Yubico announces tiny, cheap YubiHSM 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Yubico announces tiny, cheap YubiHSM 2

#91

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 6:28 PM UTC

madez wrote: post #87

j_s wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How useful are such measures when Intel has backdoored each and everyone of their CPUs with its "Intel Management Engine" [0] (and AMD has a similar mechanism)? If you trust this YubiHSM but not Intel CPUs, then it is very useful since encryption/decryption occurs on the YubiHSM, not the connected CPU. Just plug it into a computer with a CPU you do trust first to get the official public key(s) for future verificati…

If your computer is backdoored, then a HSM does not protect effectively against that attacker. At some point the computer will see the data, at which point it can be extracted. The key is not important to the attacker which can read the unencrypted data. A HSM does make attacks more difficult, and that is important. On the other hand, computers without backdoors would be _the_ significant step, though, to change the…

[deleted]

Re: Yubico announces tiny, cheap YubiHSM 2

#92

Post by hdhzy » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 9:00 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #76

hdhzy wrote: post #25

I hope te EdDSA curve 25519 support in YubiHSM2 means we'll see the curve also in Yubikeys (e.g. OpenPGP applet). Currently Yubico's OpenPGP supports only RSA but there are already tokens supporting this modern crypto [0]. [0]: https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/162/

> there are already tokens supporting this modern crypto I looked briefly but can anyone link to where to buy one? Thanks in advance (either way: "buy" link or no) for the info.

Errr, I was referring to Gnuk [0] that claims support, but it's rather a DIY project [1] than something to be mass manufactured. Sorry to disappoint you but from my shallow research in this matter the hardware used has several flaws (e.g. no secure element).

[0]: https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/gnuk/blob/master/README

[1]: http://www.fsij.org/gnuk/howto-make-gnuk-usb-token-by-stm32-...

Re: Yubico announces tiny, cheap YubiHSM 2

#93

Post by synicalx » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #78

synicalx wrote: post #12

Never really touched one of these HSMs before, what happens if you're using one in production and it dies?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12069784 >mdewinter(2016Jul): They [undisclosed HSM vendor] did, with undocumented commands, export the key from the device in an unencrypted format and loaded it into the other model so that we could continue our operation. (The first comment I ever favorited on HN.)

Wow thanks for the link, that's a bit concerning. Not an expert on HSMs, but this does seem like a fairly serious design flaw?

Re: Yubico announces tiny, cheap YubiHSM 2

#94

Post by j_s » Fri, Nov 03, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

wav-part wrote: post #69

j_s wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you state: "Securing computer is lost cause." Then you give the constraints within which computing becomes "very easy to secure". As I previously stated: use a computer that fits within your definition of "very easy to secure" to setup the YubiHSM; after that, encryption using the HSM is theoretically secure to the degree the CPU accessing the plaintext is secure (this does not have to be the CPU the YubiHSM is…

> As I previously stated: use a computer that fits within your definition of "very easy to secure" to setup the YubiHSM; after that, encryption using the HSM is theoretically secure to the degree the CPU accessing the plaintext is secure (this does not have to be the CPU the YubiHSM is plugged into). Whats the point ? We already have a secure system. Trezor is an ideal HSM. Chromebook C201 can make most secure (not s…

Just spamming here a bit later to mention the ideal configuration may be Trezor/similar for a root CA cert, and using it to generate certs for an HSM providing production performance.