5 ms·

Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. That being said I agree that

by simias 13y ago

Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. That being said I agree that OpenSSL could do with a good code cleaning, but that's a massive undertaking, especially for such a popular library. You have to be backwards compatible. Maybe a big name in software could go and write a modern crypto library without all the cruft of OpenSSL but for now we have to deal with it.

bhouston 13y ago
> no need for tinfoil hat theories Unfortunately with the Snowden disclosures, there isn't much that I rule out of bounds for the NSA when it comes to things critical to internet security. OpenSSL is so widely used and critical, it would be silly to think that it would escape scrutiny by the NSA. For example of NSA efforts in related areas (which I figured you would already know): http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 http://nation.time.com/2013/11/04/google-shocked-the-nsa-hacked-its-servers/ http://nation.time.com/2013/11/04/google-shocked-the-nsa-hac... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-nsa-rsa-idUSBREA2U0TY20140331 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-ns... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-gilmore-how-nsa-sabotaged-key-security-standard.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-...
- this_user 13y ago
  There is a difference between infiltrating companies and deliberately introducing a bug that compromises a large chunk of the Internet. I would assume the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails.
  - doctorfoo 13y ago
    Perhaps they assume all software is buggy, so they may as well own the bugs?
  - spacemanmatt 13y ago
    I would assume the NSA always assumed (note past tense) that their secrets stay pretty secret, and their wide-open backdoors will not get knockers.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      They don't assume that. I don't see why people think that NSA is simultaneously genius-level forces of the Illumanti architecting events that will culminate years later, and yet would make the rookie level mistake of introducing a backdoor that is protected only by obscurity. They know other security services understand how to decompile code (or read the original source). More importantly, they know that critical government services they can't predict will end up possibly running things like their broken version of OpenSSL. There's a FIPS standard, of course, but note that the Heartbleed page made quite clear that FIPS is vulnerable too.
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    > I would assume the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails. Don't we actually already have evidence of other cases of the NSA adding backdoors to widely used systems, exploitable by anyone aware of them? Isn't that what the elliptic curve backdoor was? http://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/all/ http://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/all/ Apparently your assumption is quite not safe to assume. I guess the NSA either figures nobody else will notice the backdoor, or just doesn't care. I guess only they know their motivations.
    - caf 13y ago
      The mooted backdoor in the Dual-ECDRBG involves the possibility that the public parameters were generated based on some secret values, such that knowing the secret values allows you to break the generator. It doesn't allow just anyone to break it - merely knowing the backdoor is there isn't enough.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    > the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails. If possible, yes. However, if they were indeed responsible for this, they'd probably have a couple honeypots to detect exploitation by third parties. If they considered the third party harmless, they could decide whether the vulnerability should be "independently discovered" or not. Planting a complicated exploit would be harder and increase the risk it could be traced back to them.
- kryptiskt 13y ago
  On the other hand, if the NSA pwned OpenSSL, shouldn't such a big thing have been in Snowden's docs?
