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

17 Dec 2003

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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
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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
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
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Tag-O-Matic: Dos: Venerable.  Windows: Vulnerable.  OS/2: Viable.