LibreSSL: More Than 30 Days Later

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2014-libressl.html

by lflux • 12 years ago

332 104 12 years ago

bickfordb• 12 years ago

It's pretty surprising that they are using CVS for a new project

vezzy-fnord3• 12 years ago

OpenBSD is developed as a complete operating system following a cathedral model. LibreSSL is part of the OpenBSD base system (as libssl), which is hosted on CVS. Naturally, so will LibreSSL.

sigzero• 12 years ago

If you know anything about the OpenBSD project it really isn't surprising at all.

Touche• 12 years ago

Not everyone does "know anything about the OpenBSD project". So instead of the smug comment, why not just explain why this isn't surprising?

1ris• 12 years ago

I think it fits their development process very well.

wereHamster2• 12 years ago

I assume they don't use branches, or merges, or any of the other VCS features which git/mercurial have and which are difficult to do or even impossible in CVS.

X-Istence• 12 years ago

Every single last thread about OpenBSD or one of their projects has this same exact statement in it ...

segmondy• 12 years ago

What's so surprising? OpenBSD folks don't fall for the next new shiny thing. 10 years from now, something else might take over git, and everyone will jump to it. OpenBSD folks don't care, if what they have works, they stick to it.

Peaker• 12 years ago

Do you consider "git" a shiny new thing?

Using CVS over git in this day and age is a very dumb decision. They may make up for it in other, good decisions. But this decision is a dumb one.

D4AHNGM• 12 years ago

They do actually use Git a little. Both the OpenBSD & the Portable LibreSSL source code have mirrors on Github that are updated in sync with the CVS repository.

Whether that's because there's a demand to host the code on Github as well, or because they like Git, or a little of both is something I wouldn't presume to know.

serge2k• 12 years ago

Every so often the shiny new things are actually better.

brynet• 12 years ago

OpenBSD was one of the first open source projects to make their CVS repositories public, you can read more about it in Chuck Cranor and Theo de Raadt's paper on Anonymous CVS.

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-paper.pdf

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-slides.pdf

It makes sense, if you consider the fact they have been using for the last ~18 years.

Panino• 12 years ago

Among the good and bad stories this year, so far, LibreSSL is the good story of the year.

Also happy to hear a bit about the ressl API. To me it sounds like a focused, high-level API that makes it easy to get right and hard to get wrong. So kind of like NaCl. It's clearly the future -- look at the huge amount of software being written for Sodium now, for example. It's huge.

rakoo• 12 years ago

The very same tedunangst wrote a piece about this API: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/goreSSL

In which you can see the clear focus on usability rather than capability. To examplify how easy it is, he actually implements the API with a go "backend".

I also really like the concept of a simple API where you can't go wrong by default, hope it can make its way into other pieces of software as well.

ianlevesque• 12 years ago

Relatedly is there an SSL implementation based on NaCL anywhere?

jfindley• 12 years ago

Not exactly the same thing, but there's CurveCP which is essentially a TCP replacement for creating encrypted communication tunnels. It is part of NaCL and uses the same crypto primitives.

It's a really interesting project, but it's not ready for production use just yet, and even when it is I don't think that replacing SSL is necessarily what it's targeting.

MoOmer• 12 years ago

Interesting and quick work. The story of the libcrypto SRP glass house makes me feel like a little kid who just heard a ghost story.

Is OpenSSL being notified of security bugs you all find in your pairing down process?

clarry• 12 years ago

Is OpenSSL being notified of security bugs you all find in your pairing down process?

Determining whether a bug can actually be exploited (on what system, under what configuration?) is hard work, and it's harder still to prove a negative. Mostly the OpenBSD devs just fix the bug and move on. If it looks like the typical kind of a bug that could lead to crashes, they release a patch against the previous two releases (assuming the code is present there).

A lot of the bugs they fix turn out to be "security bugs" only long after someone else finds that out on a version of the code running on another system not hardened by the OpenBSD devs.

After 5.6, if any serious bug is found, you can expect to find a patch for it on http://www.openbsd.org/errata56.html ; however, as the code between LibreSSL and OpenSSL diverges, it won't be obvious whether they apply to OpenSSL at all.

peatmoss4• 12 years ago

I've said this before, but kudos to the OpenBSD Project for shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden of maintaining core bits of our libre/open infrastructure. I can't think of anyone in tech who has not benefited mightily from OpenSSH and who will not benefit mightily from LibreSSL.

