugged into the dock might use a lot of power. So it needs to make sure enough power is available just in case. I've heard that third-party chargers work. I could be wrong though.
- jplayer01 8y agoThe problem is that the Switch isn't to spec in regards to how it negotiates power. It generally isn't a problem, but some third-party docks would toast your Switch because of it.
- gjasny 8y agoThere's a nice write-up of the USB spec violations done by the Switch: https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yVTRT https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV...
- zokier 8y agoIt is not like you couldn't do crypto handshakes before this if you wanted to lock down your system. Now it is just standardized.
- ckocagil 8y agoIt'll be incredibly frustrating to have to think about which USB-C device is compatible with which. You want to make a proprietary charger? Use a custom connector and stop confusing end users.
- opencl 8y agoHP at least was already doing it on their laptops. Though at least some models later disabled the lock with BIOS updates.
- singlow 8y agoMy HP Spectre won't charge from non-HP usb-c chargers in Windows; or, at least, it complains and says it won't charge. I haven't tested whether it actually draws current or not since I only booted it once in Windows. However, in Linux it charges fine at full-speed from non-HP charger with appropriate wattage. It will not charge at all from several chargers that don't have the necessary 90W capability.
- userbinator 8y agoMy first thought too. Every standard seems to eventually add DRM-ish features if it's been around long enough. This won't stop maliciousness/determined attackers, but instead it will just become another hurdle of proprietariness that restricts users unnecessarily while protecting the profits of the big companies. (Of course, it's always done "for your security"...)
- ohazi 8y agoThe Nintendo Switch actually uses USB-C power delivery, and from everything I can tell, the link between the power supply and the official Nintendo dock is compliant. Using third party docks, or trying to power the switch from the bottom connector does seem to be a little dicier. The issues people have had with it seem to be that the Switch dock requests exactly 15V from the power supply when plugged into a TV, and many USB-C power supplies don't support this voltage. The MacBook pro charger supports 9 and 20V (I think), and most others use 9, 12, or 20. The problem is that there's no indication of what failed unless you're sniffing the power delivery handshake.
- geofft 8y agoThis form of "authentication" smells like DRM, especially as they're using it to limit power and they're using Digicert to sign devices. And if you're speaking X.509 or something on both sides I'm intensely curious to see how vulnerable the attack surface is. The "authentication" that would actually help is to default to only allowing charging through ports (and allow charging without authentication - who cares where I get 65 W of power from? are there malicious electrons?), and show a little "new device" authentication screen with a Bluetooth-style pairing process when I connect something new. Then either burn an asymmetric key onto the device or generate a random symmetric key (and leave the CAs out of it), and on the host, bind the key to the current function of the device, as displayed on the pairing screen. If I clicked "Trust this keyboard," don't let it turn into a CD drive. If I clicked "Trust these headphones," don't let it turn into a keyboard. And so forth.
- Skunkleton 8y agoGiven the number of crappy USBPD implementations out there, it would be nice if some sort of counterfeit-resistant validation program existed. That said, I would still like the option to trust/use an "insecure" device.
- devereaux 8y agoGet a USBC voltmeter dongle from amazon. Best $20 I've spend: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAWYSVK https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAWYSVK UPDATE: actually, no, the displays is upside down on one of my devices! Duh! A cheap gyroscope would help, or another OLED screen on the back but in the opposite direction (as USBC-cables are reversible)
- kiddico 8y agoI'm torn with USB-C. We're finally getting some cool additions to the most used standard (though I don't know If I like this one), but at the cost of fragmenting it to the point that it's not so much a standard anymore. USB-C inconsistency on the hardware side of things has been a meme by itself. With this addition sometimes when you plug a device in it might not work despite being the exact right device/port combination (which would be a miracle on it's own even in the current environment.) I don't know. Maybe in 5 years when we've glued on all the stuff we want from this connector things will be okay. In the meantime though it's chaos. Committee approved chaos.
- holidaygoose 8y agoI've heard a lot about fragmentation, but just anecdotally it doesn't seem to be an issue in practice. My family has USB-C headphones, phones, laptops, remotes, and then USB-C charging cables around the house. Everything can be charged anywhere and everything is swappable, with the only inconvenience of the laptops needing the larger charging bricks to charge fast (otherwise they charge slow). I connect my desktop to different phones via USB-C, my phone to my headphones, laptop to monitor, my headphones using my car charger, etc. and it all works. The charging bricks and cables are cheap on sale -- $30 for bricks that can charge laptops and about $4 a cable. We're a 100% USB-C household and will only buy electronics with USB-C or USB. I'm waiting for everything else to go USB-C: come on projectors, razors, speakers, and musical instruments.
