PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

Started by Nicolas Guiniover 9 years ago18 messageshackers
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#1Nicolas Guini
nicolasguini@gmail.com

Hello everyone,

I sent few days ago to the security DL a mail reporting a vulnerability in
how Postgres is requesting DH params to be used later for encryption
algorithms. So, due to there is no problem sharing with this group, here is
what I sent:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi folks,

We are working with Postgres 9.3.14 and executing nmap we
found that it is using “weak DH group” (nmap –script ssl-dh-params). Weak =
1024 bits.

See nmap output (1)

We don’t know if other versions are affected or not. The
environment used is a RHEL 6 x86_6, OpenSSL version 1.0.2i with FIPS module.

This issue is similar to what this post explains about using weak DH
parameters: http://www.usefuljs.net/2016/09/29/imperfect-forward-secrecy/

Following with the code, it seems that PostgreSQL has
missed the keyLength OpenSSL parameter, and it delivers into a weak crypto
configuration.. Affected Code:

https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=
blob;f=src/backend/libpq/be-secure-openssl.c;h=
8d8f12952a4a4f14a15f8647b96935e13d68fb39;hb=48d50840d53eb62842c0d9b54eab9c
d7c9a3a46d

(Thanks to Damian in order to found the affected code)

(1) nmap output:

# nmap –script ssl-dh-params -p 5432 <ip>

Starting Nmap 7.25BETA2 ( https://nmap.org )

Nmap scan report for <ip>

Host is up (0.00035s latency).

PORT STATE SERVICE

5432/tcp open postgresql

| ssl-dh-params:

| VULNERABLE:

| Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Insufficient Group Strength

| State: VULNERABLE

| Transport Layer Security (TLS) services that use Diffie-Hellman
groups

| of insufficient strength, especially those using one of a few
commonly

| shared groups, may be susceptible to passive eavesdropping attacks.

| Check results:

| WEAK DH GROUP 1

| Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256

| Modulus Type: Safe prime

| Modulus Source: Unknown/Custom-generated

| Modulus Length: 1024

| Generator Length: 8

| Public Key Length: 1024

| References:

|_ https://weakdh.org

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks in advance

Nicolas Guini

#2Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Nicolas Guini (#1)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 10/05/2016 05:15 PM, Nicolas Guini wrote:

We are working with Postgres 9.3.14 and executing nmap we
found that it is using “weak DH group” (nmap –script ssl-dh-params). Weak =
1024 bits.

Yeah, it seems that we're a bit behind the times on this...

This issue is similar to what this post explains about using weak DH
parameters: http://www.usefuljs.net/2016/09/29/imperfect-forward-secrecy/

The blog post points out that, as counterintuitive as it sounds, the
SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh_callback() callback should ignore the keylength
argument, and always return a DH group with 2048 bits, or stronger. As
you pointed out, that's not what our callback does.

We should fix this in master, at least. I'm not sure about backporting,
there might be compatibility issues. It seems that at least OpenJDK
(Java) didn't support DH groups larger than 1024 bits, until version 8.
That's fairly recent, OpenJDK 8 was released in March 2014.

ECDHE family of ciphers are not affected, and are preferred over plain
DHE, I believe, so disabling DHE and removing the DH parameter loading
code altogether is one option. Clearly not backportable, though.

Meanwhile, users can work-around this by creating DH parameters with
something like "openssl dhparam -out $PGDATA/dh1024.pem 2048". Yes, the
file needs to be called "dh1024.pem", even though the actual key length
is 2048 bits.

- Heikki

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#3Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#2)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 10/05/2016 09:57 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 10/05/2016 05:15 PM, Nicolas Guini wrote:

We are working with Postgres 9.3.14 and executing nmap we
found that it is using “weak DH group” (nmap –script ssl-dh-params). Weak =
1024 bits.

Yeah, it seems that we're a bit behind the times on this...

This issue is similar to what this post explains about using weak DH
parameters: http://www.usefuljs.net/2016/09/29/imperfect-forward-secrecy/

The blog post points out that, as counterintuitive as it sounds, the
SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh_callback() callback should ignore the keylength
argument, and always return a DH group with 2048 bits, or stronger. As
you pointed out, that's not what our callback does.

