Arvados

h1. Changing Keep hash algorithm

(notes moved from #4424)

The md5 algorithm is well known to be insecure.  Attackers can force hash collisions on arbitrary data, for example http://natmchugh.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-i-created-two-images-with-same-md5.html?m=1

In the case of Keep, this exposes an obvious vulnerability.  If an attacker known the hash of a block, he or she could subvert the permission system this way:

# Generate a block that collides with the desired hash

# Upload the collision block and receive a signed token

# Use the signed token to request the block

(We may be able to tighten Keep's behavior to make this attack more difficult, such as doing a byte-for-byte check that the uploaded block matches a known block.)

This is a general vulnerability that attacks the assumptions of content-based addressing, so it seems very likely that there are other more subtle attack vectors.  Another possible attack would be a denial-of-service attack by uploading bogus blocks with specific content hashes and garbage content, preventing a user from uploading legitimate data.

We need to start thinking about moving to a best practices cryptographic hash.  The first obvious choice would be SHA-1 (used by git), but it is already considered vulnerable so we should look at SHA-2 or SHA-3.

Fixing this is likely to be somewhat difficult and disruptive, since there is already a lot of code that makes assumptions about the format and length of content hashes used by Keep, which would become longer with a stronger hash function.