SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
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SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
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Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#2SKS don’t implement any modern web security features (the whole thing does pre-date the web!) — as a result, you can (ab)use SKS as a free backend store for your JavaScript apps: https://www.quaxio.com/message_board_over_pgp_key_servers.ht...
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#3I think that decentralized services, like SKS, require a sort of fee mechanism (proof of effort, currency, or otherwise) that can prevent bad actors from inserting malicious material. I definitely think this is one of the cases that blockchain technology makes a lot of sense, and the disincentive of a fee would do very will to mitigate this.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#4The new keys.openpgp.org service is a mitigation:
> keys.openpgp.org is a new experimental keyserver which is not part of the keyserver network and has some features which make it resistant to this sort of attack. It is not a drop-in replacement: it has some limitations (for instance, its search functionality is sharply constrained). However, once you make this change you will be able to run gpg --refresh-keys with confidence.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#5> It's written in an unusual programming language called OCaml, and in a fairly idiosyncratic dialect of it at that. This is of course no problem for a proof of concept meant to support a Ph.D thesis, but for software that's deployed in the field it makes maintenance quite difficult. Not only do we need to be bright enough to understand an algorithm that's literally someone's Ph.D thesis, but we need expertise in obscure programming languages and strange programming customs.
Looking at the code [0], it looks like fairly standard Ocaml. Any particular reason it's difficult to maintain (other than the lack of popularity of FP in general)?
(It looks like the original author of the SKS Keyserver is Yaron Minsky, the guy who convinced Jane Street to use Ocaml.)
[0] https://bitbucket.org/skskeyserver/sks-keyserver/src/default...
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#6To be clear: is this suggesting that it is currently entirely unsafe to update any operation-critical equipment? It seems that now that the PoC is out in the wild, it will be a matter of days/hours before someone hits a major contributor to the major Linux distros; and all package managers begin to fail.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#7This is why we can't have nice things.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#8I think that decentralized services, like SKS, require a sort of fee mechanism (proof of effort, currency, or otherwise) that can prevent bad actors from inserting malicious material. I definitely think this is one of the cases that blockchain technology makes a lot of sense, and the disincentive of a fee would do very will to mitigate this.
How would a proof-of-work system, let alone a blockchain, work?
Apparently, GnuPG breaks badly at 150 000 signatures. You want adding a signature to be doable on a really old laptop and/or low-end Android phone; a motivated attacker can just choose to expand 1000 000 times as much effort as a not-too-interested user on antiquated hardware.
Of course you can make adding a signature more expensive the more signatures are already there, but that lets a motivated attacker make it impossible to vouch for certain users (keys.) Etc.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#9To be clear: is this suggesting that it is currently entirely unsafe to update any operation-critical equipment? It seems that now that the PoC is out in the wild, it will be a matter of days/hours before someone hits a major contributor to the major Linux distros; and all package managers begin to fail.
Yes this seems like it's going to range from very bad to outright terrible. In particular if the issue propagates prior to patching something like gpg as the package managers would be locked out from updates.
Every time there's an article about IoT security there's a discussion about lack of (security) updates and an upcoming Armageddon. Interestingly it'll be those devices that do not update that are immune to this type of thing.
Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
#10It's always sad to see someone taking down a project that is run with the best intentions. However, it may be time to move away from the entire PGP ecosystem.
Consider the post's "We've known for a decade this attack is possible. It's now here and it's devastating.".
Consider also the final section, "PGP is bad technology and it’s making a bad community", of https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/05/17/was-the-... (by noted cryptographer Matthew Green.)
My sympathies to the victims of this attack.
[EDIT: reworked slightly at 7m to try to be as kind as possible]