
Google confirms critical Android crypto flaw used in Bitcoin heist - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/google-confirms-critical-android-crypto-flaw-used-in-5700-bitcoin-heist/
======
flyt
And now we simply wait for cell carriers/handset manufacturers to push out
updates for all the handsets in the field.

~~~
enraged_camel
Yep. Everyone who normally pretends that Android fragmentation is "not that
big a deal" is going to squirm.

~~~
rednukleus
I know, right? Things would be so much better if the dominant OS was a closed
platform, and only ran on hardware made by the same company and only ran apps
purchased though a tightly controlled store run by the same company. Of course
then they could shut out other service providers such as maps and cloud
services, and basically wreck the industry for almost everyone except
themselves, but at least we would get timely updates.

~~~
briandear
I'm curious. What maps and cloud services providers have been shut out of iOS?
I recall that google maps has an app, dropbox has an app, there are even non
iTunes music players. One of the criteria for the app store doesn't seem to be
"can't compete with Apple." So this little diatribe about "wrecking the
industry" is a bit unfounded. There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from
creating their own OS and their own hardware to run it on and marketing it to
people and selling it.

Dropbox is a huge competitor to Apple's cloud services. While they're
different, if Apple really was trying to be heavy handed, Dropbox would never
have gotten on the App Store. By the way, what's the default maps application
on Android? Google is a model of openness right? So open that your gmail has
"no expectation of privacy." I wonder how they feel about things being done
using an Android device. After all, if even your private person-to-person
emails have no privacy expectation, then what expectation would one have for
using an Android device?

As far as "wrecking the industry," I've never made more money from development
as I have since the App store came along. So unless your industry is creating
malware or porn apps, iOS has hardly wrecked anything. If it weren't for iOS,
there'd likely be no Android. Apple essentially created the smartphone
industry, at least as we know it today. Entire new businesses were created
because of the App Store. I can't even on one hand the number of consumer
mobile development companies that existed before iPhone. I'm sure there were
plenty, but hardly the billion dollar industry it is today.

I'm not an Apple apologist, however when I see the same tired arguments about
the "closed" ecosystem it gets frustrating. Especially since the App Store has
over 900,000 apps. That's a lot of apps for such an oppressive system. A large
percentage of them are crap, but comparing sales numbers to Google Play, it's
pretty obvious that Apple is doing something right, at least from the
perspective of the consumer -- which is the market. There are some notable
screwups with the app approval process, however weighing that in the aggregate
against the overall success of developers within the App store, the screwups
are a drop in the bucket.

~~~
rednukleus
Apple has a rule that disallows apps from the app store if they "duplicate the
functionality of one of apple's own apps". Alternative browsers for instance
are effectively banned, you can only skin safari. There have been plenty of
examples where they have abused this rule. Google maps was around before Apple
Maps, but when it launched it became the default app, and there is no way to
change it. On android, the user can swap out gmaps for an alternative.

Luckily iOS never became dominant, and so the long term damage to the market
is limited. In the short term, certainly a lot of developers made some quick
money on iOS, and as one of them I can see why you are so keen to defend them.
But in the long run, if they had reached dominance then it would have been a
catastrophe for the industry on a scale far worse than Windows dominance in
the 90s.

There are a lot of other reasons that it would have been bad, that often don't
occur to people in cozy western environments, such as the impact it would have
had on developing countries. A lot of elitist iOS developers say its not a
problem that you can only develop iOS apps on a Mac, because "anyone can
afford a Mac mini", but try telling that to a highschool student in India.

~~~
caryhartline
"certainly a lot of developers made some quick money on iOS"

AKA: iOS developers make more money because iOS users are more likely to spend
it. Android users are people like the highschool student in India who is never
going to buy an app.

~~~
rednukleus
Ahhh, there's the elitist attitude we all know and love. As I said, I can see
why a developer targeting rich Americans would want to develop for iOS (for
now), but the fact remains that it would be a catastrophe if iOS were to gain
any sort of long term dominance.

~~~
caryhartline
So it's elitist to expect profit off of the app you're selling? I'm not sure
what you mean by a "catastrophe".

------
gsibble
I'm actually shocked that someone used a zero-day Android exploit to steal
$5,700 of BTC. Couldn't they have sold it for significantly more on the black
market?

~~~
cstavish
It's possible that the exploit was used previously and the incident went
unreported.

~~~
gsibble
Which is perhaps even more frightening considering many other high security
apps use these libraries.

------
gcb0
irony of the month: anyone NOT following the age old advice about not
implementing your own crypto would have been spared from this.

~~~
lvh
Why?

This is a failure of the CSPRNG. What "not implementing your own crypto"
usually means is trying to cobble together primitives like AES, RSA, and some
mode of operation (and, if you're lucky, there's a MAC algorithm in there
too), which would still probably have been horribly broken in some way. That's
completely orthogonal to this issue.

Are you insinuating that explicitly seeding the CSPRNG with information from
the OS' CSPRNG is somehow a bad thing, or that it is frowned upon, or that it
constitutes "implementing your own crypto"?

~~~
thirsteh
Indeed. The irony is that anyone following that (good) advice were affected by
this.

------
marshray
Has anyone looked to see if the NSA Secure Android project has this bug?

------
marshray
I thought OpenSSL's default code already pulled from /dev/[u]random at
initialization?

~~~
Afforess
The Official Sun/Oracle JDK SecureRandom class already pulls from /dev/random.
The Android class does not.

~~~
kolinko
where does it pull from?

~~~
autotravis
[http://xkcd.com/221/](http://xkcd.com/221/)

------
VikingCoder
How much would a good hardware RNG cost, and when can we have a phone with one
that can run Cyanogenmod?

------
plasma
Why does the blog post also suggest /dev/random?

I thought urandom should only be used for crypto.

~~~
aa0
Random blocks when waiting for entropy. Urandom is "unblocking random" and
will return strictly predictable results when the pool becomes drained enough.

------
gsibble
Yeah......that looks like an easy fix o_O

