Lotus Notes

[JMKELSEY@delphi.com]

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>Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 20:54:33 -0500
>From: daw@beijing.CS.Berkeley.EDU (David A Wagner)
>Subject: Re: Hack Lotus?

>Hack Lotus?  Please do.

Perhaps in this case, c2.org could have a "patch Lotus" contest,
instead.  Help us patch this dumb security hole, by which we're
leaking 24 bits of each session key.

>I would love to see the internals of how Lotus Notes does the escrow.
>Every conceivable way I can see to do it seems very vulnerable to attack.
>
>If the receiving Lotus Notes program doesn't check whether the high 24
>bits have been escrowed correctly in the LEEF-like field, then a simple
>hack to the sending Lotus Notes program to not send the LEEF field
>should give foreigners true 64 bit encryption.

I think this is the case.  The guy who spoke at the RSA conference
made reference to the fact that this new version would interoperate
with full-strength domestic versions.  Getting domestic versions to
check for LEAFs only from foreign users is possible, but it would
seem to require that Lotus was working on this idea several versions
back.  Otherwise, when an old domestic version gets a message from a
new foreign version, it's going to accept the message without a
LEAF.  Depending on how Lotus Notes does their key exchange
protocol, it may be possible to graft this kind of checking on, so
that the older programs will work with it, too, but this doesn't
seem likely at all.

>If the receiving Lotus Notes program does verify that the high 24 bits
>are escrowed correctly, then anyone can verify that, so in 2^24 trials,
>I can recover the high 24 bits, and with 2^40 more trials, I can recover
>the high 40 bits.  Therefore 2^40 + 2^24 trials should suffice to hack
>Lotus if this is how it works.

This problem is solvable, though I doubt they've bothered.  Two
ways come to mind--both using information that third parties won't
have to fix the problem.

1.   Put another 64 bits of random salt into the RSA key exchange
blob.  Use this to pad the LEAF, so that it's not feasible to
dictionary search the LEAF.

2.   Define the LEAF as part of the RSA key exchange blob.  Pad the
LEAF with random bits, unknown to the receiver.  Sign the whole key
exchange blob.

Note that #2 can be countered by hacking the software's copy of the
public key.  I don't see a way of countering #1 on the sender side
only.  (Once you get the sender and receiver working together,
key escrow seems to become really hard to do.)

Now, I'm very interested in whether they thought about this as a
potential problem, and thus padded their LEAF intelligently, or left
themselves vulnerable to a dictionary-style attack on the LEAF.
This translates, roughly, to "was someone with a basic understanding
of cryptography involved in this design?"  Clearly, IBM has some
really good people, and I suspect Lotus did/does, as well.  But were
they involved enough in the implementation to ensure that this was
done intelligently?

- From what I heard at the conference, though, I don't think they're
even checking to ensure compliance.  This implies that the security
patch can be pretty simple--clobber the LEAF field with a bunch of
random-looking bits.  Of course, this tells us nothing about the
other possible weaknesses.  How well does Notes generate key
material?  How big are the RSA keys?  How well do things like the
key exchange protocols work?  It looks to me like there are a lot of
programs with encryption out there that are lucky to manage even 40
bits of actual security, even if they're allowed 64- or 128-bit
keys.

>Waiting to hear the technical details of how it works,
>- -- Dave Wagner

Note:  Please respond via e-mail as well as or instead of posting,
as I get CP-LITE instead of the whole list.

   --John Kelsey, jmkelsey@delphi.com / kelsey@counterpane.com
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