Subject: [saag] Recent attacks on CA infrastructure

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 11:45:01 -0400

As followers of this list are no doubt aware, there has been a recent series
of attacks on CA infrastructure, apparently originating in Iran.

The targets and timing of these attacks strongly suggest that the primary
objective in these attacks is to gain access to social media accounts, in
particular Twitter, Google, Facebook and other media employed by opponents
demonstrating against the regime.

The most recent attack has also targeted the CIA, Mossad and other sites run
by intelligence agencies in an apparent attempt to compromise 'digital
walkin' pages at those sites.

After each of the attacks has been discovered, an individual has represented
himself as the perpetrator to the media, purporting to be a lone actor,
independent of any government agency.

The simplest explanation of these facts is that the attacks were perpetrated
by an agency of the Iranian government with the objective of gaining access
to social media accounts used by opponents of the regime.

It occurs to me that up till now the focus of the remediation efforts have
been focused on the question of protecting the CA infrastructure from
attack. While this is clearly necessary in itself, the ultimate target of
the attack is the social media infrastructure, not the CA infrastructure.

Thus rather than just looking at the one part of the system being targeted,
we should look at the social media infrastructure and in particular the
authentication mechanisms used by the social media infrastructure. In short,
what is the simplest mechanism that could be used to replace the current
password verification schemes in which the server receives an enclair
password?

The problem here is not to replace passwords on the Internet. It is only
necessary for a scheme to be supported at the ten or twenty social media
sites being targeted. It is only necessary for the million or so users of
the Internet in Iran and Syria to upgrade their browsers to thwart the
immediate attack. Both parties involved are highly motivated to make the
necessary effort.

The deployment challenge is thus rather different to that which OpenID and
others have attempted to address. Getting granny to change her browser is
very hard, getting every site to change their authentication scheme is
hard.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:52:26 -0700

On 9/7/11 08:45 , Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> It occurs to me that up till now the focus of the remediation efforts
> have been focused on the question of protecting the CA infrastructure
> from attack. While this is clearly necessary in itself, the ultimate
> target of the attack is the social media infrastructure, not the CA
> infrastructure.

The apparent lack of professionalism among CA operators as far a prompt
and responsible disclosure  and remediation seems to be a significant a
consideration consideration in the ongoing triage.

As consumers of the technology we've made certain assumptions about the
likelihood of compromise and the feasibility of remediation by parties
in which trust has been placed which are not born out by what
objectively has happened.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 21:04:37 -0400

Apart from the very latest incident, all the prior incidents were notified
to the parties capable of performing remediation within a very short span.

Public notice will inevitably come somewhat later given the current tools
that we have for remediation. Beter tools for remediation are highly
desirable.

---

From: "Henry B. Hotz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 18:43:36 -0700

On Sep 7, 2011, at 6:04 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> Public notice will inevitably come somewhat later given the current tools that we have for remediation. Beter tools for remediation are highly desirable.

Care to elaborate?  Are we talking better internal traceability of operations, or OCSP improvements, or what?

Also someone needs to say this:  Thanks to the CAs that stepped up and acknowledged compromises and dealt with them!
------------------------------------------------------
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
[email-masked], or [email-masked]

---

From: Santosh Chokhani <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 04:45:11 -0400

Reliance on OCSP is not a good idea.

The attacker could put their own OCSP Responder pointer in the minted certificates.  They could issue themselves a Delegated Responder certificate.  Thus, examining the legitimate OCSP Responder will be useless.

There is scarier scenario of getting a sub CA certificate out of the compromised CA.

There is even a scarier, albeit a bit harder idea of extracting the private key from the HSM using side channels.  Not all side channels require physical access to the HSM.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Henry B. Hotz
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 9:44 PM
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [saag] Recent attacks on CA infrastructure

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---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:14:18 +0200

Phillip, Joel,

On 9/8/11 3:04 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> Apart from the very latest incident, all the prior incidents were
> notified to the parties capable of performing remediation within a
> very short span.
>
> Beter tools for remediation are highly desirable.
>

Wouldn't it be nice if DANE had been completed and adopted two years
ago?  Good on Paul and others for their work here.

Eliot

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 14:17:46 -0400

It would be nice if they had listened to people in the industry about how it
worked and produced something that we could use.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 14:20:49 -0400

This would not be an OCSP token that had anything whatsoever to do with the
issuer.

OCSP was originally designed to allow status reporting for multiple
certificate providers. That is what Valicert were plotting.

So OCSP can be used as it stands to publish lists of certs that must not be
trusted under any circumstance. The token would probably be validated
against the same key used to check software updates (I really hope they
check sigs on software updates).

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Santosh Chokhani <[email-masked]>wrote:

> The attacker could put their own OCSP Responder pointer in the minted
> certificates.  They could issue themselves a Delegated Responder
> certificate.  Thus, examining the legitimate OCSP Responder will be useless.
>
> There is even a scarier, albeit a bit harder idea of extracting the private
> key from the HSM using side channels.  Not all side channels require
> physical access to the HSM.
>
> Care to elaborate?  Are we talking better internal traceability of
> operations, or OCSP improvements, or what?
>
> Also someone needs to say this:  Thanks to the CAs that stepped up and
> acknowledged compromises and dealt with them!

---

From: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:23:16 +1200

>certificate providers. That is what Valicert were plotting.

It's a bit more complex than that, it was designed to codify the somewhat
mutually exclusive business models of the three main contributors to it.  It's
for this reason that it's been described as "schizophrenic" in the past, try
figuring out what the trust model is supposed to be for example.

Peter.