The last few days has seen a number of new reports about a security vulnerability in RSA public/private keys in use on the Internet. The vulnerability has to do with duplicate keys, and not with any weakness in the cryptographic algorithm itself. But it is disturbing information because public/private key encryption is crucial to the security of web sites and a number of other secure applications and services.

The news is based on the work of academic researchers and you can read the paper here.

While the researchers did not identify the cause of the duplicate keys, a number of us are guessing that the problem lies in random number generation. It is really easy to create bad random number generators, and hard to get it right and prove that you have it right. So any sloppiness in your engineering processes related to RNG can lead to this type of problem. There are not a lot of applications in use that create RSA public/private keys and X509 certificates, so the problem may be limited to a small number of these applications. But at this time there is no indication of which RSA key generation routines may be at fault.

How bad is this problem and should you worry about it?

At this point I don’t think there are any known attacks or breaches based on this vulnerability. It may have happened, but it hasn’t been reported yet. However, while the original researchers did not disclose their methods for identifying the duplicate RSA keys, it doesn’t seem hard to think of ways to do this. That being said, I am not sure how easy it would be to mount an effective attack even if you know about the duplicate keys. A lot is still unknown about this vulnerability.

I think Bruce Schneier has a good take on this issue. If you are concerned about this potential problem, you can read his comments here.

Are there bad random number generators in the wild?

You bet. Some years ago we found one on the IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) platform. In the early days of the IBM i platform you could use a system API named CEERAN0 to generate random numbers. We were shocked to learn how poor this RNG application is. It would start generating collisions within about 30,000+ cycles. That is really bad. It turns out that IBM also provides a cryptographically secure RNG application, but the older one still exists and we’ve seen it used in vendor and customer applications.

So, the obvious question is how can you know if a random number generator is good? One place to start is with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST publishes guidelines on proper RNG methods, and a certification program. You can read the NIST recommendations for certifying random number generators here (warning: heavy lifting ahead).

NIST also has a certification program for random number generators and vendors like us can submit our work to independent labs that perform NIST testing. All of our cryptographic solutions have been through this testing. It is also important to note that encryption key management systems that undergo FIPS 140-2 certification also go through full RNG testing. Our Alliance Key Manager if FIPS 140-2 certified and the RNG routines were NIST certified as a part of that process. We’ve also certified our RNG implementations on a variety of platforms including the IBM i. The list of vendors who have completed certification are here.

While I don’t think NIST certifications are a perfect indicator of good cryptographic implementations, I certainly wouldn’t accept any encryption key management or cryptographic solution that had not been through an independent certification process.

Proper random number generation is crucial to secure cryptographic systems. You can’t leave RNG to chance (sorry about that).

When more information is available on the RSA vulnerability I’ll give you an update. 

For more information on the importance of encryption key management, download our white paper "Key Management in the Multi-Platform Envrionment" and learn how to overcome the challenges of deploying encryption key management in business applications.

Stay safe.

Patrick

5 Commonly Asked Questions About Data Privacy

The job to protect sensitive data often falls in the hands of IT security administrators and their teams because of their technical expertise. We feel data protection is everyone's responsibility because every employee has an invested interest in maintaining their organization's good reputation with customers and partners.

We have compiled questions from discussions over the years with  customers and prospects to help people understand the basics of data privacy and why responsibility of maintaining data integrity goes beyond the IT department.  In addition to this list, we have produced a podcast with more information - download it here.

1. What constitutes personal information that we have to protect and how do businesses protect this information?

The first things people think of are credit card or social security numbers.  However, other pieces of information are equally as important.  Think about the things your bank asks you when you call them to talk about your account. Can you verify your phone number? The last four digits of your social security number? Your birthdate? Maiden name? These pieces of information can be used to commit fraud. 

The banks are using that information to identify you. And the fraudsters will use that information to impersonate you. The technical term for this kind of information is Personally Identifiable Information, or PII.

Businesses can protect data with a few different techniques involving third-party software solutions and implementing internal policies around who has access to data.

Vendor solutions can provide the ability to control who has access to data inside the company and prevent potential hackers from gaining access to your network.   Companies can also use vendor solutions to encrypt their data. Encryption is a process that takes sensitive information and runs it through a scrambling process. Once encrypted, your data can only be deciphered with a special key.  The data is useless to the person that attempts to steal it, unless they they have the key.

