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| pgpfan:efail [2021/05/21 16:19] – I have a theory... b.walzer | pgpfan:efail [2022/05/16 19:46] – No one cares about my opinions of media. b.walzer |
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| * [[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/efail-pgp-vulnerability-outlook-thunderbird-smime|We're calling it: PGP is dead]] | * [[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/efail-pgp-vulnerability-outlook-thunderbird-smime|We're calling it: PGP is dead]] |
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| The word "Hoax" in the title of this article refers to the attempts to make it seem that EFAIL represented some deficiency in PGP. That was simply not true. | To be completely clear... The word "Hoax" in the title of this article refers exclusively to the media attempts to make it seem that EFAIL represented some deficiency in PGP. It also can be considered a satire of needlessly provocative headlines. EFAIL represents real issues. They were just misrepresented. |
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| EFAIL was a list of different ways to cause inherently insecure message content (HTML email) to leak decrypted messages. Such data leakage was a known issue and was under routine exploitation at the time. This fact alone should be enough to convince most people EFAIL had nothing to do with either PGP (or S/MIME). When you have a hole big enough to drive a truck through there is no extra value in discussing the size and shape of the truck. Unfortunately in the case of EFAIL we need to spend time discussing truck dimensions. | EFAIL was a list of different ways to cause inherently insecure message content (HTML email) to leak decrypted messages. Such data leakage was a known issue and was under routine exploitation at the time. This fact alone should be enough to convince most people EFAIL had nothing to do with either PGP (or S/MIME). When you have a hole big enough to drive a truck through there is no extra value in discussing the size and shape of the truck. Unfortunately in the case of EFAIL we need to spend time discussing truck dimensions. |
| The OpenPGP specification already has a simple integrity check called the [[pgpfan:mdc|MDC]] that is entirely adequate to detect this particular attack. The addition of authenticated encryption to PGP would make no difference at all for any of the demonstrated EFAIL leaks. It is not possible to suggest authenticated encryption here without also acknowledging that the OpenPGP specification is not susceptible to EFAIL. The CVE was most likely disputed on this basis. | The OpenPGP specification already has a simple integrity check called the [[pgpfan:mdc|MDC]] that is entirely adequate to detect this particular attack. The addition of authenticated encryption to PGP would make no difference at all for any of the demonstrated EFAIL leaks. It is not possible to suggest authenticated encryption here without also acknowledging that the OpenPGP specification is not susceptible to EFAIL. The CVE was most likely disputed on this basis. |
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| This might be a good place to point out how wildly impractical the CFB gadget method is compared to the other methods listed in the EFAIL paper. To make a CFB gadget attack work you need to know the first 11 bytes/characters of the unencrypted message. The EFAIL paper suggested that the use of the ''multipart/mixed'' MIME attribute could allow as many as 500 guesses at those 11 bytes/characters in the same message. Unfortunately the paper did not give any examples of clients where this might work. The three clients I tested((Thunderbird, Roundcube, Mutt)) would not even recognize a second HTML section in a message, much less decrypt and interpret it. This is important because EFAIL is the sort of attack you only get to do once. The attack email is seen by the user and would normally inform them of the fact they were under some sort of attack. | This might be a good place to point out how wildly impractical the CFB gadget method is compared to the other methods listed in the EFAIL paper. To make a CFB gadget attack work you need to know the first 11 bytes/characters of the unencrypted message. The EFAIL paper suggested that the use of the ''multipart/mixed'' MIME attribute could allow as many as 500 guesses at those 11 bytes/characters in the same message. Unfortunately the paper did not give any examples of clients where this might work. Even if there were email clients out there that will allow hundreds of attempts at decoding anonymous encrypted messages in the same message while ignoring hundreds of modification errors the attack was still quite impractical. The attack email is seen by the user and would normally inform them of the fact they were under some sort of attack. Then they would likely have reported it and the email client(s) would have fixed their bug(s). This sort of thing is typical for encrypted email where the recipient always gets to see the attack message. |
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| The spin required to make this a PGP problem was unfortunate in that it distracted from the actual issue of inherently insecure message content in encrypted messaging. The good work done by the security researchers ended up being in a sense wasted. Inherently insecure message content is still a serious issue today (2020). | The spin required to make this a PGP problem was unfortunate in that it distracted from the actual issue of inherently insecure message content in encrypted messaging. The good work done by the security researchers ended up being in a sense wasted. Inherently insecure message content is still a serious issue today (2020). |
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| A more fundamental problem with all this is that when used for messaging, PGP uses a combined identity/integrity check called a [[pgpfan:signatures|signature]]. In PGP messaging both the MDC and hypothetical authenticated encryption are irrelevant. So this ends up being a kind of a straw man. This would of been much better if it was discussed in terms of how PGP actually works and how these vulnerabilities affect the clients in that context. | A more fundamental problem with all this is that when used for messaging, PGP uses a combined identity/integrity check in the form of a cryptgraphic signature. In PGP messaging both the MDC and hypothetical authenticated encryption are less important compared to the question of allowing the handling of anonymous (invalid or missing signature) messages in a very insecure way. So this ends up being a kind of a straw man. This would of been much better if it was discussed in terms of how PGP actually works and how these vulnerabilities affect the clients in that context. |
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| The OpenPGP standard and implementations of that standard have suffered from security weaknesses of greater significance than EFAIL with no media coverage at all. That is why the media blowup over EFAIL is so odd. I have a theory... | The OpenPGP standard and implementations of that standard have suffered from security weaknesses of greater significance than EFAIL with no media coverage at all. That is why the media blowup over EFAIL is so odd. I have no idea why this ended up so wrong. What ever the reasons, this serves as yet another indication of the poor quality of the technical press. |
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| Encryption "at rest" is pretty much a solved problem for the sorts of things OpenPGP does. That is why the OpenPGP standard is so stable over the years. As a result there is not very much academic interest in such problems any more. | |
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| The excitement these days is mostly centred on the issues of "in flight" encryption. Protecting information on the network while it is being transferred. In flight encryption is anything but a solved problem. If experts were consulted it is very possible that those experts did not care very much about the properties of at rest encryption and would of talked about the much more interesting implications of something like the EFAIL CFB gadget attack for in flight encryption. Those implications would be fairly dire. | |
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| So this all might just be another example of the problems caused by insufficient research on the part of the technical press... | |
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