Re: [foaf-protocols] New attack plucks secrets from HTTPS-protected pages

one of the things that came “before its time” is making a come back. One has to play the “factoring” game “sensibly” - much as one has to allow security committees to be stacked with agendized-folks with money (that pays for core research, too).


If you look in dotNet, there is a particular ws-trust/ws-security binding. Its compatible with java, etc (circa 5 years ago, when Java security mattered.) More importantly, its compatible with apache libs, these days. In short, the saml process of delivering a per-recipient encrypted proof key (within the signed XML) was leveraged so that it delivered a client’sEPHEMERAL rsa key. Any client proxy (and you can have n of those, and being generated for a given service instance exposing service&policy-metadata) can maintain 1000 of these in its RSA security token cache; before keys overwrite cache slots. Typically, the client signs web service call headers (timestamp, and address) using the RSA key, rather than signing with hmac similarly. 


So, if you are worried about your 512 bit RSA being factored in 500 hours, (or 50, or 5)  why not give it a life time of 500mS, and just use 1000 of them? There is built in probability drive in every CPU...






From: Melvin Carvalho
Sent: ‎Sunday‎, ‎August‎ ‎4‎, ‎2013 ‎10‎:‎14‎ ‎AM
To: Peter Williams
Cc: public-webid, foaf-protocols@lists.foaf-project.org







On 4 August 2013 17:16, Peter Williams <home_pw@msn.com> wrote:




nothing new.

 

so use compression that is BUILT IN to the SSL process. IT is properly tuned. It properly uses the record layer so record-layer AND security handshake boundaries are “application aware”. It does make SSL more of an internet (i.e. layer 4 peer entity layer) concept, than a webby layer 7 “hypermedia concept”, though.

 

But, note that compression and SSL *was* patented (and continuations may still be). It was proactively-patented for national security reasons; both good and bad. The good one was to stop folks doing it completely wrong (this was at a time when VeriSign required SSL vendors to undergo a basic software audit to be allowed to embed root keys, a governance technique designed to “stop folks being stupid about basic comsec that would undermine the value of the [VISA] brand attached to certs”). The bad one was the usual CI caveat reason - minimize the distribution of knowhow about military cryptananalysis methods. We are all still thinking 1980s, even in 1994, one should recall.

 

A webid IDP is perfectly proper place to apply better knowhow, as is ws-trust STS IDP that leverages clients certs at layer 4 to authorize SAML/JWT token minting. These are proper places to apply strong crypto knowhow, speaking in terms of social politics.


 

Sent from Windows Mail




Here's a great presentation about cracking RSA.  Perhaps we will need bigger keys or to switch to ECC sooner than we thought ...

http://www.slideshare.net/astamos/bh-slides


 





 


From: Melvin Carvalho
Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 7:10 AM
To: public-webid, foaf-protocols@lists.foaf-project.org

 

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/gone-in-30-seconds-new-attack-plucks-secrets-from-https-protected-pages/