_NSAKEY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

by basicplus2 • 7 years ago

254 109 7 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

20 years on, and nobody has ever found anything signed with this "NSAKEY".

That means either the conspiracy theorists were right, but the NSA only used it for hyper targeted attacks, or Microsofts explanation was correct.

I doubt anyone will ever know.

imdsm• 7 years ago

They probably decided to rename the variable to something unfamiliar and legit sounding like _winsysdg or _realtek2100m

mapcars2• 7 years ago

20 years on, and nobody has ever found anything signed with this "NSAKEY".

Hm, wouldn't Microsoft make a proof by singing something publically with a private key?

EvanAnderson• 7 years ago

In the scenario where NSA gave Microsoft a public key to include in the product Microsoft doesn't have the private key. That's the point-- NSA would want their own root-of-trust in the product.

sterlind2• 7 years ago

AFAIK, NSAKEY was a mechanism where the NSA could install their own cipher suites on their Windows machines, without needing to know or trust Microsoft's signing key (and vice-versa.)

DoD and IC use Suite A algorithms, which are classified. So they needed NSAKEY, or a private build of Windows that would let them do what they wanted. I think all they could do maliciously with this key is install backdoored crypto suites on victims' computers, which would require Administrator access anyway.

Disclaimer: work at MS, this is well before my time, I have no inside knowledge.

piracy1• 7 years ago

MS said: "the key ensures compliance with U.S. export laws"

"the conspiracy theorists were right, but the NSA only used it for hyper targeted attacks"

Why not both?

ryanlol9• 7 years ago

Because nobody has managed to demonstrate a possible attack in the past 20 years.

ryanlol9• 7 years ago

This seems like a pretty easy conspiracy theory to prove with a debugger. Nobody has ever been able to do so!

praptak• 7 years ago

How so? I don't think there's a controversy around the semantics of this key. What is not known is who has the private key and what they sign with it.

ryanlol9• 7 years ago

Microsoft claimed the third key was only in beta builds of Windows 2000 and that its purpose was for signing Cryptographic Service Providers.

So it’s not controversial that this was utterly unexploitable without pre-existing local access?

Nobody has ever described how this purported backdoor would be used.

m12k• 7 years ago

How do you mean? The presence of a public key doesn't tell us what has been encrypted with it or if the private key has been shared with anyone. How will a debugger tell us any of that?

ryanlol9• 7 years ago

Do you know how this NSAKEY backdoor is supposed to work? I don’t, nor does anyone else apparently. This should not be a difficult question to answer.

xg153• 7 years ago

But if it's really the key to a backdoor, it has to be used somewhere in the code. E.g., some part of Windows had to check something signed with the key or encrypt something with it.

john37386• 7 years ago

Does it have anything to do with today's Windows update and this cryptic rumbling ahead of time?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/01/cryptic-rumblings-ahead-...

wolfgke• 7 years ago

We will soon see what this Windows update is about - but I seriously doubt that there exists any relationship.

alakrit• 7 years ago

If you mean the relationship between NSA and the vulnerability, then no, there actually is: it was NSA who discovered the vulnerability and it has not been used in the wild (according to NSA themselves; source: https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1217082363391377408)

jaimex2• 7 years ago

If it looks and sounds like a duck then its probably a duck.

I can't see MS admitting to giving out a backdoor key. In any case it's irrelevant as you should always assume everything you don't have source to is compromised.

xg153• 7 years ago

Normally, I'd agree with you, but this seems a bit too on-the-nose for me. When people have to talk about a shady or immoral activity or put mentions of it in writing, they usually get very creative in finding an inconspicuous name for it.

As such, if this were really a backdoor, I'd expect it's identifiers to look maximally boring and no direct reference to the NSA given anywhere.

ethanbond• 7 years ago

Conspiracy theories tend to hinge on the idea that the conspirators are simultaneously 5-dimensional chess playing lizard people from the future and, at the end of the day, dumb as a rock.

filleokus• 7 years ago

Well, I would think so as well, but we have at least some anecdata (N=1) in the other direction [0]:

In doing this I discovered that the NSA public key had an organizational name of "MiniTruth", and a common name of "Big Brother". Specifically what I saw in my debugger late one night, which was spooky for a short moment was:

O=MiniTruth CN=Big Brother

[0] http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/hacks/lotus-nsa-key.html

jeltz• 7 years ago

What if it is a case of malicious compliance like Lotus Notes' backdoor someone else already has mentioned (the classic O=MiniTruth CN=Big Brother)?

Legogris3• 7 years ago

I'd wager that there's a high probability that an arbitrary engineer tasked with implementing things like this either doesn't care or is antagonistic, thereby calling the duck a duck.

