Schneier on Security

ab praeceptis • August 28, 2016 10:47 AM

Nick P

I think it’s not “either or” (human-centric and machine-centric proofs) but one as well as the other.

How do many attacks come into existence?

Engineers think in terms of the product, its use and usability and of certain boundaries of quality, reliability, etc. Attackers, however, often think in quite different terms. They question premisses, they, in a way, put human creativity and ingenuity against machines (and thinking along that axis).

Most importantly, humans can tick like that, machines can’t – and that includes proving systems. Moreover, those systems don’t spring into action by themselves; they are limited to the role of a tool which is used by a human with a given set of assumptions, targets, etc.

My system can, for example, check whether any algo I throw at it, does meet a given set of assumptions and interests. “Assumptions and interests” is the key word and it leads us directly to the human factor. An engineer usually has a mind set quite different from that of an attacker. In fact, that in itself, constitutes a significant part of the attackers playground.

Certainly, math could be used to create a watertight solution, but, just like the verifier, it’s limited to the boundaries we humans create.

Which again (I know, I’m not making friends here) quite directly leads to “We must teach them properly. The next generation of engineers will only be as good as we educate them”.

I like the evolution of this thread: It makes us think about our role (and our way of processing) and the machines role. If we understand our role that will promise lots of progress because it’s a part of our problem to not have seen the role of the machines and ours.
What I like about machines, though, is the fact that they can be valuable helpers in making us more credible thinkers; they take over the part we humans are not made for (e.g. massive and boring calculations).

One important step btw. is to actually create resonable boundaries for machines to check. If I throw “int day” at the compiler (machine) it will be considerably less helpful that if I feed it “day : 1..31”, Small example, small thingy, unnerving ab praeceptis, why the hell is he riding on those pesky small things? Because they show how little we refelect about ourselves and about machines and because hackers love to play with things like “day 0” or “day 32”.

@tyr

Very funny remark, Euler and the 7 bridges 😉

But “without the need to swim or use a boat” was part of the problem definiton. Anyway, I smiled and liked your remark.

ab praeceptis • August 28, 2016 2:07 PM

Nick P

What do you think about short-cutting some of the executable specs or verifications in Prolog for reference implementation or simple verifier?

While I’d strongly support to make a semester or two of Prolog mandatory for CS, my answer to your question is “Little”.

For different reasons that I already briefly mentioned. And there is another important factor that makes me to not expect much from that approach. What we often losely mix together actually are quite different fields, depending from where you look from.

If I’m a mathematician or an architect or a sw engineer or a cryptologist is so decisive a difference that it basically all but seperates the related fields in quite different ways with quite different weights.

More importantly though I consider the prolog approach seductive and even seemingly obvious but in the end short circuited.

To solve the problems or to at least build an approach or, if we are lucky, even an adeqate toolset, we first must understand the underlying problem domain. That means we must, at least partly, leave our field of expertise (A civil engineer may spot many problems but he will fail to spot problems outside of his field such as, e.g. “style” and “social factors”).

The underlying and causal problems imo stem from mainly two facts, a) the human vs machine difference (plus, as I mentioned earlier some ugly sidenotes like understanding way to little how we/our brains tick) and b) the logic vs implementation difference.

The prolog approach seems short-circuited to me because it is the very implementation of (an attempt of) transforming human logic to machines. Hence it brings little to the table in relation to our task. It doesn’t help us to bridge the above mentioned causal problems.

Moreover, we must start pragmatically; after all we want to solve a practical problem with ugly beasts beneath. The decisive figure is/are the software people, i.e. the designers and the coders. This defines the mindset; whatever we come up with must be congruent with that -and- it also defines, so to speak, the codomain of what an acceptable solution is.

While, looking superficially, one might think that we have a plethora of knowledge and even tools at our disposal, this is actually not true. Hint: The best formal tools are of lamentably little value if engineers won’t use them (because they fear them, because they look “too theoretical” etc).

And indeed reality seems to confirm my impression. Rodin, for example, a very fine tool by a very bright man, is not seen as immensely valuable and desirable by most engineers (if they know it at all). Typically it’s used in high pressure situations (like “this is a railway management system. 99,9% good just isn’t good enough!”) and on top in rather large and rigid organisations.
“Funny and easy” (but largely worthless) approaches, on the other hand, easily reach acceptance.

Imo, one of the most powerful properties of spark is hardly ever recognized: It has a “face” that doesn’t frighten or apall engineers. “Is it at least close to a really good solution?” – hardly matters. Even a mediocre solution that is actually used is way better than a theoretically better solution that fails to find acceptance in its intended clientele.(Et voilà, here we are again at the human factor I stress so often).

