<https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/nadiah/new-research-theres-no-need-panic-over-factorable-keys-just-mind-your-ps-and-qs/> describes net scans for bad RSA keys on the web performed by Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, Alex Halderman, and Nadia Heninger. Among their conclusions: We manually verified that 59,000 duplicate keys were repeated due to entropy problems, representing 1% of all certificates, or 2.6% of self-signed certificates. We also found that 585,000 certificates, or 4.6% of all devices used the default certificates pre-installed on embedded devices. More surprisingly, we discovered that entropy problems can allow a remote attacker with no special access to factor a significant fraction of the RSA keys in use on the Internet. We were able to factor 0.4% of the RSA keys in our SSL scan. We did this by computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of all pairs of moduli from RSA public keys on the Internet. However, there’s no need to panic as this problem mainly affects various kinds of embedded devices such as routers and VPN devices, not full-blown web servers. The list of vulnerable devices that we have already identified includes more than thirty different manufacturers, including almost all of the biggest names in the computer hardware industry. The kinds of products that we identified include firewalls, routers, VPN devices, remote server administration devices, printers, projectors, and VOIP phones. This is a problem, but it’s not something that average users need to worry about just yet. However, embedded device manufacturers have a lot of work to do, and some system administrators should be concerned. This is a wake-up call to the security community, and a reminder to all of how security vulnerabilities can sometimes be hiding in plain sight. Cheers - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Airline peanut bag: "Produced | Periwinkle (408)356-8506 | in a facility that processes | 16345 Englewood Ave www.pwpconsult.com | peanuts and other nuts." - Duh | Los Gatos, CA 95032 _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography