HP & Export of DCE
Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. Anyone know if the 'SecureRPC' in DCE is the one BAL broke years back? I asked a few DCE supporters this, and never got an answer, so I suspect they're still shipping bogus crypto. Adam ----- Forwarded message from Anonymous ----- As I sit, somewhere not in North America, I can see a CD-Rom from Hewlett-Packard, which I've had since last year. Recently I received the following letter. I've attempted to retype its contents accurately. ---------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8< [HP Logo] Hewlett-Packard Company Software and Information Delivery Operation, SST 690 East Middlefield Road Mountain View, California 94043 415/968-9200 Dear HP-UX Support Customer, Hewlett-Packard has uncovered a bundling problem in the DCE-Core fileset that is on the October HP-UX Application Release 10.0 s700/800 Application CDs. These products were bundled such that they are not compliant with U.S. Government export regulations. The part numbers for the affected CDs and products are listed below.
Adam Shostack writes:
Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. Anyone know if the 'SecureRPC' in DCE is the one BAL broke years back?
No, they broke Sun's Secure RPC, which is different. I must admit that I've never done a serious security analysis of DCE RPC, though... Perry
Perry E. Metzger wrote: | Adam Shostack writes: | > Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. Anyone know if the | > 'SecureRPC' in DCE is the one BAL broke years back? | | No, they broke Sun's Secure RPC, which is different. I wasn't aware there were multiple things masquerading under the name Secure RPC. In any event, does the crypto in DCE stand up to the LaMacchia/Odlyzko attacks? (And did Sun ever upgrade what they ship?) Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
On Wed Mar 27, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: Adam Shostack writes: > | Adam Shostack writes: > | > Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. DCE is exported today, although without the ability to encrypt application traffic. Authentication and message integrity are in the export version. They are attacks against Diffie-Hellman. I don't know if DCE uses D-H in a similar manner. The main problem was too small a (fixed) modulus. DCE RPC uses Kerberos V5 to establish DES session keys. Dave
On Wed Mar 27, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: Adam Shostack writes: > | Adam Shostack writes: > | > Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. DCE is exported today, although without the ability to encrypt application traffic. Authentication and message integrity are in the export version. Yes, but lest we miss the point, Anon's posting was about FULL DCE, with the end-to-end security option, unless I'm very much mistaken. Greg. Greg Rose INTERNET: greg_rose@sydney.sterling.com Sterling Software VOICE: +61-2-9975 4777 FAX: +61-2-9975 2921 28 Rodborough Rd. http://www.sydney.sterling.com:8080/~ggr/ French's Forest 35 0A 79 7D 5E 21 8D 47 E3 53 75 66 AC FB D9 45 NSW 2086 Australia. co-mod sci.crypt.research, USENIX Director.
Adam Shostack writes:
| Adam Shostack writes: | > Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. Anyone know if the | > 'SecureRPC' in DCE is the one BAL broke years back? | | No, they broke Sun's Secure RPC, which is different.
I wasn't aware there were multiple things masquerading under the name Secure RPC. In any event, does the crypto in DCE stand up to the LaMacchia/Odlyzko attacks?
They are attacks against Diffie-Hellman. I don't know if DCE uses D-H in a similar manner. The main problem was too small a (fixed) modulus.
(And did Sun ever upgrade what they ship?)
I don't believe so. Perry
On Wed Mar 27, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Adam Shostack writes:
I wasn't aware there were multiple things masquerading under the name Secure RPC. In any event, does the crypto in DCE stand up to the LaMacchia/Odlyzko attacks?
They are attacks against Diffie-Hellman. I don't know if DCE uses D-H in a similar manner. The main problem was too small a (fixed) modulus.
It doesn't. DCE uses Kerberos v5. Howard -- Howard R. Melman ___ ___ ___ Voice: 617-621-8989 Open Software Foundation / / /__ /__ Fax: 617-621-2782 11 Cambridge Center /__/ ___/ / mailto:melman@osf.org Cambridge, MA 02142 http://www.osf.org/~melman/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [To: Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>] [cc: perry@piermont.com, cypherpunks@toad.com] [Subject: Re: HP & Export of DCE ] [In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 27 Mar 96 11:18:49 EST.] <199603271619.LAA08716@homeport.org> Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org> shaped the electrons to type:
I wasn't aware there were multiple things masquerading under the name Secure RPC. In any event, does the crypto in DCE stand up to the LaMacchia/Odlyzko attacks? (And did Sun ever upgrade what they ship?)
DCE security (including RPC) is Kerberos based, somewhere between V4 and V5, and appears to be about as strong as DES lets it be. Chris McAuliffe <cmca@alpha.c2.org> (No, not that one.) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBMVm++YHskC9sh/+lAQE4JgP/dbXJoUnpx/RyiYTvRe6Zrek5j+h5B6QX nusogJioZdAts2SjEjIOVfEdAtoZ/MGVyn8p750np6UttvUCfFfiCZ7uIydMEQEm IZAZ1ep3MpyaAKgpGrqyDz47ic/Kk0iit2WwEXjvkN8c+PoXrvKPjkW7ugjHqQgf 4EkPBSlI+f8= =iZQA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed Mar 27, 1996, Martin Janzen wrote: Another "RPC" comes from the Open Software Foundation, who unfortunately chose the same acronym for the remote procedure calling mechanism in their Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). This DCE is a part of the OSF/1 operating system, but implementations are available for many versions of UNIX, often as a separate product or option. This is a semi-common misconception, there is no relationship between DCE and OSF/1. OSF/1 was one of the reference platforms during the original DCE development, but so was SVR4, AIX and HP/UX. Except for parts of DFS (the distributed file system), all of DCE is user-mode code and ports easily between un*x platforms. Dave
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Adam Shostack writes:
| > Well, if Leahy passes, DCE is exportable. Anyone know if the | > 'SecureRPC' in DCE is the one BAL broke years back? | | No, they broke Sun's Secure RPC, which is different.
