Breaking Into the KeyStore: A Practical Forgery Attack Against Android KeyStore

We analyze the security of Android KeyStore, a system service whose purpose is to shield users credentials and cryptographic keys. The KeyStore protects the integrity and the confidentiality of keys by using a particular encryption scheme. Our main results are twofold. First, we formally prove that the used encryption scheme does not provide integrity, which means that an attacker is able to undetectably modify the stored keys. Second, we exploit this flaw to define a forgery attack breaching the security guaranteed by the KeyStore. In particular, our attack allows a malicious application to make mobile apps to unwittingly perform secure protocols using weak keys. The threat is concrete: the attacker goes undetected while compromising the security of users. Our findings highlight an important fact: intuition often goes wrong when security is concerned. Unfortunately, system designers still tend to choose cryptographic schemes not for their proved security but for their apparent simplicity. We show, once again, that this is not a good choice, since it usually results in severe consequences for the whole underlying system

From Dragondoom to Dragonstar: Side-channel Attacks and Formally Verified Implementation of WPA3 Dragonfly Handshake

It is universally acknowledged that Wi-Fi communications are important to secure. Thus, the Wi-Fi Alliance published WPA3 in 2018 with a distinctive security feature: it leverages a Password-Authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE) protocol to protect users' passwords from offline dictionary attacks. Unfortunately, soon after its release, several attacks were reported against its implementations, in response to which the protocol was updated in a best-effort manner. In this paper, we show that the proposed mitigations are not enough, especially for a complex protocol to implement even for savvy developers. Indeed, we present **Dragondoom**, a collection of side-channel vulnerabilities of varying strength allowing attackers to recover users' passwords in widely deployed Wi-Fi daemons, such as hostap in its default settings. Our findings target both password conversion methods, namely the default probabilistic hunting-and-pecking and its newly standardized deterministic alternative based on SSWU. We successfully exploit our leakage in practice through microarchitectural mechanisms, and overcome the limited spatial resolution of Flush+Reload. Our attacks outperform previous works in terms of required measurements. Then, driven by the need to end the spiral of patch-and-hack in Dragonfly implementations, we propose **Dragonstar**, an implementation of Dragonfly leveraging a formally verified implementation of the underlying mathematical operations, thereby removing all the related leakage vector. Our implementation relies on HACL*, a formally verified crypto library guaranteeing secret-independence. We design Dragonstar, so that its integration within hostap requires minimal modifications to the existing project. Our experiments show that the performance of HACL*-based hostap is comparable to OpenSSL-based, implying that Dragonstar is both efficient and proved to be leakage-free.Comment: Accepted at 2023 IEEE 8th European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P

Confiance basée sur la sécurité prouvée et ancrée aux dispositifs matériels dans les architectures des ordiphones

