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Zoom’s encryption has links to China, researchers discover
- tonyztan 6y agoOriginal title: Zoom's Encryption is “Not Suited for Secrets” and Has Surprising Links to China
- ddebernardy 6y agoYeah, I only kept the second part of the title when submitting it because it was a) too long and b) too clickbait-y.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoIt's using ECB mode. That doesn't even provide confidentiality. "Not suited for secrets" is entirely correct, and actually somewhat mild.
- itcrowd 6y agoThe story here is that Zoom uses key distribution servers located in China (in addition to several servers in the USA) and that Chinese law might be compelling Zoom to disclose the encryption keys. I think it is a valid concern, but for me it also raises the question of whether this may also be required in the US. In addition to letting the Chinese (and possibly US) government in on the encryption keys, the encryption scheme is also badly broken (ECB mode of AES). Prof. Matthew Green has written many articles about AES and encryption more generally and I recommend his blog if you are interested (even as a lay person). https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2011/12/01/how-not-to-use-symmetric-encryption/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2011/12/01/how-not-...
- ComputerGuru 6y agoWho the hell still uses ECB?
- floathub 6y agoThat is truly amazing. I know precious little about encryption, but I assumed everyone knows that ECB is bad and that CBC is the only sensible way to do AES. [edited for typo]
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoYour first point is correct, second is definitely not.
- floathub 6y agoSee how precious little I know about encryption? And yet even I know that ECB is a terrible choice! (In minor defense of self, I should have said CBC or "later").
- reader_1000 6y agoHint: copy-pasters* * from internet or from old codebases of one’s company
- tych0 6y agoWikipedia has a great visualization of this for those who are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#Electronic_Codebook_(ECB) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...
- kerng 6y agoThey are using EBC mode? I don't know of a single crypto library that would pick that as a default, so someone actually made this decision (like actively lowered encryption capability). I thought of some of the previous issues of not being too bad, but this leaves me wondering...
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago> but for me it also raises the question of whether this may also be required in the US The difference is the US is a democracy and Chinese Communist Party is an oppressive authoritarian regime. I do not do business or install apps based or ran out of China or any other bad state actor because I do not trust or support their government. The CPC is truly evil and any information they can harvest is a weapon in their hand. These people run concentration camps, harvest organs, and silence the people who talk ill of them. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/asia/xinjiang-china-reeducation-camps-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/asia/xinjiang-china-reeducati... https://nypost.com/2019/06/01/chinese-dissidents-are-being-executed-for-their-organs-former-hospital-worker-says/ https://nypost.com/2019/06/01/chinese-dissidents-are-being-e...
- dang 6y agoIf you keep taking HN threads further into political, nationalistic, or ideological flamewar, we are going to have to ban you. That's not because we agree or disagree. It's because such threads are predictable, therefore tedious, therefore boring, therefore off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y agoI'm really finding it hard to please this rule. Would it be okay to say just: > The difference is the US is a democracy and there are many more checks and balances vs the Chinese authoritarian government.
- dang 6y agoSure. I mean, it's not a particularly substantive comment but at least it gets the flamebait below whatever parts-per-million level should be the maximum here. I wouldn't have posted a moderation reply if you'd posted that instead.
- drevil-v2 6y agoDon’t forget the straight up lying about using 256bit keys when they are actually using 128bit keys
- t0mas88 6y agoKeyservers in China may be a risk, but this sounds like a terrible idea: "The researchers also found that Zoom protects video and audio content using a home-grown encryption scheme"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- t0mas88 6y agoAnd another case of lying in marketing: "A security white paper from the company claims that Zoom meetings are protected using 256-bit AES keys, but the Citizen Lab researchers confirmed the keys in use are actually only 128-bit." How do they keep doing this? Do they just put whatever sells best in the documents and implement something else? First the end2end thing, now 128 instead of 256 bits. How many more are we going to find in the coming days?
- luckylion 6y agoMaybe they had GPT-2 write their marketing copy, starting with "A secure video conferencing service" and just ran with whatever that produced.
