Re: Creating a rogue CA certificate

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Adrian Perrig <adrian () ece cmu edu>
Date: January 3, 2009 8:51:58 AM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Creating a rogue CA certificate

Dear Dave,

Fortunately, we have developed a system that protects against the
SSL/TLS attack recently discovered, our system called Perspectives is
available as an extension for the Firefox web browser.

The attack pointed out by Sotirov et al. is very serious: it enables
an attacker on the network path between the client and server to mount
a Man-in-the-Middle attack, that is, to effectively eavesdrop and
alter "encrypted and authenticated" SSL/TLS connections. Just to be
absolutely clear, an attacker can read your bank username / password
when logging in if he can control the network packets (this is quite
feasible through DNS-based redirection attacks, malicious access
points, or in many wireless environments).

Several other vulnerabilities exist in SSL/TLS, for example a CA's
private key that is leaked, or a malicious CA root key that is
installed by users through instructions received through spam email
also enable Man-in-the-Middle attacks.

To help users protect themselves against these attacks, Dan Wendlandt,
Dave Andersen, and I have designed the Perspectives system at Carnegie
Mellon University and CyLab. Perspectives is available as a Firefox
extension. When the browser opens an https connection (and thus
establishes an SSL/TLS connection with the web server) Perspectives
contacts several globally distributed notary servers which keep a
history of servers' SSL/TLS public keys. If the observation from the
network notaries does not match the received server key, Perspectives
warns the user.

Perspectives is already in use by an estimated 30,000 users, and the
code is stable. The Firefox extension works on Windows, MAC and Linux
and can be downloaded and installed from:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/firefox.html#install

To ensure Perspectives detects these attacks, you must instruct it to
contact notary servers for all HTTPS sites (not only for self-signed
certificates, which is the default setting), even if your browser
considers the certificate valid. Select Tools->Add-ons->Perspectives
and then click on "Preferences", then select the "Preferences" tab,
and finally select the option "Contact Notaries for all HTTPS sites"
to enable such verification.

The project web site is at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/

Technical details are available from our paper available at:
http://sparrow.ece.cmu.edu/group/pub/wendlandt-andersen-perrig-usenixatc08.pdf

Best wishes,
 Adrian

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Paul Robichaux <PaulR () 3sharp com>
> Date: December 31, 2008 9:22:23 AM EST
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: FW: [ISN] Creating a rogue CA certificate
>
> Perhaps interesting to IP readers?
>
> --
> Paul Robichaux (paulr () 3sharp com)
> Sr VP, Infrastructure Services
> 3Sharp
> 14700 NE 95th St, Suite 210  Redmond, WA  98052
> 425-882-1032 x7285 (v) 425-558-5710 (f)
> MSN: paul () robichaux net   Twitter: paulrobichaux
>
>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>
> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:08:14 +0000
> To: "isn () infosecnews org" <isn () infosecnews org>
> Subject: [ISN] Creating a rogue CA certificate
>
> http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/
>
> December 30, 2008
>
> MD5 considered harmful today
> Creating a rogue CA certificate




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