Re:Netgear Signed TLS Cert Private Key Disclosure
by lima on Monday January 20, 2020 @09:22AM
(#22098954)
That would be a central point of failure and a ton of extra complexity without providing any kind of meaningful security benefit.
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Re:Netgear Signed TLS Cert Private Key Disclosure
by CiPHPerCoder on Monday January 20, 2020 @09:28AM
(#22098987)
What do you mean "without providing any kind of meaningful security benefit"?
It prevents a bored kid who dumps the private key from one router from being able to reliably impersonate thousands of consumers' routers, the world over.
That's a meaningful security benefit.
Re:Netgear Signed TLS Cert Private Key Disclosure
by lima on Monday January 20, 2020 @10:06AM
(#22099272)
The attacker would just dump the individual router's key instead and use the remote signer as a signing oracle to impersonate devices.
Re:Netgear Signed TLS Cert Private Key Disclosure
by CiPHPerCoder on Monday January 20, 2020 @01:56PM
(#22101198)
The owner/operator of the router could do that to their own device, yes.
The idea is that each router would get a certificate signed with a distinct subdomain unique to that router. So you still can't impersonate other devices. It wouldn't be a generic domain or wildcard certificate.
The remote signer would furthermore suspend suspicious connections (i.e. from multiple public IP addresses).