![When dud crypto merely gained’t let go [Audio + Text] – Naked Security](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/bn-1200.png?w=775 "When dud crypto merely gained’t let go [Audio + Text] – Naked Security")
Latest epidode – pay attention now.
DOUG. Busts, shutdowns, Samba, and GitHub.
All that, and extra, on the Naked Security podcast.
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Welcome to the podcast, all people.
I’m Doug Aamoth; he’s Paul Ducklin.
Paul, how do you do immediately, Sir?
DUCK. I’m very nicely, Douglas.
DOUG. Let us begin the present with our Tech History section – that is an attention-grabbing one.
This week, on 01 February 1982, the Intel 80286 16-bit microprocessor was launched, and went on to grow to be a mainstay in IBM PC/AT computer systems for years.
Interestingly, Intel didn’t anticipate the 286 for use for private computer systems, and designed a chip with multitasking and multi-user methods in thoughts.
DUCK. Its main use, as you say, was the PC/AT, the “Advanced Technology” laptop from IBM, which was principally designed to run DOS.
Although DOS is proscribed to 1MB of RAM (or 640KB RAM and the remainder ROM), you may have additional reminiscence, and you may use it for issues like…
…bear in mind HIMEM.SYS, and RAM caches, all of that stuff?
Except that as a result of Intel had safety in thoughts, bless their hearts, after they designed the 286…
…when you had switched from the mode the place it ran like an 8086 into the super-powerful so-called “protected mode”, *you couldn’t swap again*.
Once you flipped into the mode that allow you to entry your HIMEM or your RAMDISK, you had been caught.
You couldn’t return and keep it up operating DOS!
And IBM really jury-rigged their PC – you despatched this particular command to (consider it or not) the keyboard controller, and the keyboard controller principally rebooted the CPU.
Then, when the CPU began up once more, the BIOS mentioned, “Oh, that’s not a true reboot, that’s a sneaky ‘switch back illegally to real mode’ reboot,” [LAUGHTER] and it went again to the place you had been in DOS.
So the issue is, it was super-inefficient.
The different factor with the 286, though it might entry 16MB RAM in complete, is that, similar to the 8086, it might solely work on a most of 64KB at a time.
So the 64-kilobyte restrict was nonetheless principally wired into the DNA of that 286 microprocessor.
It was majestically and needlessly, because it turned out, sophisticated.
It’s form of like a product that was super-cool, however didn’t actually match a necessity out there on the time, sadly.
DOUG. Well, let’s begin in on our first tales.
We have a two-pack – it’s crime time.
Let’s discuss shutdowns and lock-ups, beginning with the FBI shutting down the Hive ransomware servers in the end.
That’s excellent news!
DUCK. It does appear so, doesn’t it, Doug?
Although we have to say, as we at all times do, basically, that “cybercrime abhors a vacuum”.
Sadly, different operators steam in when one lot get busted…
…or if all that occurs is that their servers get taken down, and the precise folks working them don’t get recognized and arrested, sometimes what occurs is that they preserve their heads under the parapet for a short time, after which they simply pop up some other place.
Sometimes they reinvent the previous model, simply to thumb their nostril on the world.
Sometimes they’d come again with a brand new identify.
So the factor with Hive – it seems that the FBI had infiltrated the Hive ransomware gang, presumably by taking on some sysadmin’s account, and apparently that occurred in the course of 2022.
But, as we’ve mentioned on the podcast earlier than, with the darkish net, the truth that you have got somebody’s account and you may log in as them…
…you continue to can’t simply lookup the IP variety of the server you’re connecting to, as a result of the darkish net is hiding that.
So evidently, for the primary a part of this operation, the FBI weren’t really in a position to determine the place the servers had been, though apparently they had been in a position to get free decryption keys for fairly quite a few folks – I feel a number of hundred victims.
So that was fairly excellent news!
And then, whether or not it was some operational intelligence blunder, whether or not they simply received fortunate, or… we don’t know, however evidently finally they did work out the place the servers had been, and bingo!
Shutdown!
DOUG. OK, superb.
And then our second of those crime tales.
We’ve received a Dutch suspect in custody, charged for not simply private information theft, however [DOOM-LADEN VOICE] “megatheft”, as you set it. Paul:
Dutch suspect locked up for alleged private information megathefts
DUCK. Yes!
It appears that his “job” was… he finds information, or buys information from different folks, or breaks into websites and steals enormous tranches of knowledge himself.
Then he slices-and-dices it in numerous methods, and places it up on the market on the darkish net.
He was caught as a result of the corporate that appears after TV licensing in Austria (loads of European nations require you to have a allow to personal and function a TV set, which basically funds nationwide tv)… these databases just about have each family, minus a number of.
The Austrian authorities turned conscious that there was a database up on the market on the darkish net that regarded very very similar to the form of information you’d get – the fields, and the way in which every part was formatted… “That looks like ours, that looks like Austrian TV licences. My gosh!”
So they did a extremely cool factor, Doug.
They did an undercover buy-back, and within the means of doing so, they really received deal with on the place the particular person was: “It looks like this person is probably in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.”
