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German Health Insurance Card CA Loses Secret Key
Christiane writes "The SSL Root CA responsible for issuing the German digital health insurance card lost its secret private key during a test enrollment. After their Hardware Security Module (HSM) dutifully deleted its crypto keys during a power outage, it was all 'Oops, why is there no backup?' All issued cards must be replaced: 'Gematik spokesman Daniel Poeschkens poured scorn on the statement that Gematik had insisted on the service provider carrying out a test without backing up the root CA private keys. "We did not decide against a back-up service. The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."'"
Not even a month ago you chided them because there were too many copies (some of them even offsite, they just didn't know who had them now), now you chew them out for having too few. Make up your effing mind!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Once again, misleading title to a different summary.
For fuck's sake, the Germans didn't lose the key.
The SSL Root CA lost that.
Get the facts right.
For a second i was wondering how Germans could that stupid. That is unlike the Germany i know. And exactly as i suspected, the German insurer had been insisting the root CA for backup while the CA thought it was unnecessary.
Is it the German company's fault?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Don't blame the cards for the stupidity of their administrators.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe they should check with the NSA or CIA? They've got a backdoor into EVERY system, and may still have the key saved on a laptop lying around somewhere.
I'd rather the key be lost, than stolen, hacked, made-public, etc. At least it didn't breach security in the typical manner.
It would easily be found be searching the nearest pub car park for USB keys, or checking the train that the relevant civil servant travelled home on.
There are two fundamental ways to fail as a CA. There must be exactly one party in effective possession of the private key of the root cert. If the number of parties becomes less than or more than one, fail.
Mistakes happen, of course, and certificate infrastructures can be enormously complex. But if you're going to do any kind of risk mitigation, the absolutely most basic place to start would be with these two scenarios.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Q: How do you learn every German swear word in about 20 seconds?
A: Tell the German admin that you lost the root key.
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That's just silly. They obviously take security seriously enough that they found re-issuing all of their certs preferable to adding a second storage place for the private key, thus doubling the possibility of the system being compromised.
If the key had been compromised, that would be a breach of trust. This is more an example of the fact that as security increases, usability decreases.
I'm confused, isn't this sort of problem exactly why you carry out system tests?
Sending out new cards to card testers during a systems test is hardly extraordinary.
Poeschkens claimed, "I know nothing! noth-thing!" and proceeded to blame the problem on a man he would only identify as "Hogan."
Bark less. Wag more.
For those of you who are wondering what CA is, it stands for Certificate Authority. You see, the Germans have a hard time functioning without a constant stream of praise, so they have this authority in place that prints and sends certificates to people. Every day thousands of Germans get congratualted for crossing the street, for finding their car keys or for eating their 1000th potato of the month. You know you've walked into a German household when you see the wallpaper of framed certificates.
The problem here is that the company deleted the certificate-printing program since they thought someone was trying to hack in and print more certificates for themselves- no one is THAT special so they had to stop him. They forgot to have another program ready to print more certificates, so now Germany is under threat of entering a depression since they no longer get certificates telling them how special they are.
On a serious note: I don't follow this article very well with all the acronyms being spelled out but not explained, and no background knowledge of anything going on here. If someone would care to explain what is going on here to someone that has never heard the term CA, you should get a +5 informative easily.
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Best practices about CA management says you should have your secret key in a (physical) safe. Better yet, divide it in two pieces and put it along the passphrase in three different safes (part1+pass,part2+pass,part1+part2), so you can't lose key access even if you lose one safe, and nobody can take the key by opening a single safe.
Got Pike?
PGP Desktop has this option. You can share a key and split it among people, where x amount of y pieces are needed to recover the original key, where both x and y are user selectable values.
However, if a key is a top root CA key, you would not be using it on a general purpose computer. You would have the key generated in a HSM and stored there, where someone can perhaps use the key to sign and decrypt stuff, but would have to go to a lot of trouble to get past all the hardware tamper evident stuff in the HSM to access the raw private key material.
Most newer HSM devices I've seen have a way to back up keys generated on the device (usually to USB flash drives), provided at key generation time you set a flag allowing the key to leave the device. If this "allow private key material to leave the HSM" flag isn't explicitly set, you are screwed when it comes to backups, and your best workaround is to create another key with the flag set, then do some cross signing. Depending on task, you might be able to get away with revoking the old key, but sometimes (especially if the old key signed a lot of code certificates), this may be almost impossible.
This lost key should be a lesson to people. Making sure the keys that are in the armored box are backed up can be just as important to security as keeping them in the armored box in the first place. Ideally, consider multiple HSM hardware at multiple locations, including an offline HSM stored in padded packaging that goes in the Iron Mountain tub, as well as the means to access the key inside the box.
Actually, I can think of a reason, after all. Since this CA no longer has the ability to revoke prior signatures made with that key, then that key can no longer be trusted as a signer. You can check to see if a CA has certified something, but there's no way to check to see if the CA changed their mind, because the CA no longer has a way to say that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In talking with people (or company representatives) about their security regarding passwords and keys, I always told them two things.
First, all security experts will tell you that you should not keep copies of that stuff around.
Second, that's not a realistic expectation, stuff happens. The IT guy goes on vacation, has an accident, or dies. (Seen all 3 numerous times.) You fire the Admin for some reason. This building burns down. Etc.
A reasonable thing to do, is keep a password/key log with that critical information that is kept up to date at all times. You have two copies of it. Both are kept secure in good quality safes (not a $200 lockbox).
Both safes are in different physical locations, at least separate buildings, preferably miles apart.
The reason for this is pretty easy. Once again, things happen. I've seen buildings burnt down, flooded, inaccessible due to chemical hazards from a truck wreck, etc. You don't know what will happen, but if you have them stored at separate physical locations, you at least know you will be able to get to one of them if you need to, assuming nobody uses a nuke.
It all falls under that old techie saying, "So, when did your data become important to you? Before or after you lost it...".
I literally read that as scoured porn...
"We did not decide against a back-up service. The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."' If this were originally in English, it would mean "We knew this would happen and we tried to tell them, but those arrogant SOBs thought they knew it all and didn't want to listen to us. So we shut up, pulled up a chair, got some popcorn, and waited for the fireworks". I'm not sure that translates, though...