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SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

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Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#11

Post by hlieberman »

vermilingua wrote: post #6

To 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.

I don't think this is correct. Debian and its derivatives, at least, use a separate keyring for apt than the rest of the system uses. Though Debian does have a keyserver, pushes aren't automatically added to the user-facing keyring; they are manually moved over by a keyring maintainer who would presumably notice someone with a multi-megabyte key.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#13

Post by xvilka »

Shoop wrote: post #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 obs…

Yes, the code looks fairly simple, I would say.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#14

Post by ghuntley »

xvilka wrote: post #13
Shoop wrote: post #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 obs…

Yes, the code looks fairly simple, I would say.

Looks like fairly standard OCaml and usage of functional programming idioms. Q: Where's the CI and property tests? If you feel uncomfortable maintaining the code base, start there.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#15

Post by sirn »

hlieberman wrote: post #11
vermilingua wrote: post #6

To 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.

I don't think this is correct. Debian and its derivatives, at least, use a separate keyring for apt than the rest of the system uses. Though Debian does have a keyserver, pushes aren't automatically added to the user-facing keyring; they are manually moved over by a keyring maintainer who would presumably notice someone with a multi-megabyte key.

Ubuntu runs its own SKS keyserver (keyserver.ubuntu.com) and apk-add-repository use it when adding a PPA repository. I think in theory it's still possible to break package manager in Ubuntu if someone decide to poison a popular PPA repository/key.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#16

Post by clarkmoody »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #10

It'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…

The idea of Internet actors (human or machine) owning cryptographic identities in a distributed system is a good one. I don't think we should stray from this approach.

From your Matthew Green link:

> If PGP went away, I estimate it would take the security community less than a year to entirely replace (the key bits of) the standard with something much better and modern. It would have modern crypto and authentication, and maybe even extensions for future post-quantum future security. It would be simple. Many bright new people would get involved to help write the inevitable Rust, Go and Javascript clients and libraries.

Those word were written a little more than a year ago. What if right now is the time to assume that PGP has gone away and start building the next thing?

What alternate projects are people excited about that are solving the problem of distributed cryptographic identity and messaging?

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#17

Post by ghuntley »

ghuntley wrote: post #14
xvilka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the code looks fairly simple, I would say.

Looks like fairly standard OCaml and usage of functional programming idioms. Q: Where's the CI and property tests? If you feel uncomfortable maintaining the code base, start there.

The author of the gist has his CV on his personal website and lists himself proficient in fsharp. :confused:

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#18

Post by cyphar »

clarkmoody wrote: post #16
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #10

It'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…

The idea of Internet actors (human or machine) owning cryptographic identities in a distributed system is a good one. I don't think we should stray from this approach. From your Matthew Green link: > If PGP went away, I estimate it would take the security community less than a year to entirely replace (the key bits of) the standard with something much better and modern. It would have modern crypto and authentication,…

> What alternate projects are people excited about that are solving the problem of distributed cryptographic identity and messaging?

I would argue Matrix is a good contender. The Matrix project is working on secure messaging, and they have a lot of really cool solutions for key distribution and federated communication.

"Distributed cryptographic identity" is a slightly hard concept to pin down. In Matrix this is still an open problem, but that's just for the service which links third-party IDs (phone numbers, email addresses, etc) to Matrix IDs (@cyphar:cyphar.com, for instance). But if the problem is distributing keys, then that is a solvable problem.

But then again, maybe a different solution is needed to fill the PGP niche.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#19

Post by paulfurley »

libeclipse wrote: post #4

The 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 c…

I know the folks behind this and I think they’ve approached it thoughtfully and realistically.

It’s using a modern OpenPGP implementation and language (Sequoia, Rust) which is a big win. Despite it being centralised, I’d encourage folks to have a look.

On that issue, SKS has become so troublesome to run that the number of peers has steadily decreased to the point where there are only 2 entities running the HKPS (“secure”) pool, so in reality SKS is centralised too, as well as unmaintained. Source: I run a key server and a key expiry reminder service.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#20

Post by cyphar »

vermilingua wrote: post #6

To 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.

Package managers don't use keyservers to get their keys. Keyring updates are usually shipped as package updates or through a different mechanism. And distro media embeds the signing keys in the ISO to avoid the TOFU problem.
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