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RSA Flatly Denies That It Weakened Crypto For NSA Money
The Register reports that RSA isn't taking quietly the accusation reported by Reuters, based on documents released by Edward Snowden, that the company intentionally used weaker crypto at the request of the NSA, and accepted $10 million in exchange for doing so. RSA's defends the use of the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator, stating categorically "that we have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA's products, or introducing potential 'backdoors' into our products for anyone's use."
They're just claiming again that they assumed the NSA were good people.
This all happened in 2006. RSA adopted DUAL_EC. RSA was sold to EMC. NIST released the standard. Microsoft researchers showed the flaws in DUAL_EC. The flaws in DUAL_EC have been known since 2006, the only thing we didn't know was that they were deliberate.
Also it's interesting to note that an anonymous organization paid for the same DUAL_EC algorithm to be added to Open SSL. With Open SSL at least they didn't make it the default but it's not far off from what RSA did.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/nsas-broken-dual_ec-random-number-generator-has-a-fatal-bug-in-openssl/
An even easier test of trust:
Did RSA take $10 million from the NSA and if so for what service?
So far it looks like they aren't arguing that they did NOT take the money.
The Guardian ran the story. If it wasn't true RSA could sue their arses off in court for the value of their now worthless business. Guardian wouldn't dare run it unless they could prove it is true. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/20/nsa-internet-security-rsa-secret-10m-encryption
Just to play devil's advocate, here's a plausible scenario which makes RSA look stupid but not evil:
NSA approaches RSA with their fancy new NIST/FIPS standard and says that it prefers that government agencies and contractors use Dual_EC_DRBG as soon as possible. Maybe they have super secret intel that China broke SHA-1. Who knows. All the RSA knows is that the NSA mission statement includes counter-intelligence--i.e. protecting the government.
Because so many agencies and contractors use products based on BSafe, the NSA wants to fast track an upgrade. The NSA says that it would pay RSA for the trouble of integrating Dual_EC_DRBG into BSafe as the default FIPS-compliant mode, and for the trouble of getting it tested and certified by NIST. It offers $10 million, which is a reasonable sum for that not inconsiderable effort on the part of RSA.
I still wouldn't trust RSA as far as I could throw them, but in this scenario everybody is being sincere and earnest. But for a company like RSA, suspicion should have been the order of the day. But as others have mentioned before, RSA is more managerial driven these days. While their researchers may have raised an eye brow, at this point they don't have the clout to veto an executive decision, because all the famous guys (the ones with a spine and a reputation to burnish) have left.
Only a complete and utter moron would buy from them after this.
Remember how the RSA SecureID authentication system was hacked?
Now, the way you do these tokens is to have a counter or timer inside them that's synchronized with an external system. You simply encrypt the counter and that's your verifiable ID code. The server can authenticate a couple counts in the past or present to give a wider window, and updates if drift is detected to stay in sych.
There's a concept in security called "single point of failure" that all competent security researchers are aware of and attempt to avoid, but RSA didn't. They didn't let you seed your own SecureIDs. Instead, they seeded them. In this way you had to rely on RSA to authenticate the tokens for you, instead of let you run your own server. So, this immediately raises several red flags for a security aware person: Denial of Service == All your cards stop authenticating at RSA's whim. Additionally, RSA can grant access to other people, say the NSA, by seeding a SecureID with a duplicate of yours. Furthermore, if RSA is compromised then everyone who uses SecureID is at risk, they've made themselves a single point of failure.
A better approach is to allow businesses to seed your security cards yourself, and run your own servers. This way there's no single point of failure for the entire card system -- Compromise one business doesn't leak to others. You don't have to rely on external servers for validation so even if all external lines are cut, your intranet can still validate cards. And you don't have to worry about the NSA compromising the folks you bought the cards from after you purchased them -- Only your systems know the authentication codes -- The crackers have to crack your database.