I wasn't aware there were multiple things masquerading under the name Secure RPC.
Yes, there are. The term "RPC" is sometimes used generically, to refer to any remote procedure calling mechanism, but also refers to at least two distinct implementations. The first "RPC" was produced by Sun's Open Network Computing group. This is still the most commonly used, as Sun made the source code available at no cost [1]. Many vendors (including HP) now provide it as a standard part of their UNIX distribution [2]. A transport-independent version, TI-RPC, was later produced, but this doesn't appear to be quite as widely used, though I think it is in Solaris. (Sorry, I don't know of an archive site for this; try Alta Vista et al.) Sun's version of "Secure RPC" includes Unix (uid-based) and (in North America) DES authentication. The basic mechanism can support other authentication schemes as well, though I've never actually heard of any alternative implementations. This is the "Secure RPC" whose key exchange was cryptanalyzed by LaMacchia and Odlyzko [3]. Another "RPC" comes from the Open Software Foundation, who unfortunately chose the same acronym for the remote procedure calling mechanism in their Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). This DCE is a part of the OSF/1 operating system, but implementations are available for many versions of UNIX, often as a separate product or option. The DCE Security Services are discussed a bit in the DCE FAQ [4], and O'Reilly has an entire book on the subject [5]. To confuse matters further, it now seems that Microsoft has added an "RPC" mechanism to Windows NT and 95. This is sort of compatible with OSF DCE RPC, but not entirely; see [4]. In short, it would help to avoid massive confusion if people were more specific: refer to "DCE RPC", "ONC RPC" (or "Sun RPC", if you must :), or "Microsoft RPC", not just to "RPC". - -- Martin Janzen janzen@idacom.hp.com Pegasus Systems Group c/o Hewlett-Packard, IDACOM Telecom Operation [1] Try ftp://bcm.tmc.edu/nfs or ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/sun/ sun-exchange/rpc4.0, or a comp.sources.unix archive site. [2] To see if you have it, type "man rpc", or search your C library using something like "nm /lib/libc.a | grep clnt". If it's installed, you should see functions like "clnttcp_create", "clntudp_create", etc. If not, look for a separate librpc.a in /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, or what have you -- or ftp it from the archive sites and build your own. [3] Here's the reference, courtesy of Matt Blaze: @article{nfscrack, author = {Brian A. LaMacchia and Andrew M. Odlyzko}, journal = {Designs, Codes, and Cryptography}, pages = {46--62}, title = {Computation of Discrete Logarithms in Prime Fields}, volume = {1}, year = {1991}, } Brian also has a home page, http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/bal-home.html but as my Net connection is flaky right now, I can't tell whether this article is available there. [4] The DCE FAQ is at http://www.osf.org/dce/faq-mauney.html or ftp://ftp.dstc.edu.au/pub/DCE/FAQ. [5] "DCE Security", Wei Hu, O'Reilly, ISBN 1-56592-134-8. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMVm1GG3Fsi8cupgZAQHKkwP/QQaKNEuwuvNo5E+8Myu2P/Dv70Ha4p88 RhtEH11oBH4IjMksqL0J+o8qSOwiBA/bcciW6y8ef1gSgwFxmdbEqGmLftSGjYNU D6r8C5LmSkmmtQuLcXUE+QVEBLIXmnYC0tIwbqprGGm0soQpW0GbzZtgXtrECm0H Vi1bsJ+LEJQ= =3e3P -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Martin Janzen writes:
The first "RPC" was produced by Sun's Open Network Computing group.
Not even remotely the case -- RPC predates Sun Microsystems by a lot.
Another "RPC" comes from the Open Software Foundation, who unfortunately chose the same acronym for the remote procedure calling mechanism in their Distributed Computing Environment (DCE).
I'm not sure its so bad, given that there are at least a dozen RPCs out there or more.
In short, it would help to avoid massive confusion if people were more specific: refer to "DCE RPC", "ONC RPC" (or "Sun RPC", if you must :), or "Microsoft RPC", not just to "RPC".
Probably the case... Perry
On Wed Mar 27, 1996, Martin Janzen wrote:
Another "RPC" comes from the Open Software Foundation, who unfortunately chose the same acronym for the remote procedure calling mechanism in their Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). This DCE is a part of the OSF/1 operating system, but implementations are available for many versions of UNIX, often as a separate product or option. The DCE Security Services are discussed a bit in the DCE FAQ [4], and O'Reilly has an entire book on the subject [5].
The product is called DCE RPC and the RPC is used generically as you stated in the beginning of your note. There are many RPCs in the world, aside from the ones you listed. DCE RPC is also known as ISO RPC as the standard is based on DCE. MS RPC is also based on DCE RPC as you stated. DCE is not part of OSF/1 but is middleware supporting distributed computing which is available on virtually all platforms: (Unixes, Windows, Cray, MVS, VMS, Mac is in beta, etc.) Yes, one of the reference ports was OSF/1. We sell the source code separately. We are now seeing OSs bundled with DCE client software. The most recent versions of HP/UX and AIX for example. For more info on DCE see http://www.osf.org/dce/ Howard -- Howard R. Melman ___ ___ ___ Voice: 617-621-8989 Open Software Foundation / / /__ /__ Fax: 617-621-2782 11 Cambridge Center /__/ ___/ / mailto:melman@osf.org Cambridge, MA 02142 http://www.osf.org/~melman/
participants (7)
-
Adam Shostack -
cmca＠alpha.c2.org -
David Weisman -
Greg Rose -
Howard Melman -
Martin Janzen -
Perry E. Metzger