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That was 50 years ago. And since then we have an NSA employee co-authoring the paper which led to Heartbleed, the backdoor in Dual EC DRBG which has been succe

That was 50 years ago. And since then we have an NSA employee co-authoring the paper which led to Heartbleed, the backdoor in Dual EC DRBG which has been successfully exploited by adversaries, and documentation from Snowden which confirms NSA compromise of standards setting committees.

aw1621107 11mo ago
> And since then we have an NSA employee co-authoring the paper which led to Heartbleed I'm confused as to what "the paper which led to Heartbleed" means. A paper proposing/describing the heartbeat extension? A paper proposing its implementation in OpenSSL? A paper describing the bug/exploit? Something else? And in addition to that, is there any connection between that author and the people who actually wrote the relevant (buggy) OpenSSL code? If the people who wrote the bug were entirely unrelated to the people authoring the paper then it's not clear to me why any blame should be placed on the paper authors.
- timschmidt 11mo ago
  > I'm confused The original paper which proposed the OpenSSL Heartbeat extension was written by two people, one worked for NSA and one was a student at the time who went on to work for BND, the "German NSA". The paper authors also wrote the extension. I know this because when it happened, I wanted to know who was responsible for making me patch all my servers, so I dug through the OpenSSL patch stream to find the authors.
  - aw1621107 11mo ago
    Ah, that clears up the confusion. Thank you for taking the time to explain!
  - tptacek 11mo ago
    What does that paper say about implementing the TLS Heartbeat extension with a trivial uninitialized buffer bug?
    - timschmidt 11mo ago
      About as much as Jia Tan said about implementing the XZ backdoor via an inconspicuous typo in a CMake file. What's your point?
      - tptacek 11mo ago
        I'm asking what the paper has to do with the vulnerability. Can you answer that? Right now your claim basically comes down to "writing about CMake is evidence you backdoored CMake".
        timschmidt 11mo ago
        > Right now your claim basically comes down to "writing about CMake is evidence you backdoored CMake". This statement makes it clear to me that you don't understand a thing I've said, and that you don't have the necessary background knowledge of Heartbleed, the XZ backdoor, or concepts such a plausible deniability to engage in useful conversation about any of them. Else you would not be so confused. Please do some reading on all three. And if you want to have a conversation afterwards, feel free to make a comment which demonstrates a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
        tptacek 11mo ago
        Sorry, you're not going to be able to bluster your way through this. What part of the paper you're describing instructed implementers of the TLS Heartbeat extension to copy data into an uninitialized buffer and then transmit it on the wire?
        timschmidt 11mo ago
        > What part of the paper you're describing instructed implementers of the TLS Heartbeat extension to copy data into an uninitialized buffer and then transmit it on the wire? That's a very easy question to answer: the implementation the authors provided alongside it. If you expect authors of exploits to clearly explain them to you, you are not just ignorant of the details of backdoors like the one in XZ (CMake was never backdoored, a "typo" in a CMake file bootstrapped the exploit in XZ builds), but are naive to an implausible degree about the activities of exploit authors. Even the University of Minnesota did not publicly state "we're going to backdoor the Linux kernel" before they attempted to do so: https://cyberir.mit.edu/site/how-university-got-itself-banned-linux-kernel/ https://cyberir.mit.edu/site/how-university-got-itself-banne... If you tell someone you're going to build an exploit and how, the obvious response will be "no, we won't allow you to." So no exploit author does that.
  - BigTTYGothGF 11mo ago
    What's the original paper? The earliest thing I can find is an RFC.
    - tptacek 11mo ago
      I'm pretty sure he meant the RFC. (Insert "The German Three" meme).

aw1621107 11mo ago

> And since then we have an NSA employee co-authoring the paper which led to Heartbleed I'm confused as to what "the paper which led to Heartbleed" means. A paper proposing/describing the heartbeat extension? A paper proposing its implementation in OpenSSL? A paper describing the bug/exploit? Something else? And in addition to that, is there any connection between that author and the people who actually wrote the relevant (buggy) OpenSSL code? If the people who wrote the bug were entirely unrelated to the people authoring the paper then it's not clear to me why any blame should be placed on the paper authors.

timschmidt 11mo ago
> I'm confused The original paper which proposed the OpenSSL Heartbeat extension was written by two people, one worked for NSA and one was a student at the time who went on to work for BND, the "German NSA". The paper authors also wrote the extension. I know this because when it happened, I wanted to know who was responsible for making me patch all my servers, so I dug through the OpenSSL patch stream to find the authors.
- aw1621107 11mo ago
  Ah, that clears up the confusion. Thank you for taking the time to explain!
- tptacek 11mo ago
  What does that paper say about implementing the TLS Heartbeat extension with a trivial uninitialized buffer bug?
  - timschmidt 11mo ago
    About as much as Jia Tan said about implementing the XZ backdoor via an inconspicuous typo in a CMake file. What's your point?
    - tptacek 11mo ago
      I'm asking what the paper has to do with the vulnerability. Can you answer that? Right now your claim basically comes down to "writing about CMake is evidence you backdoored CMake".
      - timschmidt 11mo ago
        > Right now your claim basically comes down to "writing about CMake is evidence you backdoored CMake". This statement makes it clear to me that you don't understand a thing I've said, and that you don't have the necessary background knowledge of Heartbleed, the XZ backdoor, or concepts such a plausible deniability to engage in useful conversation about any of them. Else you would not be so confused. Please do some reading on all three. And if you want to have a conversation afterwards, feel free to make a comment which demonstrates a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
        tptacek 11mo ago
        Sorry, you're not going to be able to bluster your way through this. What part of the paper you're describing instructed implementers of the TLS Heartbeat extension to copy data into an uninitialized buffer and then transmit it on the wire?
        timschmidt 11mo ago
        > What part of the paper you're describing instructed implementers of the TLS Heartbeat extension to copy data into an uninitialized buffer and then transmit it on the wire? That's a very easy question to answer: the implementation the authors provided alongside it. If you expect authors of exploits to clearly explain them to you, you are not just ignorant of the details of backdoors like the one in XZ (CMake was never backdoored, a "typo" in a CMake file bootstrapped the exploit in XZ builds), but are naive to an implausible degree about the activities of exploit authors. Even the University of Minnesota did not publicly state "we're going to backdoor the Linux kernel" before they attempted to do so: https://cyberir.mit.edu/site/how-university-got-itself-banned-linux-kernel/ https://cyberir.mit.edu/site/how-university-got-itself-banne... If you tell someone you're going to build an exploit and how, the obvious response will be "no, we won't allow you to." So no exploit author does that.
- BigTTYGothGF 11mo ago
  What's the original paper? The earliest thing I can find is an RFC.
  - tptacek 11mo ago
    I'm pretty sure he meant the RFC. (Insert "The German Three" meme).