Re: Hashes,File protection,etc

[Dave Aitel <dave () immunitysec com>]

On Mon, 2002-10-14 at 15:59, Dan Kaminsky wrote:
> Dave Aitel wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 2002-10-14 at 14:40, Dan Kaminsky wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> > > >      
> > > For remotely computed data / hashes, you can't -- thus the folly of 
> > > trusting MD5 hashes on critical files downloaded off of untrusted 
> > > servers.  If somebody can modify the tarball, they can probably modify 
> > > the hash too.
> > >    
> >
> > Well, not always, if there is a semi-trusted third party or two - see
> > http://www.immunitysec.com/hashdb.html for one implementation of this
> > sort of thing. 
> >
> >  
> Cool stuff there!  Maybe host the DB over DNS or something trivial. 
>  hash.filename.immunitysec.com :-)
>
> Incidentally, Bitzi was/is trying to do something like your stuff for 
> arbitrary data -- they didn't care what(P2P), they just hosted the 
> translation between hash to content.  Genuinely cool crypto, using 
> Merkle's old Hash Tree concept.
>
> The great thing about hash trees is that you don't need the entire file 
> to find out you're being fed bad data.
>
> I believe Bitzi opened their code, too:  www.bitzi.com.  
>
> --Dan

Cool. I'd go look at that, but 10000 people are currently grabbing SPIKE
Proxy or SPIKE looking for that IIS DoS, which means my network
connection is swamped. I squeeze my e-mail through, though. :>

Any solution to this problem would be good - be it mine, or something
else. I'm really tired of hearing about opensource.tar.gz getting
trojaned. If Ximian, Freshmeat.net, Akamai or something would host a
HashDB server, we could be done with that stuff once and for all. As it
is, you're only protected for files that I have bothered to go out and
grab, or validated off of announcements.


-- 
Dave Aitel <dave () immunitysec com>
Immunity, Inc

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