6 HN users recommended this talk5 months2014–2025score 5.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Frequently linked as an entertaining and alarming account of OpenSSL code quality and why the fork happened.
Bob Beck of OpenBSD describes the first month of LibreSSL, the fork aimed at cleaning up OpenSSL, including oddities found in the code base and why it was cleaned rather than audited cryptographically.
“The entire talk is amazing, even 7 years later.” (HN, 2021)
The immediate effect of Heartbleed was the OpenBSD folk [1] and Google [2] forking OpenSSL. There's a talk from Bob Beck of OpenBSD on pruning OpenSSL, it's pretty hilarious [3]. In that case open source was at least able to react appropriately, even if it didn't act preemptively. [1]: [link] [2]: [link] [3]: [this video]
This exemplifies one of the key reasons OpenBSD forked OpenSSL. For those who haven't seen it I'd recommend this presentation from Bob Beck[1], around the 10 minute mark he recounts fixing issues in the memory allocator which had been reported 4 years prior. Seems there's still a similar backlog sitting behind embargoes? [1] [this video]
I'd much rather have 1 really really good ssl library that everyone uses instead of 2 so-so ones. That's reasonable, but those aren't the options at play here. Not only because GnuTLS is already a thing, but the chances of OpenSSL becoming really really good are questionable. An OpenBSD guy gave a talk a few weeks back where he said that Heartbleed wasn't the reason for the split, it was the reason for digging into the code and realizing that OpenSSL under current leadership isn't capable of being a really really good option. [this video]
OpenBSD developer explains why OpenSSL was beyond saving
From Beck's talk[1] they are not reviewing the cryptography code, merely cleaning up the programming. They admit they don't yet have cryptography experts reviewing if the algorithms/implementations are doing what they are supposed to be doing and that they are in fact secure. [1] [this video]
Talk admits cleanup, not cryptographic review, so far
> Maybe I'm naieve, but I think perhaps the problems with OpenSSL had come to light a little bit sooner if all dangerous code had clearly been marked 'unsafe'. After listening to Bob Beck's talk[1], I think people did know how unsafe that code was but no one wanted to take a shot at fixing it until it all went bad. At 2:12 into the video (the Jon Snow slide), he explains why nobody looked (or admitted they looked)[2]. Code can be so bad in any language to discourage people from even attempting to figure out how it works. 1) [this video] 2) quotes "Why did WE not look" & "It is your parents talking about how you got made horrible"
Explains why nobody looked at the unsafe OpenSSL code
I meant my comment in the same spirit as a Southerner means "Bless your heart". I do believe Ted Unagnt's comment is included in the [this video] LibrSSL first 30 days along with quite a lot of other oddities.
LibreSSL first 30 days includes oddities and comments
> it was created as a direct response to Heartbleed The reason for the fork was not Heartbleed itself but the crazy memory allocation done behind the scenes. [this video]
Fork motivated by memory allocation, not Heartbleed itself
Big-endian Support for AMD64 - the explanation from the person in the crowd is something of a horror story that I think a lot of have witnessed in various forms. [this video]
Horror story from audience about big-endian support
> I've never seen a terrible huge C codebase libssl/openssl (before the rewrite/fixes especially)? Maybe doesn't qualify as huge? See eg: [this video] "LibreSSL with Bob Beck" (the first 30 days)
in the sense that it is utterly wrong, I suppose so... in reality, openssl appears to be a $1mm+/year for-profit fips consulting business [1] that appears to not care much about security, letting serious security issues sit in their bug tracker for years on end [1] [this video]
to be blunt: openssl is a festering heap maintained by a bunch of hacks. They let critical security bugs sit in their queue for 4 years while they sat on them [1]. They also actively worked to disable automated testing with malloc tooling; while obviously that won't catch all bugs, every bit helps. Finally, it contained rafts of code that, bluntly, my boss would probably fire me for checking in. [1] [this video]
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