20 ms·

Snowden Meets the IETF

204 points by kazuho 11y ago

Panino 11y ago
It must have been an exciting surprise for attendees. I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. From the tweet stream provided by @conflictmedia, that was tied for 1st for most re-tweeted, along with making the Internet for users, not spies. (It should be noted that DNSSEC is not encrypted.) Too bad his appearance wasn't recorded, but HUGE thanks to Niels ten Oever and Rich Salz for tweeting major points!
- tedunangst 11y ago
  > I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. And yet, when HBO screwed up their dnssec config and Comcast blocked the site, how did users react? By demanding Comcast stop verifying! (Fully encrypted DNS can only fail in even more ways than dnssec.)
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Unsurprising, since verification breaks things users want and provides no security in return.
  - Panino 11y ago
    > (Fully encrypted DNS can only fail in even more ways than dnssec.) The main reasons DNSSEC fails frequently are: * pre-computed signatures, rather than online signing * a demented, overly complex protocol * signatures that expire rapidly Maybe tptacek can name some others. The only DNS encryption people are currently using (DNSCurve/DNSCrypt) does per-packet encryption, with a very simple protocol involving only a single ciphersuite designed by djb, and no signatures. This makes all the difference in the world. If encryption were so bad then people wouldn't be using TLS, SSH, etc. It's the terrible design of DNSSEC that has poisoned efforts in DNS security.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      The first of those is actually a very important feature. In an age where many organizations outsource their DNS hosting, it's more important than ever to sign your resource records offline. It's pretty useless to invent a new scheme that gives Amazon and Cloudflare access to your cryptographic keys, so your favorite three letter agency could just go via them instead. Only you can sign your data, and no one else. That is a feature we cannot compromise on if we face the sort of adversaries mentioned here. The rapidly expiring signatures is actually a feature too. It serves to avoid the trainwreck that is TLS certificate revocation. But that is a technical problem that may have other solutions. Feel free to suggest one.
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      > and no signatures. It's probably time to retire unauthenticated encryption as useless. Now, if what you meant is that it uses AEAD, that amounts to the same thing as a signature. It has all the same failure modes, namely failure to authenticate. DNSSEC is a clusterfuck, but if somebody can't put the right public key in the right place, I'm not convinced they'll be able to put the right public key in the right record with DNSCurve either. The exact same thing will happen, and then the solution will be "click here to disable dnscurve".
    - jedisct1 11y ago
      DNSCurve and DNSCrypt use authenticated encryption. DNSCrypt is not stuck to "a single ciphersuite designed by djb". The ciphersuite is negotiated (using DNS queries + signed responses in DNSCrypt v2, and TLS in DNSCrypt v3). Over TCP, it's not limited to "per-packet encryption" either.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. You know, it's funny because just last week, I chatted with a friend of mine in the UK giving me some pretty crazy rundown of DNS issues he was having. I found out that BT (UK's leading ISP) hijacks DNS for parental control purposes (read: pornblock). More info here: https://thecomputerperson.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/bts-network-based-content-filtering-porn-block-breaks-the-internet/ https://thecomputerperson.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/bts-netwo... It boggles my mind actual major ISPs get away with this stuff. Sure am glad to use dnscrypt.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    This is by law in the UK. A 2014 amendment to the 2003 Communications Act forces ISPs to do this. Blame the government, not the ISPs. edit because HN won't let me post a rebuttal to the reply below: Private corporations can be compelled and coerced by the government in other ways that aren't readily publicized. If you think these companies enjoy wasting resources on porn filter then you're crazy. Wikipedia: "Prime Minister David Cameron made it clear in July 2013 that his aim was to ensure that by the end of 2013 all ISPs would have a filtering system in place.[13] As a result three of the four major ISPs (TalkTalk, Sky and BT[14]) began applying default filtering to new customers in 2013[15] with the fourth major ISP, Virgin, doing so in February 2014.[16] Default filtering of existing customers was implemented by all four major ISPs during 2014 with the aim of ensuring that the system applied to 95% of all households by the end of the year.[17][18]" This timing isn't a big coincidence. Elect a better PM (or indirectly elect considering this is the UK) if you don't want such shenanigans.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      1. Porn filtering is not law in the UK, that is a common misconception. It was merely encouraged by the government, but ISPs are not forced to offer it. The ISPs absolutely are the ones to blame. 2. DNS hijacking certainly is not mandated by law. Edit: Here is a post by Adrian Kennard, CEO of Andrews & Arnold ISP in the UK, regarding porn filters: http://www.revk.uk/2014/02/porn-filters-no-it-is-not-law.html http://www.revk.uk/2014/02/porn-filters-no-it-is-not-law.htm...
- arca_vorago 11y ago
  This is where I get to plug djbdns and DNSCURVE over DNSSEC. I think DJ has been ahead of the curve (no pun intended) on these things for quite some time. I am currently in the process of migrating from bind9 (and avoiding bind10 like the plague) to djbdns wherever possible. Quirks and lack of updates/extensions not withstanding, it's great so far. http://dnscurve.org/integration.html http://dnscurve.org/integration.html
  - skuhn 11y ago
