“End-to-End incompatible with Chrome Update functionality”

https://code.google.com/p/end-to-end/issues/detail?id=9

by hodgesmr • 12 years ago

28 48 12 years ago

code.google.com

raldi3• 12 years ago

It doesn't seem like they're ignoring it. They just don't have a quick fix for this hard problem.

If you've got an easy answer, please post it on the bug!

comboy• 12 years ago

It's open source and you don't have to install it through the google store.

danielweber8• 12 years ago

What's the precedent for a company ever being required to ship backdoored products to their customers by government legal order, NSL'd or otherwise?

"The FBI once lobbied for the government to give them that power!" or "look at these service companies that had evidence in their possession they were required to turn over!" are non-answers.

hodgesmr• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_BSAFE

vezzy-fnord• 12 years ago

An older example. One that attracted a lot of attention in the 90s, but was soon forgotten and is now largely a historical curiosity, even though it should have caused people to be aware of the pitfalls of unsupervised intelligence way before Snowden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

danielweber8• 12 years ago

This is absolutely not the government requiring someone to do something by court order.

it was also revealed that NSA had secretly paid RSA Security $10 million to use Dual_EC_DRBG

This instance is unsettling -- especially to RSA customers -- but it is very much a different beast from a court or legal order requiring installation of a backdoor.

rlx0x2• 12 years ago

Lavabit closed down because they would otherwise be required by law to compromise their entire customers security. Also as it is part of a NSL that no one is allowed to talk about it by fear of a prison sentence, it is very reasonable to assume that this happens a lot more often than the public knows.

danielweber8• 12 years ago

Cool story, but not a response to my question. When has a company -- even a single one -- been required to backdoor a product they ship to customers by any kind of court order?

(Lavabit is different in lots of ways. #1: not a product. #2: They actually had the evidence the government wanted and told the government so.)

brute• 12 years ago

In the case of the alleged steroid dealer, the feds seemed to compel Hushmail to exploit this hole, store the suspects’ secret passphrase or decryption key, decrypt their messages and hand them over.

http://www.wired.com/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/

Technically, they were forced to collect the key which they would not have stored otherwise, so this does not count as "had evidence in their possession"

danielweber8• 12 years ago

The specific thing about "had evidence in their possession" was to discourage very casual readers from saying "but but Lavabit!" Lavabit had intimated they were already in full possession of the data the government wanted, no architecture changes needed.

Users connect to the service via a SSL (https://) connection and Hushmail runs the Encryption Engine on their side

Well, there we go. Right there they've got the Lavabit architecture, and all the same problems. The encryption and decryption is happening on the server, so the server has full access to the unencrypted messages.

I've been asking for a while and there are still zero instances of a company being forced to ship a backdoored product to customers. Companies can be compelled to turn over evidence inside their servers, which is why any "encrypt in the cloud!" architecture is fundamentally vulnerable to government demand.

Even if Hushmail didn't store the key at all, it was in their possession for some period of time. They can't be compelled to go back in time and retrieve things they threw out previously, but there is nothing unusual in the law about a court order compelling you to stop throwing out evidence about third-parties that temporarily passes through your possession.

EDIT I know wonder if a "encrypt in client-side Javascript" technique would be immune to this particular attack. It has all the usual problems 'tptacek and others point out, but if the company is providing the encryption code to the customer, and then the customer encrypts, the company has a very good argument that all that stuff is not in their possession. (A lot of this might turn on the specific reading of the license. Sometimes companies want to maintain possession of the code they ship to you. It's a technically unsafe architecture so I suspect we'll never get the answer to this legal question.)

Foxboron• 12 years ago

Couldnt this be countered by writing your own script checking the hash of the files X times a day?

danielweber8• 12 years ago

Once you assume the browser you are using for secrets is actively hostile, it's a pretty Sisyphian task to try and guarantee anything.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

Your average user is going to know how to do that or even want to do that. If they have to jump through a ton of hoops they just won't use it and be worse off.

willvarfar• 12 years ago

This is true if you have any program or OS upgrade going, whether manual or automatic.

"Ignore" is just a linkbait title :(

dang• 12 years ago

Yes, and it was also badly editorialized. We've changed the title to be (approximately) that of the bug report.

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you not to change titles except when they are linkbait or misleading. Changing them to be more linkbaity and misleading is right out!

Edit: Oops, I forgot: the submitted title was "Google ignores the simplest and most likely attack vector with End-to-End".

DanBlake2• 12 years ago

Maybe the solution is to have the automatic downloads of chrome be anonymous and build the system in such a way that changing it would not be possible.

Basically, change the chrome automatic updater to not send any identifying information when it requests a update. That way, you can be sure that Google couldn't just target 'you' with a update.

Then, you just need to rely on the fact that people would be watching the chromium code for any changes which would negate the above anonymity.

The real challenge would be for Google to develop a way where they could not still identify people from their other data (IP, cookies, etc..) when they were requesting a update.

Maybe have a third party host/store chrome update binaries? Something like amazon S3 or something which would not data share with Google.

