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Socat Weak Crypto Draws Suspicions Of a Backdoor (threatpost.com)
msm1267 writes: Socat is the latest open source tool to come under suspicion that it is backdoored. A security advisory published Monday warned that the OpenSSL address implementation in Socat contains a hard-coded Diffie-Hellman 1024-bit prime number that was not prime. "The effective cryptographic strength of a key exchange using these parameters was weaker than the one one could get by using a prime p," the advisory said. "Moreover, since there is no indication of how these parameters were chosen, the existence of a trapdoor that makes possible for an eavesdropper to recover the shared secret from a key exchange that uses them cannot be ruled out." Socat said it has generated a new prime that is 2048 bits long; versions 1.7.3.0 and 2.0.0-b8 are affected. The advisory adds that a temporary workaround would be to disable the Diffie-Hellman ciphers.
Putting on my tin-foil hat, it almost seems like there is a coordinated program to backdoor security products, and attribute them to a 'mistake'. But that's just me being paranoid.
This cannot happen accidentally. We have for example versions of the Miller-Rabin test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Rabin_primality_test which easily test primality if you believe the Riemann Hypothesis and other versions which unconditionally give such a high probability that one is more likely to have had a cosmic ray wreck your computing results than for the test to be erroneous. You can use for example this Javascript http://www.javascripter.net/math/primes/millerrabinprimalitytest.htm. There's no obvious way one would come up with a composite number unless one was deliberately trying. Hopefully there's enough of a record to note when this fake prime was put in.
link to the technical discussion from the article (which propeller heads may safely skip).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Some time ago I decided to go purely OpenBSD. I do my best to only use software they've provided, except when there's absolutely no other option.
They might not be perfect, but the OpenBSD devs have repeatedly shown that they take security very seriously, and their security practices are much beyond those of other projects' practices.
I can't imagine how anybody who cares about security would run Linux these days. I don't think that systemd, for example, has undergone a security audit anywhere near as stringent as that which the OpenBSD devs subject their code to.
Heck, the OpenBSD devs will even fork third party software and fix and maintain it themselves if the original authors aren't capable of meeting the extremely stringent standards of the OpenBSD devs.
All other projects should strive to be like OpenBSD when it comes to security. They're the leaders who we all need to look up to.
So the crypto "experts" repeatedly tell us not to roll our own crypto. So we use theirs instead. Then we find out that it's buggy as all fuck. Just look at OpenSSL, and the many security flaws it has been found to have. Now there's this flaw with this utility, plus the many other incidents lately.
Why the hell should we trust these people any longer? It's not like these bugs are obscure or justifiable in some way. I mean, these supposed "experts" are fucking up the most basic stuff! These are mistakes that we mere mortals would probably not have made had we, gasp, rolled our own crypto.
The lesson we should all learn from this is that when self-proclaimed "experts" tell you to not do something on our own, we should be extra cautious using whatever they're pushing us to use instead. It could very well be much, much worse than anything we'd create on our own.
what is the length of the smallest prime factor of this "prime". the length of the smallest prime factor would determine the actual strength of the encryption.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The correct term for this is backhole.
Not terribly bright, are ye? Failing to choose a prime number where a prime number is required is language-independent.
They can neither confirm nor deny, nor admit electronically or in print, that they have been backdoored.
Even if it's obvious (and a requirement) that they are.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This proves that NetCat(nc) is superior to socat. NetCat has no such vulnerability.
Suck it socat!
Socat Weak Crypto Draws Suspicions Of a Backdoor
I thought we were calling them "backholes" now?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
FFS it's open source. Modify the code so that shit is more secure, and revoke privs to the retard responsible for putting something like that there in the first place, until he has demonstrably removed his head from his ass (and even then, leave the crypto to the big boys, cause you're way outta your depth son)
Devuan (the fork of debian) sure doesn't take security seriously (neither does debian).
They pooh poohd a request to bring things like the bastille-linux hardening script back in (would work fine for Devuan as no systemd), saying a REAL system admin does all the 100 config things HIMSELF!
(Bastille goes back to the early 2000s, they're just trying to protect their jobs, fat old blowhard fucks)
Then they chewed out someone for being sexist. :( )
(SJW pieces of shit too