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Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

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Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#51
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researcher's reaction is correct. OpenBSD maintainers' lack of patience may have led to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

The researcher’s lack of full disclosure may have lead to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

As far as I understood, this attack has no client-side mitigation that could be employed other than treating every wifi as an open network. The attack might already be known to hostile actors or may have become known during the embargo, but full disclosure without an embargo would guarantee that clients are at risk without mitigation. An embargo at least gives time to prep patches and protect at least a portion of the clients.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#52
post #31
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the first time OpenBSD does not respect embargoes, for example https://lwn.net/Articles/726585/ and https://lwn.net/Articles/726580/

" As a compromise, I allowed them to silently patch the vulnerability. " The way I read that they broke no embargo

They were pressured by OpenBSD to do so, and regret it. That doesn't mean they broke embargo, but it also doesn't reflect well on them. Do you think Theo would've respected the embargo if they had said "no, do not patch until the embargo date?"

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#53
"This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on."

As much as this is a scare tactic to get people to demand vendor patches, it's been true for https for a while.

Browsers don't have any trick (that I know of) to enforce https on first connection. HSTS is defeated by simply rejecting connections to https - the user will retry the site from different devices and destroy their hsts cache in order to reach the site. Assuming the site used hsts.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#54
post #47
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They agreed, but now they regret the decision and wouldn't make it again. To prevent themselves from doing so, they will not speak with OpenBSD until later in the process.

What's the word for pressuring a person until they make a decision they immediately regret?

[deleted]

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#55
post #36
post #5

> This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on. ... if transmitted over plaintext http

Note that in the demo video they use SSLStrip to cancel attempts of websites to switch to https. The only protection here is HSTS (which is not enabled by most websites, but major ones like banks will usually have them) and manually typing https:// in your address.

You can (and should) also be using HTTPS Everywhere: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#56
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researcher's reaction is correct. OpenBSD maintainers' lack of patience may have led to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

The researcher’s lack of full disclosure may have lead to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

I wonder when the NSA and CIA was responsibly informed about this vulnerability.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researcher’s lack of full disclosure may have lead to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

As far as I understood, this attack has no client-side mitigation that could be employed other than treating every wifi as an open network. The attack might already be known to hostile actors or may have become known during the embargo, but full disclosure without an embargo would guarantee that clients are at risk without mitigation. An embargo at least gives time to prep patches and protect at least a portion of th…

Either there is a possibility for patches to be prepared during an embargo or there is “no client-side mitigation”, you can’t have both. From reading the rest of this thread, it appears that it is quite possible to patch this on clients such that, if you are using a patched client, you are safe. Disclosing earlier would have lead to more people having patched clients earlier and hence being safe.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#58
post #39
post #6

Is there a way I can install an open source phone OS on my old Android phones to keep them patched? I'm not prepared to keep buying new phones just because manufacturers only provide intermittent updates for a year or two. Anyone got any suggestions for options?

Unfortunately, Google has given app developers a quite powerful tool to disable the use of their apps on non-official OS images, in the form of SafetyNet. So even if you can install an open source version of Android expect a bunch of stuff to no longer work afterwards.

Magisk (/system/less root) currently passes the SafetyNet checks and it, and it's MagiskManager App, are both FL/OSS and hosted on github [0] as well as pre-built images linked from XDA [1].

I'm using it successfully with LineageOS 14.1 (Android 7.1.2).

[0] https://github.com/topjohnwu

[1] https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#59
post #12
post #9

It seems that OpenBSD already patched their source code and that wasn't to the likings of the researcher. In the future he will now delay notifying OpenBSD of vulnerabilities. Why did OpenBSD silently release a patch before the embargo? OpenBSD was notified of the vulnerability on 15 July 2017, before CERT/CC was involved in the coordination. Quite quickly, Theo de Raadt replied and critiqued the tentative disclosure…

Not the first time OpenBSD does not respect embargoes, for example https://lwn.net/Articles/726585/ and https://lwn.net/Articles/726580/

Sounds like the researcher is at fault for putting OpenBSD on their list. If you cut a deal with someone who serially defects, at a certain point the onus shifts from them to your lack of foresight.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#60
post #16
post #9

It seems that OpenBSD already patched their source code and that wasn't to the likings of the researcher. In the future he will now delay notifying OpenBSD of vulnerabilities. Why did OpenBSD silently release a patch before the embargo? OpenBSD was notified of the vulnerability on 15 July 2017, before CERT/CC was involved in the coordination. Quite quickly, Theo de Raadt replied and critiqued the tentative disclosure…

The researcher's reaction is correct. OpenBSD maintainers' lack of patience may have led to this vulnerability being discovered and exploited by other people.

You got everything wrong. If big vendors are unable to patch their proprietary products in an acceptable time, that shouldn't put others at risk. Users shouldn't choose their products...

Think about it in a different way: What if a vulnerability was discovered in TLS and FOSS implementations patched it, but there is an embargo for supposedly protecting some banking software? What if NSA/CIA/other agencies find out about it (they would know immediately) and use it to target users/activists?

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