5 ms·

I had speculated for a while that Secure Boot, Widevine, Trusted Computing, all of it seems like they have some pretty serious central points of failure. So muc

I had speculated for a while that Secure Boot, Widevine, Trusted Computing, all of it seems like they have some pretty serious central points of failure. So much so, that it would be a modern heist of the century if they were stolen. If someone (for example) got Apple's iOS signing key and Apple's HTTPS certificate, Apple could suffer catastrophic damage. If someone got the PlayStation 5 signing key or the Xbox One signing key, catastrophic damage there. In a way, it's a beautiful, super-secure house... built on a single ludicrously powerful point of failure. Good thing we don't have any corrupt government agencies who might want to bribe someone for keys... yet... hopefully... This is actually something I would fear for the future. There have been countless physical heists - most recently in Antwerp, Belgium, where over $100 million in diamonds were stolen in 2003. We haven't had a major signing key stolen yet, but there's always that first day... if you can't keep $100M in diamonds safe, can you really be sure that you can keep a hardware signing key safe forever? Heck, the logistics of stealing the diamonds is insane - but stealing a key only takes a pencil and a piece of paper.

bombcar 4y ago
And you know nobody actually has their high-value signing key protected by a series of complex offline vaults and checks and balances like you'd see in Ocean's 11 - at best it's on the other side of a room on an air gapped computer.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Right... because the more you lock the key down and try to secure it, the greater the risk something in your security will go wrong, and then you will lose it yourself. Losing the key is not as bad, though still catastrophic, from a corporate perspective. Imagine if Apple couldn't distribute a software update ever again. Much better to not invest in super-strong security that has that risk... but then you have an increased risk of theft... It's almost like cryptographic signing keys are the modern day Ring of Power...
  - whizzter 4y ago
    https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies
- secabeen 4y ago
  The IANA key ceremony is pretty close to best practice: https://kimdavies.com/key-ceremony-primer https://kimdavies.com/key-ceremony-primer
  - infogulch 4y ago
    This is the second time today that I've seen reference to a "key ceremony", which I hadn't heard of before. Sure I expected root key holders to have some kind of formality around key management, but not a 5 hour event live-streamed on youtube! https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/45 https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/45
- walrus01 4y ago
  “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
  - superkuh 4y ago
    That's kind of how I feel trying to access the text of this article. All I can see when I look at the page or view source is a bunch of executable code. You have to do quite a bit to be able to read this security warning.
- gryf 4y ago
  The Simpsons got it right: https://youtu.be/eU2Or5rCN_Y https://youtu.be/eU2Or5rCN_Y
  - blibble 4y ago
    that matches my experience of an unnamed large multinational datacentre company to get to the floor needed to go through the multilayer security, id checks, etc the cleaner had left their mop in one of the secure doors, bypassing most of it
- dgacmu 4y ago
  That's not strictly true. At one point, my desk was next to the room that held the vault for one particular signing key. You'd have to get through the building security, through a room guarded by one access control mechanism, and then into a vault secured by a second mechanism. It wasn't guards and guns but it also seemd sufficient for the task at hand.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    For a many million dollar key, a few armored robbers with guns would solve this problem. Or to quote xkcd: get the hammer
    - dgacmu 4y ago
      Depends on if you are concerned mostly about covert access or overt access. I'd argue the former is quite a bit more serious in the case that keys can be revoked online.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Depends how long they need it for. "Hi, we have your family hostage for a week and if you tell anyone we have this key we'll ship you back parts" More than enough time for a nation state backed actor to spread a lot of damage.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Yeah covert is the main issue - you need to be sure that dgacmu didn’t wander into the office one door over and grab a copy of the keys. Some sort of read-only memory that logged how many times it had been read might help.
        calvinmorrison 4y ago
        more like sleeper cell agents
- saagarjha 4y ago
  The places that care store them in HSMs which few people have physical access to.
dmix 4y ago
> recently in Antwerp, Belgium, where over $100 million in diamonds were stolen in 2003 One of my favourite books I’ve read was about this heist https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7071759-flawless https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7071759-flawless
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
This summarizes a thought I had for a while. Muggings and robberies happen every single day, probably by the millions. Hacks also happen, although not that frequently. Now, what would happen if you combined both? Say a rogue criminal group threatens/kidnaps/holds a sysadmin at gunpoint and forces them to export all the private keys, the keys to the kingdom. It would be like the explosive mints in Mission Impossible, where if you make the two ends touch, BOOM! Make the hacking world and the physical mugging/robbing worlds intersect and you probably got an extremely dangerous combination, a nuclear bomb waiting to explode.
- User23 4y ago
  > Make the hacking world and the physical mugging/robbing worlds intersect and you probably got an extremely dangerous combination, a nuclear bomb waiting to explode. This is easily within the capabilities of any state level actor. And unlike a nuclear bomb, it can be kept out of the news. I’d wager it’s already been done.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    I haven't heard the government complain about encryption since early 2000s. I'd wager you're correct.
- DrPhish 4y ago
  This is a well know, and I'd imagine well used technique see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
- c22 4y ago
