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No Backdoor in Vista

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the inappropriate-comments-aplenty dept.

mytrip wrote to mention a C|Net article stating that Vista will not have a security backdoor after all. From the article: "'The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."

26 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. is Niels Ferguson.. by Pavel+Stratil · · Score: 5, Funny

    going to die soon? (nothing personal)

    1. Re:is Niels Ferguson.. by bj8rn · · Score: 4, Funny

      Let's see. Your comment was modded redundant. This could mean that there's no point in asking this question, as Ferguson is going to die soon. At the same time, however, it could also mean "He's not going to die! Stop asking these stupid questions!" So I really don't know whether he is going to die soon or not. The information you (and the mods) have provided me with is insufficient to determine the this. Sorry.

      --
      Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
    2. Re:is Niels Ferguson.. by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Funny

      People didn't get it ... he said it would happen ...

      "Over my dead body"

      We're talking Bush administration here. Talk about painting a target on your back! They'd WANT to get rid of anyone who can point a finger. Disposing of the body is no big deal.

      Heck, they don't even have to "terminate with extreme sanction" any more. Just drop a hint to Balmer that he's going to work for google, and let a random chair take him out.

      Speaking of which, if google wanted to throw up a few roadblocks, they could "hint/spread rumours/FUD" that a few critical microsoft developers have accepted/will accept/are in secret talks to accept to jump switch, and watch the body count in Redmond rise like the kill score in Alien 2, from the "pre-emptive kills".

    3. Re:is Niels Ferguson.. by gnarlin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Steve Balmer, in the converence room, with the chair!

      --
      A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
  2. Balmer Says... by aragod · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe that can be arranged...

  3. Right. by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."

    I suspect the NSA, (who I seem to recall left a few stray tags lying around in a previous version of Windows' code), would look at you dead-pan and agree.


    -FL

    1. Re:Right. by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd be disappointed if NSA ever resorted to anything so crude. NSA is an agency of savants not a mob of freebooting bucaneers. Assasination is so CIA.

      NSA surely is well aware of the way that trust can, unintentionally, propagate. Everybody trusts something; if somebody doesn't want to cooperate, you obtain his unwitting cooperating by coopting something he trusts. Does he personally supervise the building of every release and patch? Certainly not. He trusts the release process to carry out his intentions. Even if the individuals involved are not cooptable, they trust their compilers to generate object code that is perfectly isomorphic to their source code. Those who do not trust compilers trust their debuggers, disassemblers and operating system utilities.

      Those who do not trust their operating system utilities, and live-boot from randomly chosen operating systems or remove their hard disks and examine them using a hand coded manchine language program on a custom built computer lacking a bios or operating system to be subverted, still trust the network to transfer their object code to the mastering facility, or their optical disk burning software to burn the image accurately. Or they trust the facility to read that data correctly, and to press it as they intended to the distribution media.

      Those who trusted none of this and checked the hard disks by hand coded machine code on a hand wired computer without BIOS or operating system probably deserve assasination, but even so this is hardly necessary, since everyone gets patches over the Internet. A simple black bag job to retrieve the signing keys, and nobody can trust anything anymore.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Right. by Haeleth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I suspect the NSA, (who I seem to recall left a few stray tags lying around in a previous version of Windows' code)

      Yes and no.

      True, there was a tag in one version of Windows NT 4 that had the name "_NSAKEY". However, it has never been linked to the NSA in any way whatsoever, except by conspiracy theorists.

      You might as well claim that USER32.DLL is proof of a conspiracy to turn American back into a British colony (U.S. obviously stands for United States, and E.R. = Elizabeth Regina = the queen of England! OMG BILL GATES HATES AMERICA!)

      Here is Bruce Schneier's take on the matter.

    3. Re:Right. by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I think it's much easier for MS to sack him and then change the code.

      I know Niels, he certainly would not have any difficulty getting another job. He was pretty well known before he went to Microsoft. He was the cryptographer who worked on Two-Fish with Bruce Schneier. Microsoft has been hiring pretty much all the top security talent they can over the past five years.

      Cryptography and data security is pretty much a guild craft. If Niels made such a categoric statement and it turned out to be untrue his personal reputation would be severely damaged. Microsoft can't force him to lie for them and since he works in the Netherlands trying to would be most inadvisable.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  4. What else would he say? by mangus_angus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."


