New trusted root certificates added to Windows in unannounced update

https://hexatomium.github.io/2016/10/11/unannounced-root-cert-update/

by svenfaw • 10 years ago

168 61 10 years ago

hexatomium.github.io

grandalf• 10 years ago

What's the best way to audit one's own computer for root certs that perhaps should not be trusted?

nowayyeah• 10 years ago

Switch to debian? You can't audit everything on your OS, you have to trust somebody. I trust debian.

geofft2• 10 years ago

Why do you trust Debian? (I say this as a happy Debian user/sysadmin/occasional package maintainer).

In particular, it's a volunteer-run organization in which it's not unusual at all to volunteer to maintain a package as part of your day job that uses a package, and where a large amount of discretion is given to the individual package maintainer, until they choose to hand maintenance to someone else. This is perfect for an organization who wants to push security configuration weaknesses. Even if you can't get a back door in, you can certainly default to code that you have privately found vulnerabilities in, or compile with or without certain options, add third-party patches that are pretty questionable, or add CAs that are particularly easy to coerce. None of these actions look weird at all, they just look like someone who is putting work into their package and caring about doing Debian-specific work to make it work well. In particular, until relatively recently, the Debian ca-certificates package included the CAcert root cert, which was in very few other root stores, and the SPI one, which was in no other stores.

It's also the case that Debian accepts binary packages built on the developer's personal machine (and this used to be required until very recently), so it's very easy to straight-up upload a backdoor that isn't in the source. (This might have changed recently, but I believe this was true at least as recently as the last stable release.)

0x0• 10 years ago

Debian had some fairly dubious CAs included for almost 10 years, so they're not without fault. Looks like they've cleaned up - and at least their processes are fairly transparent.

https://lwn.net/Articles/590879/

dfc• 10 years ago

Another nice thing about Debian's certificate package is that debconf will prompt you to accept each new certificate if you have debconf set to show low priority questions. I have not seen anything similar in other distributions or OSX.

dogma1138• 10 years ago

Export and compare to Mozilla CA list. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/secu...

Google anything that is not on it (and is not MSFT).

gsnedders• 10 years ago

Note that not all are trusted for the web: some are limited to other environments only. See especially the CKA_TRUST_* attributes.

oxguy3• 10 years ago

On OS X, open the app Keychain Access and look at the System Roots keychain -- you can see all the root certs there.

For Windows: Have never done this myself, but the link mentions a tool called RCC that lists root certs and highlights potentially suspect ones I guess? No clue if this is legit, use at own risk: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/rcc-check-your-syste...

mey5• 10 years ago

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Manage Computer Certificates

Search for Manage Computer Certificates (Win 8 and up)

This will open an app, look in Trusted Root Certification Authorities

If you should trust an authority is a tricky question. Typically you trust your OS and let them decide (which is what's going on here). See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751157.aspx and https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt171474.aspx for what their process is supposed to be

mey5• 10 years ago

One additional note, most applications in Windows by proxy follow this OS level list of trusted certificates. Notable exceptions are Java and Firefox which maintain their own CA repositories in their installations.

sbierwagen• 10 years ago

Trusted Root Certification Authorities and Third-Party Root Certification Authorities only show me a couple dozen roots each, https://snag.gy/pLwe3q.jpg where https://hexatomium.github.io/2016/10/11/unannounced-root-cer... says that Microsoft trusts 356 roots total, a list being here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3...

Most notably for me, the list doesn't show any of the foreign roots, Agencia Notarial de Certificación, Autoridad Certificadora Raíz Nacional de Uruguay, etc. Are they kept anywhere else?

EDIT: According to the author, Manage Computer Certificates will only show you that a trusted root exists after you've used it. Trusted roots that you've never used are invisible: http://hexatomium.github.io/2015/08/29/why-is-windows/

The test he provides still works: "OpenTrust Root CA G3" won't show up in Manage Computer Certificates until you visit https://www.opentrust.com/

So, Manage Computer Certificates is useless for untrusting roots Microsoft trusts for you.

mey5• 10 years ago

Microsoft has gotten really bad about describing what it is doing and planning on doing with the Windows 10 generation. They've been called out on it before, but I haven't seen much from them in a formal way over the last year. Individual teams in the company may do an excellent job, but overall the bar is low.

ersii• 10 years ago

Were they really any better prior to Windows 10 though? I remember trying to read the Windows 7 updates, but they were always seemed very... light on material.

mey5• 10 years ago

There at least existed KB articles with patch details ahead of a patch being dropped. I've routinely tried to dig up a newly deployed Windows bundle at home on a machine not running the Insider Program and hit 404s pulling up the KB number.

ladzoppelin• 10 years ago

IMO, I think its a security problem. People run diffs on the updates and use the detailed bug fixes to uncover exploits faster than most can patch. It could also be MS ending the era of "admin approved updates". Google started it and now MS competes with Google and even Apple in the the School market so it makes sense in a way.

shostack• 10 years ago

It's clear they are boiling the frog prepping for Windows as a service. And on a SaaS model you have to take that control away to keep costs down. Obfuscating the full extent of the changes is just part of "making sure you have the latest and greatest"and why many apps for example have stopped including actual release notes in app stores.

Scary release notes and the opportunity for users to say no are bad for business.

merb2• 10 years ago

Trusting new CAs is always a big deal

well half of the list aren't _new_ CAs more like additional root certs.

