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New OpenSSL Man-in-the-Middle Flaw Affects All Clients
Trailrunner7 (1100399) writes 'There is a new, remotely exploitable vulnerability in OpenSSL that could enable an attacker to intercept and decrypt traffic between vulnerable clients and servers. The flaw affects all versions of the OpenSSL client and versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2-beta1 of the server software. The new vulnerability could only be exploited to decrypt traffic between a vulnerable client and a vulnerable server, and the attacker would need to have a man-in-the-middle position on a network in order to do so. That's not an insignificant set of conditions that must be present for a successful attack, but in the current environment, where open wireless networks are everywhere and many users connect to them without a second thought, gaining a MITM position is not an insurmountable hurdle. Researchers who have looked at the vulnerable piece of code say that it appears to have existed, nearly unchanged, in the OpenSSL source since 1998.'
But if you have a man in the middle position, most of those same users would have just clicked "ignore" or typed yes to the "connect anyway" prompt.
"but in the current environment, where open wireless networks are everywhere and many users connect to them without a second thought"
As will always be. Any attempt at security by involving the end user is a recipe for failure.
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Just to be clear, versions 1.01 and 1.02(beta) is the same as saying "Any OpenSSL version released since early 2012", right? It sounds like the summary is trying to downplay the threat a little bit.
The more of these we find, the more secure OpenSSL will be. I hope we continue to find these kinds of problems and see them fixed. If open source has one strength, it's that when many skilled eyes DO converge on the code it can be tested and fixed far more quickly than a corporation with limited resources and only paid developers can do the same sort of debugging work. The trick is getting the eyes there in the first place.
This is a flaw, but it requires both ends use vulnerable OpenSSL versions. Which means your day-to-day life may or may not be affected that much.
I mean, if you use iOS, OS X, or Windows, you're more than likely NOT using OpenSSL on the client side (except say, if you use Firefox on Windows) - since Apple and Microsoft have their own SSL implementations. If you have an Android phone or tablet, then yes, it's quite likely an issue, and while both are popular, people generally don't use them that much for data (iOS traffic, after 7 years, has finally dropped to below 50% of all mobile traffic out there, despite Android outselling iOS by a huge margin). And nevermind the oddball Linux user.
So the real question is, how many people really ARE affected?
Heartbleed affects everyone because it exposes server secrets irrespective of the client side. But this vulnerability is only really present if both ends use OpenSSL.
How does LibreSSL fix users who do stupid things? This I'd like to know...
LibreSSL does not yet have any users.
"Ultimately you still need to get the encryption information across securely"
This is provably impossible with an active MITM attacker (Though a solution to passive listeners does exist and is in common use). If it could be done, we wouldn't be messing around with complicated certificate signing systems.
Correct. A MITM beats everything done over the wire. You need to secure your shit before you use the wire. You need a pre-shared key to encrypt the initial communication. A certificate sort of does this, but not really because we still trust them blindly and we initially accept them over the same wire. The proper way to do shit would be for you to go to your bank in person, for example, and generate 2 keys - one for you to use to talk to your bank and one for the bank to use to talk to you. You then use that key when establishing your first communication with the bank, and they use theirs. You can use whatever encryption you want, you can deploy a key-changing scheme, or a certificate scheme like we have now, whatever.
Your initial key exchange must be done securely. Doing it in person is the most secure way possible, but it's also the least convenient. Doing it over the wire is NEVER secure against a MITM.
So it is 100% save!! Yay!! ;-)