  I think you're describing the plot of Firewall with Harrison Ford.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Given how much modern hardware is on check-for-updates-online mode by default, how long would a stolen signing key be valuable? I'd imagine the OEM would respond to the theft by cutting new keys and pushing an update to supplant the old key. There'd be some details to hammer out (retroactively declaring the old key untrustworthy past date of theft, allow-listing a bunch of software and peripherals that couldn't be updated to accept if they matched key + checksum), but it feels like stealing such keys would have a very short window of utility. To be clear, this is not to imply resolving the theft is trivial... Some engineers will have a bad week. It's more that it's solvable from the aggrieved party's side in a way that a diamond theft isn't.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  The beauty of stealing a signing key is you don't necessarily tip off the company by getting yourself a copy of it. (The diamonds were removed, but the key stays where it is) If you were clever enough to get the key you might hold it until it was truly valuable for your exploit.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Bonus points for letting everyone think, the diamonds are still there.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  If you stole a hardware key (which I am speaking of), you've just smashed Secure Boot on all the devices that use it, forever. You can boot whatever software you want on your PlayStation, or Xbox, or Windows Secure-Boot-Enabled PC, or iPad, or similar. Every device with that key has had their locks smashed and there's no going back. Once you've done that, downgrading firmware, modifying firmware, undoing software updates, it all becomes a lot easier. Bonus points if you stole a Windows signing key and a Windows Update CDN Certificate. Send out fake Windows updates, approved by Microsoft, to do whatever you want. Maybe even force them to use your own middleman update server and only recognize your own keys. Fun stuff. Got the Apple signing key? Revoke any app you like and have it instantly lock out from millions of iPhones. Break every app for everybody on iPhone and give Apple employees and users a miserable week and cause a political panic. Sky's the limit.
killjoywashere 4y ago
> We haven't had a major signing key stolen yet The DigiNotar case seems fairly close ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/3/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/3/
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  There’s also the HDCP key getting leaked. https://www.themarysue.com/hdcp-master-key-confirmed-blu-ray-crack/ https://www.themarysue.com/hdcp-master-key-confirmed-blu-ray...
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>but stealing a key only takes a pencil and a piece of paper. You need to have a serious discussion with your HSM vendor if that is the case.
- brezelgoring 4y ago
  A theoretical piece of paper and pen
- patmcc 4y ago
  Getting to it might be very, very hard. But once it's in your hand you've got it. Diamonds can found as you're leaving the building, or you can be stopped at the airport, or the big pile in your house can be found, etc. A signing key is like, 4096 bits at most? 4 sms messages will do it.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    So the plan is to ... what ... break the physical security precautions of the HSM during a burglary and then leave without the operator noticing? When I say "break the physical security precautions" that typically involves things like grinding open the casing, depotting the innards, avoiding trigger the self-zeroing mechanism etc etc. and doing so while avoiding the anti-tamper sensors.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      The threat is more of an insider one, and the human element is always the weakest link in the chain.
    - Xelynega 4y ago
      I think their point is that it's easier because you don't need to do the "leave without the operator noticing" that you need to for physical items. Once you have access to those 4096 bits you don't have to escape with them, you just need to transmit 4 sms messages.
      - 4y ago
gjsman-1000 4y ago
I would also like to add to this the recent paper documenting the attacks on the 4K Blu-ray ecosystem for another reason this could happen. It was actually really secure, until... PowerDVD. It included the AACS 2.0 Copy-Protection Scheme as an encrypted, obfuscated DLL. Which would've been fine - except they accidentally were shipping an unencrypted, unobfuscated DLL containing all the algorithms alongside it. Big oops there. As for the key material itself - it used SGX [a Secure Enclave for Intel CPUs], but it turns out it didn't check for known old insecure hacked SGX firmware, any SGX firmware would do despite Intel strongly warning that isn't safe. So for pirates, Inadvertently unencrypted DLL + bad SGX provisioning = Ripping movies ~1 year after release despite completely new DRM. There's always the possibility for stupidity to leak a key.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  One engineer's "stupidity" is another engineer's "plausible deniability". ;)
- banana_giraffe 4y ago
  Similar to how Bethesda shipped the DRM-free version of Doom Eternal alongside the download for the DRM version.
- fomine3 4y ago
  AACS is designed to expect some keys will leak, so they have revocation mechanism for new titles.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Right... but here's the hilarious (for a pirate) bit. AACS knew player keys would leak and hardened their system against it... but they didn't realize that BDXL readers, which existed before 4K Blu-ray was released, could actually read 4K discs with modified firmware. Also, said BDXL readers had no Secure Boot and could be easily modified. With a modified player (which they didn't expect), you can read directly from the disc the data, which is (at the end of the encryption chain) encrypted with a per-disc key that is unchangeable. Normally this wouldn't matter because you can't read the disc directly - but with the modified player, you can. The player key goes through a long, complex process to end up with that unchangeable, unrevokable unique disc key. The pirates solution? Keep the drive keys when they discover them secret, and just generate the disc-unique keys and post them online for every disc. Then, with the modified drives, every disc in the list is permanently broken, and AACS LA has no idea what drive key is leaked and can't revoke it. And so here we are... AACS LA doesn't know which drive key the pirates are using, and when disc keys are generated, the disc is cracked forever. Worst of all worlds for AACS...
m463 4y ago
> If someone (for example) got Apple's iOS signing key and Apple's HTTPS certificate, Apple could suffer catastrophic damage. ...people could see what's going on on their phone. I think this could be a good thing.
Lammy 4y ago
> government agencies who might want to bribe someone for keys Why would they need a bribe? They have a whole mechanism for "do what we want, and you're not allowed to tell anyone about it". I would be shocked if NSA/FVEY didn't already have every signing key they could get their hands on, especially from companies that are friendly to them like Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fizx 4y ago
Can we call this Death Star security? Invincible quintillion-dollar project, unless you hit the tiny trash vent at the back of canyon 35.
fomine3 4y ago
As you may know, PS3 was the example of failure.