    I think that's a mistake. You are using abandoned software: djbdns 1.05 was released in 2001. It even has a published security flaw from 2009, for which the $1000 guarantee was paid by DJB, and yet there is still no official release to fix the issue (there is a patch available from other sources). There is a fairly healthy ecosystem of BIND alternatives these days, but djbdns is not one of them.
    - scintill76 11y ago
      This one? http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864 It is a little disappointing he didn't issue a new release with the patch included. Perhaps it can be rationalized that the original fork is abandoned, but distro-maintained forks are fine. As someone who runs tinydns to serve a few personal domains, I'd be interested to hear of another simple, solid option, if it fixes any concrete problems a recent Ubuntu build of tinydns has.
  - jedisct1 11y ago
    A major issue with DNSCurve (and, to some extent, DNSSEC) is that you can't really do validation on the client. Routers frequently redirect anything going to port 53 to a local cache and anything that doesn't look like regular, unencrypted DNS queries, will be dropped on the floor. It's also fairly common to have routers only support some DNS records, or to be unable to return more than one record type in a response (e.g. no RRSIG records and A records together). Wi-fi access points are particularly good at making any attempt at making DNS more secure next to impossible. I've been working on DNSSIG, a DNSCurve-like protocol that encapsulates signed responses in TXT and CNAME records, similar to what ip-over-DNS tunnels do. The end result is pretty ugly. DNSCrypt initially used port 53, similar to DNSCurve, but it turned out to be a terrible idea, as it didn't work for the majority of home users, that had routers redirecting DNS queries.
- undefined0 11y ago
  If a future DNS improvement (hopefully, blockchain based) starts providing SSL keys to reduce the latency required for an SSL connection on HTTP/2 (skipping the "Connection: Upgrade") and on HTTP/1 (when being redirected from http to https), it would provide advantages and would also encourage encrypted DNS queries.
s_q_b 11y ago
The more I consider the ramifications of these news reports, the more I realize we need full decentralization and total encryption. We have the tech: Strong encryption, Tor-like relays, and the blockchain. What we need is a way to make services based on these technologies not just as easy to use but easier to use for the average Jane. If the internet as we know it is to survive, we have to crack this nut.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  That's necessary, but not sufficient. We need both sane policies and technical measures to ensure that nothing less than those policies is possible. If we only have the technology, policy-makers can and will make life difficult both for the users and makers of these technologies; more draconian regimes will simply never allow those technologies to take root to begin with.
  - makmanalp 11y ago
    I think this needs to be expressed more often. Not only will draconian regimes now allow it, but it's also harder to protect such systems at the ends. I saw a presentation by cperciva at some point that talked about the "Three B's": Bribery, Burglary and Blackmail. So tech should be one of many tools to combat oppressive societal structure - some other ones being more social and legal tools.
    - cperciva 11y ago
      The concept of the "three Bs" has been around for longer than I have. In my talk ("everything you need to know about cryptography in one hour") I added a fourth B, "guantanamo Bay", aka. torture.
      - hueving 11y ago
        guantanamo bay is pretty lame in comparison to what other oppressive regimes will do. I would suggest changing it to something more direct like "Breaking kneecaps" or something along those lines.
justwannasing 11y ago
I find it interesting that people now consider Snowden the authority and source for all these things.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Agreed. He actually knows little about most of INFOSEC compared to other, serious practitioners. He seems to be a good IT guy, expert on NSA tools, and have anecdotes of what they had trouble hitting. Far as security engineering, I'd trust a source with a good track record of building and breaking stuff similar to what I'm assessing. People are leaning on him way too much for way too many things. I'm not even saying my statements apply to the article here so much as in general for people interviewing or citing him. Anyone reading posts of high-security engineers pushing strong hardware and software security pre-Snowden would've survived almost everything in NSA's toolbox using such methods. Leads me to add that Snowden seems totally unfamiliar with that stuff and it's unsurprising given his job was SIGINT-related rather than strong INFOSEC. My only failure was not focusing on clean slate chips and hardware design enough. My priority was software but prioritizing the kind of hardware I've promoted here & elsewhere would've got me further. Makes the software easier to secure. Just was too lazy to learn all the hardware engineering knowledge it takes to (a) do custom hardware and (b) do sub-micron, custom hardware. I'm making amends now, at least.
frankNo 11y ago
Well, luckily for humanity this is exactly what I've been coding full time since December of 2014, dedicating my life to. I have been designing it for many years. My vision is complete and planned, all the way until The World Brain! See: https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html The first layer, MORPHiS, is a global secure encrypted distributed datastore that deprecates bittorrent, email and the web so far and is slated for release at the end of this Month! See http://reddit.com/r/morphis http://reddit.com/r/morphis for details. Sorry for reddit; it is because I keep getting shadow banned here for being pro Snowden, Etc. Do not worry, MORPHiS is designed to deprecate hacker news! Anyways, the website is morph.is but doesn't launch until the 31st of this month. Read the only article in the /r/morphs subreddit for lots of details on MORPHiS! Peace all!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

