Re: [Long] How to recover private keys for various Microsoft products

["William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>]

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In <v03102800b0eab79afcbc@[208.129.55.202]>, on 01/20/98 
   at 12:43 PM, Steve Schear <schear@lvdi.net> said:

>At 4:29 AM +0000 1/21/98, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>>    How to recover private keys for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Internet
>>            Information Server, Outlook Express, and many others
>>                                      - or -
>>                 Where do your encryption keys want to go today?
>> 
>>                    Peter Gutmann, <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
>> 
>>Summary
>>-------
>> 
>>Microsoft uses two different file formats to protect users private keys, the
>>original (unnamed) format which was used in older versions of MSIE, IIS, and
>>other software and which is still supported for backwards-compatibility reasons
>>in newer versions, and the newer PFX/PKCS #12 format.  Due to a number of
>>design and implementation flaws in Microsofts software, it is possible to break
>>the security of both of these formats and recover users private keys, often in
>>a matter of seconds.  In addition, a major security hole in Microsofts
>>CryptoAPI means that many keys can be recovered without even needing to break
>>the encryption.  These attacks do not rely for their success on the presence of
>>weak, US-exportable encryption, they also affect US versions.
>> 
>>As a result of these flaws, no Microsoft internet product is capable of
>>protecting a users keys from hostile attack.  By combining the attacks
>>described below with widely-publicised bugs in MSIE which allow hostile sites
>>to read the contents of users hard drives or with an ActiveX control, a victim
>>can have their private key sucked off their machine and the encryption which
>>"protects" it broken at a remote site without their knowledge.
>> 


>Seems a good way to teach M$ a security lesson is to use Peter's code to
>snatch M$' ant significant keys on their corporate servers and publish. 
>Of course, they're probably too smart to leave important data just lying
>around on unsecure '95/NT servers and instead use Linux ;-)

More than likely they have them tucked away on one of the AS/400's they
are running at Redmond. :)


- -- 
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William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
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Tag-O-Matic: Dos: Venerable.  Windows: Vulnerable.  OS/2: Viable.

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