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Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#11

Post by Kronopath »

This news story is way too light on details for this audience. A better description of the vulnerability is here: https://www.freakattack.com/

A summary:

The vulnerability allows attackers to intercept HTTPS connections between vulnerable clients and servers and force them to use ‘export-grade’ cryptogrpahy, which can then be decrypted.

A connection is vulnerable if the server accepts RSA_EXPORT cipher suites and the client either offers an RSA_EXPORT suite or is using a version of OpenSSL that is vulnerable to CVE-2015-0204. Vulnerable clients include many Google and Apple devices (which use unpatched OpenSSL), a large number of embedded systems, and many other software products that use TLS behind the scenes without disabling the vulnerable cryptographic suites.

It also includes a list of vulnerable websites, including sites like mit.edu, groupon.com, marriott.com, and americanexpress.com (!).

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#12

Post by zaroth »

If such a suite was enabled, how would the plethora of SSL testing sites out there have graded it? I assume a passing grade would not have allowed insecure suites such as these to be allowed. Insecure cipher is insecure; that would not typically be worthy of a CVE? It sounds more like even if the suite was not on your accepted list, a MITM could cause the server to downgrade?

This is all OpenSSL has to say about it;

  RSA silently downgrades to EXPORT_RSA [Client] (CVE-2015-0204)
  ==============================================================

  Severity: Low

  An OpenSSL client will accept the use of an RSA temporary key in a non-
  export RSA key exchange ciphersuite. A server could present a weak
  temporary key and downgrade the security of the session.

  This issue affects all current OpenSSL versions: 1.0.1, 1.0.0 and 0.9.8.

  OpenSSL 1.0.1 users should upgrade to 1.0.1k.
  OpenSSL 1.0.0 users should upgrade to 1.0.0p.
  OpenSSL 0.9.8 users should upgrade to 0.9.8zd.

  This issue was reported to OpenSSL on 22nd October 2014 by Karthikeyan
  Bhargavan of the PROSECCO team at INRIA. The fix was developed by Stephen
  Henson of the OpenSSL core team.
I find these notes are usually too curt to really understand what's going on...

Also, that CVE is from Jan 8, 2015, while this is claiming to be a new issue disclosed today. I've seen no mention on the oss-security list of "FREAK", so something is borked with this disclosure if it is a new vulnerability...

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#13

Post by jakejake »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #4

The story has a familiar ring. Back in the day, Microsoft stored passwords in a fairly insecure format. Then they got security religion, and improved the strength of their password storage dramatically. It was very hard to crack the new format. (I don't remember exactly, but this would have been somewhere around when NT came out.) But Microsoft was always big on backward compatibility. They wanted users of old machin…

Yep I remember there were password cracker programs that would recover the "LM" version of the password in seconds. I was a network admin at the time and remember having to turn this "feature" off once we discovered it.

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#15

Post by adsr »

Kronopath wrote: post #11

This news story is way too light on details for this audience. A better description of the vulnerability is here: https://www.freakattack.com/ A summary: The vulnerability allows attackers to intercept HTTPS connections between vulnerable clients and servers and force them to use ‘export-grade’ cryptogrpahy, which can then be decrypted. A connection is vulnerable if the server accepts RSA_EXPORT cipher suites and the…

Something is odd with that site. If I enter https://www.freakattack.com it reports Safari 5.1.10 as safe from the attack. If I simply enter https://freakattack.com it reports it as vulnerable.

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#16

Post by cozzyd »

Buge wrote: post #7
rbanffy wrote: post #2

If http://dualec.org/DualECTLS.pdf is the actual paper, I am not sure why Apple and Google users are more exposed than others. The paper requires a more thoughtful reading, of couse, but it does not appear to single out these two vendors.

Safari and Android browsers are vulnerable. http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/03/attack-of-we...

Firefox for Android seems to be fine? (According to the client test)

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#17

Post by yuhong »

rogerbinns wrote: post #10
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #4

The story has a familiar ring. Back in the day, Microsoft stored passwords in a fairly insecure format. Then they got security religion, and improved the strength of their password storage dramatically. It was very hard to crack the new format. (I don't remember exactly, but this would have been somewhere around when NT came out.) But Microsoft was always big on backward compatibility. They wanted users of old machin…

I worked on reverse engineering Microsoft's remote desktop protocol (RDP) back in the day. It was wrapped in encryption much like how SSL operates. France outlawed encryption except for authentication, so you just had to put the client and the server in the French country setting and then man in the middle the tcp connection. Reverse engineer away. Thanks France!

Of course, the private key turned out to be hardcoded anyway.

Re: Major security flaw undermines Apple and Google users, researchers discover

#20

Post by deathanatos »

> Google’s Chrome browser is not vulnerable to the FREAK bug, but the browser that comes built into most Android devices is vulnerable.

Is this true? Both Chrome on my mobile device and on my laptop show as vulnerable on freakattack.com. Both have outstanding updates[1]; however, if only mean the latest version is not vulnerable, I feel like the message that we need to send the layman is "update, now (and really, always)" not "is not vulnerable"

[1] which Chrome wasn't able to actually download earlier, but all seems good now.

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