22.10 Summary

This chapter completes Part IV Bleeding Hearts and Biting Poodles, which was concerned with attacks on previous version of TLS. The attacks we covered in this chapter exploit implementation bugs rather than protocol weaknesses or vulnerabilities in underlying cryptographic mechanisms.

The SMACK and FREAK attacks are practical examples of how easily mistakes happen when you have to implement complex cryptographic protocols and algorithms. Indeed, to put it in the words of Bruce Schneier, complexity is the enemy of security. Remember: we had an initial discussion on this topic in the very first chapter of this book.

Truncation attacks show why it is important that both Alice and Bob have the same view of the cryptographic protocol they are executing. If Bob thinks they are both in state x but Alice thinks they are in state y, the security of the whole protocol may be compromised.

The danger of making assumptions about input data – in other words, data that might...