Le paysage du monde des téléphones mobiles a changé avec l’introduction des ordiphones (de l’anglais smartphones). En effet, depuis leur avènement, les ordiphones sont devenus incontournables dans des différents aspects de la vie quotidienne. Cela a poussé de nombreux fournisseurs de services de rendre leurs services disponibles sur mobiles. Malgré cette croissante popularité, l’adoption des ordiphones pour des applications sensibles n’a toujours pas eu un grand succès. La raison derrière cela est que beaucoup d’utilisateurs, de plus en plus concernés par la sécurité de leurs appareils, ne font pas confiance à leur ordiphone pour manipuler leurs données sensibles. Cette thèse a pour objectif de renforcer la confiance des utilisateurs en leur mobile. Nous abordons ce problème de confiance en suivant deux approches complémentaires, à savoir la sécurité prouvée et la sécurité ancrée à des dispositifs matériels. Dans la première partie, notre objectif est de montrer les limitations des technologies actuellement utilisées dans les architectures des ordiphones. À cette fin, nous étudions deux systèmes largement déployés et dont la sécurité a reçu une attention particulière dès la conception : l’entrepôt de clés d’Android, qui est le composant protégeant les clés cryptographiques stockées sur les mobiles d’Android, et la famille des protocoles sécurisés SCP (de l’anglais Secure Channel Protocol) qui est définie par le consortium GlobalPlatform. Nos analyses se basent sur le paradigme de la sécurité prouvée. Bien qu’elle soit perçue comme un outil théorique voire abstrait, nous montrons que cet outil pourrait être utilisé afin de trouver des vulnérabilités dans des systèmes industriels. Cela atteste le rôle important que joue la sécurité prouvée pour la confiance en étant capable de formellement démontrer l’absence de failles de sécurité ou éventuellement de les identifier quand elles existent. Quant à la deuxième partie, elle est consacrée aux systèmes complexes qui ne peuvent pas être formellement vérifiés de manière efficace en termes de coût. Nous commençons par examiner l’approche à double environnement d’exécution. Ensuite, nous considérons le cas où cette approche est instanciée par des dispositifs matériels particuliers, à savoir le ARM TrustZone, afin de construire un environnement d’exécution de confiance (TEE de l’anglais Trusted Execution Environment). Enfin, nous explorons deux solutions palliant quelques limitations actuelles du TEE. Premièrement, nous concevons une nouvelle architecture du TEE qui en protège les données sensibles même quand son noyau sécurisé est compromis. Cela soulage les fournisseurs des services de la contrainte qui consiste à faire pleinement confiance aux fournisseurs du TEE. Deuxièmement, nous proposons une solution dans laquelle le TEE n’est pas uniquement utilisé pour protéger l’exécution des applications sensibles, mais aussi pour garantir à des grands composants logiciels (comme le noyau d’un système d’exploitation) des propriétés de sécurité plus complexes, à savoir l’auto-protection et l’auto-remédiation.The landscape of mobile devices has been changed with the introduction of smartphones. Sincetheir advent, smartphones have become almost vital in the modern world. This has spurred many service providers to propose access to their services via mobile applications. Despite such big success, the use of smartphones for sensitive applications has not become widely popular. The reason behind this is that users, being increasingly aware about security, do not trust their smartphones to protect sensitive applications from attackers. The goal of this thesis is to strengthen users trust in their devices. We cover this trust problem with two complementary approaches: provable security and hardware primitives. In the first part, our goal is to demonstrate the limits of the existing technologies in smartphones architectures. To this end, we analyze two widely deployed systems in which careful design was applied in order to enforce their security guarantee: the Android KeyStore, which is the component shielding users cryptographic keys in Android smartphones, and the family of Secure Channel Protocols (SCPs) defined by the GlobalPlatform consortium. Our study relies on the paradigm of provable security. Despite being perceived as rather theoretical and abstract, we show that this tool can be handily used for real-world systems to find security vulnerabilities. This shows the important role that can play provable security for trust by being able to formally prove the absence of security flaws or to identify them if they exist. The second part focuses on complex systems that cannot cost-effectively be formally verified. We begin by investigating the dual-execution-environment approach. Then, we consider the case when this approach is built upon some particular hardware primitives, namely the ARM TrustZone, to construct the so-called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Finally, we explore two solutions addressing some of the TEE limitations. First, we propose a new TEE architecture that protects its sensitive data even when the secure kernel gets compromised. This relieves service providers of fully trusting the TEE issuer. Second, we provide a solution in which TEE is used not only for execution protection, but also to guarantee more elaborated security properties (i.e. self-protection and self-healing) to a complex software system like an OS kernel

Confiance basée sur la sécurité prouvée et ancrée aux dispositifs matériels dans les architectures des ordiphones