SeriousM• 10 years ago

... And the other half is new. What's your point again?

merb2• 10 years ago

well I didn't said that it's good or bad, I just said that they are "familiar"? not sure why they even add more CAs since they already have one, some of them with way more than 8 years left. they didn't had ECC certificates tough.

kpil2• 10 years ago

Irrelevant - it's way beyond repair.

There is virtually nil chance that none of the root CAs are compromised or influenced, or at least influenceable by a criminal organisation or group.

I also doubt that all governmental organisations that have the opportunity to legally influence the CAs have full control of all their employees and that they are not vulnerable to criminals.

I also doubt that the governmental organisations of the usual suspected countries involved in government funded industrial espionage are not able to influence CAs - in order to target information in other countries.

Actual lawful interception is inevitably possible - but it's a good thing so it can be ignored. Actual political espionage can also be ignored, as it is unlikely to happen to normal people and companies and nearly impossible to avoid without considerate resources.

But the first three scenarios are probable, and can cause serious economical harm, and can't be fixed without changing the whole current infrastructure.

eeZi2• 10 years ago

Irrelevant - it's way beyond repair.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, since we're not getting rid of if anytime soon.

Google's Certificate Transparency is a great approach.

developer2• 10 years ago

I think the point the parent was making is that it is likely that one or more of the most prevalent certificate authorities' private keys have been compromised - whether voluntarily provided to government, or obtained by criminals via dubious methods.

Once the private keys are compromised, all bets are off. No database - whether maintained by Google or anyone else - puts a dent in such a problem. It's one thing to track inauthentic certificates; it's quite another to discover someone silently decrypting traffic with a copy of the private key.

Edit: My response brings up an interesting question I hadn't considered before. With the certificate chain, is it required to have the private keys for the entire chain in order to be able to decrypt the stream? If someone has the certificate authority top-level certificate, can they decrypt a domain's certificate without having its private key as well as any intermediates? If not then it'd be true that the primary concern with a top-level private key being compromised is illegitimate certificates being signed, in which case Google's attempt to combat that with Certificate Transparency isn't half bad.

pfg• 10 years ago

Efforts like Certificate Transparency and HPKP solve most of these issues and do not require a full replacement of the Web PKI.

rocqua• 10 years ago

HPKP has the trust on first connect issue, because you can't preload every website.

It also has the potential to wreck your site.

droopyEyelids• 10 years ago

The 'all or nothing' take on security is a very childish or naive point of view.

No security system is invulnerable, and even the slightest inconvenience will prevent a certain percent of behavior.

In light of those two facts, you must speak about specific threats and attacks if you want to say anything about security.

For example: Compromised root CAs have not been found to be used by criminal gangs in bank phishing schemes. Therefore, they seem to provide about the right level of security for that threat.

Compromised CAs have been strongly implicated in government attacks, so they don't provide an adequate level of security in that context.

This doesn't mean they're beyond repair. They work for certain tasks in certain contexts, like your front door, or a safe, or a password, or a security guard.

wtbob• 10 years ago

The 'all or nothing' take on security is a very childish or naive point of view.

I disagree; indeed, I think the idea that cryptography and security can be flawed-but-useful is itself naïve. If something is breakable, it will be broken; that's why we need to be using the best possible security protocols and standards.

For example: Compromised root CAs have not been found to be used by criminal gangs in bank phishing schemes.

They've not been found, which means neither that they've never existed nor that they never will exist.

kpil2• 10 years ago

True.

I should not have said 'beyond repair'.

But the comparison to my front door is adequate. It is mostly of symbolic value. It is possible to gain entry to the house in 30 seconds.

It is at least not possible to just walk in without me noticing when I am at home.

euske• 10 years ago

Again, the root problem, which is universal, is the concentration of power. One company or group or place has so much power for everything in the world, and regulating them has been always the central problem of the human society.

But alas, we always need the concentration so badly for the sake of efficiency.

tremon• 10 years ago

But alas, we always need the concentration so badly for the sake of efficiency.

Note that this is actually unproven. It is a dogma of modern economics, not an established fact.

yakult• 10 years ago

Would it be possible to replace MS's CA list with e.g. Firefox's entirely? Would that break things?

walrus01• 10 years ago

you can manually delete and import root CAs in the windows 10 CA trust store:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754841(v=ws.11...

userbinator2• 10 years ago

I believe I've read somewhere that that's not all of them, there's more hardcoded in various system files.

ourmandave• 10 years ago

Do they mean the Windows 10 update that has bogged my system and failed once a day for the last two weeks? That update? =(

neppo• 10 years ago

does your main drive have more than 20GB free space?

If not, the update will fail.

DocTomoe• 10 years ago

Wouldn't it be lovely if they checked that before they did the whole download/install/making the user wait for 15 minutes dance?

mtgx• 10 years ago

And this is happening as soon as Microsoft makes it so that you can't pick and choose updates anymore. Yeah, it doesn't look suspicious at all.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/microsoft-no-more-pick-a...

peteretep• 10 years ago

    > Yeah, it doesn't look suspicious at all.

Could you expand on what you think Microsoft's dastardly plan here is?

jwtadvice• 10 years ago

To continue to trade access to corporations' and private computers' the world over for political and economic advantage to the intelligence and treasury communities.

Honestly I don't know whether this particular CA addition is a good example of the sorts of backdoors that Microsoft is known to insert on behalf of intelligence and police organizations. I think the parent was perhaps being a bit flippant?

New trusted root certificates added to Windows in unannounced update

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