AnthonyMouse10• 12 years ago

Maybe have a third party host/store chrome update binaries? Something like amazon S3 or something which would not data share with Google.

Obvious problem there is that whoever is putting pressure on Google could put the same pressure on Amazon. Solution is to use P2P. If your device has uploaded the new code to two other devices (and so on) before installing it, targeting specific devices becomes much more difficult.

DanBlake2• 12 years ago

using tor to download it should work pretty well, yes.

danielweber8• 12 years ago

If a hostile party can get code onto your computer, it doesn't matter much whether the hostile code is living inside chrome.exe or some other program.

If I am quietly targeting you to get malware onto your machine to capture your key, trying to sabotage Google Updater even in the current format is the wrong way.

McDiesel• 12 years ago

Since when does the google store update an extension not installed through the google store?

malka• 12 years ago

well. Probably as soon as the NSA requests it.

opendais• 12 years ago

This is the most likely attack vector for any automatically updating program on your computer, not just End-to-End.

What would stop a maliciously updated Chrome from recording all your keystrokes in the browser [all of your password; passphrases] as well as copying where you were at the time?

Etc.

This is one of those things where if you think the Government is going to silence you for being a dissenting voice and/or steal your info because of it...you grab an open source project, you compile it, you use that. You don't grab closed source software that automagically updates.

I don't think its reasonable to expect Google to protect the user from -every- potential attack vector.

simias3• 12 years ago

I think the reason many people (including myself) have a certain reticence to this google made crypto-in-the-browser is that nowadays I feel the #1 reason to use such an extension would be to protect ourselves from eavesdropping from Google or the government. So basically you're trusting Google for giving you the tools to escape Google's scrutiny, knowing full well that if they really want to access your messages they can easily backdoor your crypto extension.

So what's the point? To me it's just homeopathic crypto.

raldi3• 12 years ago

You have access to all the code and can read it and compile it yourself, and then turn off automatic updating.

And if you're not tech-savvy enough to do that, you can hire someone else to.

And if even that's not enough to please you, then tell me, what could possibly satisfy you?

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

It is a hard problem, and it's a positive sign that Google acknowledges the problem. Providing end-to-end security also goes against the trend of expanding the non-open parts of their Android app suite.

In addition to the reported bug, this plugin is handing cleartext back to Google-controlled code. Web apps and good security are still miles apart.

But this is still a significant change from a year ago when we heard internet portal CEO kvetching about the NSA and not even mentioning and-to-end encryption.

There is still a VERY long way to go before this counts as democratizing end-to-end security. Any portal that has real time communication tools and a social graph could also provide tools for automating Web-of-trust and key exchange.

All journeys etc.

antmldr• 12 years ago

This isn't a bug / complaint / observation of a vulnerability of End-to-End per se, you could argue Microsoft could be NSL'd to do the same to a user's operating system.

To counter this you'd need a secure, distributed way to release updates in Chrome. I don't think that's quite in scope of what this project is trying to accomplish.

AnthonyMouse10• 12 years ago

To counter this you'd need a secure, distributed way to release updates in Chrome. I don't think that's quite in scope of what this project is trying to accomplish.

It's not like that would require a large amount of novel code. Use BitTorrent + sign the update, problem solved.

stcredzero5• 12 years ago

You know, if we had DRM infrastructure we could actually trust, this wouldn't be a problem. Granted, having DRM we can trust may well be itself an insurmountable problem.

AnthonyMouse10• 12 years ago

Your comment doesn't parse due to an ambiguity. Who is we?

If "we" are supposed to be all of us as owners of computing devices, I'm not sure how DRM is supposed to help. Maybe the ambiguity is in what you think DRM is.

If "we" is "they" as the overlords who manufacture our stuff, having a DRM infrastructure they can trust would be a primary source of the problem, because it would consequently be one that we can't.

stcredzero5• 12 years ago

If "we" are supposed to be all of us as owners of computing devices, I'm not sure how DRM is supposed to help. Maybe the ambiguity is in what you think DRM is.

This is exactly the knee-jerk populist fluff we need people to actually think through. If we was everyone, then we could have agents that use our private key to sign and encrypt things on our behalf, but be a bit more confident that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. (Actually, we'd best spawn agents with a time-limited signed ephemeral private key.)

"We as in the overlords" is so predominant as a model, people have forgotten to think about the implications of such tools for themselves. Most DRM "discussion" gets reduced to "two legs baaad, four legs goood."

rlx0x2• 12 years ago

I think its a moot point, if the government is the attacker, who tries to spy on you specifically, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to prevent that from happening.

The US government has (literally) secret laws, that grants themselves the right to go to another country and kill someone without due process or trial or any kind of repercussion if they 'accidentally' kill innocent bystanders.

Its sort of laughable to talk about end to end encryption and possible NSL when you really think about it.

fulafel• 12 years ago

Here you make the mistake of assuming security is binary. Making attacks more expensive and likely to be exposed are effective deterrents.

There are many things that people in us government would like to do but cannot afford it.

“End-to-End incompatible with Chrome Update functionality”

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