Cryptkeeper Bug
Full article156 words · extracted from schneier.com · click to collapse
The Linux encryption app Cryptkeeper has a rather stunning security bug: the single-character decryption key “p” decrypts everything:
The flawed version is in Debian 9 (Stretch), currently in testing, but not in Debian 8 (Jessie). The bug appears to be a result of a bad interaction with the encfs encrypted filesystem’s command line interface: Cryptkeeper invokes encfs and attempts to enter paranoia mode with a simulated ‘p’ keypress—instead, it sets passwords for folders to just that letter.
In 2013, I wrote an essay about how an organization might go about designing a perfect backdoor. This one seems much more like a bad mistake than deliberate action. It’s just too dumb, and too obvious. If anyone actually used Cryptkeeper, it would have been discovered long ago.
Tags: backdoors, encryption, Linux, security engineering
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/02/cryptkeeper_bug.html