BofA+Netscape

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Lads,

I thought many of you would be interested in the text of this story. I'm
wondering if anyone has any comments on the excryption mechanism (i.e.
"eavesdropping" protection) being used. I believe, from my visits to the
Netscape (formerly Mosaic) Communications Inc. offices that they are using
RSA, but I'm not sure how *secure* their implementation is (eg. key size,
etc.). I'll be contacting my local branch to inquire as to how soon I'll be
able to use the service and will post my experiences with it as soon as
possible.

This development certainly signals a major breakthrough in E$ technology.

   dave
____________________________________________________________
 "Money is the root of all Evil. Send $9.95 for more info."



 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= cut here =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Bank of America Goes Online With Credit Card Service

By David Einstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

   In a major step toward electronic commerce, Bank of America announced
yesterday it will launch a system next month for processing credit card
transactions on the Internet.
   The bank, second largest in the United States after Citicorp, will use
software from Netscape Communications to make it safe for merchants and
consumers to do business online.
   Lack of a secure way to transmit credit card information has been the
biggest obstacle to conducting business on the Internet, a global computer
network reaching some 30 million people.
   "Secure payment processing is a critical element to making elec tronic
commerce happen," said Netscape spokeswoman Rosanne Siino. She called the
BofA announcement "a pretty big deal for us." Netscape's software
incorporates data encryption that protects online communications from
eavesdroppers. It also gives both parties in a transaction the ability to
verify each other's identity.
   BofA intends to market its new service to merchants for whom it
currently processes ordinary credit card transactions. The service will be
free to consumers, who will be able to make purchases with almost any
major credit card.
   Officials of the San Francisco based bank said they do not expect online
processing to generate a flood of business immediately. "We anticipate
that the maturity of this product is going to take a year if not years to
develop," said Jim Aviles, vice president of marketing for BofA Merchant
Services.
   Electronic shopping is not expected to catch on until the public gains
widespread, low-cost access to the Internet. Full access is still
expensive and not available everywhere.
   Netscape, an 8-month-old company based in Mountain View, is one of the
leading makers of software used to navigate the Internet via a Windowslike
interface. One of the company's founders is Marc Andreessen, the
23-year-old whiz kid who developed Mosaic, the navigation program that
ignited interest in the Internet last year.
   Yesterday's announcement was the latest in a series of deals involving
Netscape. Late last month, MCI said it would use the company's technology
as the core of its planned internetMCI electronic shopping service.

San Francisco Chronicle  6 December 94
(Business) Section D, Pg 1 ("D1")

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| Lads,
| 
| I thought many of you would be interested in the text of this story. I'm
| wondering if anyone has any comments on the excryption mechanism (i.e.
| "eavesdropping" protection) being used.

	It my personal feeling that Netscape doesn't have the right
talent mix to develop secure software.  For example, they may well get
the RSA parts right, and then store the passphrase in a text file,
'for ease of use.'  The RSA is secure, but the system is not secure if
usnauthorized people using your machine is a possibility.

	Writing secure software is a difficult and tricky buisness
that requires a lot of effort; early versions of Mosaic had problems.

	Netscape really needs to develop a threat model that allows
them to assess the severity of potential problems.  It is my guess
that they have not done so, although, I'd be pleased to hear I'm
wrong.

	Everyone's favorite company, First Virtual, seems to have
developed a threat model that allows them to offload allmost all risk
and security problems to their customers.  It may not be a good
solution, but at least they have considered how the security of their
system intersects the real world.  Just integrating RSA does not do
that.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume

Adam Shostack wrote:

> 	It my personal feeling that Netscape doesn't have the right
> talent mix to develop secure software.  For example, they may well get
> the RSA parts right, and then store the passphrase in a text file,
> 'for ease of use.'  The RSA is secure, but the system is not secure if
> usnauthorized people using your machine is a possibility.
> 
> 	Writing secure software is a difficult and tricky buisness
> that requires a lot of effort; early versions of Mosaic had problems.

Netscape is seeking people to write this stuff, as we heard at the
last Cypherpunks meeting. So, this is the chance for Cyppherpunks to
see it done right.

I will speculate that Netscape, being a _very_ high-visibility
company, is in contact with the folks at RSA Data Security about this,
perhaps even using them to do the integration. (Recall that Bidzos is
involved in a couple of efforts along these lines.)

This doesn't mean they'll do it right, natch, but it gives us hope
that the crypto protocols will at least be well-handled.

(Ultra-speculative scenario: If I were the NSA/FBI/COMINT
establishment, anxious to ensure "escrowed access," Netscape is
something I'd be looking at. Ultra-speculatively, we should be on the
lookout for any evidence that Netscape will be deploying any kind of
"software key escrow" scheme, e.g., any links to the TIS proposals, to
Denning, etc. "GAKscape"?)

--Tim May



-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: 
subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tcmay

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Here is a posting I made to www-security a few days ago when Netscape
announced SSL.  It did not get any response.  I see though that they at
least fixed their spelling...

Date: Sun, 27 Nov 1994 12:12:47 -0800
From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
X-To: www-security@ns1.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: info on proposed SSL protocol and Netscape implementation
Sender: owner-www-security@ns1.Rutgers.EDU

I have a few comments on the proposed SSL and Netscape's HTTP-SSL
that uses it.

First, CHALLENGE is consistently mis-spelled CHALLANGE throughout the SSL
document.

Second, 3 cyphers are specified in this version of the document: RC4,
RC2, and DES.  I would like to see 3DES and/or IDEA.  RC4 and RC2 have
not to my knowledge received much public scrutiny, and the 56 bit key
size of DES is of questionable security today.  Of course these would be
for the non-export versions.

