[cabf_netsec] [EXTERNAL] Comments from call

Kirk Hall Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com
Wed Jul 5 11:22:01 MST 2017


Tom (Ritter, I assume) - your message below is helpful.  Can you send out your ideas before our next call on July 13?  Kirk

-----Original Message-----
From: Netsec [mailto:netsec-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Tom . via Netsec
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 10:47 PM
To: netsec at cabforum.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL][cabf_netsec] Comments from call

Hey all, didn't want to monologue on the call, so I thought I would try and jot down some thoughts in email.

I haven't made a concrete decision about what direction I would want things to go, but would say I'm generally supportive of reducing redundancy by outsourcing more or most of the Network Security Guidelines to other standards where they are indeed redundant. And I certainly have no objections to doing a short term fix for non-controversial changes - but the emphasis is on non-controversial, I think it would be very distracting if we spent more than a month or so debating what is and isn't controversial and getting that fix out the door.

But coming from a pentesting background, I am extremely skeptical that existing auditing requirements would encompass many of the attack vectors I am concerned about in CA infrastructure.

How to capture those concerns I don't have a strong opinion on at the moment, but I would like, at the least, to document them in some capacity (probably with an accompanying story) and have them reviewed officially by CAs in some capacity, if not having specific actions required.

I tend to be work backwards from the most valuable assets and operate from a 'line in the sand' perspective. If the attacker compromises 'above' the line in the sand, there are authz/authn/policy/sanity checks that prevent 'the bad things from happening' (here issuance).
If they compromise 'below' the line in the sand, they can issue.

So to be explicit, some of the concerns I have are around:
- Administration of systems governing issuance below the line in the sand. Administration via ssh keys, puppet or similar tools, IPMI, etc.
E.g. Can I compromise Joe's work laptop and login to the issuance box OR to the puppet host and push a config change to the issuance box.
- The authentication systems that govern control to the above systems, both the issuance systems and the systems which administer them. E.g.
Can I compromise Joe's work laptop, login to the ldap system, grant a fake user account permission to login to the puppet box, login to the puppet box and push a configuration change.

And similar, but I think those are good examples.

-tom
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