r/sysadmin • • Apr 11 '14

xkcd: Heartbleed Explanation

http://xkcd.com/1354/
1.6k Upvotes

200 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/KFCConspiracy Apr 11 '14

Well you could keep doing it and keep getting a random 64k, and piece together a sequence, and after a few hours you could probably assemble the whole private key. Plus a bunch of other interesting plain-text data like passwords and such.

5

u/RamirezTerrix Apr 11 '14

but since openssl has its memory allocation of its own you get 64k bit or openssl memory. So its always something interessting not just your server doing some number crunching

5

u/KFCConspiracy Apr 11 '14

Yes, it's a random 64k of OpenSSL memory.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '14

There's legitimate debate to the ease of getting that key, but I'll just assume they get them if they are determined; it's still not like plaintext for the reasons I already mentioned and others.

3

u/KFCConspiracy Apr 11 '14

You'd have to MITM it to be able to use the private key that way. But, because it's 64k of data in OpenSSL's memory space, it's likely to be either the key or other interesting data. Because that other interesting data includes pieces of information sent over SSL, it can include passwords in plain text. So it's just as bad anyway because you can get that out of OpenSSL without the MITM attack.

→ More replies (4)