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SSL Renegotiation Attack Becomes Real
rastos1 and several other readers noted that the SSL vulnerability we discussed a couple of weeks back, which some researchers had claimed was too theoretical to worry about, has now been demonstrated by exploit. The attack description is available on securegoose.org. "A Turkish grad student has devised a serious, real-world attack on Twitter that targeted a recently discovered vulnerability in the SSL protocol. The exploit by Anil Kurmus is significant because it successfully targeted the so-called SSL renegotiation bug to steal Twitter login credentials that passed through encrypted data streams. All in all, a man in the middle is able to steal the credentials of a user authenticating himself through HTTPS to a trusted website."
Or 'Goodness, old boy, that's dashed inconvenient!' for us Brits. So two phrases. Gosh.
It's nice to have a Sandbox for testing the latest and greatest hacks and security protocols, where no one cares about the user and/or what information they've posted on the site.
Important part of the article:
The only reason it was exploitable was because of Twitter's API. Understandably, I'm not too worried about the rest of the Internet going down in flames any time soon.
I wondered how this will be addressed and the numerous "it will be fixed, don't worry" posts were not really helpful. TFA was and linked to "a TLS extension to cryptographically tie renegotiations to the TLS connections they are being performed over, thus preventing this attack" draft.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
A good source of info about what this attack is and how serious it is can be found at
http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2009/11/understanding_the_tls_renegoti.html
Well, I suppose it's my own fault for trusting The Register. After reading the first article, I got curious and went on to check out the technical details of the exploit. What The Register phrases as "it's Twitter's API's fault" is actually "holy fuck you can POST the whole HTTP message to arbitrary locations (hosted on the same server, anyway)", which is a tad bit worse. While the Internet still isn't going to go down in flames, this does open up potential for some sites to get some nasty burns, and in a way they almost surely won't already be protected against, even if the developers aren't idiots.
Do you seriously believe the NSA hadn't exploited this, and other bugs, already ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
However the one after that will take a bit longer...
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
You could actually read the rest of the article, in which it indicates that this is not merely a CSRF-equivalent attack (as it was originally taken to be), as opposed to just reposting an out-of-context snippet chosen to make the editors look bad.
Hopefully this will make people tweet a tad bit lesser.
I fear it's like hoping a large sponge will be able to lower ocean levels a foot. For some people, I'm sure they would only slack off on their Twitter use if the exploit made your computer grow a foot and kick you in the groin every time you tweeted.
Apparently just a specific subset, though it would probably be easy to find other websites with vulnerabilities similar to Twitter's. Basically, although he couldn't directly read the encrypted user name and password passed between Twitter servers and clients, he was able to exploit functionality in Twitter's public API to log the data from the request to a location he could access, including the stuff that had been encrypted in transit.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
no its not, in the code base its 666
It would be nice if FireFox updated with detection for sites that would allow this (and other) kinds of attacks. /Paranoid
With shit like this in the wild it's hard to know what sites to trust.
Obviously such attacks are possible because of the application security, renegotiation just makes it easier. BTW, here is a tool to check if your server is vulnerable to renegotiation attacks: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssldb/
BTW, clients (e.g. browsers) are pretty save - there is NO need to panic!!
For what its worth Debian released an update to Apache and guidance on how to mitigate the vulnerability.
They did indicate that this was only a work around and a protocol redesign would be required in order to completely fix the vulnerability.
I wonder how many people just simply aren't paying attention and will get burnt by this problem. I want to believe not many but I honestly know better...
You are forgiven for the error. Anyone using a letter that could be mistaken for a number in any software version string should be cockpunched with brass knuckles coated in broken glass and lemon juice
No it just means they will arrest him and throw him in jail next time he visits the USA on holiday.
That one burned down, fell over, and THEN sank into the swamp...
Looks like Debian has backported the security fix. The version with disabled renegotiation is 0.9.8k-6 .
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/o/openssl/openssl_0.9.8k-6/changelog
It's in "unstable" at the moment, but you should be able to download and install it without harm.
The NSA is like the DIA, they actually have a real mission, funding and never have "Church report" or ""Oliver North" moment. :)
The staff rise up via wealthy parents or selection via standardised testing and scholarships/part time work.
Entering the final years of advanced maths and cryptography they are tapped/groomed via security clearances for small projects.
If they show the skills and mindset they are invited in deeper.
Nothing like working in the future, with languages, huge budgets and never having to answer to anyone.
Some burn out, some get the contacts and security clearances to contract back, some exit and go private.
Over history, after ww2, the US has been seen to be very good with hardware and software.
Enigma shows the gold standard, Crypto ag and Soviet penetration shows the ongoing skill set.
The idea that "all the big encryption methods" are safe is rather large risk to take.
The US gifted (as in export laws) the world Apple. IBM, Sun, MS , Unix ect.
Was that just for MS and Apple to sell boxes and get students enjoying the American way of digital life?
"the rest of the world" has sold out and is part of the NSA telco loop, a disputed zone or under constant surveillance.
If your under under constant surveillance, it becomes a known known to have fun with
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
looks like we're all well and truly fucked.
Microsoft should have a patch in about 8 years, Apple will have lashed its developers until there are no further utterances of this problem, Adobe will ask what model phone does it affect, Oracle will ship another box of stupid mugs and tshirts to me as soon as I complain about the vulnerability, Dell will insist i continue to wait for the DRAC to load its SSL page, and i think most importantly my bank will have little, if ANY clue what im talking about.
I need about, say, a million open source eyes on this problem. Gentlemen, the internet appears broken and im offering beer to fix it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You have to remember it's not a fix. It's a workaround, it just disables part of the protocol.
Their are also new packages for Apache2 for Debian for some other parts that needed to be disabled/changed, but it too is just a workaround.
Their isn't yet a real fix, because it's problem with the protocol it self.
New things are always on the horizon