Slashdot Mirror
Australian PLAID Crypto, ISO Conspiracies, and German Tanks
New submitter Gaglia writes: PLAID, the Australian 'unbreakable' smart card identification protocol has been recently analyzed in this scientific paper (disclaimer: I am one of the authors, and this is a personal statement.)
Technically, the protocol is a disaster. In addition to many questionable design choices, we found ways for tracing user identities and recover card access capabilities. The attacks are efficient (few seconds on 'home' hardware in some cases), and involve funny techniques such as RSA moduli fingerprinting and... German tanks. See this entry on Matt Green's crypto blog for a pleasant-to-read explanation.
But the story behind PLAID's standardization is possibly even more disturbing. PLAID was pushed into ISO with a so-called "fast track" procedure. Technical loopholes made it possible to cut off from any discussion the ISO groups responsible for crypto and security analysis. Concerns from tech-savvy experts in the other national panels were dismissed or ignored. We contacted ISO and CERT Australia before going public with our paper, but all we got was a questionable and somewhat irate response (PDF) by PLAID's project editor (our reply here). Despite every possible evidence of bad design, PLAID is now approved as ISO standard, and is coming to you very soon inside security products which will advertise non-existing privacy capabilities.
The detailed story of PLAID in the paper is worth a read, and casts many doubts on the efficacy of the most important standardizing body in the world. It is interesting to see how a "cryptography" product can be approved at ISO without undergoing any real security scrutiny.
On a related note, the enthusiastic comments to PLAID's design made by a few readers in the old Slashdot story reminds us as a cautionary tale that you need cryptographers to assess the security of cryptography. Quoting Bruce Schneier: amateurs produce amateur cryptography.
Technically, the protocol is a disaster. In addition to many questionable design choices, we found ways for tracing user identities and recover card access capabilities. The attacks are efficient (few seconds on 'home' hardware in some cases), and involve funny techniques such as RSA moduli fingerprinting and... German tanks. See this entry on Matt Green's crypto blog for a pleasant-to-read explanation.
But the story behind PLAID's standardization is possibly even more disturbing. PLAID was pushed into ISO with a so-called "fast track" procedure. Technical loopholes made it possible to cut off from any discussion the ISO groups responsible for crypto and security analysis. Concerns from tech-savvy experts in the other national panels were dismissed or ignored. We contacted ISO and CERT Australia before going public with our paper, but all we got was a questionable and somewhat irate response (PDF) by PLAID's project editor (our reply here). Despite every possible evidence of bad design, PLAID is now approved as ISO standard, and is coming to you very soon inside security products which will advertise non-existing privacy capabilities.
The detailed story of PLAID in the paper is worth a read, and casts many doubts on the efficacy of the most important standardizing body in the world. It is interesting to see how a "cryptography" product can be approved at ISO without undergoing any real security scrutiny.
On a related note, the enthusiastic comments to PLAID's design made by a few readers in the old Slashdot story reminds us as a cautionary tale that you need cryptographers to assess the security of cryptography. Quoting Bruce Schneier: amateurs produce amateur cryptography.
His erect penis,
Plugged inside a man's anus.
He is a faggot.
Even faster than LUDICROUS.
Australians have been selling their freedom for security for years. Socialized society, insane gun control, and their crypto attitude is just horrible.
The detailed story of PLAID in the paper is worth a read, and casts many doubts on the efficacy of the most important standardizing body in the world. It is interesting to see how a "cryptography" product can be approved at ISO without undergoing any real security scrutiny.
Not really surprising given the Microsoft OOXML standard controversy a few years ago. I suppose the ISO could always have been susceptible to influence peddling in the past, but the OOXML thing was the first time I, and a lot of others, became aware of it.
Now we know that anything with PLAID insecurity (ISO/IEC 25185-1) should be automatically removed from consideration. I suspect as many new products will come out with this as there will be with MD5 and SHA-1 over the next few years. It's a dead standard before it was even published.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
ISO JTC1/SC27 is meeting right now in Jaipur India. I'm one of the US delegates, but screw ups leading to no visa meant I didn't go.
