Really interesting research: TPM-FAIL: TPM meets Timing and Lattice Attacks, by Daniel Moghimi, Berk Sunar, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Nadia Heninger.
Abstract: Trusted Platform Module (TPM) serves as a hardware-based root of trust that protects cryptographic keys from privileged system and physical adversaries. In this work, we per-form a black-box timing analysis of TPM 2.0 devices deployed on commodity computers. Our analysis reveals that some of these devices feature secret-dependent execution times during signature generation based on elliptic curves. In particular, we discovered timing leakage on an Intel firmware-based TPM as well as a hardware TPM. We show how this information allows an attacker to apply lattice techniques to recover 256-bit private keys for ECDSA and ECSchnorr signatures. On Intel fTPM, our key recovery succeeds after about1,300 observations and in less than two minutes. Similarly, we extract the private ECDSA key from a hardware TPM manufactured by STMicroelectronics, which is certified at CommonCriteria (CC) EAL 4+, after fewer than 40,000 observations. We further highlight the impact of these vulnerabilities by demonstrating a remote attack against a StrongSwan IPsecVPN that uses a TPM to generate the digital signatures for authentication. In this attack, the remote client recovers the server’s private authentication key by timing only 45,000 authentication handshakes via a network connection.
The vulnerabilities we have uncovered emphasize the difficulty of correctly implementing known constant-time techniques, and show the importance of evolutionary testing and transparent evaluation of cryptographic implementations.Even certified devices that claim resistance against attacks require additional scrutiny by the community and industry, as we learn more about these attacks.
These are real attacks, and take between 4-20 minutes to extract the key. Intel has a firmware update.
Attack website. News articles. Boing Boing post. Slashdot thread.
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infossl
November 15, 2019
academicpapers, cryptography, hardware, keys, Security technology, tpm
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There was a successful attack against NordVPN:
Based on the command log, another of the leaked secret keys appeared to secure a private certificate authority that NordVPN used to issue digital certificates. Those certificates might be issued for other servers in NordVPN’s network or for a variety of other sensitive purposes. The name of the third certificate suggested it could also have been used for many different sensitive purposes, including securing the server that was compromised in the breach.
The revelations came as evidence surfaced suggesting that two rival VPN services, TorGuard and VikingVPN, also experienced breaches that leaked encryption keys. In a statement, TorGuard said a secret key for a transport layer security certificate for *.torguardvpnaccess.com was stolen. The theft happened in a 2017 server breach. The stolen data related to a squid proxy certificate.
TorGuard officials said on Twitter that the private key was not on the affected server and that attackers “could do nothing with those keys.” Monday’s statement went on to say TorGuard didn’t remove the compromised server until early 2018. TorGuard also said it learned of VPN breaches last May, “and in a related development we filed a legal complaint against NordVPN.”
The breach happened nineteen months ago, but the company is only just disclosing it to the public. We don’t know exactly what was stolen and how it affects VPN security. More details are needed.
VPNs are a shadowy world. We use them to protect our Internet traffic when we’re on a network we don’t trust, but we’re forced to trust the VPN instead. Recommendations are hard. NordVPN’s website says that the company is based in Panama. Do we have any reason to trust it at all?
I’m curious what VPNs others use, and why they should be believed to be trustworthy.
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infossl
October 23, 2019
breaches, certificates, cryptography, disclosure, encryption, keys, Security technology, vpn
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Wow, is this an embarrassing bug:
Yubico is recalling a line of security keys used by the U.S. government due to a firmware flaw. The company issued a security advisory today that warned of an issue in YubiKey FIPS Series devices with firmware versions 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 that reduced the randomness of the cryptographic keys it generates. The security keys are used by thousands of federal employees on a daily basis, letting them securely log-on to their devices by issuing one-time passwords.
The problem in question occurs after the security key powers up. According to Yubico, a bug keeps “some predictable content” inside the device’s data buffer that could impact the randomness of the keys generated. Security keys with ECDSA signatures are in particular danger. A total of 80 of the 256 bits generated by the key remain static, meaning an attacker who gains access to several signatures could recreate the private key.
Boing Boing post.
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infossl
July 1, 2019
cryptography, encryption, firmware, keys, randomnumbers, Security technology, securityengineering, securitytokens
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MongoDB now has the ability to encrypt data by field:
MongoDB calls the new feature Field Level Encryption. It works kind of like end-to-end encrypted messaging, which scrambles data as it moves across the internet, revealing it only to the sender and the recipient. In such a “client-side” encryption scheme, databases utilizing Field Level Encryption will not only require a system login, but will additionally require specific keys to process and decrypt specific chunks of data locally on a user’s device as needed. That means MongoDB itself and cloud providers won’t be able to access customer data, and a database’s administrators or remote managers don’t need to have access to everything either.
For regular users, not much will be visibly different. If their credentials are stolen and they aren’t using multifactor authentication, an attacker will still be able to access everything the victim could. But the new feature is meant to eliminate single points of failure. With Field Level Encryption in place, a hacker who steals an administrative username and password, or finds a software vulnerability that gives them system access, still won’t be able to use these holes to access readable data.
