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Apple's SSL/TLS bug

imperialviolet.org

31–40 of 295 posts

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#31
I just made this - it'll tell you if you're vulnerable.

https://gotofail.com/

Not very well tested, please let me know if it works for you. If you're on OS X Mavericks or on iOS 7 and haven't patched you should get big scary red text.

Edit: posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282164

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#32

Worth noting that static analysis finds bugs like this immediately. TLS code seems like the perfect candidate to run through static analysis on every checkin. There are products such as Coverity and PVS-Studio that would have immediately flagged this and probably some open-source ones built around LLVM as well (unsure about this one, though). I personally use Coverity and have it hooked up in the same way everyone co…

PVS-Studio might be a bit unlikely however in this particular case.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#33
post #24

Emerging tools such as gofmt and clang-format are able to automatically re-format your code based on the language rules rather than the human behind the monitor. Using those tools this specific category of issues should at least be visible in the formating diff. Interesting. Never thought about it that way before.

Those kinds of tools aren't new or emerging. The "indent" utility for C has been around for decades. I first remember using it on 4.3BSD, but it may have been around before that.

    indent - indent and format C program source

    HISTORY
        The indent command appeared in 4.2BSD.
And for context, 4.2BSD was released in 1983.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#34
post #8

It's interesting watching all the speculation about "was it a backdoor, or just a bug?" Lots of points in favor or against: 1) It's a huge compromise, and "open" to anyone to exploit, which would ultimately get caught and fixed faster. But it's also not targeting anything specific, so there's less of a signature of the attacker. 2) Incredibly simple, and thus a plausible mistake. 3) Hidden in plain sight I'd generall…

Whether it was intentional backdoor or not, NSA must've had a field day with it by now.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#35
post #2

If only it was open source this never would have happened.

Clearly sarcasm. With open source, it is not a matter of whether these mistakes (or whatever this one was) happen or not, it is a matter of likelihood of these mistakes being spotted. It's a statistical thing. It's unfortunate this has to be explained.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#36
I'm going with accident either through a merge or a double paste. I'm guessing that if they were running some kind of static analysis tool that it probably would have flagged this one as a duplicated line and someone would have caught it earlier.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#38

I just made this - it'll tell you if you're vulnerable. https://gotofail.com/ Not very well tested, please let me know if it works for you. If you're on OS X Mavericks or on iOS 7 and haven't patched you should get big scary red text. Edit: posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282164

Safari/iOS 4.3.3: not vulnerable Safari/i0S 7.0.4: VULNERABLE Chrome/iOS 7.0.4: not vulnerable

Looks like using Chrome instead of Safari may help; I'd say it would be more interesting if standard mail client can be fooled.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#39
post #8

It's interesting watching all the speculation about "was it a backdoor, or just a bug?" Lots of points in favor or against: 1) It's a huge compromise, and "open" to anyone to exploit, which would ultimately get caught and fixed faster. But it's also not targeting anything specific, so there's less of a signature of the attacker. 2) Incredibly simple, and thus a plausible mistake. 3) Hidden in plain sight I'd generall…

Whether it was intentional backdoor or not, NSA must've had a field day with it by now.

In general, NSA is not my most serious threat (in terms of actual harm; they are the most powerful by far though) -- I agree they overreach, and for some people are a serious threat, but for me my primary concerns are Chinese/other foreign intel (who are documented as going after industrial/economic material much more than NSA) and independent/criminal/etc. types.

The scary thing is the bar is so low; even I could turn this into a nice weaponized thing to go after the long tail of people who don't upgrade, for the next months. The "diode" etc. infrastructure NSA built isn't that different from botnet C&C or the kind of relays people have when hacking.

Re: Apple's SSL/TLS bug

#40

I just made this - it'll tell you if you're vulnerable. https://gotofail.com/ Not very well tested, please let me know if it works for you. If you're on OS X Mavericks or on iOS 7 and haven't patched you should get big scary red text. Edit: posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282164

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