An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers

[Joseph Ashwood]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anonymous" <nobody at cryptofortress.com>
Subject:  Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers


> You clearly know virtually nothing about Palladium.

Actually, properly designed Palladium would be little more than a smart card
welded to the motherboard. As currently designed it is a complete second
system that is allowed to take over the main processor. It has a few aspects
of what it should be, but not many. It does include the various aspects of
the smart card, but it also makes room for those aspects to take over the
main system, properly designed this would not be an option, of course
properly designed it could also be a permanently attached $1 smart card that
internally hangs off the USB controller instead of a mammoth undertaking.

I still stand by, "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to write a secure program
simply doesn't work" regardless of how many times MS says "trust us" any
substantially educated person should as well be prepared to either trust a
preponderance of evidence, or perform their own examination, neither of
these options is available. The information available does not cover the
technical information, in fact their "Technical FAQ" about it actually has
the following:
"Q: Does this technology require an online connection to be used?

A: No. "

That is just sooooo enlightening, and is about as far from a useful answer
as possible.


> NCAs do not have
> "complete access to private information".  Quite the opposite.  Rather,
> NCAs have the power to protect private information such that no other
> software on the machine can access it.  They do so by using the Palladium
> software and hardware to encrypt the private data.  The encryption is
> done in such a way that it is "sealed" to the particular NCA, and no other
> software is allowed to use the Palladium crypto hardware to decrypt it.

This applies only under the condition that the software in Palladium is
perfectly secure. Again I point to the issues with ActiveX, where a wide
variety of hoels have been found, I point to the newest MS operating system
which has it even been out a month yet? and already has a security patch
available, in spite of their "secure by default" process. Again I don't
believe this is because MS is inherently bad, it is because writing secure
programs is extremely difficult, MS just has the most feature bloat so they
have the most problems. If the Palladium software is actually secure
(unlikely), then there is the issue of how the (foolishly trusted) NCAs are
determined to be the same, this is an easy problem to solve if no one ever
added features, but a hard one to solve where the program evolves, once MS
shows the solution for this, I will point to the same information and show
you a security hole.

> In the proposed usage, an NCA associated with an ecommerce site would seal
> the data which is used by the user to authenticate to the remote site.

After running unattended on your computer, a <sarcasm>brilliant</sarcasm>
idea, hasn't anyone learned?

> The authentication data doesn't actually have to be a certificate with
> associated key, but that would be one possibility.  Only NCAs signed by
> that ecommerce site's key would be able to unseal and access the user's
> authentication credentials.  This prevents rogue software from stealing
> them and impersonating the user.

Not in the slightest, a single compromise of a single ecommerce site
(remember they're "trusted") will remove all this pretend security. Let's
use a particularly popular example on here right now www.e-go1d.com, they
could easily apply to be an ecommerce site, they collect money, they offer a
service, clearly they are an ecommerce site. Are you really gullible enough
to believe that they won't do everything in their power to exploit the data
transfer problem above, as well as any other holes in Palladium? I should
hope not.


> Seriously, have you read any
> of the documents linked from http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/?

Yes I have, in fact at this point I think it is safe to say that you have
not, or you didn't understand the implications of the small amount of
information it actually contains.
                    Joe