Alleged backdoor in OpenBSD's IPSEC implementation.

'mikea' mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Wed Dec 15 17:07:48 UTC 2010


On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:00:56PM -0500, Stefan Fouant wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mikea [mailto:mikea at mikea.ath.cx]
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 8:28 AM
> > To: nanog at nanog.org
> > Subject: Re: Alleged backdoor in OpenBSD's IPSEC implementation.
> > 
> > >
> > > Someone is confusing FBI with NSA, methinks. And yes, if this is
> > > the kind of thing not talked about, "NDA"s expire when you do. But
> > > seriously ... this would seem to be the kind of code that Smart
> > People
> > > should be doing security audits on Just Because.
> > >
> > > So rustle up a couple of PostDocs, and give them an idea for a
> > Thesis,
> > > and yer set.
> > 
> > More to the point, I think it wouldn't be an NDA, but a security
> > classification on the knowledge of the backdoors, and probably one not
> > subject to automatic downgrading.
> 
> Please pardon my ignorance on the matter as I am not involved in any way
> with Open Source development, but it stands to reason that anything of this
> sort would have been scrutinized by the many developers involved with
> OpenBSD and surely would have been discovered at some point.  And to further
> that point, is this not something that can be verified now if this code is
> still in the public domain?  Or is writing a crypto stack such an esoteric
> task that only a relegated few can possibly decipher the inner workings? 
> 
> Not that I don't love a good government conspiracy theory, and yes I do
> believe there are a fair amount of backdoors in most code (including that of
> many private and publicly held corporations)... but open source?  Just seems
> unlikely to me based on my limited understanding...

In sober honesty, I doubt that there are any backdoors in any *BSD
crypto stack that is really open source -- modulo the issues set out in
"On trusting trust". But while I doubt it, that doesn't mean that I'm
certain there are none. 

At this point, a real Conspiracy Theorist (TM) would ramble on about how
all the *BSD crypto stack folks either were co-opted by the NSA or were
under threat of death or worse if they talked.

-- 
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin 




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