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with
multiple key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed
keylength=1024, so that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it
just sets fixed DH parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for
the ECDH curve. The DH parameters are loaded from a file called
"dh_params.pem" (instead of "dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the
built-in 2048 bit parameters are used.

I removed the code for generating DH parameters on-the-fly altogether.
The OpenSSL man page clearly says that that should not be done, because
generating the parameters takes a long time. And because OpenSSL always
passed keylength=1024, AFAICS that had been always dead code.

If we want to get really fancy, we could generate the parameters the
first time you turn ssl=on, and store them in $PGDATA. But the
generation takes a very long time, so the admin might think it's stuck.

I note that supplying custom DH parameters in the file is completely
undocumented :-(. We should add a note in the docs on how to generate
the custom DH parameters with openssl. Also, there's no easy way of
telling if your custom parameters are actually been used. If you copy
the params file in $PGDATA, but you have a typo in the name, you won't
notice. Perhaps we should print a line in the log when the file is loaded.

I'm afraid of back-patching this, out of fear that older clients would
stop working, or would downgrade to an even weaker cipher. You could fix
it by putting weaker 1024 bit params in dh_params.pem, so maybe we could
do it if we put a warning and instructions for doing that in the release
notes. Thoughts?

- Heikki

Attachments:

0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchtext/x-diff; name=0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchDownload+48-148
#4Christoph Berg
myon@debian.org
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#3)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

Re: Heikki Linnakangas 2016-10-06 <fd6eb3cc-1585-1469-fd9e-763f8e410b19@iki.fi>

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with multiple
key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed keylength=1024, so
that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it just sets fixed DH
parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for the ECDH curve. The DH
parameters are loaded from a file called "dh_params.pem" (instead of
"dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the built-in 2048 bit parameters are
used.

Shouldn't this be a GUC pointing to a configurable location like
ssl_cert_file? This way, people reading the security section of the
default postgresql.conf would notice that there's something (new) to
configure. (And I wouldn't want to start creating symlinks from PGDATA
to /etc/ssl/something again...)

Thanks,
Christoph

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#5Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Christoph Berg (#4)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 10/06/2016 10:26 PM, Christoph Berg wrote:

Re: Heikki Linnakangas 2016-10-06 <fd6eb3cc-1585-1469-fd9e-763f8e410b19@iki.fi>

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with multiple
key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed keylength=1024, so
that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it just sets fixed DH
parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for the ECDH curve. The DH
parameters are loaded from a file called "dh_params.pem" (instead of
"dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the built-in 2048 bit parameters are
used.

Shouldn't this be a GUC pointing to a configurable location like
ssl_cert_file? This way, people reading the security section of the
default postgresql.conf would notice that there's something (new) to
configure. (And I wouldn't want to start creating symlinks from PGDATA
to /etc/ssl/something again...)

Perhaps. The DH parameters are not quite like other configuration files,
though. The actual parameters used don't matter, you just want to
generate different parameters for every cluster. The key length of the
parameters can be considered configuration, though.

- Heikki

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In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#3)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

06.10.2016, 16:52, Heikki Linnakangas kirjoitti:

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with
multiple key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed
keylength=1024, so that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it
just sets fixed DH parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for
the ECDH curve. The DH parameters are loaded from a file called
"dh_params.pem" (instead of "dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the
built-in 2048 bit parameters are used.

We've been using the same built-in parameters for 14 years now, they
apparently came from
https://web.archive.org/web/20011212141438/http://www.skip-vpn.org/spec/numbers.html
(the original page is no longer available) and are shared by countless
other systems.

While we're not using the most common Oakley groups which are presumed
to have been broken by various parties (https://weakdh.org) I think it'd
be worthwhile to replace the currently built-in parameters with custom
ones. And maybe even regenerate parameters for every minor release.