Also, the name was never supposed to be known - it was due to early releases mistakenly having debug symbols included.

mtgx• 7 years ago

Nadella has just said that he would support a "don't-call-it-a-backdoor" backdoor key for the U.S. (and I assume other) government(s):

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21064267/microsoft-encryp...

Also, there are at least several other instances that make Microsoft highly suspicious in regards to this stuff, starting with:

- how they bought Skype not long after the NSA was promising billions of dollars (in government contracts most likely) to the company that would bypass Skype's encryption somehow

- changing Skype's architecture to be intercept-able

- Skype entering the PRISM program the moment Microsoft bought it

- some other suspicious "bugs" and design choices in regards to how Bitlocker works, including storing the encryption keys on its servers or defaulting to break-able OEM encryption. Plus the fact that you never do hear about law enforcement being thwarted by laptop encryption

- silently adding root certificates in Windows with no official documentation, some for some oppressive regimes, other for the U.S. government

- Not to mention that the first thought that came to my mind after hearing about all the hidden tracking stuff built into Windows 10 was that Windows 10 must have been designed based on a FBI/NSA wishlist.

If you've ever done anything "wrong" on your Windows 10 machine, the U.S. government will know about it, because Microsoft will know about it. At least Microsoft revealed to us that half of the government's orders to the company were secret and came with gag orders -- too bad they never really fought the government on it and ended-up supporting it with the Cloud Act.

There are probably others I missed myself or forgot about. Nadella must think of us all as idiots if he thinks we'll buy the idea that a specially-made encryption key for various governments doesn't equal a backdoor.

jki2752• 7 years ago

Where do you believe MS is storing all this tracking data you believe they are taking from every Windows 10 machine on the planet?

Doesn't this conspiracy theory stretch belief a great deal?

DangerousPie• 7 years ago

everything you don't have source to is compromised.

Everything for which you haven't read, fully understood, and compiled from the source can be compromised. Just because there's source for something somewhere doesn't mean the binary you downloaded is secure.

zelon88• 7 years ago

Relevant... [1]

Ken describes how he injected a virus into a compiler. Not only did his compiler know it was compiling the login function and inject a backdoor, but it also knew when it was compiling itself and injected the backdoor generator into the compiler it was creating. The source code for the compiler thereafter contains no evidence of either virus.

[1]https://wiki.c2.com/?TheKenThompsonHack

Denvercoder9• 7 years ago

Make sure you've also read, understood and recompiled the compiler. And the compiler used to compile the compiler.

colejohnson662• 7 years ago

Because open source projects like OpenSSL never have bugs sitting wide open for years. cough Heartbleed

1122• 7 years ago

It's only fitting that for recurring posts we have recurring comments.

Oh wow, there's an `nsagate` subdomain on `apple.com`! https://www.robtex.com/dns-lookup/nsagate.apple.com

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Could be a nameserver.

cdmckay• 7 years ago

https://www.robtex.com/dns-lookup/nsbgate.apple.com

1122• 7 years ago

Yes, it was just irony on how these things keep getting reposted.

andy_ppp2• 7 years ago

Even if this _NSAKEY thing is not to do with an actual NSA backdoor(s) into Windows, does anyone here really believe the NSA hasn't leveraged their position to suggest Microsoft (and others) give them ways to access things (or else)? If not it suggests that through software defects they have complete access anyway?

IAmEveryone• 7 years ago

This is sort of circular, or tautological: “I believe in it because it’s so believable “

FWIW, I am rather skeptic. And I even have reasons: if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones.

Cooperating with the NSA is also clearly not in the companies’ interests. If (when) it comes out, they’d be at risk to lose a lot of business in other countries.

In any case, my usual argument about cynicism applies: spreading such theories becomes self-fulfilling, because why should MS work for the NSA/every politician take bribes/every cook spit in your food, if that’s what the people believe anyway, no matter what you actually do?

SturgeonsLaw• 7 years ago

Microsoft is listed as a provider in the NSA's Prism program in Powerpoint slides released in the Snowden leak. In fact, the timeline indicates that they were the first on board.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_sl...

cameronbrown• 7 years ago

if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones

The FBI is not the NSA.

andy_ppp2• 7 years ago

I'm making an educated guess rather than saying it's 100% true. As others have stated from the PRISM leaks and so on it's not like these companies are not already complicit in supplying data.

AndriyKunitsyn• 7 years ago

if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones.