The landscape of mobile devices has been changed with the introduction of smartphones. Sincetheir advent, smartphones have become almost vital in the modern world. This has spurred many service providers to propose access to their services via mobile applications. Despite such big success, the use of smartphones for sensitive applications has not become widely popular. The reason behind this is that users, being increasingly aware about security, do not trust their smartphones to protect sensitive applications from attackers. The goal of this thesis is to strengthen users trust in their devices. We cover this trust problem with two complementary approaches: provable security and hardware primitives. In the first part, our goal is to demonstrate the limits of the existing technologies in smartphones architectures. To this end, we analyze two widely deployed systems in which careful design was applied in order to enforce their security guarantee: the Android KeyStore, which is the component shielding users cryptographic keys in Android smartphones, and the family of Secure Channel Protocols (SCPs) defined by the GlobalPlatform consortium. Our study relies on the paradigm of provable security. Despite being perceived as rather theoretical and abstract, we show that this tool can be handily used for real-world systems to find security vulnerabilities. This shows the important role that can play provable security for trust by being able to formally prove the absence of security flaws or to identify them if they exist. The second part focuses on complex systems that cannot cost-effectively be formally verified. We begin by investigating the dual-execution-environment approach. Then, we consider the case when this approach is built upon some particular hardware primitives, namely the ARM TrustZone, to construct the so-called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Finally, we explore two solutions addressing some of the TEE limitations. First, we propose a new TEE architecture that protects its sensitive data even when the secure kernel gets compromised. This relieves service providers of fully trusting the TEE issuer. Second, we provide a solution in which TEE is used not only for execution protection, but also to guarantee more elaborated security properties (i.e. self-protection and self-healing) to a complex software system like an OS kernel.Le paysage du monde des téléphones mobiles a changé avec l’introduction des ordiphones (de l’anglais smartphones). En effet, depuis leur avènement, les ordiphones sont devenus incontournables dans des différents aspects de la vie quotidienne. Cela a poussé de nombreux fournisseurs de services de rendre leurs services disponibles sur mobiles. Malgré cette croissante popularité, l’adoption des ordiphones pour des applications sensibles n’a toujours pas eu un grand succès. La raison derrière cela est que beaucoup d’utilisateurs, de plus en plus concernés par la sécurité de leurs appareils, ne font pas confiance à leur ordiphone pour manipuler leurs données sensibles. Cette thèse a pour objectif de renforcer la confiance des utilisateurs en leur mobile. Nous abordons ce problème de confiance en suivant deux approches complémentaires, à savoir la sécurité prouvée et la sécurité ancrée à des dispositifs matériels. Dans la première partie, notre objectif est de montrer les limitations des technologies actuellement utilisées dans les architectures des ordiphones. À cette fin, nous étudions deux systèmes largement déployés et dont la sécurité a reçu une attention particulière dès la conception : l’entrepôt de clés d’Android, qui est le composant protégeant les clés cryptographiques stockées sur les mobiles d’Android, et la famille des protocoles sécurisés SCP (de l’anglais Secure Channel Protocol) qui est définie par le consortium GlobalPlatform. Nos analyses se basent sur le paradigme de la sécurité prouvée. Bien qu’elle soit perçue comme un outil théorique voire abstrait, nous montrons que cet outil pourrait être utilisé afin de trouver des vulnérabilités dans des systèmes industriels. Cela atteste le rôle important que joue la sécurité prouvée pour la confiance en étant capable de formellement démontrer l’absence de failles de sécurité ou éventuellement de les identifier quand elles existent. Quant à la deuxième partie, elle est consacrée aux systèmes complexes qui ne peuvent pas être formellement vérifiés de manière efficace en termes de coût. Nous commençons par examiner l’approche à double environnement d’exécution. Ensuite, nous considérons le cas où cette approche est instanciée par des dispositifs matériels particuliers, à savoir le ARM TrustZone, afin de construire un environnement d’exécution de confiance (TEE de l’anglais Trusted Execution Environment). Enfin, nous explorons deux solutions palliant quelques limitations actuelles du TEE. Premièrement, nous concevons une nouvelle architecture du TEE qui en protège les données sensibles même quand son noyau sécurisé est compromis. Cela soulage les fournisseurs des services de la contrainte qui consiste à faire pleinement confiance aux fournisseurs du TEE. Deuxièmement, nous proposons une solution dans laquelle le TEE n’est pas uniquement utilisé pour protéger l’exécution des applications sensibles, mais aussi pour garantir à des grands composants logiciels (comme le noyau d’un système d’exploitation) des propriétés de sécurité plus complexes, à savoir l’auto-protection et l’auto-remédiation