- vuln 8y agoIf you have Nintendo switch in your household ensure everyone understands to use the Nintendo branded USB-C or else your switch will be toast and warranty voided. Source: USB-C household with a 9 year old and a new switch.
- holidaygoose 8y agoI'm not so familiar with the Switch, but this thread here https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/6jnkl4/list_of_recommended_switch_usbc_chargers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/6jnkl4/list... seems to indicate that using other USB-C chargers is okay?
- thefounder 8y agoThis is DRM and planned obsolescence all day long...just like with HDMI/HDCP it will make user's life a pain not to mention more expensive. I'm sure all the vendors are happy to advance new authentication schemes every year(i.e like hdcp 1.0,2.0,2.1) and resell you the same devices.
- amluto 8y agoThe article seems to claim that this will protect against malware on USB sticks. This is, obviously, utter BS. Also, unless literally every “trusted” USB-C device has its key and its core functionality on a secure chip, the bad guys will just compromise a signed device and make it malicious. As far as I know, many, many USB devices can have their firmware replaced with no authentication whatsoever.
- hahabrew 8y agomany USB devices can have the entire internal hardware replaced and snapped back into thier "chassis/plastic sarcophagus" whith no authentication. if you have an environment dependent, on USB media/devices and security at the same time, there has to be some handshake that IDs hardware as friendly, or USB devices need a security redo.
- Spivak 8y agoIt's not perfect by any stretch but I do like the idea. One problem we have in environments with strong security requirements is that peripherals, typically USB sticks, need to be authorized and controlled. Since there's typically very little information to actually uniquely identify devices, far too many USB devices have the same serial number, we end up having to just ban them altogether. I welcome the world where machines trust my CA and someone who wants a USB device just comes to me, signs the paperwork, and leaves with a signed device that suddenly just works. I mean pushing the security boundary to "someone with the knowledge to flash USB firmware without corrupting the certificate" is pretty darn good.
- amluto 8y ago> I welcome the world where machines trust my CA and someone who wants a USB device just comes to me, signs the paperwork, and leaves with a signed device that suddenly just works. Digicert surely welcomes this world! I personally don’t expect Digicert to have any real controls at all. Also, right now, to put malware on a USB stick, you can just write malware to it. To create a USB stick that has malicious firmware to attack the host drivers, you need a USB stick that doesn’t protect its firmware or you need to build your own. In the new world, this changes to, drumroll please, a USB stick that neither protects its firmware nor wipes its key when new firmware is uploaded. Or you can build your own and pay Digicert, or you can attack a machine that doesn’t bother validating the signature because it wants to retain compatibility with the billions of existing unauthenticated USB sticks. Also, if devices need per-device keys, then I suspect that firmware upload won’t wipe the key, since otherwise firmware upload mostly breaks the security model unless some rather complicated checks on the firmware upload process are done. USB-C devices are cheap, and they’re made by tons of vendors, many of whom know about voltage conversion but not security. Heck, most of these vendors, even big names like Nintendo, can’t even be bothered to speak the protocol correctly.
- Havoc 8y agoIsn't it already crazy complicated?
- dbuder 8y agoIt's already a total nightmare, this will just make interoperability worse.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago>The authentication program relies on cryptography to validate and digitally sign USB Type-C devices with 128-bit security. Seems... low, esp for an offline device that you can get hands on both sides of. How many chargers are going to use as cheap a micro as possible for this? Also, adding an encryption layer and further fragmenting - does have the benefit that Apple may make iPhones with TypeC connectors... so, hooray?
- nixpulvis 8y agoI'm starting to think that merging the power and data connections was a REALLY bad idea... Sometimes all I want to do is wire up something to a battery and some resistors to at least get me online long enough to send something important. Unless I'm missing something, that's getting harder and harder every revision. EDIT: Yea, I know I'l probably cause some amount of damage in the process.
- bscphil 8y agoI have to agree. The fact that people have had devices destroyed by badly designed cables and chargers is proof enough. I keep my laptops for years after the manufacturers have stopped selling replacement parts. With older Dells at least this means buying replacement batteries and AC adapters on Ebay, and they're usually China-made generics not Dell originals. I have never had a problem with this mess of different products together; pumping five amps into one of my data ports knowing people have fried motherboards doing that scares me.
- Dylan16807 8y ago> The fact that people have had devices destroyed by badly designed cables and chargers is proof enough. No it's not! Badly designed cables and chargers have been damaging devices via power-only ports for decades.
- kevin_b_er 8y agoThis smells like a profiteering move for DigiCert. Now you need yet another company's blessing to make hardware. A non-universal serial bus this is becoming even quicker.
