DigiNotar Compromise

http://blog.gerv.net/2011/09/diginotar-compromise/

On Monday August 29th at 6.30pm BST Mozilla was informed by Google about a misissued certificate for *.google.com which was being used in active attacks on users in Iran. This certificate was chained to the root of the Dutch CA “DigiNotar”. Since that notification, I have been part of the Mozilla team working on our response.

The Compromise

DigiNotar discovered evidence of compromise of their systems on the 19th of July, but decided not to inform embedders of their root, including Mozilla. We have now been given details of 247 certificates, covering 23 CNs, which were misissued around this time, from a number of different DigiNotar intermediate certificates, including their EV intermediate. (These are the ones Chrome has explicitly blacklisted.)

Mozilla has a spreadsheet of certificate data from the certificates, but not copies of the certificates themselves. It seems that the attackers tried to make their certificates as like the genuine ones as possible by filling in the correct company names and locations.

[...]

The CNs concerned were as follows:

*.10million.org
*.balatarin.com
*.google.com
*.logmein.com
*.microsoft.com
*.mossad.gov.il
*.skype.com
*.torproject.org
*.walla.co.il
*.wordpress.com
addons.mozilla.org
azadegi.com
DigiCert Root CA
Equifax Root CA
friends.walla.co.il
login.yahoo.com
Thawte Root CA
twitter.com
VeriSign Root CA
wordpress.com
www.cia.gov
www.facebook.com
www.sis.gov.uk

If that had been it, we might never have known. However, it has now emerged that DigiNotar had not noticed the full extent of the compromise, because for one particular intermediate certificate (the DigiNotar Public 2025 CA, the “2025 intermediate”), the attackers had managed to hide the traces of the misissuance – perhaps by corrupting log files. It is from this intermediate that the *.google.com certificate which recently came to light was issued. This certificate was issued on the 10th of July, a week before the 247, and is not a short-life cert. Up to now, due to the lack of logging, DigiNotar has been unable to determine how many certificates were misissued from this intermediate, or what their CNs or serial numbers were. (And not knowing their serial numbers makes it impossible to revoke them.) From looking at OCSP requests for unknown serial numbers, it seems there are at least 4, but there could be many more. This, to me, shows a greater level of sophistication; it is at least possible (but entirely speculative) that an initial competent attacker has had access to their systems for an unknown amount of time, and a second attacker gained access more recently and their less subtle bull-in-a-china shop approach in issuing the 247 certificates triggered the alarms.

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http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/security-dutch-government-websites-jeopardy

The Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner has given a press conference in the early hours of Saturday morning after an internet security firm appears to have been hacked by Iranian hackers.

The Dutch internet solicitors' firm Diginotar supplies certification for secure sites which guarantee their reliability. However, Iranian hackers have reportedly managed to surpass the certification system so that the Iranian authorities can read gmail and google messages of people in Iran.

According to a computer expert on Dutch public broadcaster NOS, the government can no longer guarantee the security of its websites. This means, for instance, that the internet identification site DigID is no longer reliable, which citizens use for various government services.

Government sites have not been shut down, but visitors to the sites will be warned that the sites are not secure.