On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 4:58 AM, reox <[email protected]> wrote:
> ...
>
> I do not understand what is the problem here? Does anyone have more
> information?
Taking from the 4th paragraph under "How It Works":

<quote>
The Android package installer makes no attempt to verify the
authenticity of a certificate chain; in other words, an identity can
claim to be issued by another identity, and the Android cryptographic
code will not verify the claim
</quote>

*If* I am reading the 4th paragraph correctly, it appears (and using
Adobe as an example):

The app is using a certificate that is *not* self-signed. The app's
certificate has an Issuer Distinguished Name of Adobe. However, the
system does not verify Adobe actually issued the app's certificate The
verification system is just performing a string comparison of the
distinguished names.

Actually, that is the case. From the 6th paragraph:

<quote>
... instead defaulting to simple subjectDN to issuerDN string matching
</quote>

To summarize, signature verification on the chain is not being
performed. Rather, a simpler [insecure] algorithm is used that
consists of Distinguished Name matching.

I attached an image that shows the relationship between Issuers and
Subjects. It was ripped from Peter Gutmann's Engineering Security book
(https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf). It should help
you visualize what's going on.

That's another good find by Forristal.

Jeff

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