- nimbius 8y agoSpeaking as an automotive mechanic by trade who just got into GPG and letsencrypt this week, what application does this have? I guess another question is, why did we need "secured" x509 USB? whos pushing this standard? For example, the Porsche 911 comes with single lug wheels...theyre exotic enough to take their own special wrench, at four hundred dollars, for no real reason other than 'racecar.' youll never race it at speeds where this F1 class hardware matters, but hey, racecar.
- devereaux 8y agoAnother reason for the special wrenches might be called "thieves"
- jhauris 8y agoThe lug wrenches aren't restricted in any way. Thieves can buy them and will get more use per dollar out of them than an owner who lost theirs.
- devereaux 8y agoA random thief may not have a few hundreds to invest in wrenches. This will mostly be a deterrent for opportunistic thieves, the same reason you lock the door of your home. Even locked, it is still easy to open with the appropriate tools.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI imagine it's still possible to remove the wheels without the specialist wrench. It will just damage the lug nuts. Obviously to an owner wanting to legitimately work on their own vehicle this is a huge issue but to a thief who wants to leave the car on bricks and sell the wheels on, not so much.
- est31 8y agoYou might be able to use it to prevent BadUSB like attacks. Something looks like an USB stick with data on it, you plug it in. The device tells the computer that it's a keyboard and sends keypresses to install some virus or something. [1] I don't know about the particulars of this standard though, maybe it's just some DRM thing and soon you'll have to buy expensive dell mice for dell laptops or something like it's already the case with gamepads and consoles. [1]: https://srlabs.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/SRLabs-BadUSB-BlackHat-v1.pdf https://srlabs.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/SRLabs-BadUSB-B...
- James_Owens_69 8y agoI don't own any USB C devides and I don't know anyone who does. Let this meme die please. That crap ain't universal.
- xte 8y agoAh, ok... I'll wait to see something like: "hey this is a Samsung USB-C cable, you can't use it. Go buy an LG's one. They are exactly the same except of authentication but we can't trust if otherwise, it's for your safety!" Than I'll wait for a crying herd of fanboys that proudly try to justify it well pushed by marketing sheepdogs in disguise...
- baroffoos 8y agoSame kind of justifications that get made for apple stuff "Oh you cant replace the screen because we are protecting your security even though the replacement screen came from another iphone.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago> Malware delivered via USB is suspected to be the root cause of infection behind the Stuxnet virus... Not exactly top notch reporting here. It is the OSs responsibility to lock down access to I/O resources. Stuxnet was caused by the insecurity of Windows Autorun, not USB.
- angry_octet 8y ago@aionescu: https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/1080573780743749632?s=09 https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/1080573780743749632?s=09 Why did they have to go down the 'trust' rather than 'distrust' route? It is a completely different universe from the principle of least privilege.
- exactly 8y agoBrace yourselves for the next UEFI Secure Boot "Improvement" bonanza, and, of course the accompanying Stuxnet backdoor. Just like Spectre/Meltdown: half of all people will just shrug, completely unsurprised, when the inevitable zero day drops. And the split between those that find the sky falling, will be the clueless and the plants. Whatever.
- karmakaze 8y agoThe ideal solution from the vendors' perspective is to have a single hardware standard with this standardized method of making compatibility vendor specific so that we have the situation as with lightning cables but with cheaper hardware costs. A standardized incompatibility standard.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hanniabu 8y agoSeems like this might be able to be used to charge a fee to charge your phone with public ports.
- akerro 8y agoWill this allow Nokia phones to be charged or set as tethering only on Windows and iPhones only on Macs?
- rkangel 8y agoThis article says that the USB-IF "is going a step further" with this cryptographic authentication, which isn't quite right. The 'I trust this device' system allows confirming that you trust the device. This crypto confirms that the USB-IF trust the device (and presumably all they are asserting is that the device conforms to standard). It's an interesting idea, and not a bad one. That's assuming the certificate system is sound which I remain sceptical of until I know more, given the normal issues with managing a single unrevocable private certificate.
- sierdolij 8y agoThere's a major component missing in modern OSes: - a peripheral firewall that asks the user if a particular device should be connected. The problem is, there is no reliable and nonrepudiable way to differentiate and authenticate said devices. What I hope this extension does is help implement such a OS peripheral firewall. What such a standard would need: - a nonrepudiable unique identifier to know if it's been previously attached - a secure channel (at least at the lower layer(s)) to communicate on to avoid the "http"-like attack surfaces: spoofing, interception, modification The several risks of adding a seemingly vital feature set to a standard better be overwhelmingly offset by the rigor, completeness and simplicity of the proposal.