On hitting nails with a microscope

The newly presented RFC introduces probably the most contradictory extension, and by itself is the one of the most meaningless RFCs adopted in the last 20 years.

The address of the RFC is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7685.txt and it defines the padding extension, whose only function is to insert some zero bytes into the ClientHello packet of the TLS protocol. What's the purpose, you might ask? The purpose is to work around the bugs in some implementation(s) that is/are confused by certain lengths of ClientHellow packet.

You've got it right. Instead of fixing bugs (or pushing the developers to fix bugs) they invent extensions to make other developers complicate their software with those extensions to work around the bugs.

Tolerance is acceptable to people of different race/origin/group. Tolerance to bugs in unacceptable. Tolerance to idiocy is not acceptable either.

On reinventing the wheel

Google did it again, and there's a kind of hype around this new wheel.

Protocol Buffers are a bit simplified form of ASN.1 notation, which has been in use for decades. They even mention BER (Basic Encoding Rules, a form of ASN.1) but hide the "ASN" name.

This is what happens when imported eastern developers are writers and not readers.

Sometimes I feel pity that standards and protocols are not patented. One should prosecute those "reinventors" for plagiarism (taking the industry-adopted standard, hiding its name and claiming it the new protocol or something).

On how not to do things right

Recently one of the users of our SecureBlackbox product has reported, that the SMTP client component can't login to GMail with a strange message: "Someone just tried to sign in to your Google Account [my email] from an app that doesn't meet modern security standards". 

The message itself doesn't sound like having lots of sense, as it neither explains the problem ("doesn't meet standards" is not an explanation) nor it suggests a solution. 

Forum search has taken me to an the answer in Google knowledgebase, which doesn't add much to the error message' explanation either. While it offers a partial solution for the owner of the mailbox, it does not explain what exactly happens.

Finally another forum post has driven me to the what could be an explanation, although it's only a hint. Turns out that Google has implemented OAuth2 in protocols like SMTP and IMAP. And here lies a huge problem.

OAuth2 is a web-based protocol which in many cases involves the web browser and user interaction. This makes fully automated operations nearly impossible and also significantly complicates the implementation of any client. 

There exist plenty of authentication schemes which prevent password transfer and/or allow third-party servers to be used for authentication. Google seems to have chosen the worst least appropriate variant instead.

Google is known for non-standard technical and business solutions. And they mostly work for users' and Google's own benefits. But some solutions seem not just to be not tested, but not to pass any sanity check.

Come as you are

Any authorization (and to some extent authentication) is based on one or more of three elephants (and a turtle): "what you know", "what you have" and "what you are".

All those three components were used since prehistoric times. Passwords, keys on the keyring, secret signs or labels on the skin (including tattoos) - these are the widely used examples of those three types of authentication.

"What you know" in the digital age is something that is extremely easy to disclose. Passwords are hard to remember and easy to steal. While still being used, they are now complemented by other factors to form multifactor authentication.

The article on CIO has an excellent overview of methods and technologies to authenticate you based on what you are and to some extent on what you have. Not only body parts themselves are expected, but also the way they function. Heartbeat and brain waves - they seem to be the most advanced authentication sources for today.

Yet it remains unclear, how the freshness of the data can be ensured. A computer system receives authentication data from the person by digitizing them and comparing them to the stored patterns. Potentially the data can be intercepted while in transit and then replayed later for false authentication.

And even worse, fingerprints and iris pictures can be captured distantly by using powerful photo cameras and then misused.

The only way I can think about right now is a challenge-response mechanism that measures how the person reacts to certain stimuli such as certain light flash pattern (when inspecting iris) or math problem that the user has to solve (when capturing brain waves).

Working in public places? Think again.

For decades remote capturing of the data (first from people or TV set talking, then from the working computer) was an effective way for political and business espionage. We saw methods to capture sounds, CRT emission, keyboard clicks etc. Tablets and low-power notebooks give much less information to outside world, yet the spies don't calm down and try to capture even tiny bits of electronic emissions hoping to grab your passwords or even more valuable information.

Though I am a bit skeptical about real-world use of these attacks, you still need to be careful when working with confidential information in public. It is also important to mention that rubber-hose cryptanalysis remains effective and if you have logged into your banking account and the attacker knows that you have a fortune in the bank, it makes sense for him to just grab your notebook and run.