Third, it is not clear how practical the use of X.509 certificates will
be.  For example, the "name" field in the certificate must somehow be
checked against the information which the client has about the server.
Typically this will just be a machine address like home.mcom.com or
something similar.  Is X.509 a good fit for this purpose?  I am not too
familiar with X.509 but generally the names that I have seen are not in
this form.

Fourth, it would be nice if there were some support for non-certificate
authentication of the server's public key.  For example, the client may
have obtained that key previously.  I believe SHTTP is more flexible in
this area.

Fifth, I don't really like the idea that the Netscape client
embeds "approved" certificate authority keys.  I suspect that the CA
situation is going to be in flux for quite a long time and one's client
could easily get out of date.  Note that the reliance on CA's seems to
have slowed the acceptance of PEM as a widely used standard.  PGP's
anarchic "web of trust" has perhaps been a better fit to net culture.

Sixth, the use of "https:" as a URL type for secure links provides
for a very strict separation of secure and non-secure connections.
Furthermore, this separation is chosen by the server operator.  I would
like to see a more flexible system, one where the client has more control
over what information is transferred securely.  The server may want to
set a minimum, and refuse to exchange certain information non-securely,
but it should not IMO also set the maximum.  Some clients may be more
privacy conscious than others.  Some may not want information about which
URL's they use to be available to local snoopers.  The Netscape approach
seems to put too much control into the hands of the servers and not
enough into the hands of the clients.

SHTTP also uses a special URL, but it seemed to be more open to the
possibility of a negotiation between client and server for secure
connections even on "http:" URLs.  This would be done by having backwards
compatibility with HTTP in which a non-secure-aware client or server
would ignore or reject the security enhancements.  The transaction could
then proceed in non-secure mode with appropriate information displays to
the user.  SSL does not appear to allow for this kind of compatibility.

Despite the negative tone here I think that SSL is potentially a good
step towards enhanced privacy on the net.  I think though that
eventually encryption will be used far more widely than Netscape seems
to have in mind.  The net is so insecure that I suspect people will
want privacy for all but the most casual uses.

Hal Finney
hfinney@shell.portal.com

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In article <199412091849.KAA01760@netcom15.netcom.com>, tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) wrote:

> Netscape is seeking people to write this stuff, as we heard at the
> last Cypherpunks meeting. So, this is the chance for Cyppherpunks to
> see it done right.

Absolutely.  We certainly welcome any level of comments and criticism
about the SSL protocol and our implementation, and we're recruiting
for one or two more security experts to join us -- we'll be doing quite a bit
of more advanced crypto over the next couple years, if all goes well.
If anyone's interested, please drop me a note.

(I should have sent info on what we're doing to this list sooner, btw --
I can only plead being busy as hell for the last 6 months trying to
get the company up and running.)

> I will speculate that Netscape, being a _very_ high-visibility
> company, is in contact with the folks at RSA Data Security about this,
> perhaps even using them to do the integration. (Recall that Bidzos is
> involved in a couple of efforts along these lines.)

They're certainly helping us, reviewing our proposals, etc.

> (Ultra-speculative scenario: If I were the NSA/FBI/COMINT
> establishment, anxious to ensure "escrowed access," Netscape is
> something I'd be looking at. Ultra-speculatively, we should be on the
> lookout for any evidence that Netscape will be deploying any kind of
> "software key escrow" scheme, e.g., any links to the TIS proposals, to
> Denning, etc. "GAKscape"?)

No plans so far...

Marc

-- 
Marc Andreessen
Netscape Communications Corp.
Mountain View, CA
marca@mcom.com

In article <199412091814.NAA07757@hermes.bwh.harvard.edu>, adam@bwh.harvard.edu (Adam Shostack) wrote:

>         It my personal feeling that Netscape doesn't have the right
> talent mix to develop secure software.  For example, they may well get
> the RSA parts right, and then store the passphrase in a text file,
> 'for ease of use.'

My goodness, that's a bit malicious and unsubstantiated, isn't it?

Marc

-- 
Marc Andreessen
Netscape Communications Corp.
Mountain View, CA
marca@mcom.com

Marc Andreessen wrote:

| In article <199412091814.NAA07757@hermes.bwh.harvard.edu>, adam@bwh.harvard.edu (Adam Shostack) wrote:
| 
| >         It my personal feeling that Netscape doesn't have the right
| > talent mix to develop secure software.  For example, they may well get
| > the RSA parts right, and then store the passphrase in a text file,
| > 'for ease of use.'
| 
| My goodness, that's a bit malicious and unsubstantiated, isn't it?

	Maybe, but one, you substantiate it yourself, and two, I did
say it is my personal feeling.  I'll expand on it slightly by pointing
to the fact that there have been potentially serious bugs in Mosiac.
Thats understandable, writing really secure software that does lots of
stuff based on potentially malicious input is a tough task.  The fact
that it is understandable does not make it acceptable.n

	Until you hire the experts mentioned below, I'll continue to
assume that your talent mix does not include said experts.


	In message <199412112232.WAA24075@neon.mcom.com> Marc
Andreessen  writes:

	>Absolutely.  We certainly welcome any level of comments and
	>criticism about the SSL protocol and our implementation, and
	>we're recruiting for one or two more security experts to join
	>us -- we'll be doing quite a bit of more advanced crypto over
	>the next couple years, if all goes well.  If anyone's
	>interested, please drop me a note.  

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume