potential hazards of Protect-America act

Warren Kumari warren at kumari.net
Thu Jan 31 05:54:19 UTC 2008



On Jan 30, 2008, at 5:28 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:03:04 -0800
> Warren Kumari <warren at kumari.net> wrote:
>
>> Disclaimer: I'm sitting in a meeting that is making me grumpy and
>> this is one of my pet-peeves... I keep hearing people making the
>> assertion that MD5 is "broken" -- this is not completely true. Yes,
>> there have been collisions found -- yes, I can easily (and quickly)
>> generate 2 inputs that generate the same output...
>>
>> What is not trivial is for you to generate another input that will
>> generate (eg): 0x56f39544ebca88f261f2087dab3d7e61 or, given
>> 0x56f39544ebca88f261f2087dab3d7e61 to figure out what input I
>> provided.
>>
>> There was a brief flurry of media attention around the time of
>> Vlastimil's tiunneling work saying "MD5 Broken!!!". Many people (not
>> necessarily anyone on the list) just read the sensationalist
>> headlines with no understanding as to what had been accomplished...
>>
>>  As with any tool, you need to understand the capabilities and
>> limitations before using it.
>
> Yes, I know precisely what the attack on MD5 means; I've even  
> published
> a paper on some aspects of it.

Yes, I know that you do, and I know that most (all?) of the people on  
the list do. I also realize that, for this application, it isn't the  
correct choice... My little hissy fit was brought about by the many  
instances that I have encountered where people say things like  "MD5  
on BGP sessions is pointless because MD5 has been broken"[0] and other  
similar things...
>
>
> The context in the article we're talking about is a discussion of the
> quality of the FBI's surveillance systems.  The FBI's own documents
> mention the use of MD5; see, for example,
> http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/061708CKK/073007_dcs03.pdf .  I
> assert that the context mentioned there does indeed run afoul of the
> vulnerability.

Yes.

> Specifically, MD5 is being used to log received files
> in a surveillance system.  So -- suppose I'm a bad guy and I think the
> FBI is monitoring my traffic.  I create two files, one perhaps
> incriminating and one not, with the same MD5 hash.  The FBI arrests me
> and uses the intercepted file as evidence.  I tell the judge that the
> evidence was tampered with; as proof, I show my file that has the same
> MD5 hash.  I then assert that the FBI and the NSA colluded to find a
> preimage -- "everyone" knows that NSA can do such things -- and
> complain to the judge.  Or let's turn it around.  The FBI prepares two
> documents with a collision, one of interest to me and the other
> incriminating.  A undercover agent sends me the first one, which I
> save.  I'm arrested -- and the FBI lab substitutes in the second file.
> The logs will still match, but I'm being convicted based on faked
> evidence.  Or I just tell the judge that that's what the FBI did.
>
> Ever since Dobbertin's partial attack on MD5 in 1996, it's been very
> clear that one should not use it for new applications, and that one
> should phase it out of most older ones (HMAC-MD5 is an exception).  I
> assert that continuing to use it in the DCS-3000 is not justifiable,
> especially because the FBI is operating in an adversarial environment.
>
> So -- I assert that when we complained about MD5 in our recent  
> article,
> we knew exactly what we were saying and got our facts and our analysis
> precisely right.

Sure, and I'm sorry if it came across that I was saying that MD5 was  
the correct solution for this application, I wasn't... I was just  
venting about the folks that automatically rule out any protocol or  
system that uses MD5 without understanding what the hash is used for,  
what the issues are and what the threat model is...

W

[0]: There are a bunch of reasons to do (or not do) MD5 BGP  
authentication -- collisions in the hash is not one of them...
>>
>> Once again, this is one of those things that just pushes my buttons,
>> sorry if I went off on a rant...
>>
>> W
>>
>> P.S: Yes thanks, I am feeling better now :-)
>>
> I hope I haven't ruined that.
>
>
> 		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
>




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