SSL/TLS Vulnerability Details to be Released Friday
I'm getting a lot of emails asking about articles that ultimately reference this upcoming talk: "BEAST: Surprising crypto attack against HTTPS" (http://ekoparty.org/2011/juliano-rizzo.php)
I don't have any extra details. Anything that I write now will be unnecessary speculation. It sounds like it will be interesting; their presentation last year on Padded Oracle Attacks (the crypto Oracle, not the database) certainly was.
UPDATE: Dr J links us to "A CHALLENGING BUT FEASIBLE BLOCKWISE-ADAPTIVE
CHOSEN-PLAINTEXT ATTACK ON SSL" that may describe the attack. This attack requires that the attacker be able to sniff the traffic and run code on the victims machine to inject the chosen-plaintext into the stream.
My recommendation is still to wait until we see the details before formulating a response, but sight-unseen the following steps couldn't hurt:
- Users: Don't bank using someone else's wifi.
- Browser Authors: Update to support TLS 1.2
- Servers Admins: Configure to support TLS 1.2
Diginotar declared bankrupt
In the latest installment of this seemingly never-ending saga, a Dutch court in Haarlem (NL) declared DigiNotar bankrupt.
Read more:
- http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Haarlem/Nieuws/Pages/FaillissementDiginotarBV.aspx [Dutch]
- http://www.vasco.com/company/press_room/news_archive/2011/news_vasco_announces_bankruptcy_filing_by_diginotar_bv.aspx
The CA business is all about selling trust. After all a CA is supposed to be a trusted third party. Let's hope all the remaining ones get the right message: it's not about not getting caught being hacked. On the contrary: it's about doing the right thing once you have been hacked. Let's hope it leads to more transparency and public scrutiny of the CAs we trust explicitly or implicitly though the choice of some of our vendors.
--
Swa Frantzen -- Section 66
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