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I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

mcpherrin.ca

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Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#91

Post by cyanydeez »

jetbalsa wrote: post #80
hnmullany wrote: post #75

I was the product manager with responsibility for root certificates in the Netscape 4.51 browser. It's crazy to see someone factor it 25 years later. Just to reply to some people in the comments. Yes, we knew export grade encryption was weak - that was the point - that the NSA could decrypt it - and the govt. required us to do it anyway. FWIW - we had the goal of expanding the list of root authorities in the 4.5x rel…

Its a shame that Microsoft ate Netscape's lunch so early on. I still use Firefox and have fond memories of Netscape (v7) when growing up.

Its a shame public internet is npt viewed as a public utility

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#92

Post by eltondegeneres »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #19
63 wrote: post #11

A bit unfortunate that so many of the interesting bits were left to ai. I would've enjoyed some commentary on why the custom TLS implementation was necessary. Oh well. Update: found this explanation in a comment at the top of the (surprisingly short) Go file in the linked repo: The target client is Netscape Communicator 4.51 (both the 40-bit export build and the 128-bit US build) with its clock set to the year 2000.…

A while back I helped a friend (read: dumped a bunch of compute power into it) brute force the SSL keys for Sega's "Phantasy Star Online" Dreamcast game. They used a similar kind of custom (and flawed) TLS implementation in their game(s) which allowed signing new certificates after brute forcing. The benefit to this is that users can now play these games without needing to burn a new CD with either the SSL certs swap…

> A while back I helped a friend (read: dumped a bunch of compute power into it) brute force the SSL keys for Sega's "Phantasy Star Online" Dreamcast game.

Is there anything published online about this? It looks like the Sylverant website still requires patching the game.

https://sylverant.net/connecting-to-sylverant/

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#93

Post by mitxela »

upofadown wrote: post #67
throwawayk7h wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

out of curiosity, how long would 2048-bit RSA take to factor?

My article: 2048 Bit RSA and the Year 2030 https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:20482030 We don't have any way to predict when and if 2048 bit RSA would be factorable at this time. We would need a breakthrough in hardware and/or algorithms. The common estimation that it is equivalent to the difficulty of brute forcing symmetrical 112 bit encryption seems to be based on some sort of straightforward extrapolation. It…

Which isn't a very good margin in cryptography, where we usually aim for things like "longer than the universe's lifetime if every atom was a CPU". But RSA is really slow so we have to compromise encryption speed with cracking speed.

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#94

Post by mcpherrinm »

hnmullany wrote: post #75

I was the product manager with responsibility for root certificates in the Netscape 4.51 browser. It's crazy to see someone factor it 25 years later. Just to reply to some people in the comments. Yes, we knew export grade encryption was weak - that was the point - that the NSA could decrypt it - and the govt. required us to do it anyway. FWIW - we had the goal of expanding the list of root authorities in the 4.5x rel…

Fascinating! My involvement in this space starts much later, so it’s always interesting to hear from folks involved at the time. The rumours about monetizing the root program is one I’ve heard repeated but never anything concrete.

These days with the CA/Browser forum, CCADB, and openly run root programs from Mozilla, Chrome and others, this is all much better documented than what went on in the early days, so I definitely have some strong historical interest in what came before.

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#95

Post by mitxela »

gosub100 wrote: post #82
ColinWright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point at some papers or articles that talk about attacks specifically on RSA? I've done a search and have a few references, but I'd be interested to know if you have any particular examples in mind. I know that factoring (which attacks RSA) is sub-exponential, and I know that implementations of RSA (bad choices of primes, timing attacks, etc) can have weaknesses ... I'm just interested as to whether you have…

Check out the ROCA attack: www.techtarget.com/cybersecurity/tip/The-ROCA-vulnerability-How-it-works-and-what-to-do-about-it%3famp=1 In practice it was confined to specific TPM modules, but in principle it shows how one flaw in the RNG can jeopardize the whole system. I also remember seeing a similar vuln in certificates where an attacker _generated_ millions of certs and was able to somehow get the private cert by tr…

Return of Coppersmith Attack is, as the name suggests, a really old attack whose fix has been known for a decades but was missed in certain newer implementations. It does indeed underscore how RSA is tricky and you shouldn't do it yourself. Everything has to go right for it to be secure, unlike something like AES which doesn't have such subtle failure modes.

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#96

Post by ranger_danger »

zatkin wrote: post #32
ranger_danger wrote: post #31

How was it actually factored though? Where is the code for that? How was the private key created and how are the new certs issued?

The author mentions CADO-NFS right in the article: https://cado-nfs.gitlabpages.inria.fr/

Yes but used how? What is the exact configuration and details for reproducing this?

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#97

Post by CursedSilicon »

jimmaswell wrote: post #46
CursedSilicon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's flip it, then Is the "anti AI mob" in the room with us right now? If not, why did you feel the need to lament it?

This entire comment section is almost entirely people bemoaning AI output, calling AI a "slop machine", and you posted your regressive religious screed against it as if it were something to be proud of, seemingly to the approval of others. nearly every comment section with AI involved is like this, and many comment sections where AI is not involved. It deserves pushback.

Ah,

So. I (and one other person) disagreed with you visibly. Ergo you felt personally called out :)

Sounds like a bit of main character syndrome

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#98

Post by Sophira »

MrDOS wrote: post #77
excalibur wrote: post #14

> Assuming you’re somehow running Netscape 4.51 with a clock set before E-Certify roots expired on 2003-10-16, you can use these private keys to issue certificates. This describes zero people on the planet… except for this VM I set up. The planet has a lot of people.

Are very many of them time travellers?

You'd be surprised.

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#99

Post by CursedSilicon »

ricksunny wrote: post #48
CursedSilicon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I helped a friend (read: dumped a bunch of compute power into it) brute force the SSL keys for Sega's "Phantasy Star Online" Dreamcast game. They used a similar kind of custom (and flawed) TLS implementation in their game(s) which allowed signing new certificates after brute forcing. The benefit to this is that users can now play these games without needing to burn a new CD with either the SSL certs swap…

(I have next to zero knowledge of matters crypto) “Presumably for the OP this kind of work was either outside of their realm of knowledge,” Unnecessary? I don’t even follow the statement’s framing even if I validated the apparent nerdswipe tendency.

Wasn't intended as a "nerdswipe". Wrangling OpenSSL to actually work is a herculean task on a good day. Much less figuring out how to enable ancient crypto protocols within it

It's okay to "not know things". Computers are such an incredibly vast field that there's chunks of them that can simply be beyond some of us

Re: I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s

#100

Post by CursedSilicon »

eltondegeneres wrote: post #92
CursedSilicon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I helped a friend (read: dumped a bunch of compute power into it) brute force the SSL keys for Sega's "Phantasy Star Online" Dreamcast game. They used a similar kind of custom (and flawed) TLS implementation in their game(s) which allowed signing new certificates after brute forcing. The benefit to this is that users can now play these games without needing to burn a new CD with either the SSL certs swap…

> A while back I helped a friend (read: dumped a bunch of compute power into it) brute force the SSL keys for Sega's "Phantasy Star Online" Dreamcast game. Is there anything published online about this? It looks like the Sylverant website still requires patching the game. https://sylverant.net/connecting-to-sylverant/

I'm not sure why they aren't using it. His github repo is over here

https://github.com/patapancakes/dreamconstraint

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