2. We’ve been hearing a lot about encryption and key management. How do they relate to each other?

They go together, they are complementary technologies. In addition to the raw credit card number, another very important input to the encryption is the secret key.  Without the key, no one can read the encrypted data. Many people think that an encryption algorithm itself is a secret mechanism, but that’s not the case. Encryption is well understood, there are standards for it and they’re readily available.  The secret that prevents malicious users from stealing data is the encryption key.

At home, the key to your front door is what protects you. Companies that use encryption have to create a key that is unique and strong, and then protect it to ensure it doesn’t get into the wild. Anyone who has the key can get the data. In the real world of protecting data with encryption, the encryption key is what users are taking care to protect.

3. What happens when the encryption is not done correctly?

There are many ways that encryption can be done incorrectly or poorly. We see that particularly around the area of encryption key management. One big mistake many people make is storing an encryption key on the same platform where the data are stored. Sometimes you hear the term integrated key management to describe this practice. Even if you lock down the database, keeping it on the same partition as your data leaves it readily accessible for potential cracking.

Other examples are using nonstandard or proprietary encryption. It’s important that a company buying encryption technology should vet their vendors carefully. NIST certified encryption is the best assurance that a solution meets your compliance requirements.

4. Are there any laws or regulations requiring businesses to protect their sensitive data?

Yes, there are quite a few, and many companies find themselves complying with multiple regulations. If you take credit cards, you fall under the Payment Card Industry standard. That’s a private regulation promoted by the credit card vendors such as Visa and Mastercard. If you’re a bank or engaged in the banking industry, you fall under Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and FFIEC regulation for protecting data. In the health care industry, you fall under the HIPAA/HITECH acts.  FIRPA is the regulatory environment around educational institutions.

Individual states have passed data privacy regulations and defined data breaches and the penalties for them. And the federal government is moving laws through Congress to define protections for personal information. There are quite a number of regulations that define data that needs to be protected.

5. How would my organization develop a data security policy?

It’s a real challenge especially if you’re starting for the first time, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when hearing about data breaches on a daily basis. Keep it simple to start. There are some things you can do that are very effective up front.  Rank where the vulnerabilities are. Here are just a few to help get you started:

1. Make sure you have good antivirus software on Windows and Mac.
2. Use good strong passwords. “1234” or “admin” are not good passwords!
3. Understand where your data resides and who has access to it.

Here’s another interesting thing, if you have a problem, it’s going to be your problem, not the vendor’s problem. It’s going to be your headache, your upset customers, and your financial loss. So pay attention to your encryption solution! 

Something that inhibits people from taking action is just thinking they are not subject to a data breach.  That’s a dangerous attitude. We've been saying it for years beause it's true - Data Gets Out. Encrypt it! 

Download the complete podcast here.

How Much Data Can You Encrypt with RSA Keys?

When someone first begins to consider using encryption to protect business data, they discover that there are two general types: symmetric (AES) and asymmetric (RSA). At first glance, which one you would choose can be confusing.

One of the differences between the two is speed. Symmetric encryption is much faster than asymmetric. The exact difference is implementation dependent, but may be on the order of 100 to 1000 times faster.

It is widely known that AES encrypts a 16-byte block of data at a time. However, how much data can be encrypted at one time with an RSA key is usually only discussed in vague terms such as “use RSA to encrypt session keys.” This raises the question of how much data can be encrypted by an RSA key in a single operation.

The typical encryption scenario is to encrypt with a public key and decrypt with the private key. OpenSSL provides the RSA_public_encrypt and RSA_private_decrypt functions to implement this.

The first parameter to the RSA_public_encrypt function is flen. This is an integer that indicates the number of bytes to encrypt. Its maximum value depends on the padding mode. For OAEP padding, recommended for all new applications, it must be less than the size of the key modulus – 41 (all in bytes).

To get the size of the modulus of an RSA key call the function RSA_size.

The modulus size is the key size in bits / 8. Thus a 1024-bit RSA key using OAEP padding can encrypt up to (1024/8) – 42 = 128 – 42 = 86 bytes.

A 2048-bit key can encrypt up to (2048/8) – 42 = 256 – 42 = 214 bytes.

Additional Resources for IT Developers and Professionals

We collaborate with developers and IT professionals around the world and know that they use a wide variety of languages and platforms to accomplish their work.  Our products include documentation, source code examples, and HOWTO guides for developers in order to help projects get done quickly. Visit our Developer Resources section of our web site to learn more and discuss your upcoming project with our development team.

