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  • To: <xml-dev@l...>
  • Subject: Fwd: [e-lang] Protocol implementation errors
  • From: Tyler Close <tyler@w...>
  • Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 23:24:33 -0400

Given how the OpenSSL hackers have fared with ASN.1, letting web
service hackers muck about with ASN.1 seems like a poor idea.

Definitely an issue that must be addressed by those advocating use
of ASN.1 as a binary encoding of the XML Infoset.

Tyler

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [e-lang] Protocol implementation errors
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 14:50:21 -0700
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@p...>
To: cryptography@m...
Cc: e-lang@m...

From:
>                 -- Security Alert Consensus --
>                       Number 039 (03.39)
>                  Thursday, October 2, 2003
>            Network Computing and the SANS Institute
>                      Powered by Neohapsis
>
>*** {03.39.004} Cross - OpenSSL ASN.1 parsing vulns
>
>OpenSSL versions 0.9.6j and 0.9.7b (as well as prior) contain multiple
>bugs in the parsing of ASN.1 data, leading to denials of services. The
>execution of arbitrary code is not yet confirmed, but it has not been
>ruled out.

This is the second significant problem I have seen in applications that use
ASN.1 data formats.  (The first was in a widely deployed implementation of
SNMP.)  Given that good, security conscience programmers have difficultly
getting ASN.1 parsing right, we should favor protocols that use easier to
parse data formats.

I think this leaves us with SSH.  Are there others?

Cheers - Bill


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