Intel In Bed with NSA?

http://cryptome.org/2013/07/intel-bed-nsa.htm

by lifeguard • 13 years ago

185 68 13 years ago

spindritf• 13 years ago

I upvoted but the current title ("Is Linus Tovalds 'evil'?") is downright horrible and I hope a mod will revert it to the original one soon.

lifeguard3• 13 years ago

Linus is (was?) one of my living heroes. But he controls the Linux kernel.

FTA:

"It's worth noting that the maintainer of record (me) for the Linux RNG quit the project about two years ago precisely because Linus decided to include a patch from Intel to allow their unauditable RdRand to bypass the entropy pool over my strenuous objections. " -- Eugen* Leitl

Linus has close ties to Intel and has for a long time.

zdw• 13 years ago

Yeah, like when he worked for Transmeta, and that stint in the mid 200x's where a PowerPC64 was his main machine?

He may have a lot of Intel connections, but he doesn't seem to be committed to any specific vendor.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

JFTR, that quote is from Matt Mackall.

(OT: Eugen Leitl simply forwards posts from one mailing list to another, almost always without any reason for doing so, commentary, explanation, "value add", etc. He's in my kill file for that reason.)

comex2• 13 years ago

It is really, really hard for me to see this as anything other than utter paranoia. As one of the messages in the thread stated:

Right. How exactly would you backdoor an RNG so (a) it could be effectively used by the NSA when they needed it (e.g. to recover Tor keys), (b) not affect the security of massive amounts of infrastructure, and (c) be so totally undetectable that there'd be no risk of it causing a ststorm that makes the $0.5B FDIV bug seem like small change (not to mention the legal issues, since this one would have been inserted deliberately, so we're probably talking bet-the-company amounts of liability there).

lifeguard3• 13 years ago

Well, it is documented that the NSA made DES weaker by using less bits for key size (this makes brute forcing easier). I aslo noted that Schiener's AES submission was passed over (I speculate that Rijndael is easier to brute force).

The feds used to fight civilian crypto tooth and nail. Then they allowed it, and in one of the crypto books a story was related that the feds were bummed about RSA and friends. The listener questioned why, when surely their efforts were feeble compared to the government's. The response was the pace of development was much faster than expected.

twoodfin2• 13 years ago

The NSA, working with IBM, also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis, which was not widely understood at the time.

santosha• 13 years ago

'I speculate that Rijndael is easier to brute force' On what basis?

barbs• 13 years ago

The feds used to fight civilian crypto tooth and nail.

Curious. I'd like to read about this. Can anyone post any links?

cenhyperion• 13 years ago

anything other than utter paranoia.

I want hackers, cypherpunks, and cryptographers to be utterly paranoid.

humanspecies2• 13 years ago

It is really, really hard for me to see this as anything other than utter paranoia.

It is really really hard for me to imagine Intel not beeing 100% cooperative with the NSA.

kllrnohj• 13 years ago

You know who else cooperates with the NSA? The Linux community. You know, that whole "SELinux" thing? Yeah, that's an NSA project.

Turns out cooperating with the NSA doesn't automatically mean spying on the public, it could instead be hardening crypto security. Which is the NSA's other job, it turns out.

Karunamon• 13 years ago

There are only two X86 chip manufacturers of note. Intel and AMD both could tell the NSA to get bent.

enkrs• 13 years ago

Definitely paranoia. If you want to believe NSA is spying trough your Intel system, they could do it trough vPro and not some RNG calculations. One might assume that NSA can easily tap into the built in VNC server[1] of the CPU.

[1] Computers with particular Intel® Core™ vPro™ processors enjoy the benefit of a VNC-compatible Server embedded directly onto the chip, enabling permanent remote access and control. A RealVNC collaboration with Intel's ground-breaking hardware has produced VNC Viewer Plus, able to connect even if the computer is powered off, or has no functioning operating system. http://www.vnc.com/products/viewerplus/

binderbizingdos• 13 years ago

Basic Assumptions:

You have activated Intel vPro technology on the PCs through configuration of the Management Engine BIOS extension (MEBx).1

http://www.vnc.com/products/viewerplus/ViewerPlusUseCases.pd...

josephlord• 13 years ago

And how long ago would the idea that the NSA get call logs for every call in the USA have been utter paranoia? Or that they tap and record all international internet traffic?

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you!

If you random number generator isn't then all of your crypto is basically useless. Paranoid is the correct state of mind for these systems.

mhurron• 13 years ago

And how long ago would the idea that the NSA get call logs for every call in the USA have been utter paranoia? Or that they tap and record all international internet traffic?

Before 1988, if you were paying attention. So the idea that the NSA was watching everything you did is almost 30 years old now.

rorrr2• 13 years ago

That's an argument from ignorance fallacy.

"I can't imagine how that (potential) backdoor can be abused, therefore it doesn't exist".

Random generators controlled by a third party are ABSOLUTELY a problem for any crypto system based on them.

Your (b) argument is even more ridiculous, considering the NSA events that just unfolded.

Your (c) argument makes zero sense, considering it got detected.

comex2• 13 years ago

"It would be difficult to implement effectively, therefore it is likely to not exist."

Of course, the judgement also takes into account the extreme consequences for the company implementing it if discovered, and the unlikelihood that that company could be legally compelled to do so, which was the case with all recently revealed examples of companies cooperating with the NSA. (Never mind that we have not even seen hidden /software/ backdoors forced by the NSA - merely systems that were known to be interceptable being intercepted.)

