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SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

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Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#21

Post by cyphar »

koolba wrote: post #9
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.

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…

Package managers don't use keyservers to get their keys (at least, not for the distro's repos). I believe Ubuntu might use them for PPAs, but openSUSE doesn't use them for any OBS projects (and I'm pretty sure this is the same for any RPM repo).

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#22

Post by gravitas »

ghuntley wrote: post #17
ghuntley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_hominem

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#23

Post by jlgaddis »

paulfurley wrote: post #19
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 (“sec…

Out of curiosity, which is more obscure: OCaml or Rust?

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#24

Post by cbsmith »

gravitas wrote: post #22
ghuntley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_hominem

That wasn't an argument... It was an expression of confusion as to why the author would say what they said.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#26

Post by kchamplewski »

jlgaddis wrote: post #23
paulfurley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (“sec…

Out of curiosity, which is more obscure: OCaml or Rust?

Probably OCaml. While it's been around much longer, it's never really reached mass acceptance (though does get used here and there). Rust is newer but I'd estimate it's already more used, and its adoption in industry is growing quite quickly.

This is probably to do with the fact that OCaml doesn't necessarily solve any problems that are apparent to businesses, whereas Rust solves the very apparent "manual memory management makes massive vulns trivial" problem.

I'm not sure which language is actually more approachable for someone trying to learn it from scratch though.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#27

Post by kyrra »

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…

PGP for pre-shared keys is exceptionally useful still. In the payments world, we use it regularly for both interactive application/message level encryption, and also when moving files between companies.

It could die for email, but still be heavily used elsewhere.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#28

Post by Valodim »

dpc_pw wrote: post #25

Is the new berifing SKS from Sequoia PGP (written in Rust!) affected as well? https://sequoia-pgp.org/blog/2019/06/14/20190614-hagrid/

It is not! That's why the author recommends using the running instance at keys.openpgp.org, as a replacement for the sks pool.

Note that Hagrid is not an "sks in rust". It is different in a lot of ways, see https://keys.openpgp.org/about/news#2019-06-12-launch

(disclaimer: I maintain keys.openpgp.org)

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#29

Post by soulofmischief »

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,…

It's not the silver bullet we need, but I really like Keybase's approach. I think any PGP replacement should take notes from their architecture.

Re: SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack

#30

Post by hinkley »

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.

I’ve gotten stuck maintaining Python code for a testing framework and again for a CI/CD system. The fact that I know less than a junior programmer didn’t really slow me down that much, but it did make me a bit anxious.

One of those systems involved a large and obvious crypto component. If the python code had been part of that work instead of merely peripheral to it, I would have rewritten it.

Why? Because I can make python work but I can’t tell you if it’s safe. I have no idea what the weird gotchas are that look like good code but are not. What the “printf” of python is. Hackers do.

And I know even less about O’Caml. I would not sign up for that gig. Lots of the sort of rational and cautious people you want working on crypto would not.

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