[db-wg] MD5s of the RIPE database, Deprecation of MD5 and safe authentication methods

Dear Database Working Group Members,

I am contacting you to share the thoughts on the usage of MD5 in the
RIPE database. I already discussed the problems concerning MD5
authentication with RIPE NCC Security<security at ripe.net> on 2 Apr 2015
and RIPE NCC Security officer encouraged me to contact your group to
work together on this issue.

In 2011, I had grabbed all the  MD5s of the RIPE  database before
they  were taken out from the public view and I don't think I was the
only security researcher who downloaded all the hashes.

This john-compatible file (containing MNT logins and MD5 hashs) was
never exposed to public but the  hashs  can  be  (VERY) easily
cracked. From the discussion with RIPE Security (who received a copy
of this file), 27.000 usable hashes (on a total of 36.000) appeared to
be valid til now.

By reading https://labs.ripe.net/Members/kranjbar/password-management-in-ripe-database
, I see : "The MD5 hash is public, when running a single query (not
for bulk queries)."
I assume this was a known problem but the RIPE didn't alert that all
the hashs have been retrieved, although there were some urgency to
change the passwords or to use a safer authentication method.

When I discussed it with RIPE NCC Security, I gave a 90 day disclosure
policy about this "public" information, starting from the 16 Apr 2015.
The 90 day period can be adjusted by adding more days at the end if
RIPE shows a good progress of the migration. I wanted to do
responsible disclosure when I saw the RIPE Responsible Disclosure
Policy which is a Really Good Thing, I think.

According to the RIPE transparency, as recommended by RIPE NCC
Security, therefore I am now contacting this working group to work
together because deprecation of MD5 is an important change in the RIPE
database and it must be debated in a democratic manner.

My analysis is simple: The MD5 authentication is broken for years and
it's time to change to a more secure method. I think people needs to
be encouraged to move to SSO authentication. Using MD5 now is unsafe
and dangerous, especially with unchanged 4 year-old passwords.

Please share your thoughts about this situation. I will be happy to
debate with you.


I want to thank Ivo Dijkhuis, RIPE NCC Information Security Officer,
for the quality of the exchanges we had.

Regards,

--
Pierre Kim
pierre.kim.sec at gmail.com
@PierreKimSec
https://pierrekim.github.io/