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Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

spideroak.com

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Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#11
Be careful. It is easy to pay for an audit from a firm that doesn't have a serious cryptography practice. You would reasonably think that any software security firm would be competent in evaluating crypto, or at least crypto basics like whether you're using a sane block cipher mode or failing to authenticate your ciphertext. But it turns out that the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of firms, including some of the best, have no crypto literacy at all. (The best firms that don't do crypto will tell you this and refer you).

We've seen some horror stories. It's hard not to get a little irritated when you're the second firm to assess a target and own it up on day 2 with a trivial CBC padding oracle.

All this means is, when you're talking to a potential auditor, ask them hard questions about cryptography. Ask them to describe some of the crypto vulnerabilities they have found on projects. If they talk about "weak keys" or "bad ciphers", they're unserious.

Zooko's team at Least Authority is a serious crypto practice. Engaging Zooko was a good call!

$1000 per auditor/day is less than you'd pay to get someone to run Nessus on your network from a normal firm. Zooko did you an _enormous_ favor. For crypto work, a rate four times as high wouldn't be out of the ordinary.

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#12
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have any of those libraries been audited so far? Seems like a necessary step for widespread js crypto.

SJCL had substantial peer review during its development, but I'm not aware of a public 3rd party audit from a security firm. Oh yeah, and before people with torches show up, let me clarify that is a Javascript based crypto product but not browser and website based crypto. The deployment target is situations where the code delivery problem is solved: HTML5 mobile apps (including phonegap / cordova), desktop apps with…

SJCL has been audited.

You should ping me via email if you're serious about arranging for OSS crypto to get reviewed, not because I want to sell you audit services, but because someone already beat you to the punch in a big way, and you should talk to them. :)

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#13
post #11

Be careful. It is easy to pay for an audit from a firm that doesn't have a serious cryptography practice. You would reasonably think that any software security firm would be competent in evaluating crypto, or at least crypto basics like whether you're using a sane block cipher mode or failing to authenticate your ciphertext. But it turns out that the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of firms, including som…

We will be conducting ongoing audits and also would like to conduct an audit (hopefully at least partially crowd-funded)on SJCL by itself. Thanks for this valuable feedback!

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#14
post #11

Be careful. It is easy to pay for an audit from a firm that doesn't have a serious cryptography practice. You would reasonably think that any software security firm would be competent in evaluating crypto, or at least crypto basics like whether you're using a sane block cipher mode or failing to authenticate your ciphertext. But it turns out that the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of firms, including som…

Thanks for this - really valuable info!

(Ka Ping Yee's report, attributed in Alan's blog post, is more testimony on the difficulty in getting useful audit.)

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#15
post #11

Be careful. It is easy to pay for an audit from a firm that doesn't have a serious cryptography practice. You would reasonably think that any software security firm would be competent in evaluating crypto, or at least crypto basics like whether you're using a sane block cipher mode or failing to authenticate your ciphertext. But it turns out that the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of firms, including som…

[deleted]

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#16
I just posted a comment on the SpiderOak blog about how I was rather startled when I found out that they had waited until after we did the security audit before they informed us that they knew about bugs going in:

https://spideroak.com/blog/20140220090004-responsibly-bringi...

However, after I got over my surprise, I started thinking that this was a really good move on SpiderOak's part. If you hire a security auditor, it might be hard for you to tell whether you're getting value for your money. Leaving known bugs in the code and then observing whether the auditors find them is potentially a good way to overcome that.

Mind you: this will make life harder for we in the security auditing industry if this practice takes off. ☺

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#18
post #15
post #11

Be careful. It is easy to pay for an audit from a firm that doesn't have a serious cryptography practice. You would reasonably think that any software security firm would be competent in evaluating crypto, or at least crypto basics like whether you're using a sane block cipher mode or failing to authenticate your ciphertext. But it turns out that the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of firms, including som…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#19

I just posted a comment on the SpiderOak blog about how I was rather startled when I found out that they had waited until after we did the security audit before they informed us that they knew about bugs going in: https://spideroak.com/blog/20140220090004-responsibly-bringi... However, after I got over my surprise, I started thinking that this was a really good move on SpiderOak's part. If you hire a security auditor…

:)

Re: Responsibly Bringing a new Cryptography Product to Market

#20
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SJCL had substantial peer review during its development, but I'm not aware of a public 3rd party audit from a security firm. Oh yeah, and before people with torches show up, let me clarify that is a Javascript based crypto product but not browser and website based crypto. The deployment target is situations where the code delivery problem is solved: HTML5 mobile apps (including phonegap / cordova), desktop apps with…

SJCL has been audited. You should ping me via email if you're serious about arranging for OSS crypto to get reviewed, not because I want to sell you audit services, but because someone already beat you to the punch in a big way, and you should talk to them. :)

Will do! Thanks! Is there a public report available? How long ago was this?
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