The reality out there is a very bitter one. I have, in fact, often to fight to propagate understanding and acceptance for the simple and bloodily obvious (I think) necessity that software can’t be “just programmed” (or worse, hacked, an outcome of the stupid “fun” “culture”). Moreover I have to explain that “we buy good libraries” is not a solution, unless these libraries are reasonably verified (Most are, in fact, not even reasonably specified, let alone verified).

Back to the “philosophical” part: Problems usually are, no matter whether we like it or not, to be properly examined, identified and described, before we can even start to think about a solution (Otherwise: What the hell are we trying to solve?) and I see only one path, which is a more or less mathematical one. There prolog might indeed be helpful but no more helpful than a number of other devices.
At the other end of that path is software, i.e. the implementation of algorithms.

That pretty much describes my perspective. It is one that sees this path from more or less pure mathematical to more or less practical (up to as in “hardware, logic cells” etc). And I see that in the center of that path is the software architects, designers, coders around whom that hole game turns and who set the rules for what is acceptable (as rule, as tool, etc.) and what is not.

That center must doubtlessly evolve but so must other fields and even the very understanding of them. I am, for instance, badly missing more technology philosophers (real ones, not the blabla drones (“evangelists”)) with a strong background in reasoning and mathematics as well as more than a rather remote experience in the engineering field.

That, btw. was behind one of recent my criticisms across the ocean: they have a very strong tendency and “culture” to equate “machine” to “better than mere humans”. Along that way they have created a plethora of ugly problems, in large part due to a severe lack in intellectual foundation, leading, among other problems, to an annoyingly sad and ill ignorance of the human factor and hence to very major problems.

I complimented tyr not coincidentially for his Euler fun. It is humans (like e.g. Euler) who extended the solid intellectual foundations – not machines. Last but not least: Complexity and quantity will not save us. What will save us is much more to do with, e.g. Wirths famous “simplicity!” – which looks so simple yet is so hard to reach.

ab praeceptis • August 28, 2016 7:42 PM

Nick P

Modula-3 is dead and not a verified tool.

Uhm, there quite some really dead items in that list and there are not-more-verified and even less verified tools in it.

Most importantly, however, I very happily contradict: Modula-3 is not dead, thanks to a small german company (elego) and a small but active community. And yes, there is still work done and things looked and worked at and discussed (e.g. a llvm “back end”). Moreover, Modula-3 can be built on current OSs and OS-versions (something quite many items on the list can’t offer).

Finally, Modula-3’s sys lib was verified, something very few languages can say about themselves.

“security standards” – I stick to what I said. With solid reasons. But I can live with the agreement to disagree.

“you and the tool” – again: what looks nice in papers often enough is not in reality. “not” as in “practically unusable”, “doesn’t even compile on current systems”, “has grave weaknesses”, etc.
Moreover, again, most developers can’t just switch the language; often enough they can’t even decide on it. Whatever tool one uses, must somehow fit into the work (and mind!) cycle (which is very different in a uni CS lab from a company project setting). Last but not least: Where’s the tree to pluck the needed engineers from? Because, you see, I need people to actually work on a project.
Kindly keep in mind that I speak of practical experience. Have gone those ways, had my feet on them, know them.

Also don’t forget the real world out there. The vast majority of software can claim nobility if there was some uml diagrams around. Most can’t even claim some uml BS-bingo (Yes, I hate xml and everything related to it).

The best results I’ve seen so far have not been due to tools but due to changing minds and a knowledge increase.

It’s somewhat akin to other security related issues like crypto. There are discussions about Isabelle vs Coq or about aes-128 vs chacha20/12 … while, in fact, the problem is that >90% simply don’t care and/or know better. Our problem here (formal methods, etc) is not that we must achieve 99.98% rather than “only” 99.96% – our real problem is blunt ignorance and grave lacks.

ab praeceptis • August 29, 2016 12:37 PM

Nick P

Ad “1000 papers”.

I just fell over some (very interesting) work of M. Ganesalingam again, when a (largely unrelated) nice example for the schizm I at times mention hit my brain:

Look at Gödels 2nd. IT. A very major problem for academia (understandably) but basically all but irrelevant for engineering (iff the tools are properly built and tested). Our codomains are quite different and what in yours is a serious block, in ours is but a curiosity.

This becomes particularly clear when looking at our tools. Where your toolset comes down to reasoning and plagued by more levels and incarnations of G2IT with a serious potential leading to an unresolvable paradoxon, for us engineers the world is simple; we simply verify the function over a reasonable domain/codomain subset that can be observed in a descriptive manner rather than a procedural one.