And so that they received in contact with their friends within the Dutch police, and the Dutch had been in a position to get warrants, and discover out extra, and do some raids, and bust any individual for this crime.
Perhaps unusually, they received the fitting from the courtroom, basically, to carry the man incommunicado – it was all a secret.
He was simply locked away, didn’t get bail – in truth, they’ve nonetheless received a pair extra months, I feel, that they will maintain him.
So he’s not getting out.
I’m assuming they’re apprehensive that [A] he’s received a great deal of cryptocurrency mendacity round, so he’d most likely do a runner, and [B] he’d most likely tip off all his compadres within the cyberunderworld.
It additionally appeared that he was making loads of cash out of it, as a result of he’s additionally being charged with cash laundering – the Dutch police declare to have proof that he personally cashed out someplace within the area of half-a-million euros of cryptocoins final 12 months.
So there you’re!
Quite loads of derring-do in an investigation, as soon as once more.
DOUG. Yes, certainly.
OK, it is a traditional “We will keep an eye on that!” sort of story.
In the meantime, we’ve a Samba logon bug that reminds us why cryptographic agility is so essential:
Serious Security: The Samba logon bug attributable to outdated crypto
DUCK. It is a reminder that when the cryptographic gurus of the world say, “XYZ algorithm is no longer fit for purpose, please stop using it”, snd the 12 months is – let’s say – the mid 2000s…
…it’s nicely value listening!
Make positive that there isn’t some legacy code that drags on, since you kind-of assume, “No one will use it.”
This is a logon course of in Microsoft Windows networking which depends on the MD5 hashing algorithm.
And the issue with the MD5 hashing algorithm is it’s a lot too straightforward to create two information which have precisely the identical hash.
That shouldn’t occur!
For me to get two separate inputs which have precisely the identical hash ought to take me, on my laptop computer, roughly 10,000 years…
DOUG. Approximately! [LAUGHS]
DUCK. More or much less.
However, only for that article alone, utilizing instruments developed by a Dutch cryptographer for his Master’s thesis again in 2007, I created *ten* colliding MD5 hash-pair information…
…in a most of 14 seconds (for one among them) and a minimal of underneath half a second.
So, billions of occasions quicker than it’s imagined to be doable.
You can due to this fact be completely positive that the MD5 hash algorithm *merely doesn’t reside as much as its promise*.
That is the core of this bug.
Basically, in the course of the authentication course of, there’s a component that claims, “You know what, we’re going to create this super-secure authentication token from data supplied by the user, and using a secret key supplied by the user. So, what we’ll do is we’ll first do an MD5 hash of the data to make it nice and short, and then we’ll create the authentication code *based on that 128-bit hash.”
In concept, when you’re an attacker, you possibly can create various enter information *that can give you the identical authentication hash*.
And meaning you possibly can persuade the opposite finish, “Yes, I *must* know the secret key, otherwise how could I possibly create the right authentication code?”
The reply is: you cheat in the course of the method, by feeding in information that simply occurs to give you the identical hash, which is what the authentication code relies upon.
The MD5 algorithm died years in the past, however but it lives on – and it shouldn’t!
So the repair is simple.
Samba simply mentioned, “What we’re going to do is, if you want to use this old algorithm, from now on, you will have to jump through hoops to turn it on. And if that breaks things, and if suddenly you can’t log into your own network because you were using weak security without realising it… that’s the price we’re all willing to pay.”
And I agree with that.
DOUG. OK, it’s model 4.17.5 that now forces these two choices, so head on the market and choose that up when you haven’t already.
And final, however actually not least, we’ve received code-signing certificates stolen from GitHub.
But there’s a silver lining right here, happily:
GitHub code-signing certificates stolen (however shall be revoked this week)
DUCK. It’s been fairly the few months for cloud breaches and potential provide chain assaults.
DOUG. Seriously!
DUCK. “Oh dear, stolen signing keys”… GitHub realised this had occurred on 07 December 2022.
Now, hats off to them, they realised the very day after the crooks had received in.
The drawback is that they hadn’t received into wander round – evidently their capability to get in was primarily based on the truth that they might obtain non-public GitHub repositories.
This is just not a breach of the GitHub methods, or the GitHub infrastructure, or how GitHub shops information – it’s simply that GitHub’s code on GitHub… among the stuff that was imagined to be non-public received downloaded.
And as we’ve spoken about earlier than, the issue when supply code repositories which are imagined to be non-public get downloaded…
…the issue is that, surprisingly typically, these repositories may need stuff in that you simply don’t wish to make public.
For instance, passwords to different providers.
And, importantly, the code-signing keys – your signet ring, that you simply use to place your little seal within the wax of this system that you simply really construct.
Even when you’re an open supply venture, you’re not going to place your code-signing keys within the public model of the supply code!
So that was GitHub’s worry: “Oh dear. We found the crooks almost immediately, but they came in, they grabbed the code, they went… thus, damage already done.”
It took them fairly a very long time, practically two months, to determine what they might say about this.
Or no less than it took two months till they mentioned something about it.
