ianG wrote:
On 10/10/12 23:44 PM, Guido Witmond wrote:
2. Use SSL client certificates instead;
Yes, it works. My observations/evidence suggests it works far better
than passwords because it cuts out the disaster known as "I lost my
password...."
It is what we do over at CAcert, [...]
Sorry for the long digression below, the overall concern bugs me somehow.
There is no doubts that the CAcert usage of client certificates is an
interesting experiment/deployment.
However, the limited value (of the CAcert activities enabled by a valid
client certificate) for attackers reduces the conclusions that can be
drawn from the deployment.
When reviewing a security scheme design for a client organization, I had
to ask myself what a potential attacker would attempt if the system was
protecting million dollar transactions.
Currently, one US bank usage of client certificates is attacked
(http://www.adp.com/about-us/trust-center/security-alerts.aspx,
"Fraudulent Emails Appearing to Come from ADP with Subject Line: ADP
Generated Message: First Notice - Digital Certificate Expiration").
I have serious reservations about the vulnerability of "client
certificate" usage to such social engineering attacks. Here are some of
the questions.
If we teach the user a long story about the *certificate* rules, how can
we expect him/her to pay attention to the *private*key*?
Can't the user become confused as to PK data elements (certificate,
private key, public key, local decryption password, key pair, digital
signatures), their respective origin, their look-and-feel in the user
dialogs?
Given this unavoidable state of confusion, how can the user defend
himself/herself against ill-intentioned guidance?
If the user is given a genuine certificate containing privacy sensitive
subject name data, how do you expect him/her to react to the information
that the basic Internet protocol (TLS) exposes such data in the clear to
eavesdroppers? How can you expect him/her to protect the private key
once the certificate privacy lesson has been found bogus?
If the user is given a certificate devoid of privacy sensitive subject
name data (e.g. self-signed, auto-issued, or obtained from
https://www.ecca.wtmnd.nl/ -- the proof of concept in the original
post), how do you expect him/her to pay any attention to protecting
anything?
Can anyone tell me (I am the user now) which software component and
which computing environment I need to trust to be confident about the
strength of the RSA key generated for me when I got a certificate from
https://www.ecca.wtmnd.nl/? Actually I would like to know how could I
learn by myself how the RSA key was generated for me? What is
security-critical in this certificate granting process?
Given that I exported the certificate obtained from
https://www.ecca.wtmnd.nl/ and I used openssl pkcs12 and open pkcs8
utilities to "look under the hood" of the RSA private key, at which
point in the enrollment process should I have been warned against these
steps (or equivalent actions suggested in a social engineering attack)?
As a concluding remark, I am nonetheless confident about the public key
techniques potential for improvements over the password-based
authentication paradigm. But I have difficulty with this widespread
abuse of language that equates client certificates with client
public-private key pairs. I'm afraid many security experts would even
have difficulty in clarifying the two notions. The fact that the
PKCS#12 format encryption covers both the private key and the
certificate does not help (you need to enter the private key access
password for accessing the certificate or even just the public key in a
PKCS#12 file).
Thanks in advance for sharing your views.
--
- Thierry Moreau
CONNOTECH Experts-conseils inc.
9130 Place de Montgolfier
Montreal, QC, Canada H2M 2A1
Tel. +1-514-385-5691
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