And we have one more device at hand: We can exclude the threatening paradoxon that plagues you, namely that of the validity of G2IT in our very reasoning.

a) We simply don’t have to look at the possibility that our very own reasoning can not be proven correct by itself (G2IT)

b) even better, we are allowed the generous assumption that if G2IT did in fact concern our reasoning then, so what? Because we engineers act within a self-referential system. Whether our solution is correct or just seems correct is of little concern for a variety of reasons, ranging from “Oh well, the clients judging us are victimized by G2IT, too” over “There are no external factors such as our bridge crumbling indicating incorrectness” to “our job is not 100% correctness per se and provably but 100% correctness within a comfortable frame of predicates”.

As a sidenote for our colleagues in academia: I do not see a killer problem in G2IT; one can quite comfortably escape its magic ban by other reference frames and devices. In other words: proof system A must not necessarily prove itself. There are other choices ranging from prove systems B and C over reasoning outside the constraints of mathematics (but not of logic!) to changing perspective and asking/thinking again about the framing itself.

On the other hand your life is easier because there is less pressure to deliver bridges, trains and other applications and because in most things you are your own court and judge while we are judged by others.

Sidenote 2 (though here I’m somewhat close to the border of esoterics): Maybe G2IT is a symbol for what makes some (usually on the academic “1000 papers” side) so (in a way understandably) obsessed about pushing the frontier from 99.97% security (or whatever) toward 99.98%. It might well be that the 0.01% difference looks insignificant but are actually gigantic monster blocks in your way (such as G2IT). We engineers on the other hand are utterly shocked about that vast space of the 99.97% being basically largely left unused, i.e. about the extremely poor reality e.g. in terms of actually implemented and wide spread levels of security.

ab praeceptis • August 29, 2016 7:38 PM

Get to it

a) that does in no way counter what I said or weaken it (in fact, it talks about something entirely different)
b) that would simply change/tighten the frame
c) what makes you believe that quite detailed info on bridges and trains is not available?
d) engineers have targets. Usually the target is not “create the perfect XYZ”. Actually, usually the target is even not or hardly to do with security (as in “secure against attacks”)

To avoid misunderstandings: My point was not “engineers are better than researchers”. It was rather that the two are complementary (with an advantage for the academicians because they can theoretically exist without engineers while the opposite is quite doubtful).

ab praeceptis • August 31, 2016 1:12 AM

Don

unseen, part 2.

Just 2 short remarks:

• aes-256 by definition is not somehow weakened by being fed by the output or feeding the input of some other, no matter how lousy, crypto algo.
• if they had an engineer who were capable to implement an extended aes-4096 then that person would refrain from doing so because he would be professional. Chances are that their engineer is not particularly knowledgeable in the crypto field and would hence be frightend and/or unsuccessful. If, however, they had a capable engineer (their SSL config hint that there aresome professionals available) – and – that engineer would be “forced” to come up with some “super high-end” “much better” security than aes-256, then he would almost certainly add some sh*tbingo layer, probably in the kex, to make his stupid boss happy.

Example: feed some random into some fast hash (just for stretching; (even pseudo) random must not be wasted) and use the result as 4096-bit security by simply ring walking along in aes blocksize steps. Et voilà: Not much work and his boss is very happy having 2 to the [much bigger number number than 256] security.

1 reason for my assumption is that their https config allows for aes256 but prefers 128bit. Typical for providers. the 256 is for marketing and 128 is for lower server load. And that’s quite certainly also the mindset with which he approached his bosses “256? Everyone has that. I want 4096!” demand.

And that’s pretty much what I think happened.

ab praeceptis • August 31, 2016 7:56 PM

Clive Robinson

Interesting thoughts. And you are, of course, right.

But I looked at it from a pragmatic angle. Simple reason: realm properties.
It just so happens that some days ago I wrote in a paper (referring to properly applied reasoning in the context of sound software creation) that “One problem class to be looked at is based on the fact that algorithms live in the realm of mathematics, a rather constraint free ideal realm, while software lives in the physical realm of voltages below x V or above y V”. succ(127) is just 128 in the realm of math. The same thing on an 8 bit integer does funny things. Realm properties.

Strange that I had to remind of that but actually that’s a problem class which is the source of plenty pain.

In the realm of actually performed attacks there are ugly factors like cost-value ratio, psychology, resource feasibility, and others. That’s why in the end having armed guards in front of valuable things often is what one ends up doing. Similarly, in, I posit, the vast majority of cases governments (as well as other gangs feeling not bound by law) will very often prefer to ram a knive into ones leg and then simply asking again for the secret info they desire rather than fumbling with software based usb eavesdropping.

I know, for instance, of a very major global bank having important data backups in safes in trucks which drive around day and night along more or less “coincidential” ever changing routes. Funny. Following the same principle super powers like Russia have been transforming their nuclear capability from stationary silos towards mobile launchers. Mobile as in “don’t know the location, can’t comfortably take out”.