204 points by kazuho 11y ago

It must have been an exciting surprise for attendees. I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. From the tweet stream provided by @conflictmedia, that was tied for 1st for most re-tweeted, along with making the Internet for users, not spies. (It should be noted that DNSSEC is not encrypted.) Too bad his appearance wasn't recorded, but HUGE thanks to Niels ten Oever and Rich Salz for tweeting major points!

tedunangst 11y ago
> I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. And yet, when HBO screwed up their dnssec config and Comcast blocked the site, how did users react? By demanding Comcast stop verifying! (Fully encrypted DNS can only fail in even more ways than dnssec.)
- tptacek 11y ago
  Unsurprising, since verification breaks things users want and provides no security in return.
- Panino 11y ago
  > (Fully encrypted DNS can only fail in even more ways than dnssec.) The main reasons DNSSEC fails frequently are: * pre-computed signatures, rather than online signing * a demented, overly complex protocol * signatures that expire rapidly Maybe tptacek can name some others. The only DNS encryption people are currently using (DNSCurve/DNSCrypt) does per-packet encryption, with a very simple protocol involving only a single ciphersuite designed by djb, and no signatures. This makes all the difference in the world. If encryption were so bad then people wouldn't be using TLS, SSH, etc. It's the terrible design of DNSSEC that has poisoned efforts in DNS security.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    The first of those is actually a very important feature. In an age where many organizations outsource their DNS hosting, it's more important than ever to sign your resource records offline. It's pretty useless to invent a new scheme that gives Amazon and Cloudflare access to your cryptographic keys, so your favorite three letter agency could just go via them instead. Only you can sign your data, and no one else. That is a feature we cannot compromise on if we face the sort of adversaries mentioned here. The rapidly expiring signatures is actually a feature too. It serves to avoid the trainwreck that is TLS certificate revocation. But that is a technical problem that may have other solutions. Feel free to suggest one.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    > and no signatures. It's probably time to retire unauthenticated encryption as useless. Now, if what you meant is that it uses AEAD, that amounts to the same thing as a signature. It has all the same failure modes, namely failure to authenticate. DNSSEC is a clusterfuck, but if somebody can't put the right public key in the right place, I'm not convinced they'll be able to put the right public key in the right record with DNSCurve either. The exact same thing will happen, and then the solution will be "click here to disable dnscurve".
  - jedisct1 11y ago
    DNSCurve and DNSCrypt use authenticated encryption. DNSCrypt is not stuck to "a single ciphersuite designed by djb". The ciphersuite is negotiated (using DNS queries + signed responses in DNSCrypt v2, and TLS in DNSCrypt v3). Over TCP, it's not limited to "per-packet encryption" either.
scrollaway 11y ago
> I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. You know, it's funny because just last week, I chatted with a friend of mine in the UK giving me some pretty crazy rundown of DNS issues he was having. I found out that BT (UK's leading ISP) hijacks DNS for parental control purposes (read: pornblock). More info here: https://thecomputerperson.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/bts-network-based-content-filtering-porn-block-breaks-the-internet/ https://thecomputerperson.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/bts-netwo... It boggles my mind actual major ISPs get away with this stuff. Sure am glad to use dnscrypt.