DROWN Flaw Illustrates Dangers of Intentionally Weak Crypto

A 20 year old cryptographic session key length is too short.

That's the correct title. However, that doesn't get the click-rate high enough.

The 'weakened' -meaning session key length- cryptography from the '90s is the result of the US government categorizing cryptography as a munition.

One can argue that cryptography is not a munition, and therefore should not be categorized as such. However, there are multiple misleading and missing tidbits from these "DROWN" articles.

First, the 40 bit key length only applies to non-USA certificates. For those of us old to enough to remember, there was a USA only download version of Netscape. And right there on the website was a listing of the key length as 128 bits.

Here's a page from 1997... 19 years ago... which explains much more than the click-bate nonsense being hurriedly passed around:

https://web.archive.org/web/19970614021012/http://home.netscape.com/newsref/ref/internet-security.html

Netscape 1997 wrote:To what degree can SSL security protect me? With Netscape's security technology, information you send can be trusted to arrive privately and unaltered to the server you specify (and no other). To evaluate the strategic and quantitative implications of the SSL implementation of certification and public key technology, consult The SSL Protocol specification.

SSL uses authentication and encryption technology developed by RSA Data Security Inc. For example, Netscape Navigator's export implementation of SSL (U.S. government approved) uses a 40-bit key size for the RC4 stream encryption algorithm. The encryption established between you and a server remains valid over multiple connections, yet the effort expended to defeat the encryption of one message cannot be leveraged to defeat the next message.

A message encrypted with 40-bit RC4 takes on average 64 MIPS-years to break (a 64-MIPS computer needs a year of dedicated processor time to break the message's encryption). The 128-bit U.S. domestic version provides protection exponentially more vast. The effort required to break any given exchange of information is a formidable deterrent. Server authentication uses RSA public key cryptography in conjunction with ISO X.509 digital certificates.

Netscape Navigator and Netscape Commerce Server deliver server authentication using signed digital certificates issued by trusted third parties known as certificate authorities. A digital certificate verifies the connection between a server's public key and the server's identification (just as a driver's license verifies the connection between your photograph and your personal identification). Cryptographic checks, using digital signatures, ensure that information within a certificate can be trusted.

The reason for the 40-bit versus 128-bit was due to the US government categorizing cryptography as a munition. Also note the RC4 sitting there... So, if you were dealing with US communications only - you were using 128 bit session keys, even in 1997. And, yes, the Internet at that time was nearly all about the USA.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/09/16/the-web-in-1996-1997/

And today... as I've pointed out in prior posts: Nearly everyone uses AES and the US government via NIST has published a security guide which includes removing SSLv2 from server protocols.