The fights that we know about can be nothing more than a marketing stunt. They were what Apple wanted public to know; when leaks happen that Apple doesn't want public to know, Apple's "commitment to privacy" rather pales. Apple was listed as a PRISM data provider, they were accused in using their employee's message data against them. Now they also admit to looking into iCloud photos.

neekleer• 7 years ago

In the case of the FBI claiming they needed Apple's help to retrieve encrypted data from an iPhone, it's reasonable to suspect that it was simply a ploy to pressure Apple into making concessions in the face of public pressure. A third party firm was quick to assist the FBI, but I doubt the technique used to bypass Apple's security on the iPhone was entirely novel. I would guess the firm was surprised the government didn't have enough resources to overcome the obstacle themselves long before anyone else. The San Bernardino shooting was a low stakes case of terrorism that may have been classified as a normal workplace shooting, and the FBI didn't have to make haste nor use all of the tools at their disposal. At the same time, the FBI's request to Apple can be considered legitimate after some hand waving because most of the FBI was probably told that it was technically impossible to crack into an iPhone because the necessary tool is classified and kept in reserve.

Also, I don't think any number of people believing to any extent that a corporation may have been compromised removes an important incentive for that corporation to maintain its integrity. For a security-conscious company, reputation and trust don't go that far so it would be safer to assume that Apple can be or has been compromised maybe even without their knowledge. That company would have to look after its own security and use custom protocols / devices. If it was forced to trust Apple, it would have to find an ingenious way to ensure that was not at all in the interest of Apple to betray them.

willis936• 7 years ago

Look at Snowden’s leaks and RDRAND.

lima• 7 years ago

Nothing in the Snowden leaks suggests that RDRAND is backdoored.

auiya2• 7 years ago

"Microsoft said that the key's symbol was '_NSAKEY' because the NSA is the technical review authority for U.S. crypography export controls, and the key ensures compliance with U.S. export laws"

Occam's Razor.

mapcars2• 7 years ago

I'm trying to understand what it means - does it mean your code have to have a symbol called `_NSAKEY`? Or how does it affect compliance?

CrazyStat5• 7 years ago

The entire signing system, of which these keys were part, was required to comply with US export controls.

sehugg• 7 years ago

Occam's Glomar

CrazyStat5• 7 years ago

In that case, why was it the backup key that was named after the NSA, and not the key that was actually used for this purpose in practice?

auiya2• 7 years ago

Have you never given your code variables tongue-in-cheek names?

Jonnax• 7 years ago

I remember that part of the Windows 2000 source code leaked years ago.

I'm presuming people looked at it for dubious keys.

vips7L• 7 years ago

https://github.com/Zer0Mem0ry/ntoskrnl

kstenerud• 7 years ago

Everyone loves a good conspiracy. It distracts us from the real world of carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.

mattigames• 7 years ago

Plus there is so much problems, corruption, conflicts of interest in plain sight with little to no accountability that is laughable someone is going the extra mile to hide their steps.

justaman• 7 years ago

If I was trying to hide my presence, I wouldn't name something after myself. $0.02

IanSanders• 7 years ago

It was MS who named it, probably

ziftface2• 7 years ago

Maybe that was the incompetence you guys are talking about.

yohanzw• 7 years ago

The real world is far more complicated than simply carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/11/nsa_microsof...

apexalpha• 7 years ago

Yes because the NSA snooping in everyone's data turned out to be a conspiracy...

Someone1234• 7 years ago

Using an intentionally built in Windows backdoor, it did, yes. Instead they relied on good ol' completely unencrypted traffic flowing across wires they had hooks in.

parksy2• 7 years ago

It did though, didn't it? Intelligence organisations worldwide execute their operations in total secrecy and have hidden agreements with international counterparts to share information on each others' citizens in a way that bypasses the laws and constitutions of their host nations. Secret plans that circumvent the law is pretty much the definition of conspiracy.

jandrese• 7 years ago

They weren't breaking your crypto to snoop on you though. Turns out the public information about you is enough to generate a pretty reliable profile of a person.

parksy2• 7 years ago

Ah the old conspiracy conspiracy.

doesnotexist• 7 years ago

Well, it does seem remarkable that you never hear the DOJ or Attorney General complaining loudly about how MSFT refused to decrypt something for them.

bb88• 7 years ago

This was Bruce Schneier's take on it at the time:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/13/backdoor.idg/

As he pointed out, Back Orifice didn't need a special key.

an_d_rew• 7 years ago

One thing to remember is the fear that surrounded the export of cryptographic technology from the US and ITAR and all the rest of it at the time. And then there was the whole key escrow fiasco with Lotus Notes.

So just be careful viewing the incident from 2020 with the purported benefit of decades of hindsight.

Disclaimer: I’m the guy who first found it and announced it at the rump session of the Crypto conference in Santa Barbara that year...

_NSAKEY

Related Stories