As you happen to bring up quantum computing: I don’t care too much about it. Neither am I much worried nor am I betting much on it. You don’t seem to think very differently. As for that chinese crypto magic satellite my assumption is that that is way more about politics (the “See, mine isn’t shorter than yours” variant) plus some secret stuff nothing to do with quantum than about science or crypto.

Technomagic aside, what kind of attacks are actually and really performed? From what I see (and I actually did have occasional contacts with (btw, rather bureaucratic) secret services as well as with (btw, rather bureaucratic) cyber security agencies) the real world is very different from what papers might make us believe.
Let me put it in a funny way: You know what is the single most dangerous factor in the whole state game? Bureaucracy. It’s bureaucracy, utter ignorance, and snarkdom that pose by far the greatest security risk in the cyber domain as far as states are concerned. And add vanity to the mix.
When I learned that nsa’s tao is consisting of hundreds of people I knew that their actually most important weapon was bureaucracy and old-school “shit on the law. Law is for tax payers not for tax spenders”.
What does the nsa utah data center tell me? Bureaucracy and the purely quantitative approach.

Of course, in my researchers skin I’m deep into bleeding edge worries and even rather remote risks. But as an engineer who is tasked to solve problems and to create solutions for the real world and against real attacks I find myself telling people that putting their password on a post it stuck to their monitor just doesn’t cut it.
Or I find myself explaining that the newest “this will save us” hype in town, like functional programming (It took them less than 100 years to find out about it! Wow. Our state agencies are like racing cars…) is not useful for them because I happen to know what kind of developers they attract and have and how long it takes to change mindsets in large organisations (and that math needs a certain minimum of brains).

Quantum computing being oh so dangerous? How yesteryear to be worried about that. The bleeding edge, I suggest, is being worried about aliens stealing our keys through virtual wormholes! Shiver.

ab praeceptis • August 31, 2016 9:59 PM

r

“…you didn’t bite on the train side of the argument either – people are already hacking the rail systems.”

Staying quiet on some things does not necessarily indicate lack of knowledge. Not everyone is at liberty to speak about everything.

Often I simply can’t relate to what you say because to me it looks weird. Maybe a culture thing, maybe a different mindset, maybe my lack of knowledge in certain areas like the simpsons, xkcd, etc; whatever. As far as I can follow you, I respond.

Generally speaking, I often do actually not contradict you people; I just happen to live in a quite different world and my field and task just isn’t working on reaching 99.98% rather than 99.97%. My task is to make us leave 12% and to reach 25% (putting it somewhat sarcastically) as well as to lead us back to proper reasoning.

@Clive Robinson

Thanks for the link to pressron. Interesting (and good to know that I’m not alone in this universe *g). He writes

Machine and language models of computation differ so greatly in the computational complexity properties of their description that they form two distinct classes that cannot be directly compared in a meaningful way.

Indeed. At the same time we have to see what software creation (from conception over design and development to gates flipping) is all about: It’s about a transposition (actually multiple ones and ones where frighteningly many software people have not even understood their role and position) that, if we want good and reliable software, must not just be done, but done in a congruent, complete, and consistent manner. Btw as you seem to like the field of Quanta, there are quite striking similarities (albeit more on the philosophical side but very close to the edge towards physics)
A comparison I sometimes use is music. Our field is still very much driven by people grabbing instruments and trying what can be done with them. A good orchestra, however, understands the transposition from the spherical realm of music (concept, what the composer hears in his mind) to music (what people hear when the music is performed).

But there are systems … where it does not matter how many times you stab or hot someone they can not tell you what you might want to know

I know about that and I see many interesting things there, too. But I also know that that risks to not be a solution but a mere shifting of the problem (someone does know the secret and he probably wants to keep healthy legs and and an throat).

… bureaucratic …

All correct and true, but: that shows the problem (and confirms what I said) but it doesn’t offer a solution and possibly it even doesn’t allow one.

But there is more to that point. It is in some way another incarnation of the old massive military vs. guerilla (or spies or insane king) problem. That’s almost certainly also the point that scares the living sh*t out of the bureaucrats. Military persons recognize certain well known patterns quite reliably (to then reliably fail to put up a solution in time).

But it’s even worse. Guerillas use weapons, too, so not only are their tools well known to the state player but their tools are also weaker than the states tools. Not so in IT. There the other party has (at least for some time) tools completely unknown to the state player, and even worse, they have what created those tools in the first place – that’s the real killer. Plus those tools are to a large part non physical which means that many advantages of state players vanish. Your own argument paints the reason. Bright and creative people are very, very unlikely to end up in the state bureaucracy (and if they do their mindset is probably very different from that of the opponents).

