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Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

daemonology.net

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Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#32

Post by djcapelis »

arethuza wrote: post #20
cperciva wrote: post #2

Paging tptacek, please come to the white courtesy phone and explain that SSL is the greatest thing since sliced bread. ;-)

As far as I can see this isn't a fundamental problem with SSL, but the fact that most environments come pre-installed with certificates for CAs that aren't really worthy of trust. [Edit: Certainly looking through the list of Trusted Root CA certs on this machine I have no idea who 95% of these organisations are - I also have a certificate installed by a proxy so it can intercept any SSL traffic and inspect the conten…

Unfortunately SSL's PKI is a fundamental part of how people use it. That said, I would agree with you if you were to say that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TLS protocol spec itself, aside from it being probably a bit more complex than we really really need.

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#33

Post by jgrahamc »

This is something I've been talking about for a while. Back in 2009 I gave a presentation at Virus Bulletin on JavaScript security problems and highlighted some statistics on remotely loaded JavaScript:

1. 47% of the top 1,000 web sites include google-analytics.com

2. 69% include a remotely loaded web analytics solution

3. 97% load something remotely

If you can attack any of these you get access to a very large number of web sites and can inject arbitrary code. Clearly forging the SSL certificate for SSL loaded remote JavaScript is one way in, another is an attack on the DNS of non-securely loaded remote JavaScript.

At the time techcrunch.com loaded 18 different JavaScript elements remotely. Attacking one would allow a complete site takeover using JavaScript. And those 18 elements could easily have been loading other elements so that attack could have been done through a third-party.

A quick survey in the UK shows that the banks HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland all load third-party JavaScript on the secure page used for online banking login. Barclays look like they are not, but in fact the domain they are using for one piece of JavaScript is a CNAME for a third-party.

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#34

Post by swombat »

I know that security through obscurity is no security at all, but I don't think it's particularly clever or helpful to give direct, useful advice to the goons in Iran.

This is not an anonymous argument. If you were sitting next to me, I'd be, right now, arguing that you should not publish this article because it will only cause harm overall.

What's next? "Why terrorists are stupid and what they should do to cause maximum damage"? How will you feel when the Iranian government does implement your kind suggestion?

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#35

Post by simonw »

swombat wrote: post #34

I know that security through obscurity is no security at all, but I don't think it's particularly clever or helpful to give direct, useful advice to the goons in Iran. This is not an anonymous argument. If you were sitting next to me, I'd be, right now, arguing that you should not publish this article because it will only cause harm overall. What's next? "Why terrorists are stupid and what they should do to cause max…

If they're smart enough to forge SSL certificates, they're certainly smart enough to know about XSS.

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#36

Post by xorglorb »

kahawe wrote: post #18

Can anyone explain to me how I can open up a CA and get my CA certs distributed with browsers and JVMs and what not? Is there some sort of "IANA" that approves and manages this and why would they approve all sort of shady CAs which clearly are a dangerous weak link in the whole SSL construct.

There is no approval process, no central authority. If you want your CA in OS X, you talk to Apple, if you want it in Windows, you talk to Microsoft. If you want it in Firefox, you talk to Mozilla.

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#37

Post by buddydvd »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #14

I'm not a big fan of handing over the security of my website to third parties by letting them inject arbitrary code into my pages, eg Google Analytics. A lot of people seem to do it without giving it any consideration though. You have to weigh up the pros and cons I agree. However, do you need that like button which works by including javascript from facebook.com, or can you live without it? Even better, can you do s…

> can you do something alternative which allows you to have a like button, but without including third party script?

How about create a JavaScript library that sandboxes execution of third-party scripts by loading them in iframes based off of a different domain? This would allow site owners to embed Google Analytics or FB Like buttons without worrying about the third-party scripts getting compromised or becoming malicious.

Re: Iran forged the wrong SSL certificate

#39

Post by hendi_ »

cperciva wrote: post #10
fun2have wrote: post #9

Does this apply to ad networks as well?

Depends how you insert the ad code into your website; but probably, yes.

If the ad code is inserted via JavaScript, then yes, the problem is real. Most ad code is inserted via JS, e.g. Google's AdSense.

But according to https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=... AdSense isn't available over https, so this specific problem of forged SSL certs does not apply here. But if you embed non-SSL code in your httpS page (and I assume that most users just ignore the message that would popup in this case, alerting them that non-SSL code is loaded into the "secure" site) there's no need to do that: just do the MitM attack.

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