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  This is by law in the UK. A 2014 amendment to the 2003 Communications Act forces ISPs to do this. Blame the government, not the ISPs. edit because HN won't let me post a rebuttal to the reply below: Private corporations can be compelled and coerced by the government in other ways that aren't readily publicized. If you think these companies enjoy wasting resources on porn filter then you're crazy. Wikipedia: "Prime Minister David Cameron made it clear in July 2013 that his aim was to ensure that by the end of 2013 all ISPs would have a filtering system in place.[13] As a result three of the four major ISPs (TalkTalk, Sky and BT[14]) began applying default filtering to new customers in 2013[15] with the fourth major ISP, Virgin, doing so in February 2014.[16] Default filtering of existing customers was implemented by all four major ISPs during 2014 with the aim of ensuring that the system applied to 95% of all households by the end of the year.[17][18]" This timing isn't a big coincidence. Elect a better PM (or indirectly elect considering this is the UK) if you don't want such shenanigans.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    1. Porn filtering is not law in the UK, that is a common misconception. It was merely encouraged by the government, but ISPs are not forced to offer it. The ISPs absolutely are the ones to blame. 2. DNS hijacking certainly is not mandated by law. Edit: Here is a post by Adrian Kennard, CEO of Andrews & Arnold ISP in the UK, regarding porn filters: http://www.revk.uk/2014/02/porn-filters-no-it-is-not-law.html http://www.revk.uk/2014/02/porn-filters-no-it-is-not-law.htm...
arca_vorago 11y ago
This is where I get to plug djbdns and DNSCURVE over DNSSEC. I think DJ has been ahead of the curve (no pun intended) on these things for quite some time. I am currently in the process of migrating from bind9 (and avoiding bind10 like the plague) to djbdns wherever possible. Quirks and lack of updates/extensions not withstanding, it's great so far. http://dnscurve.org/integration.html http://dnscurve.org/integration.html
- skuhn 11y ago
  I think that's a mistake. You are using abandoned software: djbdns 1.05 was released in 2001. It even has a published security flaw from 2009, for which the $1000 guarantee was paid by DJB, and yet there is still no official release to fix the issue (there is a patch available from other sources). There is a fairly healthy ecosystem of BIND alternatives these days, but djbdns is not one of them.
  - scintill76 11y ago
    This one? http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864 It is a little disappointing he didn't issue a new release with the patch included. Perhaps it can be rationalized that the original fork is abandoned, but distro-maintained forks are fine. As someone who runs tinydns to serve a few personal domains, I'd be interested to hear of another simple, solid option, if it fixes any concrete problems a recent Ubuntu build of tinydns has.
- jedisct1 11y ago
  A major issue with DNSCurve (and, to some extent, DNSSEC) is that you can't really do validation on the client. Routers frequently redirect anything going to port 53 to a local cache and anything that doesn't look like regular, unencrypted DNS queries, will be dropped on the floor. It's also fairly common to have routers only support some DNS records, or to be unable to return more than one record type in a response (e.g. no RRSIG records and A records together). Wi-fi access points are particularly good at making any attempt at making DNS more secure next to impossible. I've been working on DNSSIG, a DNSCurve-like protocol that encapsulates signed responses in TXT and CNAME records, similar to what ip-over-DNS tunnels do. The end result is pretty ugly. DNSCrypt initially used port 53, similar to DNSCurve, but it turned out to be a terrible idea, as it didn't work for the majority of home users, that had routers redirecting DNS queries.
undefined0 11y ago
If a future DNS improvement (hopefully, blockchain based) starts providing SSL keys to reduce the latency required for an SSL connection on HTTP/2 (skipping the "Connection: Upgrade") and on HTTP/1 (when being redirected from http to https), it would provide advantages and would also encourage encrypted DNS queries.