Q* confused

Not really. That’s intentional blissful ignorance. In the end Q* just changes the implementation realm somewhat. Moreover, I have reason to believe that again they look at the instruments and what they can do with them rather than understanding music. Insofar my clients are concerned about key distribution we feel that we have exellent non-Q means. Technomagic may seem to provide safety but imo it doesn’t. Math does. (Don’t care. As I said earlier, I’m an old stick).

ab praeceptis • August 31, 2016 11:10 PM

Wael

a) I did not contradict the core statement ‘no system that is either not attackable or does not leak information if there is an “energy path that can be modulated in some way”‘

But I’d like to add: Last time I looked there have been stolen some billion passwords (to focus on just one problem symptom). As far as I know the problem was never clever EM near field transmission through USB but lousy, lousy OpSec, poor or wrongly understood and applied security, lousy and often unpatched software (incl. OSs), etc.

Why would I invest my time and efforts in exotic cases when tens or hundreds of millions of people are in danger due to almost vulgarly primitive reasons?

b) I will not engage in a discussion about the definition of “quite useless”

More generally speaking I also don’t care about exotic attack vectors because it will not stop at energy paths; it’ll soon will reach deeper into the quantum level where we would be virtually lost due to a lack of knowledge and understanding as well as due to the very nature of that field.

As a scientist I would, of course, dance in enjoyment. After all what I just said translates into generations of researchers having many, many papers to be written and many PHDs to be achieved (and I will even politely leave unmentioned the question whether academia isn’t also (to a considerable part) a service for society, payed for in large part by society, and with a balance not at all pleasant in all fields).

I accept that there are doctors whose interest lies in exotic diseases that one might attract when travelling close to the event horizon of a black hole. I myself, however, am the kind of doctor who, finding himself in some kind of a war zone with many many wounded, strongly prefers to stop violent bleeding.

I hope that I will one day succeed in making myself understood (maybe not agreed with but understood). Meanwhile I wish you success in not becoming prey to evil people stealing your secrets through EM eavesdropped USB transmissions sitting unnoticed next to your very computer.

ab praeceptis • September 1, 2016 1:43 AM

Wael

My responsability is limited to what I do and say. Your perception is your responsability.

commenters here have different areas of interest!

Let me first congratulate you to that pearl of wisdom. Thank you so much for explaining. Who would have imagined that.

Now to reality: I did not doubt that nor did I attempt others to discuss what they find interesting.
But maybe someone (wink wink nudge nudge) doesn’t like to hear that someone else doesn’t attribute the same weight to that interest.

[…time and efforts in exotic cases…] Someone has to do it.

“Has to?” – No. That’s but an arbitrary assertion.
But everybody can do it and I will certainly not try to stop them.

If you think it’s a waste of time, then don’t engage in the discussion or post a short sarcastic / humorous comment.

I must have missed the line where it’s written “Wael makes the rules here”.

Moreover, I did not attack anyone and I did offer reasons for my view.

[…I also don’t care about exotic attack vectors…] Some other people do, including me.

So? I did in no way keep you away from being interested in and discussing those matters.
All I did was stating my personal position. Politely.

And again I provided a reason. You may not like or accept that reason but it’s anyway a considerable difference whether one merely arbitrarily asserts or whether one offers a reason.

Perhaps we should drop the field because your royal highness don’t care about it?

Me impressed. What a substantial and well reasoned argument.

Just in case 2 times isn’t sufficient: I did at no point suggest those matters to be dropped nor did I in any way keep anyone away from discussing them. But hey, why let reality and facts disturb your subjective perception.

Subject closed!

… says the guy who just a moment ago addressed me as “royal highness” and (falsely an groundlessly) accused me of dictating what can be discussed and what not.

so quit complaining about English not being your mother tongue

I didn’t complain. I mentioned it. Look up the difference.

When they fail (and they will) come back to the exotic doctors.

Sorry, I’m not a psychiatrist and can’t help in interpreting your dreams. But I’m under the impression that you should work on your reality perception, if only to not be emotionally stressed by things that were not said.

Btw: Sometimes, when people attack others they are telling more about themselves than about the person they address. Not that it was needed but thank you.

Have a nice evening.

ab praeceptis • September 1, 2016 5:32 PM

r

The whole L* universe is somewhat weird and confusing. Maybe it’s helpful to look at its roots. Those were basically about 1 but very important issue, namely whether u-kernels were condemned to be slow or whether one could achieve having both, their advantages and at least near-monolithic speed.

L4 is the newest and current incarnation, which has been picked up and worked on (“forked”) by diverse groups with diverse goals. The australians tried (and achieved) do to something very interesting; a safe L4 kernel. Of course, this has to be seen in a wider context of a wider trend looking at how to make safer OSs.