HAProxy made a similar change last year, see
https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/commit/d3a341a96fb6107d2b8e3d7a9c0afa2ff43bb0b6

/ Oskari

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#7Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#5)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

(We dropped the ball back in October, continuing the discussion now)

On 10/10/2016 06:24 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 10/06/2016 10:26 PM, Christoph Berg wrote:

Re: Heikki Linnakangas 2016-10-06 <fd6eb3cc-1585-1469-fd9e-763f8e410b19@iki.fi>

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with multiple
key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed keylength=1024, so
that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it just sets fixed DH
parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for the ECDH curve. The DH
parameters are loaded from a file called "dh_params.pem" (instead of
"dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the built-in 2048 bit parameters are
used.

Shouldn't this be a GUC pointing to a configurable location like
ssl_cert_file? This way, people reading the security section of the
default postgresql.conf would notice that there's something (new) to
configure. (And I wouldn't want to start creating symlinks from PGDATA
to /etc/ssl/something again...)

Perhaps. The DH parameters are not quite like other configuration files,
though. The actual parameters used don't matter, you just want to
generate different parameters for every cluster. The key length of the
parameters can be considered configuration, though.

Actually, adding a GUC also solves another grief I had about this. There
is currently no easy way to tell if your parameter file is being used,
or if the server is failing to read it and is falling back to the
hard-coded parameters. With a GUC, if the GUC is set it's a good
indication that the admin expects the file to really exist and to
contain valid parameters. So if the GUC is set, we should throw an error
if it cannot be used. And if it's not set, we use the built-in defaults.

I rebased the patch, did some other clean up of error reporting, and
added a GUC along those lines, as well as docs. How does this look?

It's late in the release cycle, but it would be nice to sneak this into
v10. Using weak 1024 bit DH parameters is arguably a security issue; it
was originally reported as such. There's a work-around for older
versions: generate custom 2048 bit parameters and place them in a file
called "dh1024.pem", but that's completely undocumented.

Thoughts? Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

- Heikki

Attachments:

0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchtext/x-diff; name=0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchDownload+132-168
#8Michael Paquier
michael@paquier.xyz
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#7)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:

I rebased the patch, did some other clean up of error reporting, and added a
GUC along those lines, as well as docs. How does this look?

It's late in the release cycle, but it would be nice to sneak this into v10.
Using weak 1024 bit DH parameters is arguably a security issue; it was
originally reported as such. There's a work-around for older versions:
generate custom 2048 bit parameters and place them in a file called
"dh1024.pem", but that's completely undocumented.

Thoughts?

The patch looks in good shape to me.

#include "utils/memutils.h"

-
static int my_sock_read(BIO *h, char *buf, int size);
That's unnecessary noise.

+ *    Very uncool. Alternatively, the system could refuse to start
+ *    if a DH parameters if not specified, but this would tend to
+ *    piss off DBAs.
"is not specified".

Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

But I am -1 for the sneak part. It is not the time to have a new
feature in 10, the focus is to stabilize.
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#9Alvaro Herrera
alvherre@2ndquadrant.com
In reply to: Michael Paquier (#8)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

Michael Paquier wrote:

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:

Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

But I am -1 for the sneak part. It is not the time to have a new
feature in 10, the focus is to stabilize.

But if we were treating it as a security issue, would we backpatch it?
If we do, then it definitely makes sense to put something in pg10. I'm
not sure that this patch is it, though -- perhaps it makes sense to put
a minimal fix in older branches, and let the new feature wait for pg11?

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PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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#10Simon Riggs
simon@2ndQuadrant.com
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#7)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 13 July 2017 at 16:32, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:

(We dropped the ball back in October, continuing the discussion now)

On 10/10/2016 06:24 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 10/06/2016 10:26 PM, Christoph Berg wrote:

Re: Heikki Linnakangas 2016-10-06
<fd6eb3cc-1585-1469-fd9e-763f8e410b19@iki.fi>

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with
multiple
key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed
keylength=1024, so
that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it just sets fixed DH
parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for the ECDH curve. The
DH
parameters are loaded from a file called "dh_params.pem" (instead of
"dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the built-in 2048 bit parameters
are
used.

