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IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

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Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#91

Post by ChuckMcM »

timlyo wrote: post #87
ChuckMcM wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a discussion once, back when I was wearing a crypto hat, which went like this: Me: "Yes triple-DES is reasonably secure, how do you exchange keys?" Them: "That is part of the connection setup." Me: "Great, how do you protect the keys during setup?" Them: "What do you mean?" Me: "What form of encryption do you use when you're doing the setup, and sending over the keys?" Them: "Well we really can't encrypt the se…

Trying to learn some more about crypto, what sort of answer would you be looking for? Would Diffie-Hellman be appropriate?

Yes (and no). Asymmetric which is based on key pairs (generally one public and one private) allow you to pass around a key that can be intercepted without compromising your ability to communicate securely using the key your didn't pass around. That said, it is always important to be attuned to whether or not those keys can be compromised by "brute force" or through a weakness.

So the vendor who is thinking about it, would have told me about their public key system which is used in the initial transfer to protect the secrets. Then they would have described how they can upgrade and change keys over time as attackers gain the upper hand on various bit lengths, and how the elements of their system that depend on randomness, do so without being susceptible to a birthday attack or an algorithm attack on their PRNG.

When they do that, I know they've been thinking seriously about how such systems are built and deployed and there is some hope that doing the do diligence "deep dive" will show me a solid system.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#92

Post by cryo »

supergeek133 wrote: post #6

Did they detail if they heard anything back from Atmel? Or did they reach out to the Zigbee alliance? I'm reading through the paper and haven't found it yet. Only that they heard from Philips. This is also why you're starting to see more and more devices opt to a completely device to cloud infrastructure instead of local communication. More control of the stack on device and in the air.

There is a official statement now

http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-alliance-statement-on-security/

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#93

Post by t0mas88 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #91
timlyo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to learn some more about crypto, what sort of answer would you be looking for? Would Diffie-Hellman be appropriate?

Yes (and no). Asymmetric which is based on key pairs (generally one public and one private) allow you to pass around a key that can be intercepted without compromising your ability to communicate securely using the key your didn't pass around. That said, it is always important to be attuned to whether or not those keys can be compromised by "brute force" or through a weakness. So the vendor who is thinking about it,…

And one part that is often forgotten: How to authenticate the other side.

Without authentication asymmetric encryption is still useless, because someone could man-in-the-middle your key exchange, swap out the public key that is sent both ways and make either side think they now have a secure channel with each other while in reality they have a secure channel with the man in the middle.

So the challenge is that they'll need some equivalent of what in the HTTPS world would be a Certificate Authority. For which you'll have the same kind of update/upgrade path questions that you very rightfully ask for the key lengths.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#94

Post by ekux44 »

mivok wrote: post #62
ekux44 wrote: post #39

Philips may have fixed the vulnerability in an update, but that's insufficient if these devices don't have high update rates. I wonder how many years until there are fewer than 15000 vulnerable Hue devices in Paris... We should hold manufacturers accountable for not aggressively pushing security updates on their users.

Hue forces updates on you every time you go into the app if there's one available, and you can't use the app until you've updated. Granted this isn't ideal if you primarily use your light switch or an amazon echo to control the lights, and fully automatic updates would probably be better, but it comes pretty close to aggressively pushing updates.

I use my Hue lights daily, but I haven't opened the official app in years thanks to 3P apps & Philips's own Zigbee switches.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#95

Post by user5994461 »

runeks wrote: post #78
user5994461 wrote: post #49

Everything will be fine =) It's not even possible to get two ZigBee products from different manufacturers to operate (like a switch and a lamp). The attack can't succeed at what the industry's been failing for 10 years.

> It's not even possible to get two ZigBee products from > different manufacturers to operate (like a switch and a > lamp). It may require a distinct payload for each type of device/software, but it should be possible. You start by infecting a group of devices of one type with a specific payload, and from there see which other types of devices are in range, and either carry the required payloads with you or fetch one…

You can't jump from and to -any- devices. They can't talk to each other. They have different network stacks.

Lemme me give a simple illustration. You know that wifi has different encryptions standards: WPA1, WPA2, WPA2-something, TKIP, AES (and mixes of those).

Now, imagine that Zigbee has no encryption standard, each manufacturer invented something of his own. [That's a simple example of a piece of the L2 layer. Trust me, ALL the upper layers are are even more of a mess :D].

There are thousands of bugs in Zigbee devices for sure, but they are specific per device/firmware/network stacks. Not cool enough for a fun apocalypse.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#96

Post by ChuckMcM »

t0mas88 wrote: post #93
ChuckMcM wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes (and no). Asymmetric which is based on key pairs (generally one public and one private) allow you to pass around a key that can be intercepted without compromising your ability to communicate securely using the key your didn't pass around. That said, it is always important to be attuned to whether or not those keys can be compromised by "brute force" or through a weakness. So the vendor who is thinking about it,…

And one part that is often forgotten: How to authenticate the other side. Without authentication asymmetric encryption is still useless, because someone could man-in-the-middle your key exchange, swap out the public key that is sent both ways and make either side think they now have a secure channel with each other while in reality they have a secure channel with the man in the middle. So the challenge is that they'l…

Very true. Early on in Java's gestation I was building into it a full capabilities system for security. One of the challenges of loading classes which provided export proscribed encryption capability was having the JVM authenticate the class, and having the class authenticate the JVM it was being loaded in to.

Of course not all situations need that, but understanding what the endpoints are trying to achieve and how that objective could be compromised by an attacker will inform on which identities must be established, and to whom, in order to achieve that objective.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#98

Post by WorldMaker »

ekux44 wrote: post #94
mivok wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hue forces updates on you every time you go into the app if there's one available, and you can't use the app until you've updated. Granted this isn't ideal if you primarily use your light switch or an amazon echo to control the lights, and fully automatic updates would probably be better, but it comes pretty close to aggressively pushing updates.

I use my Hue lights daily, but I haven't opened the official app in years thanks to 3P apps & Philips's own Zigbee switches.

I am very happy that my preferred third party app (Huetro, which runs on just about every device the UWP supports) checks for updates for me (and is kind enough not to nag about it but make it clear when one is available) because I never open the official app anymore (but as this article points out do need to keep things updated).

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#99

Post by supergeek133 »

cryo wrote: post #92
supergeek133 wrote: post #6

Did they detail if they heard anything back from Atmel? Or did they reach out to the Zigbee alliance? I'm reading through the paper and haven't found it yet. Only that they heard from Philips. This is also why you're starting to see more and more devices opt to a completely device to cloud infrastructure instead of local communication. More control of the stack on device and in the air.

There is a official statement now http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-alliance-statement-on-security/

Thanks.

Re: IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction

#100

Post by rhizome »

danharaj wrote: post #53
rhizome wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought neoliberalism was more about contorting society until they meet the needs of the market.

Two sides of the same process: force markets to exist where they didn't or shouldn't.

Sure, but it's not a symmetrical or reflexive relationship.
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