It wasn't surprising to me that RSA would get compromised because they were the single point of failure, it was only a matter of time (if not pre-compromised from inception). It wasn't surprising at all when defense related companies like Lockheed Martin and L-3 Communications were compromised thanks to RSA's SecureID breech.
Now, given the ineptitude you'd have to have as a team of premier security researchers to screw the pooch this badly in the design of your security product, and given how asinine it would be to select the absolute worst and slowest random number generator as the default for your BSafe security product, knowing you have many embedded platform use-cases, and given that it was known well in advance that trusting the PRNG was ill advised... Then considering Snowden leaks info explaining that the NSA was paying RSA to botch and weaken their security systems. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Given a gag order I'd understand RSA keeping quiet on this. If they cared about security of their customers then at that point we'd see RSA engineering a completely new line of security products with a goal to put our minds at ease, and inexplicably discontinue their past offerings. However, since they opened their fool mouths and claimed not to be screwing up everything on purpose... At least if they were forced to mess things up this bad I could understand, and once the spying apparatus has been dismantled I'd consider RSA still viable. However, if the NSA wasn't paying RSA to botch their security systems, then they can never be trusted again.
I use YubiKey instead. I can run my own server, install my own codes in the tokens, or let yubico do it if the application doesn't require such security. The protocol and server source code is open. I hear Google's partnering with them too.
Sad, really. Now anything RSA has touched I'm distancing myself from.
the lady doth protest too much
Actually, I think that lady is trying very hard to circumvent the truth.
Witness:
What the Snowden paper has revealed was not about "any contract" nor "any project", rather, it's about a one-time payment of $10 million (under table or not, unfortunately the Snowden's paper didn't state clearly) - and the result is a crippled RSA product for the rest of us.
If the $10 million payment was an under table transaction, then there would be *NO* contract signed nor any *official project".
What it entailed would be a change of a couple of lines of code, that is all to it.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages à Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism ...
I won't be able to represent anybody but myself but my companies, at least the time I was running them, never get involved with NSA / CIA / FBI or any of those alphabet agencies.
Yes, from time to time they did flag us (and even contacted some of my co-workers). What we did in return was to move part of our operations out of USA in order to not getting involved.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
you should read the article in el reg
what they say is that they participated in the use of the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator as an industry standard alongside other random number generators that they also delivered with their software. They notified their customers when the potential of a backdoor presented itself and they pretty much behaved like a company working to give their customers usable tools, not sell them down the river
It also begs two additional questions
1. How much can you trust any use of mathematical tools that you do not understand
Up to this point we have all laid a great amount of trust in key generation, which at most we know how to install and build a pass phrase for
2. How much can you trust Snowden
Up to this point he was just making claims against an agency that largely cannot (or will not) comment about their practices. Now he is making claims against a public company that could pursue him civilly for libel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States#PC_era :
"Legal challenges by Peter Junger and other civil libertarians and privacy advocates, the widespread availability of encryption software outside the U.S., and the perception by many companies that adverse publicity about weak encryption was limiting their sales and the growth of e-commerce, led to a series of relaxations in US export controls, culminating in 1996 in President Bill Clinton signing the Executive order 13026[7] transferring the commercial encryption from the Munition List to the Commerce Control List. "
Change did not come over night. You had patriot act over 10 years ago. You had George Bush senior saying he does not consider atheists citizens or something along that lines. You know what you are - Theocracy. You say your church and state are seperate, but your politicians, media and even citizens don't agree. Hell, majority of your people don't even belive evolution and vote for creationism. What can you expect in that kind of environment?
2. How much can you trust Snowden
What does that have to do with anything? Its not like he's got his own personal talk show, like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc, where he constantly spews nonsense and conspiracy theories. All Snowden did was obtain some documents showing a US Agency completely ignoring the US Constitution, and doing a lot of unconstitutional, immoral, shady, and creepy things. Snowden isnt making any statements or news conferences, the news is coming straight from the NSA (against their will, of course, which is why its trustworthy).