bombcar 4y ago

And you know nobody actually has their high-value signing key protected by a series of complex offline vaults and checks and balances like you'd see in Ocean's 11 - at best it's on the other side of a room on an air gapped computer.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Right... because the more you lock the key down and try to secure it, the greater the risk something in your security will go wrong, and then you will lose it yourself. Losing the key is not as bad, though still catastrophic, from a corporate perspective. Imagine if Apple couldn't distribute a software update ever again. Much better to not invest in super-strong security that has that risk... but then you have an increased risk of theft... It's almost like cryptographic signing keys are the modern day Ring of Power...
- whizzter 4y ago
  https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies
secabeen 4y ago
The IANA key ceremony is pretty close to best practice: https://kimdavies.com/key-ceremony-primer https://kimdavies.com/key-ceremony-primer
- infogulch 4y ago
  This is the second time today that I've seen reference to a "key ceremony", which I hadn't heard of before. Sure I expected root key holders to have some kind of formality around key management, but not a 5 hour event live-streamed on youtube! https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/45 https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/45
walrus01 4y ago
“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
- superkuh 4y ago
  That's kind of how I feel trying to access the text of this article. All I can see when I look at the page or view source is a bunch of executable code. You have to do quite a bit to be able to read this security warning.
gryf 4y ago
The Simpsons got it right: https://youtu.be/eU2Or5rCN_Y https://youtu.be/eU2Or5rCN_Y
- blibble 4y ago
  that matches my experience of an unnamed large multinational datacentre company to get to the floor needed to go through the multilayer security, id checks, etc the cleaner had left their mop in one of the secure doors, bypassing most of it
dgacmu 4y ago
That's not strictly true. At one point, my desk was next to the room that held the vault for one particular signing key. You'd have to get through the building security, through a room guarded by one access control mechanism, and then into a vault secured by a second mechanism. It wasn't guards and guns but it also seemd sufficient for the task at hand.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  For a many million dollar key, a few armored robbers with guns would solve this problem. Or to quote xkcd: get the hammer
  - dgacmu 4y ago
    Depends on if you are concerned mostly about covert access or overt access. I'd argue the former is quite a bit more serious in the case that keys can be revoked online.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Depends how long they need it for. "Hi, we have your family hostage for a week and if you tell anyone we have this key we'll ship you back parts" More than enough time for a nation state backed actor to spread a lot of damage.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yeah covert is the main issue - you need to be sure that dgacmu didn’t wander into the office one door over and grab a copy of the keys. Some sort of read-only memory that logged how many times it had been read might help.
      - calvinmorrison 4y ago
        more like sleeper cell agents
saagarjha 4y ago
The places that care store them in HSMs which few people have physical access to.

