Re: [TLS] Delegated Credentials: The impact of a hypothetical Bleichenbacher attack

[Nick Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hello Nimrod, Robert and Juraj,

Thank you for the report!

The fact that a single signature oracle computation can be used to create a
DC and therefore intercept multiple connections for up to 7 days is
something we considered when writing this specification. The mitigation you
proposed in option 1 (requiring the keyEncipherment KeyUsage to not be
present on DC-capable certificates) is sound in theory, but unlikely to be
effective in practice since many servers (including many of the ones
identified in DROWN) ignore the requirement that keyEncipherment KeyUsage
is present. Stating this requirement in the text of this document is
unlikely to prevent existing oracles from being leveraged if the
certificate is used in multiple contexts and is likely to introduce
complexity on the CA side, so I'm inclined not to include this requirement.
I'd be happy to hear an argument to the contrary, though.

I'm more inclined to incorporate some text into the security considerations
to discourage the use of DC-enabled certificates in contexts where an
oracle may be present. Servers may even go as far as to use a different
certificate for DC-enabled handshakes vs regular handshakes --- although
very few servers support this sort of dynamic certificate switching in
practice so it would be difficult to make a hard requirement here.

Nick

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 6:08 AM Nimrod Aviram <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> We're writing to ask (and share some concerns) about the potential impact
> of a Bleichenbacher attack when delegated credentials are in use.
>
> This issue is already discussed in the standard:
> In Section 3:
> ```   It was noted in [XPROT] that certificates in use by servers that
>    support outdated protocols such as SSLv2 can be used to forge
>    signatures for certificates that contain the keyEncipherment KeyUsage
>    ([RFC5280] section 4.2.1.3).  In order to prevent this type of cross-
>    protocol attack, we define a new DelegationUsage extension to X.509
>    that permits use of delegated credentials.  (See Section 4.2.)
> ```
>
> And Section 4.2:
> ```   The client MUST NOT accept a delegated credential unless
>    the server's end-entity certificate satisfies the following criteria:
>
>    *  It has the DelegationUsage extension.
>
>    *  It has the digitalSignature KeyUsage (see the KeyUsage extension
>       defined in [RFC5280]).
> ```
>
> Currently, it seems the standard does not discuss the common situation
> where the certificate has both the digitalSignature and keyEncipherment
> KeyUsages.
> If we understand correctly, for such certificates using Bleichenbacher's
> attack to forge a single signature once over a delegated credential,
> would grant an attacker the equivalent of a man-in-the-middle certificate.
> Section 3 mentions SSLv2, and this protocol indeed enabled a severe form
> of Bleichenbacher's attack, but these attacks are not limited to older
> protocol versions.
> There have been implementations of TLS 1.2 vulnerable to Bleichenbacher's
> attack, even by server operators as competent as Facebook, as discussed
> e..g. in the ROBOT paper.
>
> Also, coming back to SSLv2, one problem at the time was that the
> recommended way to disable SSLv2 in OpenSSL did not in fact disable
> SSLv2. Administrators who followed the guidelines falsely assumed they
> had disabled the protocol, but had no way to verify it was disabled. It
> would be prudent to assume this may happen again, e.g. administrators will
> be unaware that they have obsolete or vulnerable cryptography enabled.
>
> In light of the above, we would recommend one of two alternatives:
> 1. Change the text in Section 4.2 to say "[the certificate] has the
> digitalSignature KeyUsage, and does not have the keyEncipherment KeyUsage.
> Furthermore, the certificate does not share its public key with any
> certificate that has the keyEncipherment KeyUsage."
> - or -
> 2. Add text in the Security Considerations Section explaining that:
> 2.1. The recommended way for server operators to defend in depth against
> this type of attack is to use a certificate as in alternative 1 with
> delegated credentials.
> 2.2. Absent that, server operators should be aware of this risk.
>
> We would be happy to continue the discussion and help in any way.
>
> best wishes,
> Juraj, Robert and Nimrod
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