Attention please: This article contains some pretty negative connotations about the software shipped with the TRENDnet TK-IP101 KVM-over-IP product. While I will not remove what I have written, I have to say that TRENDnet went lengths to support me in getting things done, including allowing be to decompile and re-release their Java software in a fixed form under the free GNU General Public license. Please [read this] to learn more. This is extremely nice, and so it shall be stated before you read anything bad about this product, so you can see things in perspective! And no, TRENDnet has not asked me to post this paragraph, those are my own words entirely.

I thought that being able to manage my server out-of-band would be a good idea. It does sound good, right? Being able to remotely control it even if the kernel has crashed and being able to remotely access everything down to the BIOS level. A job for a KVM-over-IP switch. So I got this slightly old [TK-IP101] from TRENDnet. Turns out that wasn’t the smartest move, and it’s actually a 400€ piece of hardware. The box itself seems pretty ok at first, connecting to your KVM switch fabric or a single server via PS/2, USB and VGA. Plus, you can hook up a local PS/2 keyboard and mouse too. Offering what was supposed to be highly secure SSL PKI autentication via server+client certificates, so that only clients with the proper certificate may connect plus a web interface, this sounded really good!

TRENDnet TK-IP101

It all breaks down when it comes to the software though. First of all, the guide for certificate creation that is supposed to be found on the CD that comes with the box is just not there. Also, the XCA software TRENDnet suggests one should use was also missing. Not good. Luckily, the software is open source and can be downloaded from the [XCA SourceForge project]. It’s basically a graphical OpenSSL front end. Create a PEM-encoded root certificate, PEM-encoded server certificate and a PKCS#12 client certificate, the latter signed by the root cert. So much for that. Oh, and I uploaded that TRENDnet XCA guide for you in case it’s missing on your CD too, its a bit different for the newer version of XCA, but just keep in mind to create keys beforehand and to use certificate requests instead of certificates. You then need to sign the requests with the root certificate. With that information plus the guide you should be able to manage certificate creation:

• [How to Generate KLE Certificates usign XCA]

But it doesn’t end there. First I tried the Windows based viewer utility that comes with its own certificate import tool. Import works, but the tool will not do client+server authentication. What it WILL do before terminating itself is this:

TK-IP101 IPViewer.exe bug

I really tried to fix this. I even ran it on Linux with Wine just to do an strace on it, looking for failing open() calls. Nothing. So I thought… Why not try the second option, the Java Viewer that goes by the name of KViewer.jar? Usually I don’t install Java, but why not try it out with Oracles Java 1.7u60, eh? Well:

So yeah. What the hell happened there? It took me days to determine the exact cause, but I’ll cut to the chase: With Java 1.6u29, Oracle introduced multiple changes in the way SSL/TLS worked, also due to the disclosure of the BEAST vulnerability. When testing, I found that the software would work fine when run with JRE 1.6u27, but not with later versions. Since Java code is pretty easily decompiled (thanks fly out to Martin A. for pointing that out) and the Viewer just came as a JAR file, I thought I’d embark on the adventure of decompiling Java code using the [Java Decompiler]:

Java Decompiler decompiling KViewer.jar’s Classes

This results in surprisingly readable code. That is, if you’re into Java. Which I am not. But yeah. The Java Decompiler is pretty convenient as it allows you to decompile all classes within a JAR and to extract all other resources along with the generated *.java files. And those I imported into a Java development environment I knew, Eclipse Luna.

Eclipse Luna

Eclipse Luna (using a JDK 7u60) immediately complained about 15 or 16 errors and about 60 warnings. Mostly that was missing primitive declarations and other smaller things that even I managed to fix, got rid even of the warnings. But the SSL bug persisted in my Java 7 build just as it did before. See the following two traces, tracing SSL and handshaking errors, one working ok on JRE 1.6u27, and one broken on JRE 1.7u60:

• Working fine on JRE 1.6u27
• Breakage on JRE 1.7u60
  

So first I got some ideas from stuff [posted here at Oracle], and added the following two system properties in varying combinations directly in the Main class of KViewer.java:

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public static void main(String[] paramArrayOfString)
{
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                        */
  /* This enables insecure TLS renegotiation as per CVE-2009-3555  */
  /* in interoperable mode.                                        */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowUnsafeRenegotiation", "false");
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowLegacyHelloMessages", "true");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------- */
  KViewer localKViewer = new KViewer();
  localKViewer.mainArgs = paramArrayOfString;
  localKViewer.init();
}

public static void main(String[] paramArrayOfString)
{
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                        */
  /* This enables insecure TLS renegotiation as per CVE-2009-3555  */
  /* in interoperable mode.                                        */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowUnsafeRenegotiation", "false");
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowLegacyHelloMessages", "true");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------- */
  KViewer localKViewer = new KViewer();
  localKViewer.mainArgs = paramArrayOfString;
  localKViewer.init();
}

This didn’t really do any good though, especially since “interoperable” mode should work anyway and is being set as the default. But today I found [this information on an IBM site]!