Shouldn't this be a GUC pointing to a configurable location like
ssl_cert_file? This way, people reading the security section of the
default postgresql.conf would notice that there's something (new) to
configure. (And I wouldn't want to start creating symlinks from PGDATA
to /etc/ssl/something again...)

Perhaps. The DH parameters are not quite like other configuration files,
though. The actual parameters used don't matter, you just want to
generate different parameters for every cluster. The key length of the
parameters can be considered configuration, though.

Actually, adding a GUC also solves another grief I had about this. There is
currently no easy way to tell if your parameter file is being used, or if
the server is failing to read it and is falling back to the hard-coded
parameters. With a GUC, if the GUC is set it's a good indication that the
admin expects the file to really exist and to contain valid parameters. So
if the GUC is set, we should throw an error if it cannot be used. And if
it's not set, we use the built-in defaults.

I rebased the patch, did some other clean up of error reporting, and added a
GUC along those lines, as well as docs. How does this look?

It's late in the release cycle, but it would be nice to sneak this into v10.
Using weak 1024 bit DH parameters is arguably a security issue; it was
originally reported as such. There's a work-around for older versions:
generate custom 2048 bit parameters and place them in a file called
"dh1024.pem", but that's completely undocumented.

Thoughts? Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

+1 to include important open items such as this

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PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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#11Christoph Berg
myon@debian.org
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#9)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

Re: Alvaro Herrera 2017-07-13 <20170713170402.74uuoivrgd3c6tnw@alvherre.pgsql>

Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

But I am -1 for the sneak part. It is not the time to have a new
feature in 10, the focus is to stabilize.

But if we were treating it as a security issue, would we backpatch it?
If we do, then it definitely makes sense to put something in pg10. I'm
not sure that this patch is it, though -- perhaps it makes sense to put
a minimal fix in older branches, and let the new feature wait for pg11?

Making it user-configurable seems pretty minimal to me. Everything
else would probably require lengthy explanations about which file
could hold which contents, and this confusion seems to be part of the
problem.

Fwiw, wouldn't it make sense to recreate the default 2048 DH group as
well, maybe each time a new major is branched?

Christoph

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#12Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#9)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 07/13/2017 08:04 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

Michael Paquier wrote:

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:

Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

But I am -1 for the sneak part. It is not the time to have a new
feature in 10, the focus is to stabilize.

But if we were treating it as a security issue, would we backpatch it?
If we do, then it definitely makes sense to put something in pg10. I'm
not sure that this patch is it, though -- perhaps it makes sense to put
a minimal fix in older branches, and let the new feature wait for pg11?

I don't think this can be backpatched. It changes the default DH
parameters from 1024 bits to 2048 bits. That's a good thing for
security, but older clients might not support it, and would refuse to
connect or would fall back to something less secure. I don't think there
are many such clients around anymore, but it's nevertheless not
something we want to do in a stable release I think the best we can do
is to document the issue and the workaround. To recap, to use stronger
DH parameters in stable versions, you need to do "openssl dhparam -out
$PGDATA/dh1024.pem 2048".

But I'd like to take the opportunity to change this for new
installations, with v10, instead of waiting for another year. Of course,
you could say that for any new feature, too, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that it's a bad argument :-). It's a judgment call, for
sure.

- Heikki

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#13Joe Conway
mail@joeconway.com
In reply to: Simon Riggs (#10)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 07/13/2017 01:07 PM, Simon Riggs wrote:

On 13 July 2017 at 16:32, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:

(We dropped the ball back in October, continuing the discussion now)

On 10/10/2016 06:24 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 10/06/2016 10:26 PM, Christoph Berg wrote:

Re: Heikki Linnakangas 2016-10-06
<fd6eb3cc-1585-1469-fd9e-763f8e410b19@iki.fi>

I propose the attached patch. It gives up on trying to deal with
multiple
key lengths (as noted earlier, OpenSSL just always passed
keylength=1024, so
that was useless). Instead of using the callback, it just sets fixed DH
parameters with SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh(), like we do for the ECDH curve. The
DH
parameters are loaded from a file called "dh_params.pem" (instead of
"dh1024.pem"), if present, otherwise the built-in 2048 bit parameters
are
used.

