Re: "The End of SSL and SSH?"

[Klaus Moeller <moeller () CERT DFN DE>]

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Hi Martin,

Martin Rex writes:
> (1) the significance of a secure key storage.
>
>   SSL:  All Web-Browsers that I know keep Root-CA certificates in software
>         and it is quite possible for software to modify Root-CA certs
>       or to add new Root-CA certs, which subverts the whole
>         PKI trust model.  Modifying this storage is not that difficult,
>         given the doors and bugs in Javascript, Java, ActiveX and
>       Browser plugins.  And the more application vendors move over
>         to using Web-Browsers as frontends, the more (signed)
>         general-purpose lauch pads will be installed and used.

True, the storage itself isn't protected at all (except the root
certificates in Win2K). Everbody who knows Berkeley DBM and has write
access to $HOME/.netscape/cert7.db can modify the Netscape 4.x
certificate DB. Same goes for IE for those who know the registry calls
and have write access to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
SystemCertificates\Root\Certificates\* or (on Solaris, etc.) write
access to $HOME/.microsoft/registry5.

Win2K at least protects writing to the branch containing the root
certificates of the registry to administrator or SYSTEM and gives a
notification if a self signed certificate is inserted into the
certificate branch.

There's a DFN-CERT security bulletin about this (in German only :( at

        http://www.cert.dfn.de/infoserv/dsb/dsb-2000-02.html

        Klaus Moeller, DFN-CERT

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