Developer responds to allegations of FBI backdoor in OpenBSD IPSec

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129244045916861&w=2

by there • 16 years ago

235 51 16 years ago

The accusation came at a really strange time. I'm inclined to think more people jumped on the government conspiracy bandwagon because of the recent release of the diplomatic cables via wikileaks.

Incidentally, I thought I had seen Mr. Perry someplace on TV, and then I remembered he was on an episode of Penn and Tellers "Bullsh*t" a while back. Link for the interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT2YET6sg5I

mikedouglas• 16 years ago

Many of the commenters in the last thread admitted to this, which made it all the more irrational. There was even a debate about whether, in general, 'conspiracy theories' were more or less common than the public perception. As if that had any bearing on these specific allegations.

With the strange claims made in the email (outsourcing, expired NDAs, DARPA knew), I wish Theo would've thought twice before publicizing this guy's name. At least the extra eyes on IPSEC might catch something else.

tedunangst5• 16 years ago

Not publishing the email opens the door to "6 months ago, I emailed Theo about a backdoor, but he's trying to cover it up."

cmeiklejohn• 16 years ago

Totally agree. I guess the point that gets me is that the NDA had an expire time. Makes no sense at all. Show me the commits.

febeling• 16 years ago

I think Theo de Raadt is right to make the accusation open, because it is quite a serious thing.

On the other hand, I know that such an accusation can have a devastating effect on the live of the accused developer. So the principle of _in dubio pro reo_ should be applied faithfully.

This should be the instinctive reaction of a democratic society. It does seem to be quite hard to have this collective routine work reliably nowadays, which is sad.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

If Jason didn't put in the backdoors, then who did? :-)

Zak• 16 years ago

As far as I am aware, no actual backdoors have been discovered. This has a high probability of being a hoax.

Nrsolis• 16 years ago

Of course it does.

But I do think it's worthwhile to take measure of how important a particular piece of software is to our collective security and privacy. It's not necessarily a bad thing for interested parties to not completely trust their systems. Risk mitigation is all about quantifying probable events relative to their damage.

I think a lot of people will take a look at the IPSEC code and that can't be a bad thing.

mwg663• 16 years ago

It just seems odd to me that a seemingly well respected engineer would fabricate allegations using his corporate e-mail (VMWare). We should remember it was not he who posted them publicly.

I'm not saying it's true but only that I don't see any more evidence that it isn't true than that it is - yet.

eps• 16 years ago

Backdoors need not be literal. A well-misplaced if will go a long way in leaking a key information. Hardly a "backdoor" in a more common sense of the word, but an exploitable weakness nonetheless.

sabat• 16 years ago

I'm fairly certain that kenjackson was being ironic.

peterbotond• 16 years ago

a socially engineered email to exploit the idea of sheeple do not think, just follow with the parrots. at the cost of the innocent.

grandalf5• 16 years ago

It's really funny how there is so much indignation about this. What difference does it make whether it's true or false, there should be an audit of the code.

It's this sort of emotional, knee-jerk response that leads to irrational behavior.

frisco• 16 years ago

It's a big allegation. This email didn't strike me as an overly emotional response. It was a very firm refutation from a respected member of the community about a hefty accusation.

chubs• 16 years ago

I think his refutation was quite calm, solid, and respectable.

16s• 16 years ago

If it is a lie, is it not slander/libel? That would be a really big deal. Tarnishing a devs reputation and the OBSD project is not cool.

flogic• 16 years ago

If you're the one being accused, you have to worry about the accusation coloring other people's judgement of you. Most people really aren't logical creatures. People tend to not remember the source or veracity of things they know. So even if you're innocent, others may automatically assume you're a jerk.

motters• 16 years ago

Fortunately there's a way to resolve whether this is whistle blowing or mud slinging. Someone with some expertise in that area should audit the code to check whether the allegations have any basis. The original email makes some fairly specific claims, at least some of which are probably verifiable.

gnaffle• 16 years ago

The code has probably already been audited, but of course, more audits might reveal more problems. However, there might be non-obvious ways to make the code vulnerable to side-channel/timing attacks, and if you don't know what you're looking for, the only thing you can really do is to take as many precautions as you can.

For how many years did the NSA know about timing attacks before they became public knowledge and fixes were incorporated into code? Impossible to know. Code audits certainly didn't spot timing attack problems before people knew to look for them.

It's also impossible to know what other unknown attacks are available to NSA and the likes.

Of course, this is completely irrelevant to 99% of us, since anyone with knowledge of these unknown attacks would use them very sparingly in order to keep them secret.

khafra• 16 years ago

It can be tricky to find purposefully subtle bugs: http://underhanded.xcott.com/

geekinthecorner• 16 years ago

In the 9 or 10 years since I first heard about OpenBSD, it has never come up in conversation without the related scene drama also popping up.

davidj3• 16 years ago

The reason OpenBSD was thought of so secured is because they audited the entire code at one time and continuously audit code for new holes. The reason they audited the code in the first place was because way back in the day the main OpenBSD server was compromised and backdoors were placed in the code. They do not like people to know this.

piotrSikora3• 16 years ago

Source?

davidj3• 16 years ago

http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2002-24.html I am still looking for the break-in that predates this breakin, my memory is fucking horrible. I apologize. It will take me a while for me to find it.

dwc• 16 years ago

Jason L. Wright is known by many as "Wookiee" for reasons that may be obvious to many of you. Now I realize that it's been done before, but would it be too much to ask that we consider the term Wookieeleaks when referring to this matter? ;-)

sitmack• 16 years ago

Chewie was a female and being pregnant most of the time from her incessant whoring resulting in the hairy toe head always putting pressure on her bladder ... did cause a leak or two.

Flemlord• 16 years ago

Knowing nothing about the issue at hand or how many flavors/components/frameworks of OpenBSD exist, this struck me as some careful parsing:

> I will state clearly that I did not add backdoors to the OpenBSD operating system or the OpenBSD crypto framework (OCF).

tvon• 16 years ago

I take it as someone trying to be extremely clear that they did not do what they are being accused of doing.

slim• 16 years ago

I can't believe Perry don't have proofs of what he's saying in the form of code. I bet we won't wait for audit to see the code.

We're talking about code guys. It's not accusation of rape or broken condom.

drawkbox• 16 years ago

Not sure what to believe here but we do know that the NSA and authorities do need to have access to data for security. If there are systems that aren't apt to putting in backdoors or trapdoors then they treat you like Phil Zimmerman in the 90's by dropping the DOJ on you: http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/faq/index.html + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann or at least that was the MO at that time.

But the DOJ and US Customs dropped the case against Zimmerman in '96. Obviously they would need to go with a new plan of attack after that method failed for intercepting messages in algorithms and software that is closed or running new algorithms like PGP. Backdoors and trapdoors in software that wraps crypto algorithms is one prong in that attack. The NSA neither confirms nor denies trapdoors, backdoors, etc but DOES employ some of the top cryptographers in the world.

In 2000, the U.S. government lifted the export controls on strong crypto, so (pure speculation) other methods to intercept communications were/are needed. The alleged event here happened in 2000/2001 which might fit with a new MO.

tedunangst5• 16 years ago

I submitted this a little while ago, but it's scrolled off the new submissions page while this story seems to be hanging on, so reposting here. Sorry for the submission pimping.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2010606

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=129245633605693&w=...

Developer responds to allegations of FBI backdoor in OpenBSD IPSec

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