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The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

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Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#31

Post by vorpalhex »

dleslie wrote: post #29
markus_zhang wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good/bad guy in this scenario if you model the world in a way such that there are people who have and people who don't.

Sure there is! There are people who act with malice and sadism, people driven to harm others, people overwhelmed by greed and people consumed by a lust for power. And there are people who devote their lives to aiding others, people who are mindful of their community's needs, people who take opportunities to help others over opportunities to help themselves. All these sorts can be found across the whole spectrum of we…

While I generally agree with your take, it's important to remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sometimes the most evil actors are those knights who believe they are fighting for some great holy cause.

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#32

Post by marcan_42 »

troyvit wrote: post #25
ackbar03 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you my friend are free to roll your own crypto

Not that I sanction all of the parent's post, but for instance Telegram did exactly that, and they still receive grief for rolling their own crypto. So per the parent you can either use back-doored state-sponsored encryption or roll your own which nobody trusts. Which is better? Is there another alternative?

State sponsorship doesn't matter, what matters is that it's secure. Everyone knew Dual-EC DRBG was likely backdoored, it stank to hell and back. There are dozens of other CSPRNGs, including other "state sponsored" ones, that pretty clearly aren't. There is also a whole world of crypto developed by people not associated with any state, including the modern ec25519/ChaCha based combinations (which are partly a response to the idea that the widely used NSA proposed ECC parameters may also be backdoored).

There are trustable people doing things right with easy to use libraries you can just drop in today, with documented rationale for the designs and without any "magic numbers" (which are a telltale of the backdoored and suspected-backdoored NSA algorithms).

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#33

Post by COGlory »

A bit of a tangent, but why do people insist on posting these things to twitter? They are so annoying to read like that. What does twitter offer that other platforms, designed for this type of content, don't?

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#34

Post by JumpCrisscross »

COGlory wrote: post #33

A bit of a tangent, but why do people insist on posting these things to twitter? They are so annoying to read like that. What does twitter offer that other platforms, designed for this type of content, don't?

> What does twitter offer that other platforms don't?

Its audience.

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#35

Post by haswell »

COGlory wrote: post #33

A bit of a tangent, but why do people insist on posting these things to twitter? They are so annoying to read like that. What does twitter offer that other platforms, designed for this type of content, don't?

> What does twitter offer that other platforms, designed for this type of content, don't?

Wide reach, and ongoing engagement/discussion.

I read threads like this because the follow-on discussion is often just as or more interesting than the thread itself.

I think a blog post is also a good option here, but most blogs aren’t well suited for having a discussion.

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#36

Post by teawrecks »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34
COGlory wrote: post #33

A bit of a tangent, but why do people insist on posting these things to twitter? They are so annoying to read like that. What does twitter offer that other platforms, designed for this type of content, don't?

> What does twitter offer that other platforms don't? Its audience.

Twitter has made it too annoying to use their site without an account. I'm no longer part of that audience.

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#37

Post by Youden »

JasonFruit wrote: post #22

This bit stuck out to me: > The second lesson is that “serious” people are always inclined away from worst-case predictions. In bridge building and politics you can listen to those people. But computer security is adversarial: the conscious goal of attackers is to bring about worst-case outcomes. Are they suggesting that bridge-building and politics are not adversarial? It seems to me that bridges and politics are we…

Yes, they're suggesting that bridge building isn't adversarial.

In bridge building you might often ignore questions like "what if that nearby skyscraper fell on the bridge" or "what if there was a 100-year flood every day for a week". They're scenarios that can conceivably happen but they're very unlikely.

In computer security, you wouldn't be so safe because you need to protect your digital bridge from an adversary who has no problems demolishing the nearby figurative skyscraper.

Of course there are real-world situations where bridge building is adversarial, if you're in a war-zone for instance. I think the author is discussing more civil situations like "should we spend an extra $1B to make the bridge asteroid proof".

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#38

Post by [deleted] »

dleslie wrote: post #29
markus_zhang wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good/bad guy in this scenario if you model the world in a way such that there are people who have and people who don't.

Sure there is! There are people who act with malice and sadism, people driven to harm others, people overwhelmed by greed and people consumed by a lust for power. And there are people who devote their lives to aiding others, people who are mindful of their community's needs, people who take opportunities to help others over opportunities to help themselves. All these sorts can be found across the whole spectrum of we…

[deleted]

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#39

Post by mindslight »

Was this modified Dual EC ever used for actual sessions? It's my recollection that programs offered Dual EC as an option, but never the default one. And nobody enabled it because it was slow, and had little advantage. But perhaps that was different with NSA mandating government use standards?

Re: The NSA's Backdoor in Dual EC

#40

Post by gzer0 » 

  Searching for the text "strcmp" finds a static string that is referenced in the sub_ED7D94 function. Looking at the strings output, we can see some interesting string references, including auth_admin_ssh_special and auth_admin_internal. Searching for auth_admin_internal finds the sub_13DBEC function. This function has a strcmp call that is not present in the 6.3.0r19b firmware:

  The argument to the strcmp call is
[1] is the backdoor. [2] is more details regarding discovery.

[1] https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/blob/master/m...

[2] https://blog.rapid7.com/2015/12/20/cve-2015-7755-juniper-scr...

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