Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Thursday April 30 2015, @11:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the we're-not-really-just-procrastinating-honest! dept.

The Register covers the difficulty of putting SHA-1 crypto algorithm to bed:

The road towards phasing out the ageing SHA-1 crypto hash function is likely to be littered with potholes, security experts warn.

SHA-1 is a hashing (one-way) function that converts information into a shortened "message digest", from which it is impossible to recover the original information. This hashing technique is used in digital signatures, verifying that the contents of software downloads have not been tampered with, and many other cryptographic applications.

The ageing SHA-1 protocol – published in 1995 – is showing its age and is no longer safe from Collision Attacks, a situation where two different blocks of input data throw up the same output hash. This is terminal for a hashing protocol, because it paves the way for hackers to offer manipulated content that carries the same hash value as pukka packets of data.

Certificate bodies and others are beginning to move on from SHA-1 to its replacement, SHA-2. Microsoft announced its intent to deprecate SHA-1 in Nov 2013. More recently, Google joined the push with a decision to make changes in he latest version of its browser, Chrome version 42, so that SHA-1 certificates are flagged up as potentially insecure.

Just updating to SHA-2 is not as simple as it might seem, because of compatibility issues with Android and Windows XP. More specifically, Android before 2.3 and XP before SP3 are incompatible with the change (a fuller compatibility matrix maintained by digital certificate firm GlobalSign can be found here).

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:44AM

    by sjames (2882) on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:44AM (#177698) Journal

    MITM

    The NS keys for a domain would need to be registered along with the IP address on the root server, but only for the name server, not for every domain it serves. The challenge hashed into the salt assures you you got the correct NS key.

    It is not uncommon for a single NS to server MANY domains (zones), typically you go from root (via hints) to gtld to domain's NS. Wouldn't it be handy to already have the keys for . and com. (for example) already cached? Likewise, if example.com and example.org both have NS ns1.example.net, then you just have to have the one key for the three domains to authenticate ns1. Also, when adding entries to the example.com zone file, no extra steps are required.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2