[NBLUG/talk] Encrypting Files for Cloud Backup

Omar Eljumaily omar at omnicode.com
Sat Apr 16 08:30:33 PDT 2016


I'm not trying to start an argument about this.  I'm just really 
interested in how IT infrastructure gets hacked.  Here's an example of a 
real life hack that has had very serious repercussions for a firm and 
its clients.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/no-1-thing-it-departments-can-learn-from-the-panama-papers-hack/

Mossack Fonseca seems to have not taken security very seriously, 
although privacy should have been a huge issue for them.

Another example of a serious data theft I heard about was a financial 
services firm keeping backups for their wealthy clients in a private 
home safe.  It seems reasonable on the surface, but thieves broke into 
the home and the first thing they took was the safe.  The thieves 
probably chucked the most valuable item in the safe, the data, and went 
for currency or gold/jewels, etc.  Not all thieves are that stupid, 
though.  Physically securing data is one place where local, private 
storage will never be able to compete with 24/7 patrolled clouds in 
terms of privacy.

Thanks,

Omar


On 4/16/2016 7:03 AM, Omar Eljumaily wrote:
> I've never heard of a server side cloud encryption hack.  Maybe you 
> can give some examples.
>
>
> On 4/16/2016 6:33 AM, Aaron Grattafiori wrote:
>>
>> Server side encryption isn't really a secure solution for most threat 
>> models, including typical cloud backup scenarios.
>>
>> Client side encryption is a better option, via something like 
>> duplicity, although you then have to remember to backup the (strongly 
>> password protected) encryption key somewhere.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
>> On Apr 16, 2016 7:25 AM, "Omar Eljumaily" <omar at omnicode.com 
>> <mailto:omar at omnicode.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Amazon seems to offer encryption through a setting. That may be
>>     easier than what you're attempting.
>>     https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-s3-server-side-encryption/
>>
>>     I use Google cloud, and they encrypt as a standard feature.
>>     https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil/addlhelp/SecurityandPrivacyConsiderations#encryption-at-rest
>>
>>     All Google Cloud Storage data are stored encrypted. For more
>>     information see Server-Side Encryption
>>     <https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/concepts-techniques#encryption>.
>>
>>
>>     You can also provide your own encryption keys. For more
>>     information, see ``
>>     <https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil/addlhelp/SecurityandPrivacyConsiderations#id1>gsutil
>>     help encryption
>>     </storage/docs/gsutil/addlhelp/SupplyingYourOwnEncryptionKeys>`_`.
>>
>>
>>     On 4/15/2016 7:35 PM, gandalf at sonic.net
>>     <mailto:gandalf at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>     Hey, thanks. This looks real good. I'll start digging into it
>>>     next week. I have even found a elaborate setup script just for
>>>     Amazon.
>>>
>>>     On 2016-04-15 19:14, Aaron Grattafiori wrote:
>>>>     Checkout duplicity...
>>>>     On Apr 15, 2016 8:13 PM, <gandalf at sonic.net>
>>>>     <mailto:gandalf at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>     Well I just got something working and am setting it up to work
>>>>>     over
>>>>>     the weekend.
>>>>>
>>>>>     tar -zcf - -C /backups/servers itdocs | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc
>>>>>     -salt -pass file:/etc/backups/key.bin | aws s3 cp -
>>>>>     s3://XXXXXXX/servers/itdocs.160415.tar.gz.aes
>>>>>
>>>>>     I was able to reverse the command and have it create a fresh
>>>>>     itdocs
>>>>>     folder full of goodies in a tmp folder. The key.bin file is 2048
>>>>>     bytes of randomness:
>>>>>
>>>>>     openssl rand -base64 2048 -out key.bin
>>>>>
>>>>>     Is this any good? The sample I had only used 128 and I thought
>>>>>     2048
>>>>>     would be better.
>>>>>
>>>>>     I don't know how good this all is as backup encryption, but it
>>>>>     looks like it should be as good as most. I'm not sure how it's
>>>>>     going
>>>>>     to handle the larger backups, but I guess I'll find out on
>>>>>     Monday.
>>>>>     It's set to do half Saturday morning and half Sunday morning.
>>>>>
>>>>>     On 2016-04-15 18:46, Zack Zatkin-Gold wrote:
>>>>>     I was about to say -- usually when you see malloc errors in a
>>>>>     piece
>>>>>     of
>>>>>     software, it's because that software is unable to allocate more
>>>>>     memory!
>>>>>
>>>>>     On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 9:19 PM, <gandalf at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>>     I think I found the problem. The method works for large files but
>>>>>     openssl
>>>>>     loads the entire file into memory and hence it needs one gigabyte
>>>>>     of memory
>>>>>     available for every gigabyte of file. This method isn't going to
>>>>>     work to
>>>>>     encrypt a 500gig file and indeed breaks on my two gig test
>>>>>     backup.
>>>>>
>>>>>     Anybody have any suggestions for encrypting very large backup
>>>>>     files?
>>>>>
>>>>>     On 2016-04-15 15:41, gandalf at sonic.net
>>>>>     <mailto:gandalf at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>     I was looking for a way to encrypt files using a key or keys and
>>>>>     found
>>>>>     this article:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>     https://blog.altudov.com/2010/09/27/using-openssl-for-asymmetric-encryption-of-backups/#comment-399
>>>>
>>>>>     [1]
>>>>>
>>>>>     I tied it out and it worked, but oddly when I moved the keys to a
>>>>>     different folder openssl said it couldn't find them. Of course I
>>>>>     adjusted the encryption/description commands to point to the
>>>>>     proper
>>>>>     files. I moved them back to /root and suddenly they work.
>>>>>
>>>>>     Here's the command the article says to use to create keys:
>>>>>     openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 100000 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout
>>>>>     MyCompanyBackupsPRIVATE.pem -out MyCompanyBackupsPublicCert.pem
>>>>>     -subj
>>>>>     '/'
>>>>>
>>>>>     Here's one of the errors I got:
>>>>>     root at vault:/etc/backups/tmp# openssl smime -in
>>>>>     itdocs.160415.tar.gz.aes -decrypt -binary -inform DEM -inkey
>>>>>     ../MSRI-Backups-PRIVATE.pem | tar -zx -f -
>>>>>     Error reading S/MIME message
>>>>>     139777656317600:error:07069041:memory buffer
>>>>>     routines:BUF_MEM_grow_clean:malloc failure:buffer.c:159:
>>>>>     139777656317600:error:0D06B041:asn1 encoding
>>>>>     routines:ASN1_D2I_READ_BIO:malloc failure:a_d2i_fp.c:242:
>>>>>
>>>>>     gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
>>>>>     tar: Child returned status 1
>>>>>     tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
>>>>>
>>>>>     Moved the pem files back to /root and everything works great.
>>>>>     Although
>>>>>     I find this reassuring I also find it disturbing as these keys
>>>>>     are
>>>>>     for
>>>>>     encrypting backups and they may have to be manually typed in on a
>>>>>     new
>>>>>     system and used to restore an offsite backup from a disaster. I'd
>>>>>     like
>>>>>     to know that I can put these keys in folder and use them to
>>>>>     decrypt
>>>>>     backups.
>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>     Links:
>>>>     ------
>>>>     [1]
>>>>     https://blog.altudov.com/2010/09/27/using-openssl-for-asymmetric-encryption-of-backups/#comment-399
>>>>
>>>>     [2] http://nblug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>>>
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