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infossl
June 26, 2019
authentication, cryptography, encryption, hacking, keys, Security technology
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Mark Risher of Google extols the virtues of security keys:
I’ll say it again for the people in the back: with Security Keys, instead of the *user* needing to verify the site, the *site* has to prove itself to the key. Good security these days is about human factors; we have to take the onus off of the user as much as we can.
Furthermore, this “proof” from the site to the key is only permitted over close physical proximity (like USB, NFC, or Bluetooth). Unless the phisher is in the same room as the victim, they can’t gain access to the second factor.
This is why I keep using words like “transformative,” “revolutionary,” and “lit” (not so much anymore): SKs basically shrink your threat model from “anyone anywhere in the world who knows your password” to “people in the room with you right now.” Huge!
Cory Doctorow makes a critical point, that the system is only as good as its backup system:
I agree, but there’s an important caveat. Security keys usually have fallback mechanisms — some way to attach a new key to your account for when you lose or destroy your old key. These mechanisms may also rely on security keys, but chances are that they don’t (and somewhere down the line, there’s probably a fallback mechanism that uses SMS, or Google Authenticator, or an email confirmation loop, or a password, or an administrator who can be sweet talked by a social engineer).
So while the insight that traditional 2FA is really “something you know and something else you know, albeit only very recently,” security keys are “Something you know and something you have, which someone else can have, if they know something you know.”
And just because there are vulnerabilities in cell phone-based two-factor authentication systems doesn’t mean that they are useless. They’re still much better than traditional password-only authentication systems.
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infossl
May 1, 2019
backups, keys, Security technology, securitytokens, twofactorauthentication
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Someone is stealing millions of dollars worth of Ethereum by guessing users’ private keys. Normally this should be impossible, but lots of keys seem to be very weak. Researchers are unsure how those weak keys are being generated and used.
Their paper is here.
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infossl
April 29, 2019
academicpapers, blockchain, cryptocurrency, cryptography, encryption, hacking, keys, Security technology
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From a G7 meeting of interior ministers in Paris this month, an “outcome document“:
Encourage Internet companies to establish lawful access solutions for their products and services, including data that is encrypted, for law enforcement and competent authorities to access digital evidence, when it is removed or hosted on IT servers located abroad or encrypted, without imposing any particular technology and while ensuring that assistance requested from internet companies is underpinned by the rule law and due process protection. Some G7 countries highlight the importance of not prohibiting, limiting, or weakening encryption;
There is a weird belief amongst policy makers that hacking an encryption system’s key management system is fundamentally different than hacking the system’s encryption algorithm. The difference is only technical; the effect is the same. Both are ways of weakening encryption.
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infossl
April 23, 2019
backdoors, encryption, g7, hacking, keyescrow, keys, lawenforcement, Security technology, terrorism
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Lessons learned in reconstructing the World War II-era SIGSALY voice encryption system.
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infossl
February 15, 2019
encryption, historyofcryptography, keys, Security technology
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Impressive police work:
In a daring move that placed his life in danger, the I.T. consultant eventually gave the F.B.I. his system’s secret encryption keys in 2011 after he had moved the network’s servers from Canada to the Netherlands during what he told the cartel’s leaders was a routine upgrade.
A Dutch article says that it’s a BlackBerry system.
El Chapo had his IT person install “…spyware called FlexiSPY on the ‘special phones’ he had given to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, as well as to two of his lovers, including one who was a former Mexican lawmaker.” That same software was used by the FBI when his IT person turned over the keys. Yet again we learn the lesson that a backdoor can be used against you.
And it doesn’t have to be with the IT person’s permission. A good intelligence agency can use the IT person’s authorizations without his knowledge or consent. This is why the NSA hunts sysadmins.
Slashdot thread. Hacker News thread. Boing Boing post.
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infossl
January 16, 2019
backdoors, courts, drugtrade, encryption, fbi, insiders, keys, Security technology
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The UK’s GCHQ delivers a brutally blunt assessment of quantum key distribution:
QKD protocols address only the problem of agreeing keys for encrypting data. Ubiquitous on-demand modern services (such as verifying identities and data integrity, establishing network sessions, providing access control, and automatic software updates) rely more on authentication and integrity mechanisms — such as digital signatures — than on encryption.
QKD technology cannot replace the flexible authentication mechanisms provided by contemporary public key signatures. QKD also seems unsuitable for some of the grand future challenges such as securing the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, social media, or cloud applications.
I agree with them. It’s a clever idea, but basically useless in practice. I don’t even think it’s anything more than a niche solution in a world where quantum computers have broken our traditional public-key algorithms.
Read the whole thing. It’s short.
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infossl
August 1, 2018
authentication, cryptography, economicsofsecurity, encryption, gchq, keys, quantumcomputing, quantumcryptography, Security technology
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