This article is a good reminder for me to get off my arse and cut my meager grad-student checks to the EFF and OpenBSD project.

riffraff• 12 years ago

disproportionate share

Disproportionate based on/compared to what? (I agree that the openbsd folks do a ton of good, I am just trying to understand your references here)

spindritf• 12 years ago

Market share, funding... Pretty much any metric.

xnull2guest3• 12 years ago

Well, they take on responsibility as stewards, which means they will be the target of criticisms and backdoor attempts, and will need to meet the demands of downstream demand for fixes, requests and help. They also need to (have already) spend time on understanding the code, development and integration. They need to communicate the problems with OpenSSL and what they've done to other people within the ecosystem.

peatmoss4• 12 years ago

What spindritf said. OpenBSD has an extraordinarily high impact-to-X ratio, for many values of X (funding, notoriety, number of contributors, unnecessary problematization, glamor, etc.).

Even though I'm more likely to use OS X or Linux these days than OpenBSD, OpenBSD would fare better in the absence of most Linux distros, than most Linux distros would fare without OpenBSD.

throwaway2048• 12 years ago

A lot of the work they do on their packages and in base stuff is pushed upstream to properly support security features OpenBSD supports. Everyone benefits from this because then such features can be enabled everywhere with less pain.

pyvpx• 12 years ago

if you can get five people to buy CDs, and maybe two of them get another two or three to buy CDs, you'll have done much more good for the project than cutting a check.

peatmoss4• 12 years ago

How so? I don't have a computer with optical media anymore, and am most likely to install OpenBSD via network. Is there something about CD sales in particular that helps the project more than a straight up check? I'm happy to cut the check directly to the project even though that isn't tax deductible (though I think there's a foundation that is--though they're restricted on how they can spend those funds).

atmosx• 12 years ago

Nah, it's better to use donations to support the project. CDs are kinda lost technology these days.

ps. Donations by users are kinda hard to help (in term of numbers) but donations from companies, should be really waaaaaay more towards all BSD project but ESPECIALLY towards OpenBSD for reasons already mentioned.

illumen3• 12 years ago

So...

* it's broken on other platforms

* they broke features in their releases (no QA/testing?)

* they're making a new API based on requirements of their own programs that doesn't provide many of the OpenSSL features.

* they're using CVS, no public code reviews available. There's no evidence some of the changes were reviewed by someone other than who made the commit. (OpenSSL now does reviews)

* no public audit available.

* they have some hateful note about hipsters on their web page as an excuse after 5 months to not make it readable. So unprofessional it hurts.

* Most changes were done five months ago, with not much at all done for two months.

* The test/ directory has very few changes at all. No extra tests have been added.

* I can't find a release plan, architecture documentation, or any documentation a serious software project should have. (OpenSSL is working on these though)

Finally... their official distribution website doesn't use SSL. That's a major security issue of the face palm variety.

Not. Inspiring. Confidence.

The OpenSSL project on the other hand has been doing some good work. Please see the projects road map from July to see what they are changing. https://www.openssl.org/about/roadmap.html

kome• 12 years ago

they have some hateful note about hipsters on their web page as an excuse after 5 months to not make it readable. So unprofessional it hurts.

Are you talking about this http://www.libressl.org/ ? That's one of the most readable webpage ever.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

On iOS the font used to be a horrible script - really hard to read.

Currently it's comic sans (or a clone of it).

I personally fucking love the site and wish wish wish more people would stop throwing weird stuff in websites. I do think the dig at hipsters is pointlessly antagonistic. Isn't there an evangelism guide for people in open source projects?

hiphopyo• 12 years ago

Are you talking about this http://www.libressl.org/ ? That's one of the most readable webpage ever.

Oh indeed. Somebody needs to check out http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ :-)

mmagin• 12 years ago

Uhh, on your final point, they have signed checksums with the releases.

mmebane2• 12 years ago

they have signed checksums with the releases

Which might be OK for making sure the download isn't corrupted, but are useless for defending against an attacker, since the checksums themselves are hosted on a non-HTTPS site.

vezzy-fnord3• 12 years ago

* It's broken on other platforms, because those platforms are unable to provide sufficient primitives. LibreSSL directly inspired the introduction of a long-needed getrandom(2) syscall in Linux, and the LibreSSL-portable release still works on a decent number of platforms that will definitely be growing. Did you forget this is an early project? If anything, LibreSSL will ensure that other platforms get off their asses and actually do something about security, as OpenBSD has been trying to yell about for so long.

