back to article At LAST: RC4 gets the stake through the heart

One of the security set's most intractable problems is the stubborn endurance of old standards – the kind of thing that left SSLv3 hanging around so that people didn't have to weed out “fallback” code, for example. Well, at least one of security's code zombies, the insecure and inadequate RC4 crypto algorithm, has been …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

    ... some people developing web browser should start to be aware "web servers" today are not only facebook, google, & C. - there are also those damned embedded server to manage hardware devices which have no "web server administrato" to contact to upgrade the server encryption... and some hardware devices could have a pretty long life, even if EOLed by their maker.

    And some (i.e. some Dell DRAC blade enclosure cards) doesn't even allow to disable SSL (and not everything can be done from the even more unsecure telnet connection).

    Guess I'll need to keep around some old portable version of Firefox for a while...

    1. Tomato42
      Boffin

      Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

      just use stunnel to proxy connections to it

      and start complaining to manufacturers that their firmware is shit

      1. seven of five

        Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

        > and start complaining to manufacturers that their firmware is shit

        Most of the affected systems are just plain old and EOL. Many vendors will gladly sell you the successor which does not use RC4 anymore.

        But quite often there is a very good reason to still use the old product - dependent software releases (or worse, dependent hardware), inability to get migration downtime and of course: money.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

        "start complaining to manufacturers that their firmware is shit"

        Manufacturers aren't going to be interested if the product is EOLed. And the manufacturers themselves may have been EOLed. Meanwhile, in the real world, the bean-counters aren't going to be impressed with arguments that a million quid piece of kit has to be replaced because Google, Mozilla & Microsoft stopped supporting RC4.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

          About the only way you can do that is to demonstrate to them that NOT replacing the million-quid piece of kit could result in, say, a TEN-MEEELION-quid cost, either as fines or as the result of a lawsuit.

    2. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

      This - Why can't they add a plugin or something to support "crap SSL" - it can turn the whole damned window red if it likes - but just occasionally a bit of embedded kit needs a reset, and goes into https only mode with SSL3.

      Earlier this week I ended up in Opera's archives, because they were the people it was easiest to get "previous versions" from.

      Even a shim proxy would do the job - I need to go and look at stunnel (assuming OpenSSL doesn't drop support for said protocols), but I'll have to push said connections through the firewall at home, since the iPad etc won't run them...

    3. Len
      Happy

      Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

      That's why the article says:

      "Mozilla that its defaults will be no-RC4 in version 44 expected in January (but users will still be able to explicitly set a preference if they need it and know what they're doing)."

      The most important thing is that webserver administrators all over the world are being forced to update their security because otherwise their visitors will not be able to visit their site in Q2 2016. If individual power users have some pressing need to still use RC4 they can re-enable it.

    4. Daniel B.
      Boffin

      Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

      Being honest, AES was standardized in 2001. It has been FIPS 140-2 validated for at least 10 years, maybe even since 2001 as well. Any device built in this century could and should support AES, or at the very least 3DES (though I'd disable that shit cipher as well server-side).

      RC4-only devices would be those from the 20th century.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Good luck, with some devices embedded management servers...

        "RC4-only devices would be those from the 20th century."

        Thing is, in the real world, expensive hardware tends to have working lives in the decades. Why fix what isn't completely broken?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Laggards

    I disabled RC4 in our shipping product two months ago (along with export ciphers and SSL2/3 and the original TLS 1.0). 2016 is still way too slow - they should be throwing massive warnings and makring sites as insecure already.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Laggards

      Lots of people see support for poor network protocols in widely used software as harmless, particularly when someone else might suffer more serious consequences than themselves. We'd still all be running DES and WEP if we had to wait for everyone to choose a good time.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Laggards

        And yet my wireless devices *can* connect to a WEP, or even an unsecured, access point - because backwards availability is useful!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Laggards

          my mobile wireless device can't connect to WEP.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Laggards

          The backwards compatibility of being able to use WEP comes at a cost, which is that insecure WEP networks continue to exist.

          WEP is maybe a special case, because what people do in the privacy of their own networks is their business. But what I really object to is having to use poor protocols and being made vulnerable to downgrade attacks because the server operator doesn't believe that data protection is a priority.

          1. Mage Silver badge
            Facepalm

            Re: Laggards

            WiFi isn't private.

            It's irresponsible to host insecure WiFi.

            Silly Nintendo DS and some other stuff with no updates only uses WEP or no security at all. So no, we haven't allowed the DS on WiFi for years.

            1. Dan 55 Silver badge

              Re: Laggards

              DS online gaming was withdrawn last year, so there's no reason to let it connect anyway.

          2. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: Laggards

            @Smooth Newt - But what I really object to is having to use poor protocols and being made vulnerable to downgrade attacks because the server operator doesn't believe that data protection is a priority.

            So have it flag them as insecure protocols.

            Have a "score" by the adress bar that rates security from 0-10, where 0 and 10 are green (i.e. "current best practice HTTPS or HTTP) is fine. Have scary warning pages, and limit access to anything 0<x<5 to RFC1918 adrewsses only...

    2. Richard 26

      Re: Laggards

      "I disabled RC4 in our shipping product two months ago (along with export ciphers and SSL2/3 and the original TLS 1.0). 2016 is still way too slow"

      So it took you around two years after people first proposed dropping support for RC4 to disable it yourself but another few months is way too slow?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Better way to coordinate

    If they know they're doing this today, they should push out updates to anything they are currently updating that has a check like "if date > 20160101 disable RC4" as well as coding that in future versions.

    It seems stupid that there will be several versions of Firefox released (41, 42, and 43) this year that will NOT implement this and in order to get it you would have to install Firefox 44 which is the first version for 2016. I guess they're assuming everyone updates it religiously, but that's not the case.

  4. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    "This - Why can't they add a plugin or something to support "crap SSL" - it can turn the whole damned window red if it likes - but just occasionally a bit of embedded kit needs a reset, and goes into https only mode with SSL3."

    I thought TFA said that there WOULD (for firefox at least) be a config option to turn on that would re-enable RC4.

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