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Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

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Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#51

Post by nickpsecurity »

yeukhon wrote: post #24
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI I think you're getting downvoted because NIST is known to have recommended a pseudo-random number generation algorithm that is believed to have been intentionally designed with a backdoor [1], presumably by some US 3 letter agency. OWASP seems like a decent source for learning about security topics at a high level (particularly web app security). [1] http://dualec.org/

I didn't follow that discussion closely, so I will avoid the argument here on that subject. Overall, NIST is a good resource for comparison. If you work with government, enterprise security, or compliance, you want to go through NIST. If you have spare time I recommend read https://beta.csrc.nist.gov/publications . NIST is also responsible for running https://nvd.nist.gov/ which is a great asset for finding CVE.

I agree. They got subverted at one point by an organization they thought was helping them. Their overall catalog of advice is OK in that it's a lot of the stuff readers would hear from people they paid for IT or INFOSEC advice. Just free instead. A good example are the recommendations in this one for small, business owners that don't know anything about INFOSEC:

http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.7621r1.pdf

DISA has the "STIG's" for security configuration:

http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/Pages/index.aspx

The NSA themselves, the Information Assurance Directorate, had guides on hardening various things. There's one for deploying Chrome in the link below that also references STIG on Chrome:

https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/security-configu...

It would be straight-forward for INFOSEC people to vet the NIST or STIG guides for content accuracy then host that copy on their own sites. Or produce similar guides as some do. Just important to target them at people of low knowledge or competence so they know exactly what they need to do. It's them whose hardware will become part of the next DDOS due to configuration error.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#52

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #51
yeukhon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't follow that discussion closely, so I will avoid the argument here on that subject. Overall, NIST is a good resource for comparison. If you work with government, enterprise security, or compliance, you want to go through NIST. If you have spare time I recommend read https://beta.csrc.nist.gov/publications . NIST is also responsible for running https://nvd.nist.gov/ which is a great asset for finding CVE.

I agree. They got subverted at one point by an organization they thought was helping them. Their overall catalog of advice is OK in that it's a lot of the stuff readers would hear from people they paid for IT or INFOSEC advice. Just free instead. A good example are the recommendations in this one for small, business owners that don't know anything about INFOSEC: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.7621r1…

> They got subverted at one point by an organization they thought was helping them.

Fair points, shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater etc. But as a governmental agency, do they have the autonomy to avoid being similarly subverted in the future? Not rhetorical, I genuinely don't know how they are governed/if they can refuse the "help" of the 3 letter agencies.

Which makes me realize, the 3 letter agencies may have still benefitted by the Dual_EC_DRBG scandal coming to light - what they lost in a backdoor, they gained in a chilling effect on the spread of good crypto practices by staining NIST's reputation.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#53

Post by cvwright »

I'm surprised to see so few recommendations for libsodium. https://download.libsodium.org/doc/

For pretty much any crypto task that a "run-of-the-mill programmer" is likely to run into, they've got you covered.

Secret key encryption: https://download.libsodium.org/doc/secret-key_cryptography/a...

Password hashing: https://download.libsodium.org/doc/password_hashing/

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#54

Post by nickpsecurity »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #52
nickpsecurity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. They got subverted at one point by an organization they thought was helping them. Their overall catalog of advice is OK in that it's a lot of the stuff readers would hear from people they paid for IT or INFOSEC advice. Just free instead. A good example are the recommendations in this one for small, business owners that don't know anything about INFOSEC: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.7621r1…

> They got subverted at one point by an organization they thought was helping them. Fair points, shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater etc. But as a governmental agency, do they have the autonomy to avoid being similarly subverted in the future? Not rhetorical, I genuinely don't know how they are governed/if they can refuse the "help" of the 3 letter agencies. Which makes me realize, the 3 letter agencies m…

"do they have the autonomy to avoid being similarly subverted in the future? Not rhetorical, I genuinely don't know how they are governed/if they can refuse the "help" of the 3 letter agencies."