 

 

The modern Enterprise deploys a variety of server platforms, operating systems, and programming languages.  A major barrier to deploying encryption has been the challenge of accessing encryption keys from these widely divergent environments.  Encryption key management solutions have the primary goal of managing and protecting encryption keys, and making them available to authorized applications in a secure fashion.

Key management solutions vary greatly in the complexity of the key retrieval process. The more complex the key retrieval interface, the greater the challenge for the Enterprise IT team in deploying key retrieval in applications. Understanding this fact can help IT decision makers assess different vendor solutions and the likely costs of deploying a solution in their enterprise.  Below is a list of questions that you should ask your key management vendor when assessing their solution.

Key Management Vendor Checklist

1.  Is your key manager FIPS 140 certified?  What is the certificate number?

2.  How would you describe the encryption key payload as retrieved from the key server?  Is it simple or complex?

3.  Is there a common key retrieval application interface on all platforms?  What are the differences?

4.  What platforms do you support for key retrieval?  (Note any gaps in platform coverage for your company)

5.  Do you provide working sample code for the platforms I need? (Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM i, IBM z)

6.  Do you supply binary libraries for all Enterprise servers?

7.  Do you have a Java key retrieval class and examples? Is it standard Java or JNI?

8.  Do you charge separate license fees for each client operating system?

9.  Do you require that we purchase consulting services from you?  Why?

10.  I am an independent software vendor (ISV), can you brand the solution and certify the solution for us?
 
Once you have the answer to the above questions, it should be easier to choose the right key management vendor for your Enterprise. If you have any questions, click here and we will call you right back.

 

Last week we presented a webinar on PCI requirements for encryption key management.  Many of the people who attended were encrypting data on the System i and curious about how to manage their encryption keys according to new PCI requirements. 

The way organizations are managing encryption keys is falling under more scrutiny by QSA auditors.  Companies must demonstrate they are enforcing dual control and separation of duties.  

How is this achieved on the System i? Is it still effective to use an integrated key management solution that is store encryption keys in the same partition as the encrypted data?  The answer, quite simply,  is "no" PCI DSS requirement states the following requirements for key management:

 

• Dual Control means that at least two people should be required toauthenticate before performing critical key management tasks.
• Separation of Duties means that the individuals managing encryption keys should not have access to protected data such as credit cards, and those that have access to protected data should not have the authority to manage encryption keys.

Now here is an uncomfortable truth.  On the IBM i you simply can't achieve these PCI requirements if you store the encryption key in the same partition as the protected data.  The QSECOFR user profile (and any user profile with *ALLOBJ authority) will always have complete access to every asset on the system.  An *ALLOBJ  user can circumvent controls by changing another user's password, replacing master keys and key encryption keys, changing and/or
deleting system logs, managing validation lists, and directly accessing database files that contain encrypted data.  

From the perspective of PCI, an integrated key management system puts too much control into the hands of any one single individual.
The only way to comply with PCI requirements for key management is to store the encryption keys off of the IBM i.  Take users with *ALLOBJ out of the picture completely.  When you use a separate appliance to manage encryption keys you can grant a user access to the protected data on the System i and deny that same user access to the key manager.  Now you have enforced separation of duties.  And with the right key management appliance you can require TWO users to authenticate before keys can be managed, and have dual control of encryption keys.

Let us know about the key management strategy at your company. Is your organization encrypting data on the System i?  How are you managing the encryption keys? If you store them on a separate partition, have you had a recent PCI audit?  What did your auditor say?

The advent of faster and faster computers poses a never ending challenge for encryption methodologies. An excellent example of this is the demise of the DES encryption standard in 1999.  That was when a group of programmers was able to break the security of a DES key in about 22 hours using a brute force attack which simply tried every possible value of the key. Computers have gotten a lot faster since then! This exploit lead to the adoption of AES as the new standard for symmetric encryption.

This year marks another milestone regarding the use of RSA keys. These are the public-private key pairs that are used in the creation of the SSL/TLS connections that enable ecommerce to transactions to run over the Internet (for example when you engage in electronic banking or give a credit card number to an on-line merchant).

In the past the use of RSA keys with a length of 1024-bits was quite common. However, the official policy has changed. NIST (the National Institute for Standards in Technology) now recommends that 2048-bit keys be used to encrypt data through 2030. After that time 3072-bit keys will be required.

This is documented in NIST Special Publication 800-57, Recommendation for Key Management. See “Table 4: Recommended algorithms and minimum key sizes” for particulars.