[Fwd: Re: Defeating Timing Attacks Patch for OpenSSH 2.9.9p2 and 2.9p2]

[Nicolas Williams]

Oh, I see. I misunderstood your description of your patch.

Thanks,

Nico


On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 04:36:15PM -0700, C. Jason Coit wrote:
> Nicolas,
> 
> The timing attack described in the paper by Dawn Song et al. works by
> examining the timing of keystrokes.  Currently OpenSSH sends a packet
> every time you press a key, thus it is possible to capture the
> approximate inter-keystroke timing of a user (they found minimal
> overhead
> in time from a key press to packet sent).  Our patch causes a packet to
> be sent every 50 ms regardless of whether you type a key or not (sends
> an ignore message aka nop).  Thus an attacker cannot be exactly sure of
> your inter-keystroke timing.  
> 
> It doesn't matter if you are an average user or a fast touch-typing
> secretary, your inter-keystroke timing is obscured.  In addition to this
> our patch conserves bandwidth by shutting off after about a second after
> the last key press.  If you don't stop typing for more than a second, it
> appears as if you are constantly send packets to the server every 50
> ms.    
> Adding random noise would be less effective than what we are doing. 
> Random noise would dilute the signal of inter-keystroke timing, we are
> eliminating the signal altogether.  By pacing the inter-packet timing we
> completely remove the inter-keystroke timing information.
> 
> regards,
> 
> -Jason Coit
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Defeating Timing Attacks Patch for OpenSSH 2.9.9p2 and
> 2.9p2
> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 17:36:18 -0400
> From: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams at ubsw.com>
> To: "C. Jason Coit" <jasonc at silicondefense.com>
> CC: openssh-unix-dev at mindrot.org
> References: <3BCC889C.AA5C57F0 at silicondefense.com>
> 
> Let's see. The timing attack has to do with predictable timing. The
> solution would seem to be to add randomness to the packet timing. Your
> patch does not do this -- it adds more predictable traffic.
> 
> I would think that to defeat the timing attack SSH would have to send
> random-sized no-op packets at random intervals, or perhaps just adding
> random delays before sending packets. And, of course, we're not talking
> IP packets here, but SSH "packets."
> 
> But I could be wrong, I'm not an expert on this subject.
> 
> Nico
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