Re: My Assessment of the Heartbleed OpenSSL bug and LedgerSMB

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Rich Shepard <..hidden..> wrote:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014, Richard Hector wrote:

> Heartbleed isn't a problem with the encryption though; the encryption
> didn't get broken. Any protocol could probably potentially suffer from a
> buffer overflow due to a bug in the software. Given this one leaked info
> from the server process, who's to say it wouldn't leak your one-time pad?

Today's Washington Post has an article where the author of the bug admits
he missed validating a variable that holds a length when he submitted a new
feature to OpenSSL along with some bug fixes. The other devs who reviewed
his code missed that, too. It was an oversight, not a deliberate action.

We all have these senior moments when coding, regardless of our age. :-)

Given the type of bug this was and the other places similar problems have occurred, it's a remarkably common sort of mistake to make (anyone remember Teardrop against NT4 caused by a variation of this same mistake, allowing a kernel-level buffer overflow?) and so while it is almost a perfect deliberate bug for this sort, good money is always on it being a mistake.

C as a programming language is full of very subtle pitfalls like this because it functions as a sort of hardware-neutral assembly language. This is an advantage in many areas (particularly where you have to be close to the hardware) but that also comes at a significant cost.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Have knowledge, will travel.
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. |
www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

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Best Wishes,

Chris Travers

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