Please Remember Me: Security Analysis of U2F Remember Me Implementations in The Wild

Users and service providers are increasingly aware of the security issues that arise because of password breaches. Recent studies show that password authentication can be made more secure by relying on second-factor authentication (2FA). Supported by leading web service providers, the FIDO Alliance defines the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) protocols, an industrial standard that proposes a challenge-response 2FA solution. The U2F protocols have been thoughtfully designed to ensure high security. In particular, U2F solutions using dedicated hardware tokens fare well in term of security compared to other 2FA authentication systems. Thus, numerous service providers propose U2F in their authentication settings. Although much attention was paid to make U2F easy to use, many users express inconvenience because of the repeated extra step that it would take to log in. In order to address this, several service providers offer a remember me feature that removes the need for 2FA login on trusted devices. In this paper, we present the first systematic analysis of this undocumented feature, and we show that its security implications are not well understood. After introducing the corresponding threat models, we provide an experimental study of existing implementations of remember me. Here, we consider all the supporting websites considered by Yubico. The findings are worrisome: our analyses indicate how bad implementations can make U2F solutions vulnerable to multiple attacks. Moreover, we show that existing implementations do not correspond to the initial security analysis provided by U2F. We also implement two attacks using the identified design flaws. Finally, we discuss several countermeasures that make the remember me feature more secure. We end this work by disclosing a practical attack against Facebook in which an attacker can permanently deactivate the enabled 2FA options of a targeted victim without knowing their authentication credentials

Method of protecting a mobile terminal against attacks

Recently, relay attacks has renewed interest, not least because of the rise of NFC applications in smartphones. In the context of the NFC ecosystem, relay attacks allow an attacker to lull an NFC reader by making it believe that the legitimate user is in its vicinity. The idea of such attacks is simple: forwarding the NFC commands intended for the Secure Element (SE) inside the closest smartphone to another far away SE. The invention relates to a method of detecting relay attacks. Unlike existing solutions based on distance bounding, our invention is based on the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) that runs inside the smartphone. In our invention, we define specific mechanisms allowing TEE to verify whether a particular NFC response has been indeed computed by the Secure Element of the bounded smartphone. In addition, we enhance the TEE features by giving it control over the NFC communication, so that it can block NFC responses from being sent to the NFC reader. Thus, we prevent relay attacks by making the TEE blocking any NFC response that was not produced by the SE running inside its bounded mobile device

WideLeak: How Over-the-Top Platforms Fail in Android

International audienceNowadays, most content providers rely on DRM (Digital Right Management) to protect media from illegal distribution. Becoming a major platform for streaming, Android provides its own DRM framework that does not comply with existing DRM standards. Thus, OTT (over-the-top) platforms need to adapt their apps to suit Android design, despite a fragmented ecosystem and little public documentation. Unfortunately, the security implications of how OTT apps leverage Widevine, the most popular Android DRM, have not been studied yet.In this paper, we report the first experimental study on the state of Widevine use in the wild. Our study explores OTT compliance with Widevine guidelines regarding asset protection and legacy phone support. With the evaluation of premium OTT apps, our experiments bring to light that most apps adopt weak and potentially vulnerable practices. We illustrate our findings by showing how to easily recover media content from many OTT apps, including Netflix

Over-the-Internet: Efficient Remote Content Management for Secure Elements in Mobile Devices

International audienceWe propose Over-the-Internet (OTI), a novel system that manages secure element based applications. We demonstrate our solution in the context of NFC ecosystem and show that it can be effectively used for transmitting big applications to the secure element. Our system leverages the GlobalPlatform card specification as well as the GlobalPlatform user-centric ownership model. Our solution integrates the different actors of the NFC ecosystem in its architecture. We propose to leverage the concept of security domain, so that service providers can manage their applications independently from the SE issuer. We implement our solution within available platforms and show that it is secure, fast, reliable and easily deployable