Database of Private SSL Keys Published

Trailrunner7 writes "A new project has produced a large and growing list of the private SSL keys that are hard-coded into many embedded devices, such as consumer home routers. The LittleBlackBox Project comprises a list of more than 2,000 private keys right now, each of which can be associated with the public key of a given router, making it a simple matter for an attacker to decrypt the traffic passing through the device. Published by a group called /dev/ttyS0, the LittleBlackBox database of private keys gives users the ability to find the key for a specific router in several different ways, including by searching for a known public key, looking up a device's model name, manufacturer or firmware version or even giving it a network capture, from which the program will extract the device's public certificate and then find the associated private SSL key."

Comments

Old problem

[plsuh]

Apple ran into something similar a long time ago for Mac OS X Server. The servermgrd daemon uses a self-signed SSL cert by default to secure communications with remote management tools. About four or five versions back the certificate was identical across all installations because it was contained in the installer package. Someone had to go down and show them that you could read all of the traffic by using sslsniff and the private key from your own copy of the installer. They changed to an individual, automatically generated certificate shortly thereafter.

--Paul