Shouldn't this be a GUC pointing to a configurable location like
ssl_cert_file? This way, people reading the security section of the
default postgresql.conf would notice that there's something (new) to
configure. (And I wouldn't want to start creating symlinks from PGDATA
to /etc/ssl/something again...)

Perhaps. The DH parameters are not quite like other configuration files,
though. The actual parameters used don't matter, you just want to
generate different parameters for every cluster. The key length of the
parameters can be considered configuration, though.

Actually, adding a GUC also solves another grief I had about this. There is
currently no easy way to tell if your parameter file is being used, or if
the server is failing to read it and is falling back to the hard-coded
parameters. With a GUC, if the GUC is set it's a good indication that the
admin expects the file to really exist and to contain valid parameters. So
if the GUC is set, we should throw an error if it cannot be used. And if
it's not set, we use the built-in defaults.

I rebased the patch, did some other clean up of error reporting, and added a
GUC along those lines, as well as docs. How does this look?

It's late in the release cycle, but it would be nice to sneak this into v10.
Using weak 1024 bit DH parameters is arguably a security issue; it was
originally reported as such. There's a work-around for older versions:
generate custom 2048 bit parameters and place them in a file called
"dh1024.pem", but that's completely undocumented.

Thoughts? Objections to committing this now, instead of waiting for v11?

+1 to include important open items such as this

I have not looked at the patch itself, but conceptually +1 to include in
pg10.

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Consulting, Training, & Open Source Development

#14Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#12)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> writes:

I don't think this can be backpatched. It changes the default DH
parameters from 1024 bits to 2048 bits. That's a good thing for
security, but older clients might not support it, and would refuse to
connect or would fall back to something less secure.

Do we have any hard information about which versions of which clients
might not support that? (In particular I'm wondering if any still exist
in the wild.)

regards, tom lane

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#15Robert Haas
robertmhaas@gmail.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#14)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 1:30 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> writes:

I don't think this can be backpatched. It changes the default DH
parameters from 1024 bits to 2048 bits. That's a good thing for
security, but older clients might not support it, and would refuse to
connect or would fall back to something less secure.

Do we have any hard information about which versions of which clients
might not support that? (In particular I'm wondering if any still exist
in the wild.)

Yeah. If we break clients for v10 two months from release, some
drivers won't be updated by release time, and that sounds pretty
unfriendly to me. On the other hand, if there is only a theoretical
risk of breakage and no clients that we actually know about will have
a problem with it, then the argument for waiting is weaker. I'm not
generally very excited about changing things after beta2, which is
where are, but if this is a security issue then we might need to hold
our nose and go ahead. I'm against it if it's likely to cause
real-world connectivity problems, though.

--
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EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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#16Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Robert Haas (#15)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 07/13/2017 10:13 PM, Robert Haas wrote:

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 1:30 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> writes:

I don't think this can be backpatched. It changes the default DH
parameters from 1024 bits to 2048 bits. That's a good thing for
security, but older clients might not support it, and would refuse to
connect or would fall back to something less secure.

Do we have any hard information about which versions of which clients
might not support that? (In particular I'm wondering if any still exist
in the wild.)

Yeah. If we break clients for v10 two months from release, some
drivers won't be updated by release time, and that sounds pretty
unfriendly to me. On the other hand, if there is only a theoretical
risk of breakage and no clients that we actually know about will have
a problem with it, then the argument for waiting is weaker. I'm not
generally very excited about changing things after beta2, which is
where are, but if this is a security issue then we might need to hold
our nose and go ahead. I'm against it if it's likely to cause
real-world connectivity problems, though.

Googling around, I believe Java 6 is the only straggler [1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS#DHE_and_ECDHE_support. So we would
be breaking that. Java 7 also doesn't support DH parameters > 1024 bits,
but it supports ECDHE, which is prioritized over DH ciphers, so it
doesn't matter.

