On 29/09/12 08:48 AM, coderman wrote:
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 5:13 AM, ianG <[email protected]> wrote:
... a small history of attacks and similar events against PKI:
http://wiki.cacert.org/Risk/History
i'm curious to know if there are documented instances of HSM protected
private keys stolen via exploit against HSM firmware.
there are a few fun vulns in these expensive key containers. has such
an attack been observed in the wild?
(to date all attacks i have seen make unauthorized use of an otherwise
intact HSM, rather than attack the HSM directly...)
Yes - from a risk analysis view, the sensible thing to do is to attack
the bureaucracy not the HSM. The problem with attacking the HSM is that
it becomes obvious, a property sometimes known as tamper-evidence.
Either by stealing it or accessing it (I speculate the exploit pointed
at by Peter would have taken months of access).
This is matched by anecdotal evidence from the field - the normal attack
is to get the owner to allow secret bypasses for minting special certs.
For high value targets, the modus operandi is to replace the key
persons team with people who have dual loyalties. This is surprisingly
easy to do if you think about it...
iang
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