s_q_b 11y ago

The more I consider the ramifications of these news reports, the more I realize we need full decentralization and total encryption. We have the tech: Strong encryption, Tor-like relays, and the blockchain. What we need is a way to make services based on these technologies not just as easy to use but easier to use for the average Jane. If the internet as we know it is to survive, we have to crack this nut.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
That's necessary, but not sufficient. We need both sane policies and technical measures to ensure that nothing less than those policies is possible. If we only have the technology, policy-makers can and will make life difficult both for the users and makers of these technologies; more draconian regimes will simply never allow those technologies to take root to begin with.
- makmanalp 11y ago
  I think this needs to be expressed more often. Not only will draconian regimes now allow it, but it's also harder to protect such systems at the ends. I saw a presentation by cperciva at some point that talked about the "Three B's": Bribery, Burglary and Blackmail. So tech should be one of many tools to combat oppressive societal structure - some other ones being more social and legal tools.
  - cperciva 11y ago
    The concept of the "three Bs" has been around for longer than I have. In my talk ("everything you need to know about cryptography in one hour") I added a fourth B, "guantanamo Bay", aka. torture.
    - hueving 11y ago
      guantanamo bay is pretty lame in comparison to what other oppressive regimes will do. I would suggest changing it to something more direct like "Breaking kneecaps" or something along those lines.

justwannasing 11y ago

I find it interesting that people now consider Snowden the authority and source for all these things.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Agreed. He actually knows little about most of INFOSEC compared to other, serious practitioners. He seems to be a good IT guy, expert on NSA tools, and have anecdotes of what they had trouble hitting. Far as security engineering, I'd trust a source with a good track record of building and breaking stuff similar to what I'm assessing. People are leaning on him way too much for way too many things. I'm not even saying my statements apply to the article here so much as in general for people interviewing or citing him. Anyone reading posts of high-security engineers pushing strong hardware and software security pre-Snowden would've survived almost everything in NSA's toolbox using such methods. Leads me to add that Snowden seems totally unfamiliar with that stuff and it's unsurprising given his job was SIGINT-related rather than strong INFOSEC. My only failure was not focusing on clean slate chips and hardware design enough. My priority was software but prioritizing the kind of hardware I've promoted here & elsewhere would've got me further. Makes the software easier to secure. Just was too lazy to learn all the hardware engineering knowledge it takes to (a) do custom hardware and (b) do sub-micron, custom hardware. I'm making amends now, at least.

frankNo 11y ago

Well, luckily for humanity this is exactly what I've been coding full time since December of 2014, dedicating my life to. I have been designing it for many years. My vision is complete and planned, all the way until The World Brain! See: https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html The first layer, MORPHiS, is a global secure encrypted distributed datastore that deprecates bittorrent, email and the web so far and is slated for release at the end of this Month! See http://reddit.com/r/morphis http://reddit.com/r/morphis for details. Sorry for reddit; it is because I keep getting shadow banned here for being pro Snowden, Etc. Do not worry, MORPHiS is designed to deprecate hacker news! Anyways, the website is morph.is but doesn't launch until the 31st of this month. Read the only article in the /r/morphs subreddit for lots of details on MORPHiS! Peace all!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]