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All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

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Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#261

Post by Piskvorrr »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #232
r1ch wrote: post #23

This is not how Windows code signing is supposed to work. Normally you'd get a countersignature from a timestamp server so that the verification process can prove that the certificate was valid at the time of signing. It would appear that Oculus signed their binaries without using a timestamp server, so without a way to verify when signing happened they become invalid as soon as the cert expires.

Can you just change the clock on your PC to get it to work again?

This has unrelated but equally nasty side effects, though.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#262

Post by barkingcat »

mattnewport wrote: post #181

Our VR surgical training startup has been working for the last few months towards a big medical conference this week where we're showing multiple training procedures for multiple customers on Oculus Rift, as well as having our own booth. The headsets all stopped working the morning of the conference. Fortunately one of our engineers figured out we could get our demo rigs working by setting the clock back a few days.…

This does not bode well for real VR surgery. Imagine if this were surgery day for someone, and because of an expiring certificate the rift shuts down ...

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#263

Post by gmueckl »

zaarn wrote: post #235
gmueckl wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where MS is at fault: drivers without timestamped signatures should be treated as faulty. This would prevent these errors in the first place.

There are usecases for signatures without timestamp. Besides, literally every codesigning blogpost/tutorial/guide/etc I found tells you to use a timestamping server so the guys and girls and Oculus must have skipped the critical parts of whatever they used.

What is a legitimate use case for a binary deliverable without a timestamped signature?

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#264

Post by rublev »

oooomm wrote: post #257
tudorw wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give the engineer the day off, that's classic side think :)

Well every comment thread on the Internet related to the Rift issue mentioned this as a solution so it probably wasn't his idea.

So what? He got them out of a bind, that's what counts.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#265

Post by jdietrich »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #188
konschubert wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said it's a surgical training startup so I think it would have been fairly okay.

Those things aren't cheap for simulators, either - not to mention knock-on costs. "What do you mean - I got the doctors in, which alone took a month of herding cats, and now it won't work, just because?" How low has the SW development bar gone, if "it's okay" now means "at least it's not directly killing people"?

There has always been a tradeoff between reliability and development time. There wouldn't be a games industry if every video game had the same level of software assurance as a mars lander, because Tetris would cost $200m to develop. A medical simulator lies somewhere between a mars lander and a video game - it needs to provide accurate simulation, but the odd crash isn't a complete dealbreaker.

The bug is now patched, so the downtime appears to be less than 24 hours from discovery to fix. The original error is clearly a major blunder, but Oculus have responded properly.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#266

Post by heroprotagonist »

oooomm wrote: post #257
tudorw wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give the engineer the day off, that's classic side think :)

Well every comment thread on the Internet related to the Rift issue mentioned this as a solution so it probably wasn't his idea.

Yeah, but if he's the guy who Googled it, he should get the day off anyway if it wasn't really in his realm of responsibility.

It seems ridiculous in this modern age, but there are a huge number of people who will never bother to look into their problems on their own before asking someone else. Then this other person does a simple Google search and becomes the hero expert.

This all too often results in further dependence, with no real reward for the guy who took this basic step except more requests in the future. If this one guy can get a day off in this instance, it'll be a victory for every person who has ever said "Oh, if you google that, you'll see one of the first results with instructions to do x, y, z." to a time-draining coworker.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#267

Post by Piskvorrr »

sneak wrote: post #227

Minor nitpick: “soft-bricked” is like “soft-pregnant”. That’s not what “bricked” means, Techcrunch.

From what I've seen in XDA, soft-brick is a state which is recoverable without physically opening up the device and hunting for JTAG headers ;)

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#268

Post by teawrecks »

barkingcat wrote: post #262
mattnewport wrote: post #181

Our VR surgical training startup has been working for the last few months towards a big medical conference this week where we're showing multiple training procedures for multiple customers on Oculus Rift, as well as having our own booth. The headsets all stopped working the morning of the conference. Fortunately one of our engineers figured out we could get our demo rigs working by setting the clock back a few days.…

This does not bode well for real VR surgery. Imagine if this were surgery day for someone, and because of an expiring certificate the rift shuts down ...

It's not like a cert is necessary for it to function. A VR headset is basically a monitor you wear on your face. This is their own poor design choice that just ensures they're going to lose business of anyone who needs reliability in their headset.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#269

Post by jandrese »

jlgaddis wrote: post #174
rb808 wrote: post #17

Has anyone got a good way of managing certificates in the wild? With no real management and staff turnover I've seen a bunch of expired certificate problems. EDIT: presumably you need your client apps/libraries in the field write back when they use a cert that is <X months away from expiry.

Define "managing"? I use simple Nagios checks for keeping an eye on certificate expiration. It's simple to set up checks for new hosts/services and I have them set to trigger an e-mail alert 30 days before expiration (20 days for certificates from Let's Encrypt). It does the job; I have yet to wake up one day to an expired certificate. Apparently, this ("send me an e-mail before my certificate expires") is also the s…

What happens when you leave for a different job or get hit by a bus? More than one cert has expired because the guy who was maintaining them moved on and nobody else knew how to keep them up to date.

Obviously it should be part of a handoff process when you leave, but companies aren't always good at smoothly handling transitions like this.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#270

Post by iffycan »

Someone1234 wrote: post #140
r1ch wrote: post #23

This is not how Windows code signing is supposed to work. Normally you'd get a countersignature from a timestamp server so that the verification process can prove that the certificate was valid at the time of signing. It would appear that Oculus signed their binaries without using a timestamp server, so without a way to verify when signing happened they become invalid as soon as the cert expires.

If anyone is interested in this topic this article goes into more detail: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb9...

Is there a macOS equivalent?
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