On Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 01:33:10PM -0500, Tim Hollebeek wrote: > > In addition, the consequences of this flaw in a Windows environment are > substantially different, due to the lack of access controls. As we > discussed in the technical summary, while there is no perfect solution to > this problem, it would take very little work for Netscape to make future > exploits of this type much more difficult. The current position of > Netscape, that these sorts of vulnerabilities need not be fixed, is in my > opinion rather irresponsible. Software companies have a responsibility to > make exploiting their software as difficult as possible, _especially_ in > cases like this where the cost to do so is similar to, or less than, the > cost of using absurdly weak proprietary cryptography. It is Netscape's > responsibility to put the bar at as high a level as is feasible and > economical. As Avi Rubin, security expert at ATT Labs, pointed out, in this > case Netscape needs to run out and get a bar so they can raise it. This is a red herring. Local secure storage of secrets in PCs without another secret is not possible. We've had this discussion before on the list in reference with many client applications (including Netscape). If you are using a known key a better encryption algorithm is useless. Regardless of the algorithm its nothing more than obfuscation. For encryption to be of any use you need to encrypt the information you want to maintain secret with yet another secret, but the user does not want to be bothered with remembering another password. That is the reason they ask the client application to remember their password in the first place. Local secure storage of secrets is a service that needs to be provided by the operating system. In the case of Windows NT you can store them (with some limitations) using the Local System Authority (LSA) API. Under Windows 95/98 there is an API to store secrets using the users logon password (stores the secrets in .PWL files) but to my knowledge it is not documented by Microsoft (although they allude to it in some early Windows 95 presentation slides). Maybe someone with more knowledge of Microsoft operating systems can confirm? So given these constrains the best thing Netscape can do is not use any obfuscation at all and store the passwords in plain text. At least this does not give the user any false sense of security. On a side note, I am surprised this made it into CNN. A dozen more serious vulnerabilities have been found in Netscape and Internet Explorer and they don't even notice, yet they pick up on this rather minor issue. Go figure. > Tim Hollebeek > Reliable Software Technologies -- Aleph One / aleph1at_private http://underground.org/ KeyID 1024/948FD6B5 Fingerprint EE C9 E8 AA CB AF 09 61 8C 39 EA 47 A8 6A B8 01
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