RE: ASK ToolKit Clarifications

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu>]

For my comments on snakeoil see:

http://crecy.ai.mit.edu/snakeoil/
Follow the navigation bars through 'key distribution" to "Monkey Wrench"


Despite the hype KeyGen does not "throw a monkey wrench" into anything.
It is unfortunately nothing particularly new. It is simply an example of the
type of technique that is commonly used in conjunction with a public key
system to keep keying material fresh while avoiding additional public key
exchanges.


>Unfortunately, I cannot talk about those things that are being patented, but
>maybe in the near future.

I hope you are not about to claim a patent on the use of one way hash 
functions to create keying material. I have prior art on that dating back to 
1993 and I wasn't the first to discover it by a very long chalk. I suspect that
the internals of Photuris probably contains most of the KeyGen proposal.


>The keys are both random and unpredictable -- meaning that you will not be
>able to deduce what the next key is even if you have any key that was used
>in the past.   The system does not depend on the secrecy of internal
>algorithms for security.

What about hard coded internal parameters?

If you can avoid the need for an initial insecure exchange your magic box
means you don't need the synchronisation technique at all.


>We are not blindly implying that applications using the ASK ToolKit are
>unbreakable.  However, the toolkit provides the means for intrusion
>detection and prevention.  We know of no method this simple that does that.

I know of many, the problem is that most of them arn't much good.

The only exceptionaly simple schemes I know are Diffie Helleman and 
RSA. D-H is certainly simple. It is astonishingly simple in fact and much
easier to explain to someone than MD5 or SHA.


>The toolkit provides a number of bells and whistles to allow the developer
>of an appliction using it to do many things like change keys as often as
>wanted -- even every bit (not practical) or re-synchronize (which is
>different from re-initializing).  It also allows the last session
>information to either be stored in encrypted form on the machine or removed
>to a portable medium.

OK how about the symmetric key exchange system from Shen? You already
have exchanged a private key S beteeen the parties (e.g. used public key
or you have a password established). You don't want to exchange the password
over the wire en-clair of course. Nor do you wish to use the shared secret as 
the encryption key over long periods of time.

One option is for party Alice to chose a random session mask M and send Bob M,
The session key is then K = M XOR S. If the encryption system used is secure 
both parties can use the derrived session key without problems.

A better solution however is for Alice to chose a random token R and send
Hash (K, R), R to Bob. She can also use the XOR mask trick as well to 
decouple key exchange and session key choice. This is a massive advantage
if the text you want to exchange has already been encrypted. i.e. we
calculate M = K XOR S rather than chosing M at random.

>The ToolKit does not provide the initial strong authentication needed to
>start the process off.  There are many very good methods for doing this, so
>why should we bother.

BECAUSE YOU GREAT PUDDING HEAD THAT IS THE ONLY HARD PART.

Techniques to keep symmetric key material fresh indefinitely have been
known for years. Kerberos is full of them. So incidentaly is Windows NT
which happens to have a lot of similar ideas at least with respect to
authentication. The GSSAPI probably has the same stuff burried inside
it somewhere.

>The claims we make are not so much for the ToolKit itself but for the
>applications that we envision can be developed given the ingenuity of the
>developer.    We invite everyone who has a genuine interest in possibly
>using the ToolKit,
>and who is not just tossing flame about, to contact us with their questions.
>If you are a responsible consultant or represent a responsible organization
>and can sign an NDA, then we would be glad to fill in the details.

This is the whole big problem. Most people I know who are interested in
security worry about the competence of their security expert. So the obvious
thing to do is to hire another security expert to audit their work. That is not
possible if there are NDAs. Signing an NDA to not reveal source code is
one thing, signing one to not use a mechanism is quite another. The 
capabilities you describe can be easily performed using conventional
techniques.

The only case in which NDAs normally come up in security work is when
actual source code is being exchanged. Even then the norm is for the 
provider of the security toolkit to be providing their their trade secret source
to the purchaser rather than this happening the other way round.

As for licensing terms that relate to the utility of the functionality rather than
the cost of doing the work these tend to be limited to cases where the
selling party has an established product of known quality protected by 
credible patents. Jim Bizdos meets these criteria, you do not.
 

		Phill