    I think we would be reading about his dead body if he came out and admitted that there were backdoors being put into Vista.

  5. "Trust me," he said by replicant108 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Over my dead body,' he wrote

    The problem with closed software is that we have to take his word for it.

  6. Ballmer to his secretary: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    - Get me Ferguson... tell him we're going hunting. Yes, hunting. With Cheney.

  7. Re:Prove it. by ROOK*CA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We have no reason to believe this claim -- doubly so given that Microsoft has lied repeatedly in the past.

    I'd be willing to bet that even Microsoft would not be willing to go so far as to create intentional "backdoors" in their encryption to facilitate government (Law Enforcement) access. First off I don't think the government (at least those in the UK and the US) have the power to legally force them into doing it, and secondly if they did it voluntarily one would think the public outcry would be deafening and severly damaging to Microsoft (and it seems that "keeping it quiet" would be nearly impossible).

    I generally don't trust the government as far as I can throw them, and I don't trust Microsoft much farther than that, but I think the suggestion that they are colluding in something as nefarious as this is a bit in the Tin Foil Hat realm.

    Besides how would they "prove" they aren't doing it? release the source? as if ..... :)

  8. Dead Body? by OverflowingBitBucket · · Score: 4, Funny

    'Over my dead body,' he wrote

    "Your terms are acceptable" reply the NSA.

  9. AHA! by der_joachim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So it's a secret backdoor. :-)

    --
    Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
  10. Dear Niels I hate to break it to you but... by badzilla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... you won't be in the loop if/when it gets compromised.

    A quick look at the "Crypto AG" fiasco makes it plain how very much governments want backdoors. "For decades, the US has routinely intercepted and deciphered top secret encrypted messages of 120 countries." Imagine the power some entity would have if it could peek into any Windows system at will - the temptation must be making their toes curl.

    Whether or not there is a top-level agreement with top-level spooks it is still unlikely that local lawmen will be allowed to know about it. So what exactly IS Microsoft planning to do when they inevitably get a request to "help" with an encrypted drive?

    --
    "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
  11. Re:Credibility by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 4, Informative
    I don't understand what makes that man to put his own words in the risk if he must know that he is not the only one that decides...

    Here's what he actually wrote:

    "Over my dead body.
    Well, maybe not literally---I'm not ready to be a martyr quite yet---but certainly not in any product I work on."
  12. Damn straight! by Linegod · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let the government wait a week for someone to find a backdoor, just like the rest of us....

    --
    -- I care not for your foolish signatures.
  13. ... that he knows of. by dprovine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aside from the obvious "what about buffer overruns?" questions, aimed at the usually poor competence Microsoft shows in writing code, there's also "what about cryptographic strength?" question -- maybe the NSA already has a simple and fast way to break whatever encryption BitLocker will end up using.

    And, of course, there may well be several people working at Microsoft who actually work for the NSA or MI-6 or the FSB. (I'd be astonished if there weren't at least a few such people on the Microsoft payroll.) Those people may well do things as described in Reflections on Trusting Trust, without letting their superiors know.

    1. Re:... that he knows of. by dprovine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There's no reason you couldn't be for Microsoft and also be for some other entity too. The deception would pretending to be for Microsoft alone. But if you work for the NSA, and you get a job at Microsoft, you may well write good code, and fix security holes, and otherwise help them succeed even while ensuring NSA access to things secured using Microsoft products. Very few things in life are completely either/or.

      If Microsoft caught you and you got sued, the last thing that would happen is the NSA saying a word. I suspect the following, in decreasing order of probability:

      • You make it look like a huge mistake.
      • You tell them you wrote your password down and put it in your wallet, and your wallet was lost and later returned, and you didn't think to update the password.
      • Some heretofore unknown rich uncle dies and leaves you enough money to cover the lawsuit.
      • You die in an auto accident.

      In any case, before placing an asset in such a position, the NSA would probably train such a person with the right lies to tell if something goes wrong. If I were going to do something like that, I'd make up a fake history for the person before Microsoft hired him, and if he got caught then the FBI could investigate and tell Microsoft he was actually a spy for the Mossad. It wasn't even his real name or anything! But for sure the NSA would keep their name out of it. There's a reason they're known as the "No Such Agency".

