31–40 of 112 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "and want to find out/demonstrate how secure it is" As the page (and my post) emphatically state, this contest cannot prove anything about how secure it is. That distinction is really important.
If you take as axiomatic that all security measures can be broken, then you can measure those security measures by the cost of breaking it. You could measure the amount of time it takes for someone to break this security and grab the cash, but that only provides you with one datum. To really show how secure it is, you would also need to provide a $1000 prize, a $500 prize, a $250 prize, a $125 prize, and so on, all w…
It's really worth reading Schneier's comments on security contests. https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html...
As far as I can tell (I can't read O'Caml very well) the crypto library underpinning this makes the same mistake that all PKCS#1 signature verification functions have had at some point or another: they unpick the padding by hand[1], and then decode the ASN1 DigestInfo. The only sane way to do this is to generate the padding from scratch and check if the signature plaintext is the same (the added benefit is your ASN1…
This is about the DigestInfo -- which we generate and compare here: https://github.com/mirleft/ocaml-tls/blob/master/lib/handsha... The unpad does RSA unpadding... or am I completely mistaken?
https://github.com/mirleft/ocaml-x509/blob/master/lib/certif...
Where could I, a total beginner in crypto-stuff, learn more about this kind of thing? What would be the list of things I'd need to know how to do in order to "break in", and where could I learn how to do them?
Where could I, a total beginner in crypto-stuff, learn more about this kind of thing? What would be the list of things I'd need to know how to do in order to "break in", and where could I learn how to do them?
> "Before you ask: yes, Piñata will talk to itself and you can enjoy watching it do so."
Also, what should I be using to connect using TLS/TCP?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you take as axiomatic that all security measures can be broken, then you can measure those security measures by the cost of breaking it. You could measure the amount of time it takes for someone to break this security and grab the cash, but that only provides you with one datum. To really show how secure it is, you would also need to provide a $1000 prize, a $500 prize, a $250 prize, a $125 prize, and so on, all w…
I appreciate what you're saying but even then, the data you infer this way (apart from the breach itself ) is highly suspect. I don't think you really get a view for how much it costs to break and time is a poor proxy. It's really worth reading Schneier's comments on security contests. https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html...
But it doesn't tell you anything about dedicated attackers, and those are the guys you really need to worry about. Anyone who really wants in can climb over the fence, or cut through it, or drive a tank over it.
I'm not a fan of this type of bounty myself, but it might seem like a good idea if you have enough money for a contest prize but not anywhere near what would be needed for a professional audit. Even so, if your bounty is claimed, you still might want to know how much of the work for that first attack is reusable for all subsequent attacks, and that requires a second prize.
Suggestion: add an endpoint on the piñata that proves it has the private key. You can do this using Bitcoin's sign message method.
Very bad idea to sign everything that comes your way, kind of like `eval` on text input.