  - bhouston 13y ago
    The NSA, according to the Snowden docs, can break SSL. No details though: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/how-does-nsa-break-ssl.html http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/how-does-nsa...
    - computer 13y ago
      Those documents do not say they can break SSL. They say they focus on SSL, and can break some specific SSL-using services.
      - TranceMan 13y ago
        Would the specific be the version of openssl being used by the 'target'? Can't look right now but was this 'bug' introduced at some point in time?
  - computer 13y ago
    This bug was added 2 years ago, the Snowden documents are from before that, as far as I know.
  - lotsofcows 13y ago
    It could be. Only a percentage of the documents have been analysed so far.
  - rmc 13y ago
    Snowdon might not have known every implementation detail.
  - joshuak 13y ago
    "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
madaxe_again 13y ago
You have kept up to date with the news, right? Truecrypt, RSA... OpenSSL is low-hanging fruit by comparison. Of course it's back doored - probably more than once. You're right that it needs cleaning - it needs a full audit. I'm surprised in the light of the Snowden revelations that none of us have suggested this sooner, but hindsight is a bitch and all that.
- joosters 13y ago
  Lots of people have suggested it. Very few people have dedicated their time to helping do it, though. Welcome to the 'other people should do this' club!
  - amboar 13y ago
    I don't know what the gp's skills are, but assuming he's not a computer security professional then the 'other people should do this' club is exactly the club he should be in. Would you trust his audit of the code if he wasn't heavily experienced? it's the same case as "don't roll your own crypto".
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      There's a difference between "trusting his audit of the code" and "trusting his code". Any interested and motivated person can audit code. If nothing is found, that might not prove much. But if a vulnerability is found, the audit was worthwhile from some perspective.
      - amboar 13y ago
        Sure, so long as the bug is a genuine bug and not a misunderstanding. Debian's openssh valgrind warning springs to mind. Crypto implementations can be subtle and non obvious. Maybe it's crap design for that reason, but it seems like it's what we've got to work with currently.
        sexmonad 13y ago
dlitz 13y ago
> Maybe a big name in software could go and write a modern crypto library without all the cruft of OpenSSL but for now we have to deal with it. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ There are very few competent FOSS crypto implementers, and unfortunately, they're spread very thinly. I'm not sure that having yet one another crypto library is going to be helpful unless we actively move our users to the new library and kill the old projects.
- jafaku 13y ago
  Another irrelevant xkcd comment...
- 1ris 13y ago
  Stop posting this xkcd. Seriously. It's not funny, it's not witty, it's old as hell and it does not make sense.
Allower 13y ago
What would evidence of conspiracy look like? Do we need comments in the code, "this is an NSA back door...", seriously? >You have to be backwords compatible we have been making this trade off for years and it wont get any easier in the future, its about time we started a fresh initiative that doesn't make backwords compatibility a priority, except of course in the sense of maintainability moving forward.
spacemanmatt 13y ago
In this post-Snowden era I believe Occam's razor yields a different result about NSA interference.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. But we do have "evidence for conspiracy". We known for certain that there are organizations with huge budgets that have introducing such vulnerabilities pretty much written into their mission statements. Why would we assume they would not be involved in something they obviously should be (however perverted their goals are)? It would be grossly incompetent of the NSA not to try introducing bugs into OpenSSL.