From a professional perspective the major value of their work isn’t so much about yet another L* incarnation but about a broad basis in terms of proving. In other words, we are not so much interested in the OS but in its building blocks and particularly in the proofs for them.

As the Dresden L4 came up: That’s somehow funny in that, while their L* is of no particular high interest and somewhat floating between important plumbing work and creating a “fun distro” for everyone, it gotten some attention because the secure government mobile phones of Germany are based on one of the Dresden incarnations (“Fiasko” iirc). And yes, it’s not SeL4 based.

But again, a word of warning: while prooving all the building blocks of a kernel is a very valuable contribution to the field of safe OSs, it does not per se constitute a safe OS. For that other elements are needed, to, capabilities to name one example.

ab praeceptis • September 1, 2016 6:05 PM

r

Well, yes and no, kind of.

Basically it’s about a proper approach rather than just kind of lumping together all the parts of an OS.

Tanenbaum (and only with Minix 3 iirc) delivered one additional block, namely resiliency, some others added contributions in terms of performance, yet others in terms of caps, etc.

The real point from a higher perspective, however, is about structuredness mostly as seen from a mathematical perspective.

It’s somewhat (losely) aking to languages. Where very old languages often came to be basically fat lumps of everything thrown in, it was soon understood (famously but not first by Wirth) that both, OSs and languages, are (or then, should be) implementations of algorithms. One might jokingly think o functional languages which are (and in an obvious way) quite close to math. and math well-structuredness.

And yes, you are right, the importance of that is roughly increasing with code/project size; one should keep in mind that an OS and even to a degree a kernel actually is a projct of considerable size and complexity.

ab praeceptis • September 2, 2016 7:36 AM

Dirk Praet

[…acme-encrypt which is a port of the ‘letskencrypt’…]

I bet that, as we speak, @ab praeceptis is drawing up an extensive rant to Theo, accusing him of wilfully distributing security snake oil and maliciously supporting known broken systems 😎

No, I don’t. I highly value the work of the OpenBSD people and, hey, everyone is entitled to an idiocy from time to time (I myself had a generous share of that). Moreover, at least the OpenBSD people coded their own acme-stuff (and such adressed what possibly is the major furuncle of let’s encrypt).

Now, before some (Nick P, maybe) put an arrow into their bow and mention that OpenBSD is not exactly the peak of OS security I’d like to quickly mention something in preventive defense: I didn’t say it is. But, come on, those people have really done a lot to bring us forward in terms of security. While not being in the fervent fanclub of OpenBSD my attitude towards The OpenBSD is majorly one of gratitude and respect.

ab praeceptis • September 2, 2016 11:17 AM

“[Or most likely, a whole bucket of last words.]
A bucket and half it is!”

Thanks so much to both for providing a clear example of the little games within the lower wannabe ranks of the alpha group. Of course a prepared and served ball by one just had to be picked up and used by the other.

Thanks also for the response to the, btw. not even asked, intelligence question. (“quantitative” criterion).

Never mind the long posts from some (higher ranking alpha) members (that certain players would, of course, not dare to criticize).

In case you haven’t noted yet; You are not on your way up. Quite the contrary. Do yourself a favour and think about the famous “Si tacuisses …”.

ab praeceptis • September 3, 2016 6:40 PM

Moderator

If following Nick P’s suggestion I’d like to see the “any replies to it” part amended with “unless those replies have the substance to stand by their own, too”.

More generally, while I do understand Nick P feeling (justifiably) disturbed by those “posting series blasts” I think that “spam” is too hard a judgement, hence my proposal would be to invite those posters to a) post more moderately and b) to keep in mind whether their posts are within the frame of interest here.

ab praeceptis • September 4, 2016 12:21 AM

Bong-Smoking Primitive Monkey-Brained Spook

Neither. I did not even know that other forum (woodman) and I don’t like, let alone play name games or writing under multiple names.

Being at that I’m getting an idea why Nick P might behave the way he does (concerning myself). He seems to think that I’m acting under different names here. I don’t.

That statement, of course, isn’t worth much and doesn’t prove anything, but I felt like putting that straight out anyway.

ab praeceptis • September 4, 2016 12:55 AM

Moderator

I’d like to ask for two things:

a) Kindly check the IP of my posts (It’s an IP linked to a plain DSL and it should always be the same or very similar. No proxies or the like, just a plain simple connection).

b) I’d like to suggest to implement a tougher policy concerning socket-puppets, multiple names, repeated gross ignorance for the context of this blog, and the like.

Thank you

ab praeceptis • September 4, 2016 2:36 PM

Moderator

First: Thank you.