dmix 4y ago

> recently in Antwerp, Belgium, where over $100 million in diamonds were stolen in 2003 One of my favourite books I’ve read was about this heist https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7071759-flawless https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7071759-flawless

EMIRELADERO 4y ago

This summarizes a thought I had for a while. Muggings and robberies happen every single day, probably by the millions. Hacks also happen, although not that frequently. Now, what would happen if you combined both? Say a rogue criminal group threatens/kidnaps/holds a sysadmin at gunpoint and forces them to export all the private keys, the keys to the kingdom. It would be like the explosive mints in Mission Impossible, where if you make the two ends touch, BOOM! Make the hacking world and the physical mugging/robbing worlds intersect and you probably got an extremely dangerous combination, a nuclear bomb waiting to explode.

User23 4y ago
> Make the hacking world and the physical mugging/robbing worlds intersect and you probably got an extremely dangerous combination, a nuclear bomb waiting to explode. This is easily within the capabilities of any state level actor. And unlike a nuclear bomb, it can be kept out of the news. I’d wager it’s already been done.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  I haven't heard the government complain about encryption since early 2000s. I'd wager you're correct.
DrPhish 4y ago
This is a well know, and I'd imagine well used technique see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
c22 4y ago
I think you're describing the plot of Firewall with Harrison Ford.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Given how much modern hardware is on check-for-updates-online mode by default, how long would a stolen signing key be valuable? I'd imagine the OEM would respond to the theft by cutting new keys and pushing an update to supplant the old key. There'd be some details to hammer out (retroactively declaring the old key untrustworthy past date of theft, allow-listing a bunch of software and peripherals that couldn't be updated to accept if they matched key + checksum), but it feels like stealing such keys would have a very short window of utility. To be clear, this is not to imply resolving the theft is trivial... Some engineers will have a bad week. It's more that it's solvable from the aggrieved party's side in a way that a diamond theft isn't.

NegativeLatency 4y ago
The beauty of stealing a signing key is you don't necessarily tip off the company by getting yourself a copy of it. (The diamonds were removed, but the key stays where it is) If you were clever enough to get the key you might hold it until it was truly valuable for your exploit.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Bonus points for letting everyone think, the diamonds are still there.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
If you stole a hardware key (which I am speaking of), you've just smashed Secure Boot on all the devices that use it, forever. You can boot whatever software you want on your PlayStation, or Xbox, or Windows Secure-Boot-Enabled PC, or iPad, or similar. Every device with that key has had their locks smashed and there's no going back. Once you've done that, downgrading firmware, modifying firmware, undoing software updates, it all becomes a lot easier. Bonus points if you stole a Windows signing key and a Windows Update CDN Certificate. Send out fake Windows updates, approved by Microsoft, to do whatever you want. Maybe even force them to use your own middleman update server and only recognize your own keys. Fun stuff. Got the Apple signing key? Revoke any app you like and have it instantly lock out from millions of iPhones. Break every app for everybody on iPhone and give Apple employees and users a miserable week and cause a political panic. Sky's the limit.

killjoywashere 4y ago

> We haven't had a major signing key stolen yet The DigiNotar case seems fairly close ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/3/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/3/

sgjohnson 4y ago
There’s also the HDCP key getting leaked. https://www.themarysue.com/hdcp-master-key-confirmed-blu-ray-crack/ https://www.themarysue.com/hdcp-master-key-confirmed-blu-ray...

