[Cryptography] Encryption opinion

Watson Ladd watsonbladd at gmail.com
Tue Aug 26 23:06:16 EDT 2014


On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at mykolab.com> wrote:
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> On 8/26/2014 6:29 PM, ianG wrote:
>
>> On 26/08/2014 23:29 pm, Paul Ferguson wrote:
>>>> On 8/26/2014 3:15 PM, Bear wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> HTTPS is NOT an effective protection against MITM.
>>>>>> Furthermore, MITM is easier, not harder, to address than
>>>>>> phishing, and even if HTTPS were effective protection
>>>>>> against MITM it still would not be an effective protection
>>>>>> against phishing.
>>>>
>>>> The real "in the middle" threat these days is
>>>> credential-stealing Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) malware, such as
>>>> most modern day banking Trojans (ZeuS, et al).
>>>>
>>>> This is truly "in the middle" insofar as the attacker is
>>>> actively and surreptitiously part of the end-to-end session.
>>
>> It's curious that you say that.  In MITM there are the two end
>> nodes and a node in the middle.  When MITB takes over Alice's node,
>> he isn't in the middle anymore, he's Alice's node.
>
>
> Okay, so you got me on a technicality. :-)
>
>
> So I figured I would bring that up, especially since I see the IETF
> security area completely disconnected from reality with regards to
> security operations.
<snip>
>
> Sure, encryption is a good thing, when designed & implemented
> correctly, but if the end systems are compromised (Welcome to my
> world!) then you are simply provide a secure transit mechanism for
> criminals to conduct their... crimes, given that they have control of
> the end system with "great security".
>
> It's a Tao thing. :-)

And what exactly can the IETF do about it? Mandate that people not use
C unless absolutely necessary for system utilities?  Force people to
use capabilities so downloading a screensaver of dancing ponies
doesn't automatically mean handing over everything you do to an
attacker? Implement echo servers correctly?

The solutions to these problems emerged in the 1950-1960's, and as
late as the 1980's the Orange Book made the sort of system that CapOS,
Coyote, and Ethos attempted to make the gold standard. No one did it
for a variety of reasons, but you certainly could with enough work,
make a single-user system with the property that all access to
documents is authorized by a UI action, or use Keychain/factotum style
auth for all SSH private keys.

The reasons for non-adoption of these solutions are complex, and the
IETF deserves a lot of blame for failing to understand the Chomsky
Hierarchy and the consequences for validation, particularly when
different implementations need to produce the same results on all
inputs for security.

Security is a subset of correctness: I don't care that viewing a cat
picture can cause grey and multicolored splotches on my screen within
the area the picture says it occupies, but I do care that it can lead
to my tax returns being exfiltrated to Somalia, or all my contacts
being rounded up by the Secret Police. Somehow, in 60 years of
software engineering practice, we have not yet learned the nature of
the problem: ensuring a system of rules has a property.

</rant>
Sincerely,
Watson Ladd

> - - ferg
>
>
> - --
> Paul Ferguson
> VP Threat Intelligence, IID
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