* In case you missed the memo, LibreSSL wasn't stable back then (nor is it still, AFAIK). Of course things will break, it was still development releases and pre-alpha testing. You can't fix a mess without inevitably breaking someone's workflow.

* They're making an API that will improve on the cruft of the old one, and actually be reasonably sane. Being agnostic of implementation internals will mean easier language bindings. They also explicitly stated it's meant to be independent of LibreSSL and can be adapted to other stacks.

* Stop bikeshedding about version control. It gets old. OpenBSD has had probably the most proactive security auditing and code review practices out of any other project in nearly two decades: http://www.openbsd.org/security.html. Code review isn't some magic process, it's a practice that can be done using a variety of methods. No doubt independent audits will emerge as soon as LibreSSL nears sufficient finalization.

The LibreSSL website is only a brochure. It's made to be "unprofessional" on purpose. The developers have a technical, no-bullshit and take-no-prisoners attitude.

And of course, next time we hear of OpenBSD having more difficulties, people will jump about Theo de Raadt being mean. I'm starting to understand where he comes from.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

And of course, next time we hear of OpenBSD having more difficulties, people will jump about Theo de Raadt being mean. I'm starting to understand where he comes from.

The stuff about the "hipsters" comment is not about being mean, it's about needlessly pointlessly being mean.

This stuff matters. It matters because it creates division for no gain.

Why not just use comic sans and make no comment? Why not use fixed-width?

illumen3• 12 years ago

Where is their release plan? The files don't say alpha anywhere.

Version control matters when you don't know who actually made the change. Are the changes signed? No. Besides, my main point was a lack of openness about code reviews. They're not public, and there's no evidence they are even done.

An accessible readable website happens to be important to people, and is a legal requirement in Canada. Documentation is important, and there is none on their website. How do we know what changes they made? Documentation is part of software, and they have none. Fail.

If they want to be jerks and bash other projects, they should be able to take crits themselves.

They clearly state in the article that there hasn't been much activity for periods of time. You can see yourself by looking at the project history in CVS.

xnull2guest3• 12 years ago

* Nah, the BSD guys are removing their dependency on OpenSSL, which is terribly broken for a number of reasons. They are not offering to replace OpenSSL for everyone on every platform. That's not their goal. They've said this from the beginning. But not all is lost for you (the non-BSD guy complaining that BSD codes doesn't work outside BSD). Eventually the code will make it downstream. And they've dedicated a lot of thought to how to do that in a more secure manner than OpenSSL. Inspiring.

* They kept the core functionality intact. Were you going to use heartbeats over TCP? Do you know even know what it is? How many of those on-by-default-workarounds were you using? Yeah they removed features. But for crypto code the lack of a rats nest is a feature.

* They are maintaining compatibility with the old API for legacy code and developing a more sane API. Do you have something constructive to say about how an API might look for interop with your favorite flavor of software? Great! To the mailing list with you!

* This was a tear down of code, not a reimplementation from scratch. But yeah, I agree. People should be looking over LibreSSL much more closely than OpenSSL. Sounds like that's something you would be interested in? ;)

* It's open source? And there are discussions on the mailing list? What kind of public audit did you have in mind?

* Don't really think hipster comments have much to do with LibreSSL's quality?

* Can you point to evidence of the claim that not much has been changed in the last two months? Can you point to things you would have liked to see change?

* No extra tests are needed, as they removed features. As features get added, yeah they're going to need to add some tests.

* They don't exactly sit around in conference rooms and write reports for upper management. Have you checked out their mailing list?

Aren't their packages signed and CVS transported over SSL? It's not like the code/packages are compromised. Otherwise, yeah I agree. It would be nice to have secure hateful hipster notes. ;). Kidding aside there's no reason not to add SSL. They should get on that.

I'm thankful that someone is doing something about OpenSSL, which is a blight. I'm sorry I can't personally afford to do more to help. Criticality is a positive thing, especially with regard to crypto/security code. But aren't you being a little smidge cynical?

illumen3• 12 years ago

The claim not much has changed can be substantiated by reading the article, and by looking in CVS.

Modern code review tools provide public conversation of the code in question, and allow people to sign off on it. Is LibreSSL doing this? How can I trace a change or branch to a discussion (if there are even branches)? How are others supposed to easily look into their changes? They say this is a problem in the article we are talking about with their 12,000+ line diffs.