It seems that Oracle fixed the BEAST vulnerability in Java 1.6u29 amongst other things. They seem to have done this by disallowing renegotiations for affected implementations of CBCs (Cipher-Block Chaining). Now, this KVM switch can negotiate only a single cipher: SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA. See that “CBC” in there? Yeah, right. And it got blocked, because the implementation in that aged KVM box is no longer considered safe. Since you can’t just switch to a stream-based RC4 cipher, Java has no other choice but to drop the connection! Unless…  you do this:

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public static void main(String[] paramArrayOfString)
{
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                             */
  /* This disables CBC protection, thus re-opening the connections'     */
  /* BEAST vulnerability. No way around this due to a highly restricted */
  /* KLE ciphersuite. Without this fix, TLS connections with client     */
  /* certificates and PKI authentication will fail!                     */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("jsse.enableCBCProtection", "false");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                        */
  /* This enables insecure TLS renegotiation as per CVE-2009-3555  */
  /* in interoperable mode.                                        */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowUnsafeRenegotiation", "false");
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowLegacyHelloMessages", "true");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------- */
  KViewer localKViewer = new KViewer();
  localKViewer.mainArgs = paramArrayOfString;
  localKViewer.init();
}

public static void main(String[] paramArrayOfString)
{
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                             */
  /* This disables CBC protection, thus re-opening the connections'     */
  /* BEAST vulnerability. No way around this due to a highly restricted */
  /* KLE ciphersuite. Without this fix, TLS connections with client     */
  /* certificates and PKI authentication will fail!                     */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("jsse.enableCBCProtection", "false");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------------ */
  /* Added by the GAT from http://wp.xin.at                        */
  /* This enables insecure TLS renegotiation as per CVE-2009-3555  */
  /* in interoperable mode.                                        */
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowUnsafeRenegotiation", "false");
  java.lang.System.setProperty("sun.security.ssl.allowLegacyHelloMessages", "true");
  /* ------------------------------------------------------------- */
  KViewer localKViewer = new KViewer();
  localKViewer.mainArgs = paramArrayOfString;
  localKViewer.init();
}

Setting the jsse.enableCBCProtection property to false before the negotiation / handshake will make your code tolerate CBC ciphers vulnerable to BEAST attacks. Recompiling KViewer with all the code fixes including this one make it work fine with 2-way PKI authentication using a client certificate on both Java 1.7u60 and even Java 1.8u5. I have tested this using the 64-Bit x86 VMs on CentOS 6.5 Linux as well as on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64.

De-/Recompiled & “fixed” KViewer.jar connecting to a machine much older even than its own crappy code

I fear I cannot give you the modified source code, as TRENDnet would probably hunt me down, but I’ll give you the compiled byte code at least, the JAR file, so you can use it yourself. If you wanna check out the code, you could just decompile it yourself, losing only my added comments: [KViewer.jar]. (ZIPped, fixed / modified to work on Java 1.7+)

Both the modified code and the byte code “binary” JAR have been returned to TRENDnet in the context of my open support ticket there. I hope they’ll welcome it with open arms instead of suing me for decompiling their Java viewer.

In reality, even this solution is nowhere near perfect. While it does at least allow you to run modern Java runtime environments instead of highly insecure older ones plus using pretty secure PKI auth, it still doesn’t fix the man-in-the-middle-attack issues at hand. TRENDnet should fix their KVM firmware, enable it to run the TLSv1.2 protocol with AES256 Galois-Counter-Mode ciphers (GCM) and fix the many, many problems in their viewer clients. The TK-IP101 being an end-of-life product means that this is likely never gonna happen though.

It does say a lot when the consumer has to hack up the software of a supposedly high-security 400€ networking hardware piece by himself just to make it work properly.

I do still hope that TRENDnet will react positively to this, as they do not offer a modern replacement product to supersede the TK-IP101.