  14. I love the backdoor in MacOS X - it has its use by dirkx · · Score: 4, Informative
    MacOS X, with filefault*, creates a backdoor by means of a certificate. If you then safe the RSA key pair from your Keychain on a separate machine - you yourself or corperate IT can then be easily ensured access in case of some-one beeing hit by a bus; or in case of a total OS crash.
    Dw.

    Ad *) Or manually

    # on a safe machine
    openssl req -new -x509 -out backup.cer -outform DER -nodes
    cp privkey.pem backup.cer /safeplace
    srm privkey.pem
    # copy public cert to laptop or wherever..
    hdiutil create -encryption -type SPARSE -fs HFS+ -volname secure -size 5G -certificate backup.cer sec
  15. No Backdoor in Vista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    microsoft operating systems begining with windows 95 have never really needed a backdoor, especially since the front door is left wide open.

  16. Details by truthsearch · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here are more details on the NSA keys in Windows:

    For at least Windows 95 OSR2, 98, NT, and 2000 Microsoft has included a secret cryptographic key owned by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). It's most likely that the NSA's key exists within Windows so U.S. government users of Windows can run classified cryptosystems on their computers. But it has been kept secret and it does provide the potential for abuse. "According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system 'is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system.'" Users of Windows outside the U.S. should be especially concerned that the U.S. government can possibly gain security control over their computers. Users within the U.S. should also be concerned that Microsoft has provided the government with a secret back door that they can exploit. (Campbell, Duncan. "How NSA access was built into Windows." Heise Online 4 Sept 1999)
    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  17. He'll give him 'The Chair'... by Shark · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... as it is common Microsoft lore that Balmer can be deadly with furniture.

    --
    Mind the frickin' laser...
  18. Re:You're right! by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
    So, it comes down to a question of who do you trust: college kids who have nothing at stake, or companies that have everything at stake?
    1) the point isn't for every user to check the code, just for a few people or companies to do it and distribute the checksums. It's not that the open source world trusts anybody in particular, but it's impossible to keep a secret once several people with different interests know it.

    2) You're wrong to state that open source is just about college students and not companies. There are many many companies with an interest in Linux being secure.

    3) Why do you assume a company would be trustworthy? Having something to lose makes them vulnerable to government pressure. Look how fast all the search engines caved in to China.

  19. The backdoor may be in the hardware by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Intel, HP, Dell, and Toshiba are including the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) in many of their machines. IPMI is a "remote administration" tool embedded in the LAN hardware. It looks at UDP packets (on ports 663 and 664) and performs various commands on the target machine, completely independently of the operating system. Here's the IPMI 2.0 rev 1 specification, a rather long PDF.

    IPMI is very powerful. An IPMI session starts with a Presence ping Any machine with IPMI hardware should answer a "presence ping" on UDP port 663. This identifies an IPMI-capable machine, and returns some vendor info. Anyone can send this. This should work even if the machine is "turned off", as long as it has standby power and is on a LAN.

    Then, there's a challenge-response authentication sequence. More on this later.

    Once you're in, here are some of the things you can do:

    • Power up the system. Power it down. Force a hard reset. Force a power cycle. Force a phony overtemperature condition (in hopes of getting a clean OS shutdown.).
    • Disable front panel controls (power off, reset, and standby buttons.) Yes, that's really in the protocol. See section 28.6 of the specification. Remote control can also lock out the keyboard and blank the screen.
    • Set system boot options Or, what OS do we want to run today? These include useful tools like "bypass user password".

    There's more. Much more. Basically, you can remotely take over the machine, turn it on, inventory the hardware, load an operating system, boot it up, and talk to it.

    IPMI's back channel can do more than this. With some help from the operating system (and yes, it's supported in Windows) you can do more remote administration functions. This is great for administering your data center remotely. But it has darker implications.

    Supposedly, most machines are shipped with IPMI mostly turned off, unavailable until a program is run on the machine to load in the keys that enable it. Supposedly.

    Thus, all it takes for IPMI to be a "backdoor" is for a set of secret challenge/response keys to be preloaded into the IPMI chip. There's no way to read those keys. Short of taking the chip apart, gate by gate, there's no way to tell if there's a backdoor in there. Or a set of keys might be loaded by the system integrator before shipping the system. You can't tell. So that's where to put a backdoor, where no one can find it.

    There's an open source, OpenIPMI, for sending IPMI commands on Sourceforge. Send "Presence pings" to the machines you have and see if they answer.