[TriLUG] [CAcert.org] Information about Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL 1.0.1 up to 1.0.1f]

[Brian McCullough]

----- Forwarded message from support at cacert.org -----

Dear <me>

there are news [1] about a bug in OpenSSL that may allow an attacker to
leak arbitrary information from any process using OpenSSL. [2]

We contacted you, because you have subscribed to get general announcements,
or you have had a server certificate since the bug was introduced into the
OpenSSL releases and are especially likely to be affected by it.

CAcert is not responsible for this issue. But we want to inform members
about it, who are especially likely to be vulnerable or otherwise affected.


Good news:
==========
Certificates issued by CAcert are not broken and our central systems did
not leak your keys.


Bad news:
=========
Even then you may be affected.

Although your keys were not leaked by CAcert your keys on your own systems
might have been compromised if you were or are running a vulnerable version
of OpenSSL.


To elaborate on this:
=====================
The central systems of CAcert and our root certificates are not affected by
this issue. Regrettably some of our infrastructure systems were affected by
the bug. We are working to fix them and already completed work for the most
critical ones. If you logged into those systems, within the last two years,
(see list in the blog post) you might be affected!

But unfortunately given the nature of this bug we have to assume that the
certificates of our members may be affected, if they were used in an
environment with a publicly accessible OpenSSL connection (e.g. Apache web
server, mail server, Jabber server, ...). The bug has been open in OpenSSL
for two years - from December 2011 and was introduced in stable releases
starting with OpenSSL 1.0.1.

When an attacker can reach a vulnerable service he can abuse the TLS
heartbeat extension to retrieve arbitrary chunks of memory by exploiting a
missing bounds check. This can lead to disclosure of your private keys,
resident session keys and other key material as well as  all volatile
memory contents of the server process like passwords, transmitted user data
(e.g. web content) as well as other potentially confidential information.

Exploiting this bug does not leave any noticeable traces, thus for any
system which is (or has been) running a vulnerable version of OpenSSL you
must assume  that at least your used server keys are compromised and
therefore must be replaced by newly generated ones. Simply renewing
existing certificates is not sufficient! - Please generate NEW keys with at
least 2048 bit RSA or stronger!

As mentioned above this bug can be used to leak passwords and thus you
should consider changing your login credentials to potentially compromised
systems as well as any other system where those credentials might have been
used as soon as possible.

An (incomplete) list of commonly used software which include or link to
OpenSSL can be found at [5].


What to do?
===========
- Ensure that you upgrade your system to a fixed OpenSSL version (1.0.1g or
above).
- Only then create new keys for your certificates.
- Revoke all certificates, which may be affected.
- Check what services you have used that may have been affected within the
last two years.
- Wait until you think that those environments got fixed.
- Then (and only then) change your credentials for those services. If you
do it too early, i.e. before the sites got fixed, your data may be leaked,
again. So be careful when you do this.


CAcert's response to the bug:
=============================
- We updated most of the affected infrastructure systems and created new
certificates for them. The remaining will follow, soon.
- We used this opportunity to upgrade to 4096 bit RSA keys signed with
SHA-512. The new fingerprints can be found in the list in the blog post.
;-)
- With this email we contact all members, who had active server
certificates within the last two years.
- We will keep you updated, in the blog.

A list of affected and fixed infrastructure systems and new information can
be found at:

https://blog.cacert.org/2014/04/openssl-heartbleed-bug/


Links:
[1] http://heartbleed.com/
[2] https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt
[3] https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2014-0160
[4]
http://www.golem.de/news/sicherheitsluecke-keys-auslesen-mit-openssl-1404-105685.html
[5] https://www.openssl.org/related/apps.html




----- End forwarded message -----