No, I don’t feel I have been impersonated. Why I brought up my IP is that it might be helpful in determining name-system-location consistency along with some helpful details (location, type of connection, etc). Also feel free to nmap me in case you decide to investigate the current problems.

Nick P

You may know a lot of papers but you certainly lack even basic legal understanding and investigative and even logical capabilities.
You did put my posts along with the sock-puppet post and you again accused me to be part of some kind of trolling operations. Based on what? Based on “I have feeling”.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t demand proper investigation, proofs and whatnot. While the Moderator probably has at least some basic means to investigate (and I expressly cleared him to do so) you certainly don’t. As if to confirm what I say, you yourself publicly explained that you basically applied aunties-kitchen “reasoning”.

That is not acceptable.

Moreover I never criticized your personal style. Feel free to put your points and views in any way you see fit and adequate. On the other hand, however, you not only did repeatedly criticize my style but you even went so far to make-shift an accusation of trolling out of that.

I don’t think Bruce Schneier likes wanton accusations and libelling based on nothing but someones gut feeling. In fact, he frequently criticized that and always stood for proper legal proceeding. And that is not some matter of personal taste; it is a vital part of credibility.

What you do here is going against the very essence of what this blog stands for: Proper research, proper analysis, proper use of adequate and sound technology and means.

Finally it is not up to you to dictate how one is to write and discuss here. It is up to Bruce Schneier and his team. He doesn’t need you as sheriff or as interpretor. As weall can see Bruce Schneier can perfectly well speak for himself and he even does have (a) moderator(s).

So, stop your personal based-on-gut-feeling witchhunt!

ab praeceptis • September 4, 2016 8:39 PM

Dirk Praet et al.

Unfortunately there seems indeed to be a need to avoid games played by some. On
the other hand RSA is unwieldy long creating either a bad content/signature
size ratio or a need for other ways like the ones proposed earlier (e.g.gitgub).

I suggest an alternative that is no less secure than RSA but offers a by far
better content/signature size ratio, namely OpenBSD’s signify/Ed25519.

signify seems to be available for all major OSs and is simple to use.

My public key that I will from now on use is mentioned below.
The signed message is the full post up to and including “— signature:”,
followed by the signature.

signify PK:RWSI84is85x0FXvAHyaOZJ69GH0sAt8Nn4UF92EgbOnJMZSLZlqPz1pf
— signature:
RWSI84is85x0FVfRkZakJ5n+HIi9RWZSvlVJXWocddFeDeZZtvhRDRX6wwQrpxQGiVbBadGshTr5dwGjWipazixaI+l9ZWYdxgQ=

ab praeceptis • September 4, 2016 10:14 PM

“I figured I’d be clear that I wasn’t putting you in the same category as most of what was in the feed”

You did put me into that pastebin post, along with trolls. That is a verifiable fact. So your “I figured I’d be clear …” is questionable, to put it politely.

No answer needed, no discussion granted.

ab praeceptis • September 5, 2016 2:52 PM

Dirk Praet

here you got me. I did, indeed, not look closer at windows, because I don’t care.
I spotted “windows” as supported and didn’t look closer. You are right, fumbling
around with some unix stuff isn’t acceptable for many windows users. Apologies.

That said, I don’t like the proposed solution with github and repositories and
whatnot. a) it’s way too heavy for the problem we address and b) adding more
layers and steps that are not vitally necessary isn’t a good idea in my book.

Moreover: What’s our problem in the first place?
It’s not a signature problem; we do not think that evil people at Bruce
Schneiers site change posts. It might be thought of an identity problem; looks
attractive but is unreasonable. PKI is rotten and doesn’t provide what it says
it does and how should we couple of people reasonably check each others
identity? (Probably many would not even want that).

What it boils down to is something along the line “we don’t want to be imposted
and we would like to make it harder for evil or reckless “gamers”.

I’d prefer to have a simple solution for a simple problem.

P.S. concerning that other matter: I don’t care about those ranking games. I take
the liberty to judge for myself and to stand for myself. I’m well intentioned
and being polite is my default anyway.

Many good solutions come from people approaching problems in their own way. We
should value or at least tolerate different people with different approaches
and views rather than try to somehow make them fit into a group. In fact, quite
some of our best solutions came from “heretics” and “misfits”.

Some here love papers and that’s a valid approach and useful. But hands on
people with plenty experience can contribute, too (even if they were less
eleoquent in academic lingo and habits). And, of course, others too.

I will stay polite and respectful where I see a basis for respect but I will
not yield to “A is a prince here!” rules nor will I quietly tolerate when some
alpha feels like attacking me personally or putting along with trolls. Neither
will I tolerate to be subdued to the rules of the world of certain members. I’m
for instance, not defending a PhD thesis here, so why should rules of academia
be applied or tolerated?

