Dell computers shipping with potentially dangerous root certificate authority

At least some Dell laptops are shipping with a trusted root certificate authority pre-installed, something that those who discovered the CA are comparing to the Superfish adware installed on Lenovo machines that left them open to man-in the-middle attacks.

Called eDellRoot, the trusted root CA comes as part of the standard software load on new Dell machines. A Reddit contributor who uses rotocowboy for a screen name says the implications could be dire. “For those that are unfamiliar with how this works,” he writes, “a network attacker could use this CA to sign his or her own fake certificates for use on real websites and an affected Dell user would be none the wiser unless they happened to check the website's certificate chain. This CA could also be used to sign code to run on people's machines, but I haven't tested this out yet.”

The eDellRoot certificate is intended for all purposes, meaning its privileges are more extensive than a DigiCert certificate also installed on the machine being examined by another Dell owner, according to programmer Joe Nord, who also owns a Dell. “I'm having a tough time coming up with a good reason that Dell Computer Corporation needs to be a trusted root CA on my computer,” Nord writes in his blog.

Dell hasn’t responded yet to a request for an explanation of eDellRoot and whether customers should worry. This story will be updated when it does.

However, the DellCares Twitter account responded to rotocowboy promising to check into his concerns. “We understand your situation. We will reach out to our product group team and let you know as to why eDellroot is present,” the tweet says.

It’s not clear whether the CA was installed by Dell or by a partner allowed to pre-install software on the machine or by an attacker who has infiltrated Dell’s production line.

Nord’s post also includes a screenshot of information about the certificate that says, “You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate.” Nord writes: “As a user computer, I should NEVER have a private key that corresponds to a root CA. Only the certificate issuing computer should have a private key and that computer should be ... very well protected!”

He writes that it’s impossible to tell whether Dell itself installed the certificate. “Root certificates are always self-signed, so all I really know is that eDellRoot says eDellRoot is legit,” Nord says. “Where it breaks down is that the private key IS PRESENT on my computer and that means ... bad.”

Nord and rotocowboy both liken the potential danger of eDellRoot to the Superfish adware that was discovered on new Lenovo computers earlier this year. Superfish proxied HTTPS connections between Web sites and users’ machines, which allowed insertion of data into any page the machine was downloading. In addition, Superfish used the same certificate across all Lenovo machines and the private key for the certificate was easy to capture.

Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer for F-Secure, posted on Twitter linking Superfish to eDellRoot: “Note: Dell created their #eDellRoot certificate six months after Lenovo's Superfish scandal hit the news. No lessons learned.”