Secret Code Found in Juniper's Firewalls Shows Risk of Government Backdoors

Re:Secret Code Found in Juniper's Firewalls Shows Risk of Go... by hackuser on Saturday December 19, 2015 @03:20PM (#10764697)

Could someone provide background on the the Dual EC issue, and why this announcement is probably more important for the Dual EC implications than for Juniper's backdoor, as tptacek says below?

While I wish I was an uber-crypto-nerd, unfortunately I only have time to be an occasional crypto geek.

EDIT: Here's a start, from another front page HN article: "Dual-EC was an NSA effort to introduce a backdoored random number generator (RNG) that, given knowledge of a secret key, allowed an attacker to observe output from the RNG and then predict its future output."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Secret Code Found in Juniper's Firewalls Shows Risk of Go... by periodontal on Saturday December 19, 2015 @03:50PM (#10764796)

Basically, Dual EC is never something you'll choose willingly, given alternatives (it's quite slow and has had a slight bias demonstrated). So no one* did in practice. This made the backdoor almost a non-issue (so no heartbleed-like panic to patch, etc.).

However, having it in the standard (since removed) is perfect for fallback-like attacks or surreptitious changes (in the best case, your target has already implemented and deployed your exploit code and all you have to do is throw the switch to enable it!). That's what this is demonstrating (though some of the details are still speculative).

* Exception being those paid or required to do so by NSA.

[ Parent | on HN ]