- lozenge 6y ago"We never meant to mislead people but we realise we don't use the terminology in the way it is normally understood. We added up the keys on both sides of the conversation to reach 256 bits." Is probably what they'll say
- netsharc 6y ago"128 bits, each bit can be 0 or 1, there you go, 256 bits!"
- HumblyTossed 6y ago> How do they keep doing this? Hard to say. Could be cultural where sales and engineering butt heads. Could be "sell it first, develop it later so we can beat the market" mentality. Either way, Zoom is going to go down as either a company that did everything right and won the market or did everything wrong and won the market. Depending on who you talk to.
- s_dev 6y ago> Do they just put whatever sells best in the documents and implement something else? Yes. I've always expected businesses to stretch the truth with their marketing e.g. "Leading Brand of Donut in America", "Award Winning Bread", "Cheapest Gas for 50 miles" However Zoom are just engaging in straight up false advertising regarding security features. It's not cheeky -- it's wrong.
- dogman144 6y ago"home grown encryption scheme" seems to imply Zoom is rolling its own crypto, which is tremendously foolish. That isn't exactly the case, per the same article. More Zoom is choosing a poor choice among other choices, of implementing AES: "Furthermore, Zoom encrypts and decrypts with AES using an algorithm called Electronic Codebook (ECB) mode, “which is well-understood to be a bad idea, because this mode of encryption preserves patterns in the input,” according to the Citizen Lab researchers. In fact, ECB is considered the worst of AES’s available modes." Bad idea but not "rolling own crypto bad" edit: agree it's bad. this is pointing out inaccuracies in language from tech journalism reporting on security. This continues to be an issue per the miseducation it creates for the general public in infosec concepts, which is already an uphill battle of misconceptions. Since these articles, or AG Barr, are the discussions that actually hit the mainstream, it's an issue that needs to correct.ed Tech journalism, a profession focused on 'getting the facts,' are the direct conduit of this version of miseducation/failure of facts, and should be corrected. See: NY Times Baltimore Ransomware = NSA Tool (false), Bloomberg Supermicro (false, so far), etc.
- tpetry 6y agoEven Wikipedia is stating ECB is a very bad choice. How can someone really use it nowadays without fraudulent intentions?
- _-___________-_ 6y agoMost of Zoom's security problems seem like the kind of things a novice programmer who didn't know any better would do. Which may mean that they hire inexperienced programmers, or may mean that they wanted that as an excuse if they got caught. The former is probably more likely. After all, never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
- downshun 6y agoIncompetence can enable malice
- Diggsey 6y ago
- _-___________-_ 6y agoMaybe I've been sensitised by all the security flaws, privacy leaks and outright lies on Zoom's part, but I'm starting to really notice how much a lot of public figures are pushing Zoom. Does anyone else find it really weird? Late-night TV hosts, I can understand - maybe they just get paid for it, or have Zoom shares. But for example UK government leaders repeatedly mentioning it by name, e.g. Matt Hancock saying that despite being unwell, Boris Johnson is still having "Zoom videoconferences", or saying Johnson addressed his "Zoom cabinet", just feels... weird. Edited to add: thinking about it more, I remember "FaceTime" being used pretty similarly when it was new. So I guess all the bad news is just sensitising me.
- viraptor 6y agoZoom is popular. Enough that it's both the default for many people and the tech that gets brought up in discussions. My dance school uses zoom. My work uses zoom. Online courses use zoom. Maybe it's more noticeable when famous people mention it, but really - it's a default now. Even if there was some shady push for it, it's also organically massively popular.
- fock 6y agotrying to download the (self-installing) app twice _every_ time, whilst you're (actively) trying to join a meeting in your browser is the kind of organic popularity the yahoo toolbar had...
- chatmasta 6y agoMost people install the app and leave it installed.