Indeed friendly regards.

signify PK:RWSI84is85x0FXvAHyaOZJ69GH0sAt8Nn4UF92EgbOnJMZSLZlqPz1pf
— signature:
RWSI84is85x0Fd8f/UlHvPDj5MLrWTKtvyMB1ZWeozFHZPev5hg60OotRiLrJYWP1kRjsqS938Hz3sTiNYi603swi3/+BY+nPA0=

ab praeceptis • September 6, 2016 9:20 PM

Dirk Praet

“billions/open source”

Yes, openssl did not get any major share of the billions, afaik. But while I respect your view mine is that this raises the question “why?”. Fact is there is an open source community and fact is there has been lots of money and corp. support pumped into open source – and yet openssl (if you are right) didn’t get the support and means it needed.

Hey, we’re talking about the crown jewels, about something that is the underpinning of many things related to security, incl. vast parts of the web.

“you’re shooting at [well minded openssl] people” – a) no, I’m not shooting at them and b) if I really did than I would be shooting at people who, for whatever reason, fucked up and big time. And mind you, they knew that they were not working on some hobby project but on an immensely important one, one that, if fucked up, would create a major mess throughout the world.

And yes, there I agree, part of the problem is also that people just took whatever was served without looking or asking questions. But my argument was not “the people are correct, it’s them openssl devs. who are evil”. Not at all. My argument boils down to “look at the result, what or who ever may be guilty party(ies)”. Oh, and a side issue is also whether open source really is the paradise. I personlly do’t think so. Not at all. Nice well-minded people giving away stuff for free, objectively looked at, is just not enough. In technology social and political factors are not enough, there is more needed. Knowledge, expertise, project management etc. can’t be replaced by “nice, well-minded, and free”.

For those who don’t agree I have a suggestion: Why dentists and doctors? I know people who are well minded and will take care of your medical problems for free. Maybe you won’t survive or you will be maimed but it’s free and it’s done whit good intentions.

We can turn that any which way we want but there are some ugly facts. And no, it’s not OK as we now have LibreSSL. OpenSSL was a bleeding security hole collection for many years and during that time privacy has been broken, people were robbed, and lots of other damage has been done and suffered, maybe even whole governments have been pushed around or rooted.

“signify”

FreeBSD: pkg search signify -> It’s there, both as package and as port. Debian has it too.

Otherwise, yes, you caught me sloppy. My fault, apologies. It was stupid from me to trust funny “supported systems” lists and it was also stupid to not check windows (which I dont care about but many people do).

My lame (but true and honest) excuse is that my mind was half absent (thinking about building something really cross OS, tight, and secure based on NaCl/sodium).

Btw: I might look stubborn but my guts still tell me to dislike a solution based on multiple steps/providers/inet.

ab praeceptis • September 8, 2016 5:04 AM

Clive Robinson

We are actually not that far apart. But you see, where you see that a teenager diary lock is not anything serious, I see that it’s just soooo much better than writing her entries on the wall of a bus station. Also note that your pov risks to be understood as “there is no difference between 0% and 99% security. It’s either 100% or nothing”. Unfortunately not even 99.9% are achievable (depending somewhat on you one defines and measures).

I stick with my 99% line. And you confirm me, for instance with your directed EM attack case.

Yes, it’s possible that someone undertakes a directed EM attack on my server. But

• then I’m still way better than just use intels magic “random”
• then I’m still successfully defending against 99% of attacks
• then one were to prove that – and what – effect on security that would have
• then I still had something way better than the 99% just trusting in intels magic “random”.

Are millions of identities stolen and/or put in danger because some provider had no defense in place against directed EM attacks on his TRNG? Nope. They are stolen, abused, and put in danger because more probably than not, no sensible random source at all was used for the php code running on an old unpatched linux box.

Moreover: Following your argument one could not have any trustworthy sensible random source because any such device needed to be connected in one way or another to the board or to the chip which again would be prone to EM attacks. Alternatively one could just bet and trust in some on-chip random magic.

That’s the problem with the “99.7% just isn’t good enough” approach. In a world with 12% good solutions and practices 99.7% are a dream.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s good that people like you are trying hard to get infinitesimally close to 100%. That has brought many, many important thoughts, experience, better paradigms (even of reasoning in the first place) etc.

But at the same time it reminds me, being a first aid helper in Africa, who needs to get people to at least a halfway acceptable level of nutrition, of some doctor (who in theora is absolutely right) telling me that the meals we hand out are known to cause a rare disease in 1.4 Persons of 2 mio people.

Well noted, we discuss this while there are are plenty “dev/random or /dev/urandom” discussions alive in software circles and while even those are comparably “elite” looking at gazillions of programmers using just whatever is available in their libraries and remotely sounds like random.