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

>but stealing a key only takes a pencil and a piece of paper. You need to have a serious discussion with your HSM vendor if that is the case.

brezelgoring 4y ago
A theoretical piece of paper and pen
patmcc 4y ago
Getting to it might be very, very hard. But once it's in your hand you've got it. Diamonds can found as you're leaving the building, or you can be stopped at the airport, or the big pile in your house can be found, etc. A signing key is like, 4096 bits at most? 4 sms messages will do it.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  So the plan is to ... what ... break the physical security precautions of the HSM during a burglary and then leave without the operator noticing? When I say "break the physical security precautions" that typically involves things like grinding open the casing, depotting the innards, avoiding trigger the self-zeroing mechanism etc etc. and doing so while avoiding the anti-tamper sensors.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    The threat is more of an insider one, and the human element is always the weakest link in the chain.
  - Xelynega 4y ago
    I think their point is that it's easier because you don't need to do the "leave without the operator noticing" that you need to for physical items. Once you have access to those 4096 bits you don't have to escape with them, you just need to transmit 4 sms messages.
    - 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I would also like to add to this the recent paper documenting the attacks on the 4K Blu-ray ecosystem for another reason this could happen. It was actually really secure, until... PowerDVD. It included the AACS 2.0 Copy-Protection Scheme as an encrypted, obfuscated DLL. Which would've been fine - except they accidentally were shipping an unencrypted, unobfuscated DLL containing all the algorithms alongside it. Big oops there. As for the key material itself - it used SGX [a Secure Enclave for Intel CPUs], but it turns out it didn't check for known old insecure hacked SGX firmware, any SGX firmware would do despite Intel strongly warning that isn't safe. So for pirates, Inadvertently unencrypted DLL + bad SGX provisioning = Ripping movies ~1 year after release despite completely new DRM. There's always the possibility for stupidity to leak a key.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
One engineer's "stupidity" is another engineer's "plausible deniability". ;)
banana_giraffe 4y ago
Similar to how Bethesda shipped the DRM-free version of Doom Eternal alongside the download for the DRM version.
fomine3 4y ago
AACS is designed to expect some keys will leak, so they have revocation mechanism for new titles.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Right... but here's the hilarious (for a pirate) bit. AACS knew player keys would leak and hardened their system against it... but they didn't realize that BDXL readers, which existed before 4K Blu-ray was released, could actually read 4K discs with modified firmware. Also, said BDXL readers had no Secure Boot and could be easily modified. With a modified player (which they didn't expect), you can read directly from the disc the data, which is (at the end of the encryption chain) encrypted with a per-disc key that is unchangeable. Normally this wouldn't matter because you can't read the disc directly - but with the modified player, you can. The player key goes through a long, complex process to end up with that unchangeable, unrevokable unique disc key. The pirates solution? Keep the drive keys when they discover them secret, and just generate the disc-unique keys and post them online for every disc. Then, with the modified drives, every disc in the list is permanently broken, and AACS LA has no idea what drive key is leaked and can't revoke it. And so here we are... AACS LA doesn't know which drive key the pirates are using, and when disc keys are generated, the disc is cracked forever. Worst of all worlds for AACS...

m463 4y ago

> If someone (for example) got Apple's iOS signing key and Apple's HTTPS certificate, Apple could suffer catastrophic damage. ...people could see what's going on on their phone. I think this could be a good thing.

Lammy 4y ago

> government agencies who might want to bribe someone for keys Why would they need a bribe? They have a whole mechanism for "do what we want, and you're not allowed to tell anyone about it". I would be shocked if NSA/FVEY didn't already have every signing key they could get their hands on, especially from companies that are friendly to them like Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fizx 4y ago

Can we call this Death Star security? Invincible quintillion-dollar project, unless you hit the tiny trash vent at the back of canyon 35.

fomine3 4y ago

As you may know, PS3 was the example of failure.