Posted by hkc 14 hours ago
8 bits is crazytalk!
hey chatgbg what is a “private key”
A private key is a tiny number you don't need to share publicly because it is easy enough to guess.
Silly 2-bit outfit.
Maybe it's 3 bits.
I guess they used (x `mod` 256) instead of (x `mod` (2^256)).
- A sequence number being accidentally used as the private key or
- The private key being generated securely but then accidentally truncated to 8 bits (e.g. writing a single char into a zeroed buffer when you should've memcpy'd from a char*).
The sequence number idea is supported by the fact that two of the G3B private keys are consecutive numbers. I ran a quick Monte Carlo simulation and if I got it right, sampling 8 keys from [0,255] uniformly at random (as in the truncation scenario), you'd expect them to contain 2 consecutive numbers only about 18% of the time.
> We have done some preliminary assessment, there appears to be a flaw in the KGC script that was used on that specific day to create these ECC issuers. As for these ECC keys, our review of the KGC, assessment of the code and view of HSM keys so far indicate that a) a set of original ECC keys were created onboard as expected b) an approved deviation to our usual KGC to test a wrap/unwrap was introduced as these keys were meant for export for this instance c) a flaw in the code resulted in the second pair of keys being created onboard which were weaker d) these second pair of weaker keys were used by mistake to create the csr (because the key labels were similar) and signed by our root e) the CSR from these weaker keys were also sent over to Sectigo for cross signing (we verified the files sent over to Sectigo)
that sounds like the HSM is capable of generating keys in a range that is smaller than [1..group_order). such a feature makes no sense at all. or is this some kind of weird thing where people want to generate weak keys for 'testing' and HSM vendors have added such a strange feature. its actually satisfying to see someone get burned by this because such a feature should never exist and this is the reason why. if the HSM can generate keys in a smaller range (especially some arbitrary small range) then you are putting a lot of trust in the operators of the HSM. hopefully there are good audit logs and people actually check the audit logs every time keys are generated to make sure the keys being generated aren't from a special range.
the Audit part is scary. The same audit process might have cleared many other stuff.
https://www.einpresswire.com/article/951151580/emudhra-state...
On the other hand, can we not utilize that to also protect the IoT devices? Can we not create a MITM proxy on our own network that proxies all of our IoT devices's traffic and then forwards them to the trusted HTTPS, MQTTS, ... endpoints upstream? Since the proxy already revokes these bad certificates, the upstream traffic should be protected. We should be able to revoke any other bad certs in the the future as well.
2. This is stupidity that rises to the level of being malicious. There is no excuse, this was a fraud. Their business was literally to promise security and.. make a profit. Nothing was ever delivered.
Some would argue the inherent moral hazard makes these opposing outcomes that cannot be achieved simultaneously.
Moral hazard describes situations where an entity is incentivized to take undue risk. With an upside of saving a single Indian endineers salary and a downside of destroying the entire company, it's safe to say the market wasn't incentivizing this. They were just stupid.
I’ve tested most of them (from historical archives) and have automated testing any new CA certificates that show up in CT.
I’m calling the check “luggage code entropy” (1 byte).
It was a mistake to trust so many root CAs and misapply the same level of trust where clearly it is impossible to independently verify and most of the accountability is smoke and mirrors. We need to be asking “why” here, the stated reason needs to be much more than “because webtrust audit” and “we recorded the entire operational process for key material handling on YouTube with this open source implementation of key ceremony tooling and have underwritten the strength of the private key with a few $mm dollars, to be paid out to the rest of the roots for the shared reputational damage to the entire ecosystem should we fuck up (intentional or otherwise).
Is it possible to convince the EU to say that, no, each one of your 27 member states isn't allowed to have a PKI? I don't think so.