- fock 6y agoyou don't say. That way (and autostarting and nagging) you easily get a lot of popularity compared to a web-service (with most people being unaware of bookmarking features in their browser). That was the operating principle of a lot of crappy ad/malware companies back then this was still considered an ethical businessmodel. Seems we are seeing time repeat itself.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoI've really grown to dislike the "China == bad" thing, yes, they're domestically authoritarian, without excusing any of it, I like to act on hard evidence, not hear say, I am stunned that after the Bloomberg fiasco these kind of stories didn't take a hit. P.S. Personally, I don't consider the NSA having my data as being any better, thank you. EDIT: Just to be clear, I don't think Zoom's encryption claims should be trusted, but it's not because CHINAAA, it's because they're misleading people into thinking TLS means E2E.
- hash872 6y agoIf encryption keys are stored in a country where the company is required, by law or by force, to turn them over to authorities upon request then that should be noted. And yes that includes the US to a lesser degree. When people say 'the server with the encryption keys is physically located in China, and they have many Chinese employees', the subtext that we should all know at this point is that they're required by Chinese law to turn everything over to the authorities. We have hard evidence & beyond hard evidence of this, so it's kind of assumed that educated people are aware of this. And yes the same goes for say US telecom companies having legally mandated backdoors & the US government exploiting this to conduct unauthorized surveillance or even just purely commercial spying, it's well-documented, everyone should know this. So in the future someone can say 'this telecom company is US-based' and we can all understand the subtext. So it's OK to just say 'the servers are in China' and we should all know what that means, at this point. TLDR- it's OK to have priors
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- scoot_718 6y agoThey also base a lot of their economy on corporate espionage and stealing technology.
- petergatsby 6y agoI've really grown to dislike the "people who presumably consider themselves ethical defending a regime that represses free speech and expression, brutally crushes dissenters, disappears ethical doctors, is led by a 'president for life' dictator, and has literally hauled off 1M muslims to internment campus where their organs are being harvested and their culture is being erased, thing".
- Markoff 6y agofounder is Chinese, they have 700 employees in China, does anyone really consider this non Chinese app?
- Markoff 6y agoencryption keys issued in China, calls routed through China etc. I see denial is strong or HN has already it's army of wumaos.
- paulcarroty 6y agoNot surprised. Before using any China-related service you should think twice.
- fock 6y agoWell, that large majority of developers not is native-speaking seems highly likely if you only look at output of `zoom.sh` startup script. No pun intended.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- meowface 6y agoI'd recommend reading the original Citizen Lab article as well, which discusses the flaws more specifically. This Intercept article is good, but seems to be aimed at more of a general, less-technical audience. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto... At the very least, they are validating TLS certificates. (Which I know is the true bare minimum requirement of TLS, but "goto fail" and all...) >We set up mitmproxy to intercept the TLS traffic and configured the Zoom Linux client to route its TLS traffic through mitmproxy. Fortunately, the Zoom client did appear to warn us that the fake TLS certificates generated by mitmproxy were untrusted.
- fulafel 6y agoThe CL article seems to be underplaying the vulnerability of ECB, with the "not recommended" description. Any cryptographer will tell you it's downright trivially broken, with textbook practical attacks taught to undergrads.
- auiya 6y agoAn explanation w/ visuals for how/why ECB is a broken mode of operation for cryptography - https://www.crypteron.com/blog/practical-searchable-encryption-and-security/ https://www.crypteron.com/blog/practical-searchable-encrypti...
- prophesi 6y agoThe exact same explanation + visual are already in The Intercept's article (and CitizenLab's). The rest of it is flaunting Crypteron's searchable encryption.
- cvwright 6y agoIs ECB any worse than any other deterministic encryption? Deterministic encryption can be ok if the data that you’re encrypting is already really random (high min-entropy). Compressed audio and video streams have a decent amount of entropy. Probably not enough to satisfy a cryptographer, but it’s probably enough to make it very difficult to learn much from 128-bit AES ECB blocks. Note that everyone’s favorite ECB example with the picture of Tux the Linux penguin is not very realistic, because the plaintext is not compressed. If you ECB a JPEG or a PNG, you won’t see the same patterns. I teach the attacks on ECB in my network security class. It’s bad, but AES is not the Caesar cipher. I’m not sure “trivially broken” is quite right. That said, I am really curious what Zoom is actually doing here. Going to have to take a look today. My guess is that the real fail from using ECB mode is more likely to come from using it on audio/video metadata, or on other more structured parts of the protocol.