The same argument also applies to trusting the CPU itself: although it would be more difficult to insert a generic backdoor and ensure it could be exploited easily without compromising performance than to backdoor a random number generator, this is a matter of degree, not a fundamental difference in the argument. Though you may not trust the CPU either, I suppose, but in that case not using rdrand won't save you.

VMG• 13 years ago

Intersting discussion, but incredibly bad title.

lifeguard3• 13 years ago

I was trying to be concise. I also put quotes around evil.

sounds• 13 years ago

Looks like it has been flagged, and is now dead. Too bad...

gmuslera• 13 years ago

Hanlon's razor help in this kind of discussions. Maybe when Linus took that option didn't saw Intel as something that would intentionally make predictable its RNG for following government orders, and just choose to not reimplement the wheel where it was already available.

Would he take another option since last month? Maybe in the light of this he could take back that choice.

gizmo6862• 13 years ago

Linus does not have the option to reimplement the wheel. Software cannot generate random numbers.

skore• 13 years ago

Software cannot generate random numbers.

Can hardware? [0]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generato...

__alexs• 13 years ago

The comments about RdRand being impossible to verify because it's on-chip seem quite reasonable. (Although Intel have tried to be quite open about how it works. https://sites.google.com/site/intelrdrand/references)

I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly. Especially as RdRand is documented as having two error conditions, not enough entropy, and that the hardware appears to be broken.

In any case, here's the LKML thread where it was merged too http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1173350

obituary_latte• 13 years ago

I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly

If I understand correctly, the idea is to use RdRand to feed the entropy pool (which is also fed by other noise)[1] from which urandom pulls. So it doesn't seem RdRand would be the sole source of entropy if it were to be used in this context.

[1]http://linux.die.net/man/4/urandom

justincormack• 13 years ago

Most servers do not have any serious source of randomness (unless you buy another hardware RNG) which is partly why these were introduced (Intel used to have a motherboard RNG, and VIA had on CPU ones years back).

You can buy one of these http://www.entropykey.co.uk/ which are unlikely to be NSA "certified" instead.

stfu• 13 years ago

Would appreciate some sort of a summary. Reading some mile long email exchange just to figure out what the headline is really about makes it kinda tricky.

mpyne• 13 years ago

I read the whole thing, but few here would truly feel that my summary of 'paranoia. paranoia everywhere' is not a government plant.

The core concern seems to be the idea that an RNG embedded into Intel's latest kit might actually be a PRNG that could be backdoored by NSA on command somehow with resultant catastrophic effects to crypto primitives on that box, if the Intel RNG were the only source of entropy on the box.

ontoillogical• 13 years ago

Uh, RdRand is definitely a pseudo random number generator. The question is about whether it's cryptographically secure or not, or more specifically, whether it can be or is backdoored.

3327• 13 years ago

This is nothing more than speculative emails.

adventured• 13 years ago

It's safe to assume every core technology company has been compelled to be in bed with the NSA in some form or another. Intel has been anti-trust managed by the government for nearly two decades. Getting access to the monopoly desktop / laptop processor maker would be far too rich a target to ignore.

zanny2• 13 years ago

This is why I show preference towards AMD chips even when they have the competitive disadvantage. Any sufficiently large company ends up, through their will or the gov'ts, wrapped up in politics. Which is the one of the larger issues of our age.

humanspecies2• 13 years ago

AMD is probably cooperating with the government on the same level as Intel.

tomphoolery• 13 years ago

The thing that the thread about is kinda interesting, too. https://heml.is/

lucb1e• 13 years ago

Submitted a question here: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/q/9210/2512

Feel free to edit the question if you have anything to add!

adr_• 13 years ago

If the NSA is working with Intel, they're not going to bother with an RNG... The processor is the most trusted part of the computer security model - why would you choose bad random numbers as your attack vector?

Relevant talk: Hardware Backdooring is Practical - Jonathan Brossard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Fw8jwG07g

starmole• 13 years ago

This issue just does not pass the rubber hose test. If the NSA wanted and got a backdoor in intel chips there are so many better ways to do it than introducing a bad hw rng. If you wanted one exploit in the chip, why would you pick a hard to exploit one and user controlled one on top of that? It's classic paranoid thinking: People have a choice to use the hw rng or not. So it becomes a big deal. All the while not addressing the non-choice issue like having a potential backdoor triggered by a specific instruction sequence.

fauigerzigerk• 13 years ago

It also needs to be hard to detect and relevant specifically for crypto operations. So where would you put a backdoor on a chipset?

jvreeland• 13 years ago

Doesn't the NSA end up using these machines as well? It seems like a lot of work to introduce a flaw that you have work around for you own use later. And if it's a hardware flawu, I doubt even the NSA could demand intel or amd manyfacture seperate batches for their own use.

mr_spothawk• 13 years ago

Did anybody look @ http://leitl.org/

This email could just as easily be the musings of an insane person, which is what's suggested by the contents of the website.

rooster8• 13 years ago

One reason it would be a poor decision for the NSA to recommend Intel backdoor the RNG: Intel would be in a position to sell/leak the backdoor secret to other governments.

The NSA would have no way of blocking it from being used to attack the US. And you can't roll out a hotfix for billions of CPUs worldwide.

Intel In Bed with NSA?

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