And it sounds as if the one issues which may impact clients that did get stolen had been certainly code-signing keys.
Only two tasks had been affected.
One is the supply code editor referred to as “Atom”, GitHub Atom.
That was principally outmoded in most builders’ lives by Visual Studio Code [LAUGHS], so the entire venture received discontinued in the course of 2022, and its final safety replace was December 2022.
So you most likely shouldn’t be utilizing Atom anyway.
And the excellent news is that, as a result of they weren’t going to be constructing it any extra, the certificates concerned…
…most of them have already expired.
And ultimately, GitHub discovered, I feel, that there are solely three stolen certificates that had been really nonetheless legitimate, in different phrases, that crooks might really use for signing something.
And these three certificates had been all encrypted.
One of them expired on 04 January 2023, and it doesn’t appear that the crooks did crack that password, as a result of I’m not conscious of any malware that was signed with that certificates within the hole between the crooks getting in and the certificates expiring one month later.
There is a second certificates that expires the day we’re recording the podcast, Wednesday, 01 February 2022; I’m not conscious of that one having been abused, both.
The solely outlier in all of it is a code-signing certificates that, sadly, doesn’t expire till 2027, and that’s for signing Apple packages.
So GitHub has mentioned to Apple, “Watch out for anything that comes along that’s signed with that.”
And from 02 February 2022, all the code-signing certificates that had been stolen (even those which have already expired) shall be revoked.
So it appears to be like as if it is a case of “all’s well that ends well.”
Of course, there’s a minor side-effect right here, and that’s that when you’re utilizing the GitHub Desktop product, or when you’re nonetheless utilizing the Atom editor, then basically GitHub is revoking signing keys *for their very own apps*.
In the case of the GitHub Desktop, you completely have to improve, which you ought to be doing anyway.
Ironically, as a result of Atom is discontinued… when you desperately have to proceed utilizing it, you really need to downgrade barely to the newest model of the app that was signed with a certificates that’s not going to get revoked.
I could have made that sound extra sophisticated than it truly is…
…nevertheless it’s a nasty search for GitHub, as a result of they did get breached.
It’s one other unhealthy search for GitHub that included within the breach had been code-signing certificates.
But it’s search for GitHub that, by the way in which they managed these certificates. most of them had been not of any use.
Two of the three that may very well be harmful could have expired by the point you take heed to this podcast, and the final one, in your phrases, Doug, “they’re really keeping an eye on.”
Also, they’ve revoked all of the certificates, regardless of the actual fact that there’s a knock-on impact on their very own code.
So, they’re basically disowning their very own certificates, and a few of their very own signed packages, for the higher good of all.
And I feel that’s good!
DOUG. Alright, good job by GitHub.
And, because the solar begins to set on our present for immediately, it’s time to listen to from one among our readers.
Well, when you bear in mind from final week, we’ve been attempting to assist out reader Steven roll his personal USB-key-based password supervisor.
Based on his quandary, reader Paul asks:
Why not simply retailer your passwords on a USB keep on with {hardware} encryption and a keypad… in a conveyable password supervisor resembling KeePass? No have to invent your individual, simply shell out a couple of bucks and preserve a backup someplace, like in a protected.
DUCK. Not a nasty concept in any respect. Doug!
I’ve been which means to buy-and-try a type of particular USB drives… you get hard-disk sized ones (though they’ve SSDs generally nowadays), the place there’s loads of room for a keypad on the highest of the drive.
But you even get USB sticks, they usually sometimes have two rows of 5 keys or two rows of six keys subsequent to one another.
It’s not like these commodity USB drives that, say, “Includes free encryption software,” which is on the stick and you may then set up it in your laptop.
The concept is that it’s like BitLocker or FileVault or LUKS, like we spoke about final week.
There’s a full-disk encryption layer *contained in the drive enclosure itself*, and as quickly as you unplug it, even when you don’t unmount it correctly, when you simply yank it out of the pc…
…when the facility goes down, the important thing will get flushed from reminiscence and the factor will get locked once more.
I suppose the burning query is, “Well, why doesn’t everyone just use those as USB keys, instead of regular USB devices?”
And there are two causes: the primary is that it’s a problem, and the opposite drawback is that they’re a lot, rather more costly than common USB keys.
So I feel, “Yes, that’s a great idea.”
The drawback is, as a result of they’re not mainstream merchandise, I don’t have any I can suggest – I’ve by no means tried one.
And you possibly can’t simply go into the typical PC store and purchase one.
So if any listeners have a model, or a sort, or a selected class of such product that they use and like…
…we’d love to listen to about it, so do tell us!
DOUG. OK, nice.. I like just a little crowd-sourcing, folks serving to folks.
Thank you very a lot, Paul, for sending that in.
If you have got an attention-grabbing story, remark or query you’d prefer to submit, we’d like to learn it on the podcast.
You can e-mail suggestions@sophos.com, touch upon any one among our articles, or hit us up on social: @NakedSecurity.
That’s our present for immediately – thanks very a lot for listening.
For Paul Ducklin, I’m Doug Aamoth, reminding you till subsequent time to…
BOTH. Stay safe!
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