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Microsoft Drops Aging Encryption Schemes
christchurch wrote to mention an Eweek column about Microsoft's decision to stop using DES, MD4, and MD5 for encryption in Vista. From the article: "All three algorithms show signs of 'extreme weakness' and have been banned, Howard said. Microsoft is recommending using the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)256 encryption algorithm and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cipher instead, he said. The change is part of a semi-yearly update to Microsoft's Secure Development Lifecycle policies by engineers within Microsoft's Security Business & Technology Unit."
Presumably they haven't banned ROT13 then.
i thought they where just one way hashing algos
As opposed to the quarterly update by managers ?
Even if Vista and related products use higher encryption, Windows' obsessive temp file creation, along with swap files, seems to minimize the effect that using encryption has, right?
I mean, sure, it'll be much harder to brute force any MS encryption now, but did people do it that way before? Weren't there always other workarounds that will still be present?
Great... yet another reason to upgrade hardware when planning for a Vista install.
Gotta add more cycles to the those brute-force attack teams!
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Developers who use one of the banned cryptographic functions in new code will have it flagged by automated code scanning tools and will be asked to update the function to something more secure, Howard said.
C:\ > make windows.vista
ERROR: Insecure code found.
Please upgrade code to Linux.
liqbase
Is that even allowed by US Gov. to export that to other countries? I thought that there was a limit of encryption and everything above ...bits was banned from exporting (remembering 56-bits encryption Windows NT).
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DES, MD4, MD5 and, in some cases, the SHA1 encryption algorithm, which are "way too complicated to understand," said Michael Howard, senior security program manager at the company. "Instead, our R&D lab is doing great things with sophisticated XOR encryption that should be enough security for just about anyone."
I'm a big tall mofo.
this post is rot13 encrypted. twice. to improve security.
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wasn't NTLM slightly based on/uses DES ? If thats the case, then does it mean that they are changing the algo used in SAM too ?
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If this is true then LM hashes, which use DES, are on their way out finally. It's going to break some backwards compatibility, but it will go a long way in fixing some of the most obvious, http://www.antsight.com/zsl/rainbowcrack/, privelage escalation problems.
Anyone that disagrees that removing these "encryption" methods is bad, is obviously just a troll. /sarcasm
Ok, question: what does Windows use hashes for, other than the updater (if even that)? Can't the updater just change what it supports, and leave the other hash tools alone?
How about some real security enhancements, Gates?
Anyway they can use whichever algorithm they want ... bad implementation/planning is the cause of their security holes.
...
Soon in Vista, 120xDES and AES implemented as default algorithms but windows media player will run any command sent remotely
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Microsoft has promised additional encryption schemes for power users, including ig-pay atin-lay, leaving out every third word, and Navajo code talkers.
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Firefox and other mozilla based browsers already support 256-bit AES encryption for ssl websites, as does apache..
On the other hand, IIS and IE support nothing stronger than 128-bit RC4.. so be dropping RC4 they will lose compatibility with older versions of their own products, but maintain compatibility with their competitors.
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These are newcomers. Shouldn't that give us some pause as to how much we should rely on them? Yes they've been well studied. But compare AES with DES. It's been around forever and the only weakness that we know of is keylength. Do we really have enough exposure to the "new guys" to put confidence in them to switch everything to them?
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Well ... I know that these criptography standards are begining to be dated, and it is very likely that we will see more successful brute force atacks on them in the following years. However, I wonder if changing them will have a noticeable positive effect on the security of Vista. How many of the many exploitable holes in Windows XP are due to bad criptography, and how many are due to bad design and policies?
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MD5 is used in the HTTP digest authenticattion.
I hope they'll still support that!
I checked and it looks like MD5 has the same problems any hashing function would. Namely that you can't take infiniti and squeeze it into a jar of fixnum bytes without more than one number between 0 and infiniti resulting in the same value for F.
The article is in plain English. I haven't seen it on MSDN yet, but I imagine this is the gist in developer-speak:
.NET framework. While not completely insecure, these algorithms have documented vulnerabilities which mean they can be cracked or exploited in certain scenarios. FxCop will warn you when it finds these classes in use, and provide a suggested fix. Typically, this will simply envolve switching the provider you are using with the more secure SHA256 or AES providers.
Microsoft will be marking the DES, MD4, MD5 and SHA1 encryption provider classes obselete in upcoming versions of the
This has already been done.
/etc/shadow. If the passwords start with $1$ that means it's MD5, if it says $2$ that's blowfish.
In case you're curious here's some info on the redhat mailing list about it.
Note that this message is from 2003, but still not a lot has been done.
It is possible though... you can check if your system uses md5 or blowfish by looking in
Could this been due to the patent on SHA has expired? And NSA wants to keep control of all things being crypted?
Well, they are actually not that different. Any block cipher (like AES) can easily be used as a hashing algorithm (using the last block as the "digest") with fixed key/IV. It can be used as a MAC the same way by varying the key.
Hashing algorithms can as well be used as stream ciphers. Since they have the property that they are "cryptographically secure" - ie. their output could as well have been random for all you care - they can be used to create a stream of pseudo-random bytes that you can XOR your message with.
The real difference between hashing algorithms and "real" two-way encryption is efficiency! Hashing algorithms are also commonly called one-way encryption schemes.
You can always just take your favorite symmetric key encryption algorithm and XOR successive blocks to produce a hash. This may have weaknesses for particular algorithms (IANAC).
A hashing algorithm, as we all know, is just a many-to-one function (not reversible in general). f(x)=0 is such a hash function. It exhibits disappointing collision characteristics, though. f(x)=x avoids this complication, although it is reversible. Uh oh, now Microsoft's gonna steal and patent my elite hashing algorithms.
Right now you can generate SHA256 hashes, but you can't sign anything using SHA256 because it's not supported. Mono of course handles this without any problem.