Post #1544721
2024-04-16 08:03 UTC
@simontatham @lispi314 @indigoparadox Am I paranoid when I connect this vulnerability with the xz-backdoor? To get the private keys an attacker needs access to ssh-servers, which the xz-backdoor could have provided. So it's imaginable that the group behind the backdoor found the ecdsa-sha2-nistp521 problem and thought: "how make the most of it"?
Replies (1)
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@simontatham@hachyderm.io 2024-04-16 08:09
@agitatra @lispi314 @indigoparadox interesting thought – hadn't occurred to me! Off the top of my head I'd guess the number of P521 users is _relatively_ small. As another commenter pointed out, it's never been PuTTY's default; and generally the NIST curves seem to have mostly gone out of fashion these days, in favour of Ed25519. So I doubt this was _all_ the xz backdoor actors were after. It doesn't seem worth all the effort by itself. But it could have been one thing on their shopping list.