- jalk 6y agoOT: My kids school uses zoom atm. Been connecting using the web client at https://zoom.us/wc/join/<meetingid https://zoom.us/wc/join/<meetingid without dashes>. Today however those links are returning 403 Forbidden (even tried multi) My knee-jerk reaction was that they have some way of capitalizing on installed software which they can't on the web-client. But of course it could simply be that the web-client requires more server resources and now have to curb its usage.
- mattmcknight 6y agoThere is a maintenance issue up: https://status.zoom.us/incidents/16ll08mmddk6 https://status.zoom.us/incidents/16ll08mmddk6
- jalk 6y agoI know, but my knee still jerked
- senderista 6y agoIt’s hard to take the rest of the article seriously when they criticize Zoom for using 128-bit AES.
- senderista 6y agoDownvoters: please name one scenario in which using AES with >128-bit keys adds any actual security margin, even in principle.
- turowicz 6y agoI always knew that the "zoom.us" is a dodgy name for an installation file. As if someone was going an extra length to make sure you think its a US company.
- tiborsaas 6y agoIt is a US company and the founder is american too. https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/ZM:US https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/ZM:US
- jplayer01 6y agoAren’t most of their developers in China?
- lain_ 6y agoI'm not sure if/how that would even matter in the context.
- jplayer01 6y agoYou don’t remember the whole Australia debacle when their government passed a law allowing them to secretly compel software developers to compromise whatever they’re working on? This is basically the same thing, where we know the Chinese government is capable and willing to coerce anybody in their grasp to serve in their interests. Guess where software developers in China happen to live? China. Where can the CCP most easily wield their power and influence? Also China.
- unlinked_dll 6y agoIs Eric Yuan a US citizen? He wasn't born or educated here so I don't know he considers himself American, and a significant amount of his company's product development is not done in America. Before this sounds anti-immigrant, I'm the product of immigrants like most Americans and I think the qualifier for being American is considering oneself American and having citizenship or on the path to get it.
- upofadown 6y agoOK, this makes things clearer. Zoom does in fact encrypt their streams from client to client but they have easy access to the keys. In their recent post about this question they apologize for what they admit to be an incorrect use of the phrase "end to end encryption". They base this on the existence of things like the gateways used to the regular telephone network. It seems like an odd way to spin this. Why didn't they just state that the data is encrypted "end to end" and then leave it at that? Apple supposedly has access to the keys used to encrypt FaceTime calls but they happily involve the "end to end encryption" marketing phrase. I don't see why Zoom couldn't do the same. The way Zoom has handled this could of been a lot better. I think the world needs a consumer standard for cryptography. Something like: * Level 1 for the case where any eavesdropper can get the plain text. * Level 2 for when just the provider can get the plain text. * Level 3 for when just the users can get the plain text. Most of what is being described as "end to end encrypted" these days is really just level 2 even in the case where the provider does not have the keys due to the fact that the provider can trivially MITM the traffic. The general public should be made aware of the distinction without having to dig into the technical details.
- xtian 6y agoApple does not have access to FaceTime keys or iMessage keys for that matter. They are truly end-to-end encrypted, and I don’t think there is any need to cheapen or muddy the term for the sake of marketers.
- ec109685 6y agoThey can still write software to insert themselves into the key exchange flow and eavesdrop on a conversation. E.g. I don’t believe there is anything stopping Apple from pretending a participant bought a new device.
- xtian 6y agoHow would they spoof the 2FA from an existing device?
- 6y ago
- tanvir08 6y agosds
- kerng 6y agoIt would be good for the title to contain that the encryption they use is broken.
- dang 6y agoIt seems like the root node of this article graph is https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto..., which is being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22768494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22768494 Matthew Green's article is being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22771193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22771193
- aabbcc1241 6y agoWhy is it surprising ? I heard Zoom is China based dispute it's domain name has .us