Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Source Claims Feds Demand Private SSL Keys From Web Services
Lauren Weinstein writes "With further confirmation of the longstanding rumor that the U.S. government (and, we can safely assume, other governments around the world) have been pressuring major Internet firms to provide their 'master' SSL keys for government surveillance purposes, we are rapidly approaching a critical technological crossroad. It is now abundantly clear — as many of us have suspected all along — that governments and surveillance agencies of all stripes — Western, Eastern, democratic, and authoritarian, will pour essentially unlimited funds into efforts to monitor Internet communications."
If this is true it means that SSL/TLS to any Internet service could be useless — the authorities could simply man-in-the-middle anyone. Without knowing who has given keys over, or if anyone has given keys over... The NSA does claim encryption poses a problem for them, but honesty isn't their best attribute. The source claims that major providers at least have resisted (assuming it is happening), but that smaller companies may have folded to the pressure.
Well, at least it's not "man-in-the-middle" because that would be bad.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Does this mean a self-signed certificate is more secure than a commercial one?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Time to learn Klingon, or invest in carrier pigeons and a Little Orphan Annie decoder pin.
I wonder if our government will be responsible for single handedly killing our consumer tech industry.
Of course encryption is a problem for them. It's the same problem Allied intelligence had acting on information that could only be attained because Enigma was broken.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If they don't already have it, then they'll probably soon have the ability to crack traditional encryption methods using quantum cracking algorithms. Our only hope then is post-quantum cryptography.
Distinct from quantum cryptography--which is the practice of using quantum computing algorithms for encryption--post-quantum cryptography refers to encryption methods whose algorithms can be run on traditional computer processors, but that have been specifically designed to be resistant to quantum cracking algorithms.
Nice, now all the carders need to do is hack the NSA to get the keys to the palace on credit card fraud. By the aspect that NSA systems are 'antiquated' and incapable of even searching for an email, just how hard could that be?
For all our offiste (well and onsite too) certs we have typically used self signed, and simply installed the certs in the client machines.
this was done because we're cheap and lazy but yay
I wish I was back in my last cisco vpn class and see what my instructor (who according to his self was installing security for major industry) has to say now about my question about transparent proxies and ssl and cisco road map. he was recommending ssl as a better replacement to ikev2. Granted my tin foil hat was fully deployed about NSA snooping but...
i wish i was wrong.
So the next time the US wants to chastise another country for spying on their citizens, the response is going to be "go away you hypocritical assholes".
America has lost her moral compass, and is quickly turning into a police state.
Papers please comrade.
>> "The government is definitely demanding SSL keys from providers," said one person who has responded to government attempts to obtain encryption keys. The source spoke with CNET on condition of anonymity.
So...some guy said "yes, they're collecting keys." No written evidence, no names. We demand "citation" from people posting backstories of cartoon characters on Wikipedia, so how exactly is this "confirmation" of anything?
Many have assumed for a long time that root SSL certificates have been provided by American CA's (GoDaddy, VeriSign, Network Solutions etc), but what about foreign ones? StartSSL is Israel-based, so it can be assumed the Israeli government has the root key. What about SwissSign, based in Switzerland and run by the Swiss Post? :)
Time to start giving your friends one time pads on physical media.. a few GB worth should provide plenty of encrypted chat time, though you will have to get the key to them in the first place.
The US DoD shares your opinion. https://www.my.af.mil/afp/netstorage/login_page_files/afportal_faqs.html Looks like a self-signed cert not issued by any commercial vendor in the default browser lists.
In some cold war police states half the population was employed to spy on the other half. No wonder their economies sucked.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If this does not kill off the cloud or at least seriously damage the business model, I think it would be safe to say human apathy has reached critical mass and we deserve everything that is coming in the next 20-30 years.
To decrypt, don't they just need the private key for the CA? From there I believe its all down hill to eventually get the session keys.
Never heard about "main-in-the-middle" before reading this Article?
Well you don't have to be ashame of yourself, this is a secret technique only available for government agencies, you see they can tap into the "main" routes, AKA THE MOTHERFUCKING INTERNET BACKBONE, CORE ROUTERS, T1 AND YOUR FUCKING ISP!
Its time to move towards self-signed certificate AKA DO NOT FUCKING TRUST ANYONE!
If true this could be bad as presently SSL uses the public / private RSA key pair for encryption as well as authentication.
BUT under the latest SSL / TLS standard (only presently client side supported by Chrome) the encryption half of the secure connection can be performed by Diffie-Hellman key exchange and that would offer perfect forward security. Meaning that all a government with the private key can do is a MITM attack, and it is possible to spot that by using multiple IP path checking and other tests.