What kind of audit? The traditional kind. Like the third party one the OpenSSL people are funding.

Extra tests would be good if they are rewriting functions, which according to the article is what they did past month one. Is their test plan do a release and see what happens? I can't tell, since I can't see a test plan anywhere. If you're changing a function, and not doing so with even basic tests, and are holding your development practices up as 'best practice' you are lying.

I'm being cynical because I care. They aren't doing many things the OpenSSL project themselves were taken to task for. As well, the OpenSSL project has now taken on many of the practices that LibreSSL are doing, but also they're doing much more (see their roadmap https://www.openssl.org/about/roadmap.html). To let LibreSSL get away with being careless is kind of silly when they are holding it up as being better.

IshKebab2• 12 years ago

Look at all the points where memory is allocated, and then make sure it is freed, exactly one time, no more, no less.

C is clearly the wrong language for something this security critical if that's where your bugs are. C++ solved this many years ago.

AceJohnny2• 12 years ago

While I agree that C is the wrong language for security-critical applications (and I write this as a mostly C developer myself), I strongly disagree that C++ is a better language. Sure, it has constructors and destructors and pass-by-reference, but that's not enough, and cons/destr's don't fit the common memory usage-model of performance-critical applications (where an SSL library is often used), which use preallocated memory pools.

wtetzner• 12 years ago

Seems like an area where Rust could really shine.

tpush• 12 years ago

Well, good then that C++ allows you to easily use your own memory allocation scheme via custom allocators. You can even use STL's data structures :-).

smosher_• 12 years ago

You had me up to "C++."

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

I fixed a double-delete bug just this month in some c++ code.

IshKebab2• 12 years ago

So? I didn't say no C++ code has bugs. I said C++ is a better language for eliminating memory errors. Obviously this only happens if you take advantage of the features that allow that (RAII, smart pointers, etc).

felixrabe2• 12 years ago

It kinda bugs me when time-sensitive articles (like those about software) are published without a date on them. The article does not mention a date when it was written, I assume it was recently. It mentions "2014-09-09 FreeBSD advisory", and the date today is 2014-09-28, so September 2014 is a good bet.

felixrabe2• 12 years ago

Btw I enjoy the article. Thanks for writing it.

ams61105• 12 years ago

It was presented at EuroBSDCon2014, but you're right that's not really obvious IN the paper (it is indicated in the URL).

A more chronological catalog is at http://www.openbsd.org/papers/

Twirrim• 12 years ago

In particular, we answer the question "What would the user like to do?" and not "What does the TLS protocol allow the user to do?"

This makes me think of the laudable approach taken by the developers for the Cryptography library for python. Expose functions to users with sane and safe settings to users, and provide the abilities to override the defaults if you really must (but in such a manner that it's extremely clear that you're stepping into dangerous territory)

rocky1138• 12 years ago

Off-topic, but the markup of that page is really interesting. I've never seen someone do this before:

<h1>LibreSSL: More Than 30 Days Later</h1> Ted Unangst<p> tedu@openbsd.org<p>

LibreSSL was officially announced to the world just about exactly five months ago. Bob spoke at BSDCan about the first 30 days. For those who weren't there, I'll quickly rehash some of that material. Also, it's always best to start at the beginning, but then I'll try to focus on some new material and updates.

<h1>openssl</h1>

_ZeD_• 12 years ago

What's so strange about this markup? It's plain html.

cygx• 12 years ago

He's probably unaware of tag omission[1].

The site uses it incorrectly, though: The <p> tag belongs at the start of a paragraph - it is not a separator like <br>.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/p.html#p-tags

imanaccount2474• 12 years ago

It is wrong in a rather odd way. Whoever did it seems to think paragraph tags are just line breaks.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

http://www.libressl.org/

At the moment we are too busy deleting and rewriting code to make a decent web page. No we don't want help making web pages, thank you.
This page scientifically designed to annoy web hipsters. Donate now to stop the Comic Sans and Blink Tags

Beltiras• 12 years ago

There is some agonizing done over the rewrite culminating in the need for a redesign of the API. I've wondered why there wasn't a light-weight library that simply implemented the smallest number of protocols to delivered the necessary components for a secure HTTPS connection. You'd have some other library for other protocols, but this one should have the feature of being as light-weight (and small) as possible. Wouldn't that be the cyphersuite of choice for most hosting facilities?

LibreSSL: More Than 30 Days Later

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