I imagine they might be having some discussions in the corridors about this.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Here's the meat of the "questionable and somewhat irate" response:
The following are factual and editorial errors in the document:
1. Abstract – States that for AS 5185-2010 "we show that the privacy properties of PLAID are significantly weaker than claimed" but in fact the report shows that the privacy properties of PLAID are unbroken by the attack and in fact unbreakable by the attack. The report actually shows that the "ID Leakage" properties of the protocol (as defined in AS 5185-2010) could be better implemented in the 2010 version of the reference implementation by implementing the fake "ShillKey" better - see further discussion in section 6.2.
2. Abstract – states that it will be ...." reporting a number of undesirable cryptographic features
of the protocol" This is however unargued and not actualised. The reference appears to
logically means section 5.3 of the Unpicking PLAID paper however, as shown in section 7 of
this discussion these are either not claims of the protocol or are not shown to be weaknesses
by any argument presented by the Researchers - see further discussion in section 7.
3. History in Introduction is not 100% correct – the Public Consultation process included additional workshops and stages – see section 4 "History" above
4. P3, Last paragraph, the words "added for privacy reasons" is incorrect, the ShillKey was added to delay and distract an atacker, privacy was never an issue and is not stated as a design requirement.
5. P4, last paragraph, P5 first paragraph – Not clear what point is being made – OPACITY is a completely different protocol based on Eliptic Curve technology. Last sentence seems to mix this Paper on PLAID up with a completely seperate report on OPACITY.
6. P3 2nd last paragraph the Researchers state "Even though the encryption key in RSA is usually public, in PLAID it is kept secret to enhance privacy". This is an incorrect representation of PLAID, the reason for both keys being kept secret is in fact to prevent any leakage to an attacker of the AES diversification seed in order to enhance security. Note that PLAID is not a PKI, and the use of public and private key concepts is not relevant, ALL keys are secured in (preferably) hardware crypto devices.
I'm no crypto expert - can anyone explain to me why these points aren't valid? Especially points 1 and 4.
In crypto, "unbreakabe" is a codeword for "amateur scam".
This is so unlike the trustworthy NSA and their rock-solid, shenanigan-free encryption wares.
Entertainment value set to 2048 bits.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
It's irrelevant to the core logic of the issue, but misspellings and grammar errors are a pretty good indicator of the quality of a piece of work.
A "mute" item would be "(1) refraining from making sound or (2) silent" -- one that does not make an actual audible sound.
A "moot" item is one that is "(1) of no importance or (2) merely hypothetical."
There are many other errors that seem to indicate this whole document was whipped up in a hurry by a pissed off individual without review, but the high-school-level error "mute point" sticks out like a sore thumb.
Seeing this kind of minor but highly-visible mistake in the headings and TOC of a formal document... does not lend credibility to the whole.
I think not...(*poof*)
Hi, as someone who also worked for a company which was working for Centrelink at the time (Not involved in PLAID) I have to admit that I admire the development of PLAID because the commercial products available were rubbish and "Security agencies" such as NSA and DSD were not helpful in this regard. A significant gap in the way that smart-cards which were being used for access control such as building security worked was found and an attempt was made to re-mediate this.
Protocols evolve over time to either become better or reveal the fact that they are fundamentally flawed. SSL was not written by cryptographic experts it was created by Netscape and it has evolved over time to secure a significant percentage of Internet transactions. PLAID exists because all of the available security products in this space were fundamentally broken and PLAID was an attempted to fix this problem. During the time since this protocol was created I've watch the various debacles with a number of propriety commercial smart card products used in public transport. I would hope that PLAID will evolve over time with the assistance of interested parties to be an open protocol which provides a solution in this problem space.
One criticism of this appears to be that a department which spends billions of dollars on ICT infrastructure should engage in the development of a product when there is an identified gap identified in the market. The spend in total was in the hundred thousand dollars so in reality the project was done on a shoestring is it's not surprising that there are flaws.
I lost all respect for ISO standards when Microsoft was successful in getting their Excel spreadsheet 'standard' approved, over the strenuous objections of the technical committees, by essentially lobbying (bribing?) enough ministers in enough european governments.
At that point it became obvious that ISO was for sale.
pgmer6809
I'm the author of the original submission. There was a mistake in the story, as we never contacted AusCERT, but CERT Australia instead. The similarity of the names was a bit unfortunate. I apologize for this error. Could some moderator please edit the submission? Thank you!