by simias 13y ago

bhouston 13y ago

> no need for tinfoil hat theories Unfortunately with the Snowden disclosures, there isn't much that I rule out of bounds for the NSA when it comes to things critical to internet security. OpenSSL is so widely used and critical, it would be silly to think that it would escape scrutiny by the NSA. For example of NSA efforts in related areas (which I figured you would already know): http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 http://nation.time.com/2013/11/04/google-shocked-the-nsa-hacked-its-servers/ http://nation.time.com/2013/11/04/google-shocked-the-nsa-hac... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-nsa-rsa-idUSBREA2U0TY20140331 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-ns... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-gilmore-how-nsa-sabotaged-key-security-standard.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-...

this_user 13y ago
There is a difference between infiltrating companies and deliberately introducing a bug that compromises a large chunk of the Internet. I would assume the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails.
- doctorfoo 13y ago
  Perhaps they assume all software is buggy, so they may as well own the bugs?
- spacemanmatt 13y ago
  I would assume the NSA always assumed (note past tense) that their secrets stay pretty secret, and their wide-open backdoors will not get knockers.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    They don't assume that. I don't see why people think that NSA is simultaneously genius-level forces of the Illumanti architecting events that will culminate years later, and yet would make the rookie level mistake of introducing a backdoor that is protected only by obscurity. They know other security services understand how to decompile code (or read the original source). More importantly, they know that critical government services they can't predict will end up possibly running things like their broken version of OpenSSL. There's a FIPS standard, of course, but note that the Heartbleed page made quite clear that FIPS is vulnerable too.
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  > I would assume the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails. Don't we actually already have evidence of other cases of the NSA adding backdoors to widely used systems, exploitable by anyone aware of them? Isn't that what the elliptic curve backdoor was? http://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/all/ http://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/all/ Apparently your assumption is quite not safe to assume. I guess the NSA either figures nobody else will notice the backdoor, or just doesn't care. I guess only they know their motivations.
  - caf 13y ago
    The mooted backdoor in the Dual-ECDRBG involves the possibility that the public parameters were generated based on some secret values, such that knowing the secret values allows you to break the generator. It doesn't allow just anyone to break it - merely knowing the backdoor is there isn't enough.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > the NSA is interested in gaining access to systems in a way that doesn't allow basically anyone to ride on their coattails. If possible, yes. However, if they were indeed responsible for this, they'd probably have a couple honeypots to detect exploitation by third parties. If they considered the third party harmless, they could decide whether the vulnerability should be "independently discovered" or not. Planting a complicated exploit would be harder and increase the risk it could be traced back to them.
kryptiskt 13y ago
On the other hand, if the NSA pwned OpenSSL, shouldn't such a big thing have been in Snowden's docs?
- bhouston 13y ago
  The NSA, according to the Snowden docs, can break SSL. No details though: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/how-does-nsa-break-ssl.html http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/how-does-nsa...
  - computer 13y ago
    Those documents do not say they can break SSL. They say they focus on SSL, and can break some specific SSL-using services.
    - TranceMan 13y ago
      Would the specific be the version of openssl being used by the 'target'? Can't look right now but was this 'bug' introduced at some point in time?
- computer 13y ago
  This bug was added 2 years ago, the Snowden documents are from before that, as far as I know.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  It could be. Only a percentage of the documents have been analysed so far.
- rmc 13y ago
  Snowdon might not have known every implementation detail.
- joshuak 13y ago
  "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

madaxe_again 13y ago

You have kept up to date with the news, right? Truecrypt, RSA... OpenSSL is low-hanging fruit by comparison. Of course it's back doored - probably more than once. You're right that it needs cleaning - it needs a full audit. I'm surprised in the light of the Snowden revelations that none of us have suggested this sooner, but hindsight is a bitch and all that.

joosters 13y ago
Lots of people have suggested it. Very few people have dedicated their time to helping do it, though. Welcome to the 'other people should do this' club!
- amboar 13y ago
  I don't know what the gp's skills are, but assuming he's not a computer security professional then the 'other people should do this' club is exactly the club he should be in. Would you trust his audit of the code if he wasn't heavily experienced? it's the same case as "don't roll your own crypto".
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    There's a difference between "trusting his audit of the code" and "trusting his code". Any interested and motivated person can audit code. If nothing is found, that might not prove much. But if a vulnerability is found, the audit was worthwhile from some perspective.
    - amboar 13y ago
      Sure, so long as the bug is a genuine bug and not a misunderstanding. Debian's openssh valgrind warning springs to mind. Crypto implementations can be subtle and non obvious. Maybe it's crap design for that reason, but it seems like it's what we've got to work with currently.
      - sexmonad 13y ago

dlitz 13y ago

> Maybe a big name in software could go and write a modern crypto library without all the cruft of OpenSSL but for now we have to deal with it. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ There are very few competent FOSS crypto implementers, and unfortunately, they're spread very thinly. I'm not sure that having yet one another crypto library is going to be helpful unless we actively move our users to the new library and kill the old projects.

jafaku 13y ago
Another irrelevant xkcd comment...
1ris 13y ago
Stop posting this xkcd. Seriously. It's not funny, it's not witty, it's old as hell and it does not make sense.

Allower 13y ago

What would evidence of conspiracy look like? Do we need comments in the code, "this is an NSA back door...", seriously? >You have to be backwords compatible we have been making this trade off for years and it wont get any easier in the future, its about time we started a fresh initiative that doesn't make backwords compatibility a priority, except of course in the sense of maintainability moving forward.

spacemanmatt 13y ago

In this post-Snowden era I believe Occam's razor yields a different result about NSA interference.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

> Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. But we do have "evidence for conspiracy". We known for certain that there are organizations with huge budgets that have introducing such vulnerabilities pretty much written into their mission statements. Why would we assume they would not be involved in something they obviously should be (however perverted their goals are)? It would be grossly incompetent of the NSA not to try introducing bugs into OpenSSL.