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"OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

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Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#51

Post by pron »

kryptiskt wrote: post #44
jwr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a first approximation, no one should write their own memory allocator. Just as no one should write their own garbage collector, and no one should write their own filesystem. All these subsystems have one thing in common: they are incredibly complex and very hard to get right, but seem easy on the outside.

The discouraging of everybody who wants to provide an alternative only locks us in to supershitty software that got there first. Worst is Better reigns. I mean, there is an extremely small chance that anybody will adopt your library if it is unquestionably better than the dominant alternative. We don't actually need to discourage people, we need to do everything to encourage them. Sure, 99 of 100 will be no better th…

The idea is to leave each component to the experts. If you're a concurrency/memory expert, then write a malloc library. If you're a cryptography expert, write your crypto code and use someone else's malloc.

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#52

Post by LaGrange »

pwang wrote: post #25
jwr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a first approximation, no one should write their own memory allocator. Just as no one should write their own garbage collector, and no one should write their own filesystem. All these subsystems have one thing in common: they are incredibly complex and very hard to get right, but seem easy on the outside.

I disagree. These are complex to make robust, but they are not hard concepts. I think everyone should write their own GC, write a filesystem, and handle their own memory layer, at least once. Treating lower levels of the stack as "too complex, there be dragons, just write some Javascript that hits RESTful API for JSON" is a great way to ensure you never progress as a software dev or an engineer. I agree that reinvent…

> I think everyone should write their own GC, write a filesystem, and handle their own memory layer, at least once.

Of course. But not in production. Which is a detail missed by the snarky one-liner, maybe because one-liners suck. Still, the point isn't that people shouldn't ever write them, just that they shouldn't actually use the ones they developed while not being a part of a team of experts specializing in the issue at hand.

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#53

Post by kryptiskt »

bhouston wrote: post #26
simias wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. That being said I agree that OpenSSL could do with a good code cleaning, but that's a massive undertaking, especially for such a popular library. You have to be backwards compatible. Maybe a big name in software could go and write a modern crypto library without all the cruft of OpenSSL bu…

> no need for tinfoil hat theories Unfortunately with the Snowden disclosures, there isn't much that I rule out of bounds for the NSA when it comes to things critical to internet security. OpenSSL is so widely used and critical, it would be silly to think that it would escape scrutiny by the NSA. For example of NSA efforts in related areas (which I figured you would already know): http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 htt…

On the other hand, if the NSA pwned OpenSSL, shouldn't such a big thing have been in Snowden's docs?

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#54

Post by stiff »

It is surprising that a project that is quite mission critical is completely at the bottom of the scale when it comes to how much the development process is oriented toward reliability. There are no systematic unit tests, no systematic documentation, the best you get is a bunch of disorganized integration tests, so it is not even at the level you would expect for a decently maintained business project: https://github.com/openssl/openssl

Perhaps the open source model of development is just not very good for software of this kind. Of course it's good that the source is open for everyone to look and potentially contribute, but without funding and without having a real process and a full time team it seems to me it is hard to get the level of quality required.

I also wonder how much in the end the big institutions care about this stuff. Intel hires a bunch of guys to do formal models of their processors to ensure bugs aren't shipped to millions of customers, why is nobody funding a formally specified version of SSL? For other mission critical systems, like what goes into spacecrafts, or hospitals, or gets developed in the military there are rigorous processes in use to prevent stupid mistakes, so it's somewhat disappointing that the major infrastructure pieces don't receive this kind of treatment.

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#55

Post by goldenkey »

supersnap wrote: post #33

This is pretty much proof that open source fails to maintain security software in a responsible way. Look kids ssl is not that hard to implement. Time to let the cargo cult go have a campfire and sing songs. This is too important to leave to lazy paid for nothing programmers who want to write lazy ass c code after too many beers. Grow up

I guess we should just let you code it in Enterprise java and pay you dividends.. Get a hold of yourself - most open source is actually funded by large companies in the first place. And being drunk has nothing to do with bad code, I for one code better when inebriated. Your straw man banter doesn't need to be on HN.

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#56

Post by linuxydave »

supersnap wrote: post #33

This is pretty much proof that open source fails to maintain security software in a responsible way. Look kids ssl is not that hard to implement. Time to let the cargo cult go have a campfire and sing songs. This is too important to leave to lazy paid for nothing programmers who want to write lazy ass c code after too many beers. Grow up

0/10 Try harder next time

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#57

Post by bhouston »

kryptiskt wrote: post #53
bhouston wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no need for tinfoil hat theories Unfortunately with the Snowden disclosures, there isn't much that I rule out of bounds for the NSA when it comes to things critical to internet security. OpenSSL is so widely used and critical, it would be silly to think that it would escape scrutiny by the NSA. For example of NSA efforts in related areas (which I figured you would already know): http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 htt…

On the other hand, if the NSA pwned OpenSSL, shouldn't such a big thing have been in Snowden's docs?

The NSA, according to the Snowden docs, can break SSL. No details though: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/how-does-nsa...

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#58

Post by computer »

kryptiskt wrote: post #53
bhouston wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no need for tinfoil hat theories Unfortunately with the Snowden disclosures, there isn't much that I rule out of bounds for the NSA when it comes to things critical to internet security. OpenSSL is so widely used and critical, it would be silly to think that it would escape scrutiny by the NSA. For example of NSA efforts in related areas (which I figured you would already know): http://www.cnbc.com/id/101301261 htt…

On the other hand, if the NSA pwned OpenSSL, shouldn't such a big thing have been in Snowden's docs?

This bug was added 2 years ago, the Snowden documents are from before that, as far as I know.

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#59

Post by joosters »

jwr wrote: post #9
btown wrote: post #3

This should be a case study about why people developing system-critical software shouldn't write their own memory allocators.

At a first approximation, no one should write their own memory allocator. Just as no one should write their own garbage collector, and no one should write their own filesystem. All these subsystems have one thing in common: they are incredibly complex and very hard to get right, but seem easy on the outside.

Writing a memory allocator is a great project. Too many programmers believe that malloc() does 'magic' or that what it is doing is simple.

After writing your own allocator, you'll never view malloc() as a cheap and simple operation again!

Re: "OpenSSL has exploit mitigation countermeasures to make sure it's exploitable"

#60

Post by mappu »

madaxe_again wrote: post #35
simias wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's just a bug. There's really no need for tinfoil hat theories unless you have any evidence for a possible conspiracy. That being said I agree that OpenSSL could do with a good code cleaning, but that's a massive undertaking, especially for such a popular library. You have to be backwards compatible. Maybe a big name in software could go and write a modern crypto library without all the cruft of OpenSSL bu…

You have kept up to date with the news, right? Truecrypt, RSA... OpenSSL is low-hanging fruit by comparison. Of course it's back doored - probably more than once. You're right that it needs cleaning - it needs a full audit. I'm surprised in the light of the Snowden revelations that none of us have suggested this sooner, but hindsight is a bitch and all that.

Was there an issue with truecrypt?
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