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OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

peereboom.us

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Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#51

Post by agwa »

keule wrote: post #38
agwa wrote: post #19

I've done quite a bit of programming with the OpenSSL library and this article is only scratching the surface of the awfulness. Documentation is horrible to non-existent, you really do need to go spelunking into the source to figure out how things work, and the code really is that horrible. The worst thing is that error reporting is not consistent - sometimes -1 means error, other times 0 means error, other times 0 m…

So I only have a basic/intermediate understanding of SSL and X509, but I am curious about your opinion: Is the awful code design just a flaw in that particular implementation, or are the standards involved so hard to implement correctly?

I think it's largely a problem with OpenSSL itself.

It's true that TLS and X.509 are quite complicated and I think it would be a challenge for anyone to implement them correctly, but that doesn't explain even half of OpenSSL's awfulness. Having consistent naming and error handling conventions should be possible regardless of how complicated the standards are. Plus, their crypto library is awful too, despite not having to deal with TLS or X.509.

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#52

Post by ghshephard »

marssaxman wrote: post #42
dkarapetyan wrote: post #36

Why is this so hard? I'm honestly curious to know. The theory is extremely well laid out, i.e. it's just number theory. We know to do stuff in a way that avoids side-channel attacks, i.e. try not to leak power usage when you're exponentiating, etc. Why do people keep using the awful mess that's openssl?

What is the alternative?

http://www.yassl.com/yaSSL/Home.html

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#53

Post by aaronem »

nknighthb wrote: post #41
koenigdavidmj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the only one bringing race into this. All that is meant is that the author views OpenSSL as approximately what you would get if you flung poo around for a while.

The author brought race into it by comparing human beings to monkeys, a common racist trope. If your only defense for someone calling people sub-humans is "but it might not be racist!", you need to think hard about what you're defending.

If your only justification for calling someone a racist is "but sometimes racists use that word!", you need to spend less time on Tumblr.

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#54

Post by ghshephard »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #26
hadoukenio wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with self-signed certificates. If you need to trust a website that uses self-signed certificates, just make sure to verify out-of-band.

Yes, I trust my own self-signed certs and I might trust the self-signed certs of certain sites. However, telling me that "There is nothing wrong with self-signed certificates." is irresponsible IMO. Who runs "peereboom.us"? #### if I know. I'm going to tell FF "It's okay - I'm good" this time b/c I'm not doing anything that matters but, as a rule, self-signed certs for unknown sites is not okay.

Would you trust visiting a site that's just HTTP?

Self signed certs for unknown sites are fine. There is zero problem visiting them.

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#56

Post by antientropic »

nknighthb wrote: post #25
a3_nm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be intended. Supporting SSL is better than not supporting it (well, except in situations where an OpenSSL bug could leak your server's memory, but that's a bit of a stretch " rel="nofollow">http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#www.peereboom.us> -- but put this aside), because it's always better to encrypt traffic even in a way vulnerable to passive attacks; and some people may reasonably opt-out of the SSL CA bus…

If someone has passive access to snoop, the odds they can perpetrate an active attack are so close to 100% as to make the distinction immaterial. Encryption without authentication accomplishes nothing. Worse, self-signed certificates train users to freely click through certificate warnings. People running servers with self-signed certificates are actively reducing what security we have available for the web. If we ev…

I guess you don't agree with Poul-Henning Kamp in his FOSDEM keynote this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk (around 15:00)

His claim is that browsers treating websites with self-signed certificates as less secure than non-encrypted websites by displaying big fat warnings is just about the greatest gift we can give to organisations like the NSA. It's not true that there is no material distinction between an active attack and passive eavesdropping. For the NSA to do active MITM attacks on all self-signed https traffic (in a world where all unencrypted http is replaced with self-signed https) would take massively more resources than passively monitoring unencrypted traffic. Plus the odds of them getting caught would be very high (since some people are going to notice that the certificate that shows up on the client is not what the server sent).

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#58

Post by betterunix »

keule wrote: post #38
agwa wrote: post #19

I've done quite a bit of programming with the OpenSSL library and this article is only scratching the surface of the awfulness. Documentation is horrible to non-existent, you really do need to go spelunking into the source to figure out how things work, and the code really is that horrible. The worst thing is that error reporting is not consistent - sometimes -1 means error, other times 0 means error, other times 0 m…

So I only have a basic/intermediate understanding of SSL and X509, but I am curious about your opinion: Is the awful code design just a flaw in that particular implementation, or are the standards involved so hard to implement correctly?

OpenSSL is a mess on its own. Other libraries are better organized and better documented, so I doubt that it is the fault of TLS or x509.

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#59

Post by cortesoft »

rodgerd wrote: post #45
a3_nm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be intended. Supporting SSL is better than not supporting it (well, except in situations where an OpenSSL bug could leak your server's memory, but that's a bit of a stretch " rel="nofollow">http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#www.peereboom.us> -- but put this aside), because it's always better to encrypt traffic even in a way vulnerable to passive attacks; and some people may reasonably opt-out of the SSL CA bus…

I'd trusts self-signed certs ahead of most CAs, frankly.

That doesn't make any sense.... even if you don't trust a CA at all, it is impossible for a self-signed cert to be MORE trustworthy, since it provides absolutely ZERO authentication. It could be created by anyone at all, including on the fly by a MITM.

Re: OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

#60

Post by hadoukenio »

ghshephard wrote: post #54
ScottWhigham wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I trust my own self-signed certs and I might trust the self-signed certs of certain sites. However, telling me that "There is nothing wrong with self-signed certificates." is irresponsible IMO. Who runs "peereboom.us"? #### if I know. I'm going to tell FF "It's okay - I'm good" this time b/c I'm not doing anything that matters but, as a rule, self-signed certs for unknown sites is not okay.

Would you trust visiting a site that's just HTTP? Self signed certs for unknown sites are fine. There is zero problem visiting them.

@ScottWhigham I'm not being irresponsible. I'm with ghshephard on this one.
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