Unfortunately, for now this scenario seems unlikely as many providers excluding google are not providing access to this key exchange scheme.
ALSO, under existing SSL you are not protected presently if a provider hands over their old expired keys to the government and these are used to crack stored session data.
SO - Put pressure on your providers to support TLS with Diffie-Hellman, like Gmail and OpenSSL!!
No, the private key for the CA just enables someone else to sign certs as if they were the CA themselves. It does not permit an entity holding that private key to decrypt all data encrypted by certs issued by the CA. Each cert signed by the CA contains a public key; the corresponding private key is typically not in the possession of the CA but is in the possession of the person/organization who's identity the CA is certifying in the cert signed by the CA.
If they have the CA key, they can create a new private key for the service you are going to, reroute your traffic intended to go to that service sending it to their own server, provide the public half of the "master" key they created which is signed by the CA key, and your client (browser) will believe it is reaching that service when it is not. This is the man in the middle attack, styled slightly different by having the CA key instead of the target private key.
Browsers could help with that by saving the public keys its gets from every site you visit, and warn/block your access later when the key is changed. Even this is not perfect since it is vulnerable to the attack on the first visit, or when the key change is believed to be when the old one expired.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It is worse than that. Much worse.
SSL is typically deployed on the web without Diffe-Hellman, the RSA public key is used directly to encrypt the symmetric cipher.
If you acquire the RSA private key then you don't need to man in the middle. A packet capture is sufficient to recover the symmetric cipher and decrypt the entire session.
I've seen this claim a few times in the past. Someone a few months ago told me they were confident that the government already have private keys for every major US site.
If that were the case, why would they need to request data from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, etc. All of these companies have discussed how the government requests data from them, and how they have to provide it. If the government simply had the private keys and could just sniff all traffic, they wouldn't need to.
I wouldn't be shocked if someone asked for private keys at some point, but no company is obligated to hand them over. The government wouldn't have any legal recourse to do anything about it, and it would hurt the program if it went public and went to court. The government has zero leverage in this case.
The only reason the NSA has been able to get data currently is because of the NSL program. That program needs to stop and go out the window. There is zero reason why the previous system (obtain warrants, or prove in court good reason why you had probable cause and literally didn't have time for the warrant in each case) can't work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
We haven't used "legit" certs from companies like VeriSign for almost 6 years. Unless someone wants to break into our company and rip the keys from the HSM's inside the companies secured vault then I doubt there will be any compromise of our keys by ANYONE at a federal agency.
If the feds want your keys they would have to come to you!
This will raise the bar a little: http://eccentric-authentication.org/eccentric-authentication/five-minute-overview.html
(With current operating systems, that's still too easy, hence I can only raise the bar. not solve it...)
Update, 11:40 a.m. PT: Adds additional comments from a Facebook representative saying the company has not received such requests.
So how do we know this statement is not as it is due to a FISA or other type of gag order with accompanied threat? The truth is we simply do not if this statement is as it is due to the duress of a gag order. We have not have a pre-established a duress code word, nor the trust the needs to accompany it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Does the NSA really have a problem decrypting SSL/TLS? I find it hard to believe that they do not have dedicated hardware with specialized processors that have been custom built to crack SSL/TLS.
Probably the only CA I would trust.
"Anonymous source claims" ...
That anonymous source guy is a nutcase. Imonths nonymous source the same guy who says Obama is a space alien?
On the other hand, in 2008 Mr. Source said "you think 2% growth for six monthd is a bad economy? Just wait and see how Obama trashes the economy for six years", so I guess he's right sometimes.
I would think that SSL certificates are much less interesting than the certificates used to sign drivers and programs.
'nuff said
I met a guy who met a guy who met a retired Brit a year or so ago while on holiday who claimed to have worked on IT for the UK surveillance effort directed at illegal migrants and related persons of interest ie terrorists.
While this was a few years before, he said they could do nothing to see VPN traffic content. It was completely opaque to them and a source of frustration.
There have been patches for TLS-SRP in chrome and firefox for years and they continue to sit for BS/political reasons.
Any site you can login may use TLS-SRP to establish a secure channel leveraging access credentials to establish trust rather than or in addition to PKI.
It does not solve everything but it does help to protect users not only from CA infrastructure compromise but also phishing attacks against users credentials. TLS-SRP derived session encryption keys provide PFS out of the box.
This makes the argument for use of a private certificate authority with self-signed certificates.
It's interesting how the linked blog post points to the death of public-key encryption. The efficacy of any form of encryption depends on the trustworthiness of all parties sharing information. If any party shares encryption keys or cleartext with third parties, any encryption method is compromised. The issue here has nothing to do with public-key encryption and everything to do with the trustworthiness of the entity operating the SSL-secured server. If you can't trust the operator not to hand out its private key, you can't expect your communications with that party to be 100% secure.