It could happen to anyone if it's about receiving bad advice from an authority with a conflict of interest. That's why the solution is to either produce good advice for each of the things they're talking about or vet their advice to see if it contains any problems.

"what they lost in a backdoor, they gained in a chilling effect on the spread of good crypto practices by staining NIST's reputation."

I never thought about that. I doubt they intended that but it might be a real benefit for SIGINT side. That's interesting enough angle I'm going to bring it up to regulars on Schneier's blog who discussed the NIST stuff a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#55

Post by danieljscott »

pkd wrote: post #38
danieljscott wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? I've heard lots of people saying that, but not had any concrete reasons why. As far as I know, he's generally correct about the things he discusses. And pretty good at making technical discussions interesting.

http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/steve_gibson/

Yeah, I've seen that site - 1 item in the last 10 years. Not a lot considering that he broadcasts 2 hrs a week. Maybe he's improved since the early 2000s?

Anything else? I don't really understand the extreme reaction he seems to get.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#56

Post by alinajaf »

deckar01 wrote: post #22
alinajaf wrote: post #15

Not necessarily best practices, but I recommend the Matasano Crypto Challenges to basically everyone. I make all of the developers on our team do them too: http://cryptopals.com

Those challenges teach vulnerabilities in old, low level cryptographic primitives. As much as I enjoyed those challenges, they are not a good place to start for a developer trying to build a secure application.

I don't know much about how a developer should try to build a secure application from the get-go. I don't think I've ever worked on or assessed a codebase where that plan worked.

I did the challenges years ago when you had to email in for them. Since then I can count at least five occasions where having done the challenges has allowed me to identify vulnerabilities in real-world crypto. I was usually able to recommend fixes that in theory made those codebases more secure. This is keeping in mind that I'm at best a hobbyist security researcher and just barely a professional developer.

I think there are about seven or eight people on Earth that I would trust to securely implement cryptography in their code. For the rest of us I'm happy with doing the best we can with libraries that make that easy (NaCl), and otherwise trying to find ways to break the thing. The cryptopals challenges help you do that, so that's where I'd recommend a developer start.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#57

Post by bsder »

cvwright wrote: post #53

I'm surprised to see so few recommendations for libsodium. https://download.libsodium.org/doc/ For pretty much any crypto task that a "run-of-the-mill programmer" is likely to run into, they've got you covered. Secret key encryption: https://download.libsodium.org/doc/secret-key_cryptography/a... Password hashing: https://download.libsodium.org/doc/password_hashing/

I would go for TweetNaCl instead.

The problem I have with most of the crypto libraries is that their attack surface is absolutely enormous.

Most people don't need SSL. Most people don't need a zillion choices.

Most people need a single choice that actually works and is resistant to programmer error.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#58

Post by wooshy »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #32

I made this a while ago: http://howtostoreapassword.com . Still relevant I think. :) I should probably update it to use one of the more modern algos, but the availability of good bcrypt libraries makes it solid advice still.

That was pretty comical. I don't know if it is just my connection but it seems to take a pretty long time to load a page with a relatively small amount of content.

Re: Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices

#60

Post by wglb »

cheeze wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low level, yes. But, old? We cover AES, HMAC, stream ciphers, GCM, RSA, DH, SRP, and elliptic curves. The criteria for inclusion on the first 6 sets of challenges was "had to be something we took advantage of on the job at Matasano". It's not textbook stuff. Part of the point of the crypto challenges was to illustrate why people shouldn't work directly with low-level primitives, as a sort of antidote to the kind of a…

The first set of problems are all very simple, but you have to start somewhere. I'm not sure that the cryptopals chalelnges are the best way to learn exactly how you should be implementing everything, but I've found the knowledge that I gained from doing the challenges very applicable in my daily job and definitely helped further my understanding of crypto in a way that reading a book just couldn't do.

Part of the point that I got with cryptopals is how easy it is to break stuff that you thought was hard to break.

There is a theory that we practice on my team that you don't really understand something unless you try to break it. And this team regularly tells developers facts about their programs and systems that previously unknown to them.

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