Categories
Cryptography

Timing Attack on SQL Queries Through Lobste.rs Password Reset

Just to assuage any panic, let me state this up front. If you’re reading this blog post wondering if your Lobste.rs account is at risk, good news: I didn’t publish it until after the vulnerability was mitigated, so you’re safe. You don’t need to change your passwords or anything. This write-up is purely for education […]

Categories
Cryptography Software Security

Dead Ends in Cryptanalysis #2: Timing Side-Channels

Previously on Dead Ends in Cryptanalysis, we talked about length-extension attacks and precisely why modern hash functions like SHA-3 and BLAKE2 aren’t susceptible. The art and science of side-channel cryptanalysis is one of the subjects I’m deeply fascinated by, and it’s something you’ll hear me yap about a lot on this blog in the future. […]

Categories
Cryptography Software Security

Soatok’s Guide to Side-Channel Attacks

If you’re ever tasked with implementing a cryptography feature–whether a high-level protocol or a low-level primitive–you will have to take special care to ensure you’re not leaking secret information through side-channels. The descriptions of algorithms you learn in a classroom or textbook are not sufficient for real-world use. (Yes, that means your toy RSA implementation […]

Categories
Cryptography Software Security

GNU: A Heuristic for Bad Cryptography

If you see the letters GNU in a systems design, and that system intersects with cryptography, I can almost guarantee that it will be badly designed to an alarming degree. This is as true of GnuPG (and PGP in general) as it is of designs like the proposed GNU Name System (IETF draft) and cryptographic […]