Re: [TLS] Rizzo claims implementation attach, should be interesting

[David Wagner <[e-mail]>]

I've been reading the discussion about this attack.  Of course, until
we see a full description of BEAST, it's hard to draw firm conclusions,
but I want to suggest a slightly different perspective on some of the
views I see mentioned here.

I've seen the claim made that ~"it is inherently unsafe to mix trusted
and untrusted content over the same encrypted channel, you should never
do that, crypto protocols aren't intended to be secure against that"~.
I do not think this is a fruitful or sensible way to think about things.

Modern crypto protocols do aim to make it safe to mix trusted and
untrusted content over the same channel.  They aim to be secure against
chosen-plaintext attack; and the notion of chosen-plaintext attacks is
motivated exactly by ensuring it is safe to mix trusted and untrusted
data over the same channel.  The designers of SSL and TLS 1.0 presumably
intended for SSL to be secure against chosen-plaintext attacks, but we've
sinced learned that there is a subtle flaw that enables a successful
chosen-plaintext attack.  It is a surprise that they fell short of this
natural goal and are vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attack (by the way,
no need to bring up blockwise-adaptive attacks; blockwise-adaptivity is
not needed).  TLS 1.1 introduces revisions to fix this problem, and as
far as we know, TLS 1.1 is secure against chosen-plaintext attack.

The conventional wisdom until now has been that, while there are
known chosen-plaintext attacks on TLS 1.0, they are not very serious
in practice.  As a result, there has not been much pressure to move to
TLS 1.1.  It may be time to reconsider that conventional wisdom.

I don't think it makes sense to advocate "you should never send both
trusted and untrusted content over the same crypto channel"; that advice
leads to absurd results.  Often dynamic web pages includes both trusted
and untrusted content; are you going to advocate that no dynamic web
page should sent over TLS?  In my view, TLS had darn well better be
secure in that threat model, and as far as we know, TLS 1.1 is.

I've also seen claims on this list that ~"CBC mode is inherently
insecure and should never be used"~.  I think that's a little too broad.
The problem with TLS 1.0 is not that it uses CBC mode and CBC mode
is inherently insecure.  Rather, the problem is that TLS 1.0 uses a
special variant of CBC mode, one which turns out to be insecure against
chosen-plaintext attack.  In particular, TLS 1.0 uses "ciphertext block
chaining", where the last ciphertext block is used as the next IV.
This way of choosing the IV enables chosen-plaintext attacks.

It is worth pointing out that the crypto-theory community has proven that,
if CBC mode is used properly, it is secure against chosen-plaintext
attacks.  However, those proofs only apply to the standard form of
CBC mode, where the IV is chosen randomly.  The proofs do not apply to
TLS 1.0's "ciphertext block chaining", and in fact, "ciphertext block
chaining" is not secure: it is not IND-CPA secure.

As long as you use CBC mode securely, these problems go away.  TLS 1.1
does use a secure form of CBC mode.  So I don't think it is accurate to
suggest that CBC mode is necessarily insecure.

In summary, I'd recommend: don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
We don't need to throw out CBC mode; TLS 1.1's use of CBC mode is fine.
There's nothing wrong with sending both trusted and untrusted content over
the same channel, as long as the crypto protocol is designed properly; and
as best as we know, TLS 1.1 is fine for that.

References for further reading:

See Wei Dai's 2002 attacks on SSH and Bodo Moeller's extension of them
to SSL and TLS 1.0:
  http://osdir.com/ml/ietf.secsh/2002-02/msg00049.html
  http://www.openssl.org/~bodo/tls-cbc.txt
Those messages were clear that the implication of their attack is that
SSL is not secure against chosen-plaintext attack, and the key enabler
for their attack is that SSL's use of CBC mode chooses IVs unsafely.
See also Greg Bard's paper, which extends those early observations and
gave an early warning about the risks to SSL and TLS 1.0:
  http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/136