Re: OpenSSL development (Heartbleed)

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 05:38:21 +0000 (UTC), Natasha Kerensikova wrote:

> On 2014-04-22, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:57:28 +0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> No, properly _implemented_ standards are what is required.
>>> 
>>> Heartbleed came about because a boundary check was missing which allowed
>>> a invalid request to be processed instead of being rejected and, because
>>> of the _implementation_, was allowed access to memory that had nothing to
>>> do with the request.
>>> 
>>> This was a failure in the implementation of the standard, not a failure
>>> of the standard itself.
>>
>> Boundary checks or not, the transport layer shall have no access to the
>> server data.
>>
>> A tightly coupled system is vulnerable. If compromising just one component
>> opens all gates wide, that is a bad standard and bad design. The effects of
>> errors and faults must be bounded per design. 
> 
> How would you design a transport layer that has no access to whatever is
> supposed to be transported?
> 
> "Heartbleed" didn't leak any data that ins't legitimataly needed by
> OpenSSL (i.e. transported data and/or transport parameters (like keys))

I heard it leaked user data, I didn't go into details. I hope user data are
not transported, because otherwise that would be even an greater design
fault.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de