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Comment by masswerk | Hacker News Reader

I know, this may be unpopular in context, but are there any updates on the Estonian ID-cards?

News as of November were that they were (temporarily) locked-down [1] and are to be reissued until next March [2] in reaction to the RSA related security flaws [3] in the libraries bundled with the Infineon chip. Is this even an issue, or is everyone using a phone app, instead of the cards, anyway?

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/03/estonian_e_id_lockd...

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41858583

[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/security_flaw...

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Most people who use ID card every day have updated certs remotely or went to police office. I would say government handled it pretty well.

Problematic was communication with card maker Gemalto, who didn't inform Estonia about security flaws properly. Gemalto was informed by researchers in March. These researchers informed Estonian government in August. Few days after that prime minister announced security problems.

Things would have been a lot of easier if Gemalto didn't hide the problem from the government.

Chances are that the contractual arrangements that routinely exist between governments and contractors like Gemalto make "blameless post mortems" non-profitable. It's a tricky thing to do right, because you do want to have accountability in the contract.

Governments (rightly) want contractors like this as experts-on-tap in the technology under consideration. But what you really want is not exactly a provider of the technology, but rather an advisor or partner in the process of implementing your process. I don't think we know how to structure a non-nepotistic relationship of that kind.

That's usually why projects of this size have multiple parties involved aside from directly contracting with the vendor.

As much as it's easy to hate on the Big4 consulting companies, they exist for this reason among others (some of which have more to do with how to grease the skids with pork).

Most people I interact with (here in EE) were not too much affected by the problem, since a lot of people actually use MobileID, with the crypto chip embedded in the SIM card of your smartphone, which was unaffected and available for like 10€ from each telco in Estonia. Saves you from lugging around a smartcard reader. Depending on your threat model, the fact that the PIN never enters computer memory is an advantage for MobileID, unless you prefer a proper PIN-pad reader.

We also have Smart-ID[1] now, a convenient alternative to Mobile-ID. Although not as widespread as Mobile-ID, most banks and government portals have already adopted it.

I personally prefer Smart-ID because of the low friction in getting started, compared to Mobile-ID where you have to get a SIM-card that supports it.

[1] https://www.smart-id.com/

It has to be said, however, that this is NOT a "legal" qualified digital identity or signing scheme, conceptually similar to any other commercial authentication tools like PIN calculators, codecards or what not. It is actually marketed as such and provided by the private sector.

The security assumptions for Smart-ID are far weaker than MobileID or ID-cards and actually no government institution will accept such signatures. You can sometimes use it for identity, for example the Tax Board allows you to authenticate via your bank, which in turn may support Smart-ID: https://www.emta.ee/eng

Since offering Mobile-ID actually costs a lot of money to banks (since there is no direct connection to the card via browser and a USB cable, you have to pay to use some API-s across SK.ee & telcos), it is the main motivation for developing it.

Conversely, it's a good tech demo of using the real power of the id card infrastructure, that is trust root federation. More of that kind of thinking could enable great things.

They released software that allowed you to update the certificates on your card.

They then gave a limited time frame for every one to migrate their cards over. Either with the software update or going to the police department and having them do it for you.

After the deadline they declared all older cards digitally invalid. Meaning that you can still use it as a physical ID but not for online auth or signing processes.

Not sure when physical replacements start shipping, but the latest companion software (https://id.ee) offers a pretty smooth online key regeneration feature.

Rolling out new physical cards in just a quarter of a year may be some feat. – Is there confidence in achieving this? Or is the key regeneration tool a complete replacement for the procedure?

The key regeneration is touted as a proper solution and the cards do not need to be replaced after the procedure. It takes advantage of ECDSA to circumvent the borked RSA.

https://github.com/open-eid/qesteidutil/commit/20ead85d31b0b...

There is a huge campaign going on with service points open even in shopping malls for people that do not manage the process at home. Initially there were some scaling problems, though..

Edit: to tell the truth, the information available in Estonia regarding the exact nature of the fix is still scarce. There has been some offhand remarks from RIA that the updater basically patches the microcode on the card to generate an EC keypair, but not a lot of details.. The basic premise that the new key is still generated on the card, still holds, apparently.

They asked for certificate updates to continue using the cards.

I don’t use them on a daily basis, because I use an app for authentication, much faster.

I updated the certificates using the tool they provide. Anyway I'm using the app most of the time.

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