Any TLS server key compromises?

Marc Branchaud marcnarc at rsasecurity.com
Thu Aug 12 16:34:09 EDT 2004


I've been wondering, has a TLS server (or client, for that matter) key 
ever actually been compromised?  I don't think I've ever heard of one.

I'm thinking of two possible avenues for compromise, and ignoring 
insider attacks.  One is through defects in the protocol itself or its 
implementation.  The other would be through a compromise of the server 
host (e.g. a buffer overflow in Apache) that allows the attacker to copy 
the TLS server's private key from the file system.

It seems to me that in-the-wild attacks on the protocol or its 
implementation are unheard of.

OTOH, we hear about server break-ins all the time.  However, one never 
hears about these break-ins leading to a compromise of the server's key.

Perhaps the server's private key isn't a really useful target?  Although 
posession of the key makes it easy to spoof a secure server, actually 
doing that spoofing requires a secondary attack, like phishing or an 
active attack on the Internet, to redirect a user to the false server.

So have there ever been any actual TLS private key compromises (through 
any non-insider attack)?

If TLS private keys aren't attractive enough a target for them to be 
compromised even when the opportunity presents itself (as I'm assuming 
it has), then to what extent do these keys really need to be protected?

		M.
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