Java 6 was released back in 2006. The last public release was in 2013.
It wouldn't surprise me to still see it bundled with random proprietary
software packages, though. The official PostgreSQL JDBC driver still
supports it, but there has been discussion recently on dropping support
for it, and even for Java 7. [2]/messages/by-id/69ae857b-15cc-36dd-f380-6620ef1effb9@8kdata.com

I would be OK with breaking DH with Java 6 in PostgreSQL 10, especially
since there's a simple workaround (generate a 1024-bit DH parameters
file). I would be less enthusiastic about doing that in a minor release,
although maybe that wouldn't be too bad either, if we put a prominent
notice with the workaround in the release notes.

[1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS#DHE_and_ECDHE_support

[2]: /messages/by-id/69ae857b-15cc-36dd-f380-6620ef1effb9@8kdata.com
/messages/by-id/69ae857b-15cc-36dd-f380-6620ef1effb9@8kdata.com

- Heikki

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#17Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#16)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 07/13/2017 11:07 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 07/13/2017 10:13 PM, Robert Haas wrote:

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 1:30 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> writes:

I don't think this can be backpatched. It changes the default DH
parameters from 1024 bits to 2048 bits. That's a good thing for
security, but older clients might not support it, and would refuse to
connect or would fall back to something less secure.

Do we have any hard information about which versions of which clients
might not support that? (In particular I'm wondering if any still exist
in the wild.)

Yeah. If we break clients for v10 two months from release, some
drivers won't be updated by release time, and that sounds pretty
unfriendly to me. On the other hand, if there is only a theoretical
risk of breakage and no clients that we actually know about will have
a problem with it, then the argument for waiting is weaker. I'm not
generally very excited about changing things after beta2, which is
where are, but if this is a security issue then we might need to hold
our nose and go ahead. I'm against it if it's likely to cause
real-world connectivity problems, though.

Googling around, I believe Java 6 is the only straggler [1]. So we would
be breaking that. Java 7 also doesn't support DH parameters > 1024 bits,
but it supports ECDHE, which is prioritized over DH ciphers, so it
doesn't matter.

Java 6 was released back in 2006. The last public release was in 2013.
It wouldn't surprise me to still see it bundled with random proprietary
software packages, though. The official PostgreSQL JDBC driver still
supports it, but there has been discussion recently on dropping support
for it, and even for Java 7. [2]

I would be OK with breaking DH with Java 6 in PostgreSQL 10, especially
since there's a simple workaround (generate a 1024-bit DH parameters
file). I would be less enthusiastic about doing that in a minor release,
although maybe that wouldn't be too bad either, if we put a prominent
notice with the workaround in the release notes.

Some more information on the situation with JDK version 6: I installed
Debian wheezy on a VM, with a OpenJDK 6, and tested connecting to a
patched server with the JDBC driver. It worked! Googling around, it
seems that this was fixed in later versions of OpenJDK 6
(https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8062834). I then downloaded
the latest Oracle JRE binary version, 6u45, available from
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase6-419409.html.
With that, it does not work, you get errors like:

org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: SSL error:
java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not generate DH keypair
...
Caused by: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: Prime size
must be multiple of 64, and can only range from 512 to 1024 (inclusive)

So, the last binary version downloadable from Oracle is affected, but
recent versions of OpenJDK 6 work.

Rebased patch attached, with proposed release notes included. Barring
new objections or arguments, I'll commit this (only) to v10 later today.

- Heikki

Attachments:

0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchtext/x-patch; name=0001-Always-use-2048-bit-DH-parameters-for-OpenSSL-epheme.patchDownload+133-167
0002-Update-release-notes-for-the-DH-parameter-changes.patchtext/x-patch; name=0002-Update-release-notes-for-the-DH-parameter-changes.patchDownload+37-1
#18Heikki Linnakangas
heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Heikki Linnakangas (#17)
Re: PostgreSQL - Weak DH group

On 07/31/2017 02:27 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

Rebased patch attached, with proposed release notes included. Barring
new objections or arguments, I'll commit this (only) to v10 later today.

Ok, committed for v10. Thanks Nicolas and Damien, and everyone else
involved!

- Heikki

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