Re: W3C Web Crypto WG - Is our deliverable doomed ?

One comment inline.

On 9/18/12 11:29 AM, "Ryan Sleevi" <sleevi@google.com<mailto:sleevi@google.com>> wrote:


On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com<mailto:watsonm@netflix.com>> wrote:
One of the points missing from the article, which we have considered a lot, is the fact that it is possible to build systems with useful security properties, whilst always accepting that we can't really trust the Javascript code at the client (for the reasons given in the article).

Specifically, we trust the browser code more than the Javascript code and we trust code in secure elements even more. We take care understand the security properties we have through the lens of exactly what operations are being performed by which code and with which data.

This is why the API becomes much more interesting when we introduce concepts like pre-provisioned keys. Without them, then I fear the API does indeed suffer from many of the issues identified in the article.

Pre-provisioned keys allow us to bind to something we trust, even if that is just the browser code, and from there we can infer something useful. Without that, then any Javascript could be using a malicious polyfill WebCrypto API and all your security bets are off.

Having said that, it is certainly possible to 'simulate' pre-provisioned keys (insecurely) in polyfill for test and API validation purposes. I wouldn't rule out some kind of obfuscation-based JS polyfill implementation with pre-provisioned keys, but that does sound like a "challenging" project that I am not about to embark on ;-)

…Mark


Respectfully, I have to disagree with Mark here. I do not think pre-provisioned keys (smart card or deivce) do not, in themselves, buy any additional security properties, just as they would not and do not within native applications.

To take a step back, to see how I get there, let's take a step back and look at the points raised in the article:

 *   Secure delivery of Javascript to browsers is hard
    *   If you have SSL, just use SSL
 *   Browsers are hostile to cryptography
    *   The prevalence of content-controlled code
    *   The malleability of the Javascript runtime
    *   The lack of systems programming primitives needed to implement crypto
       *   The browser lacks secure random number generation
       *   The browser lacks secure erase
       *   The browser lacks functions with known-timing characteristics
       *   A secure keystore
    *   The crushing weight of the installed base of users
 *   The view-source transparency is illusory
    *   Unlike native applications, Javascript is delivered on demand and thus may be mutated in time
    *   An exploit server side can compromise many tens or hundreds of thousands of users

To address these points, let's look at what we have at our disposal.


 *   This work
    *   Our API so far provides secure RNG and functions with known-timing characteristics, along with a secure keystore. Yes, we don't offer a secure erase, nor do we offer a generic secure memory comparison, and perhaps those are things we can look at in the future. But I'd suggest that, given the general framework of what is brought by the API, it's not as c

I think the bolded statement above is the root of all questions. We are pretending that the API comes with specific guarantees around crypto functionality and secure storage. I say that we totally get away from that. We just say that the API is what it is – just an API – the application MUST treat a client using these API like any other client – untrusted. Any trust can come only from external sources that the server application controls – like in Mark's example.

 *   Content Security Policy
    *   Can address the malleability problem and the prevalence of content-controlled code
 *   Web Intents
    *   Can address the malleability problem and the prevalence of content-controlled code
 *   The view-source transparency is illusory
    *   The W3C has, through various efforts, looked at offline [1][2] and system applications [3] that can provide stable source over time.
    *   Several popular user agents implement support for forms of signing or organizational validity that is equivalent to native code.
    *   Given many auto-updating systems today, the same argument can be made of native applications.
 *   If you have SSL, just use SSL
    *   As demonstrated by our use cases, SSL is not in and of itself suitable or equivalent to what is being requested.
 *   An exploit server side can compromise tens or hundreds of thousands of users
    *   As demonstrated by the Flame attacks, this is equally true for native applications.
    *   As the mobile web continues to take off, it's not uncommon to see study after study looking at mobile permissions or implementation details that show mobile, "native" applications are just as susceptible  Yes, this is a valid attack class, but it's increasingly becoming no different than 'native' code.

While I have great respect for the Matasano team, and agree with their publication as capturing the state of the world at the time it was written, I do not think it's a statement about what is at all possible. I think our efforts in this WG are to show that we can, are, and have been addressing those issues.

The crushing weight of the installed base is a problem that, as a WG, I don't think we can solve, but that's not to say it's unsolvable. As browsers such as Chrome and Firefox have shown, it's possible to adopt a rapid release schedule that reasonably upgrades the vast majority of users.

However, I think it's important to keep the right perspective in these discussions. My goal at least has been to ensure a robust enough implementation that applications which were previously native-only can be reasonably be implemented in the web platform. That said, this API cannot in and of itself solve the trusted computing problem. This API is agnostic about its operating environment. It may be executing on vendor hardware that is restricted to specific origins and with in-built device keys, that disallows any form of arbitrary web content except that vetted individually line by line by the vendor. It may be executing on general purpose desktop machines running popular operating systems, capable of running any number of applications - and, for better or worse, capable of running any number of malware applications.

That's why I don't think pre-provisioned keys get you anything - smart card, device bound, or otherwise. Much like non-repudiation, trust requires an end-to-end system security, and that is not something our API is providing. To the extent possible, we're defining the interaction between the user agent and the application - but nothing we've specified prevents the user agent or operating system from being subverted, and we've yet to require anything (such as CSP) that prevents subversion of the application.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/
[2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/offline.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2012/05/sysapps-wg-charter.html