Have they been asked? Do they keep a copy?
Something like "The government shall not collect or store any information, even publically available information, about the activities of a citizen except upon issuance of a warrant; said warrant shall only issue upon evidence that a specific individual has committed a specific crime."
So the only kind of records the government is ever allowed to keep are records for criminal cases? WTF? How are they supposed to run the US Postal Service? That's your name plus your address right there. What about the patent office? Only inventions used for crimes can be patented?
Those are just the tip of the iceberg for much it'd fuck everything up.
This is what happens when you commercialise trust.
Time to start up our own CA's and get them into Firefox.
Ya know what if this was really true then why do we still get spam? why are people still getting viruses? why are people getting scamed out of thousands of dollars from CC fraud???? If they were truly spying on us as all the experts say they are then why are they allowing criminals to get away scott free?. Im not saying there not spying but they cant be spying on us that hard.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Set up a web hosting company with fake IDs in the name of nonexistent individuals. Host a few 'interesting' web sites and wait for the NSA/CIA/FBI to come knocking asking for the keys. Report everything (including the infamous National Secutity Letter contents) to the press. Burn the fake IDs, wigs and phoney beards and disappear into the woodwork.
Have gnu, will travel.
Browsers could help with that by saving the public keys its gets from every site you visit, and warn/block your access later when the key is changed. Even this is not perfect since it is vulnerable to the attack on the first visit, or when the key change is believed to be when the old one expired.
There is a Firefox extension that does this, I think it's called certificate patrol.
This is disgusting. BTW, you can bet your ass Slashdot has been or will be approached. Funny.... now I trust sites with self-signed certificates more than ones who paid all the dough for EXTENDED-VALIDATION SUPER-GREEN ADDRESS BAR SSL 65,535-bit MEGA-AES certificates from Verisign.
http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2011/09/anti-evil-maid.html
It doesn't just happen during wartime - sacrifices must be made in order to assure your sources remain secret. The NSA only works when they are separated from other departments - the FBI for example, would disclose their ability to use your own cell phone as a bug against you when it comes out in the court transcripts (as did actually happen in an organized crime case.) The NSA works best when you don't know how they are doing it or even what they are doing or their limitations. This is why it is a HUGE deal to them when you know anything about them. Most people don't even know that they are much larger in size than the FBI or CIA.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What's the problem ? Setup a fake dummy box and give them SSH key to it =)
...about the NSA-PRISMS program (for example),is that 80 percent of its resources are spent dealing with spam.
+1 for 1,000 Eyes!
A web of trust is fine for communicating with people who live within walking or public transit distance. But to extend the web beyond that, someone has to get his key signed in more than one city. This involves getting groped at the security gate and then getting on a plane owned by an airline who probably already shares your info with the government. So the web of trust between cities and especially between countries will end up having bottlenecks where trust must flow through people who routinely travel internationally.
Sometimes I am not interested in authentication with a machine because I know that the machine in question is the right one.
How do you know that the machine is the right one if it's not in the same room? Your Internet connection might be behind a transparent proxy feeding all connections to a given IP address through a third party called a "man in the middle". SSH and unknown-CA SSL provide what is called "key continuity management", alerting the user to changes in a machine's public key since the last visit, but that doesn't help if a connection to a server has been MITM'd from day one. This is especially likely in the case of a national firewall. One mitigation to being MITM'd from day one is route diversity, checking the public key as seen by several notaries spread throughout the Internet that you already trust.
There is only one option, allow self-signing as an encryption measure but not as an authentication measure. Naturally you have to take care while doing this since it could implicate that any encrypted connection is secure.
And this implication is exactly why popular browsers are allergic to unknown-CA SSL certificates unless a route-diversity extension like Perspectives has been installed.
A visitor to a web site using a self-signed certificate or other certificate from an unknown CA may be behind a man in the middle. A key continuity management tool could compare the key fingerprint from this visit to the fingerprint from past visits to make sure a man in the middle has not been introduced since the last visit. But if it's the user's first visit and there's a man in the middle, game over.
In passing, at least once they did the census and did not reapportion because of the gored oxen and the world did not immediately end. If you look at reapportionment history then you will learn that it and and most of our sacred cows around voting are mathematically silly. So I have a math degree and do not much care but let us not base big arguments on a constitutional provision that in both theory and practice is such a fail. It does have the saving grace that we only have to pull our hair out every decade.
http://www.faroo.com/hp/p2p/faq.html#privatesearch
Casteism
The government already spent 1.5 billion to build a 1 million square foot compound dedicated to internet surveillance and it opens next month:
http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/