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Category — SSL TLS security
New Raccoon Attack Could Let Attackers Break SSL/TLS Encryption

New Raccoon Attack Could Let Attackers Break SSL/TLS Encryption

Sep 10, 2020
A group of researchers has detailed a new timing vulnerability in Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that could potentially allow an attacker to break the encryption and read sensitive communication under specific conditions. Dubbed " Raccoon Attack ," the server-side attack exploits a side-channel in the cryptographic protocol (versions 1.2 and lower) to extract the shared secret key used for secure communications between two parties. "The root cause for this side channel is that the TLS standard encourages non-constant-time processing of the DH secret," the researchers explained their findings in a paper. "If the server reuses ephemeral keys, this side channel may allow an attacker to recover the premaster secret by solving an instance of the Hidden Number Problem." However, the academics stated that the vulnerability is hard to exploit and relies on very precise timing measurements and on a specific server configuration to be exploitable. ...
Maximum Lifespan of SSL/TLS Certificates is 398 Days Starting Today

Maximum Lifespan of SSL/TLS Certificates is 398 Days Starting Today

Sep 01, 2020
Starting today, the lifespan of new TLS certificates will be limited to 398 days, a little over a year, from the previous maximum certificate lifetime of 27 months (825 days). In a move that's meant to boost security, Apple, Google, and Mozilla are set to reject publicly rooted digital certificates in their respective web browsers that expire more than 13 months (or 398 days) from their creation date. The lifespan of SSL/TLS certificates has shrunk significantly over the last decade. In 2011, the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum), a consortium of certification authorities and vendors of browser software, imposed a limit of five years, bringing down the certificate validity period from 8-10 years. Subsequently, in 2015, it was cut short to three years and to two years again in 2018. Although the proposal to reduce certificate lifetimes to one year was shot down in a ballot last September , the measure has been overwhelmingly supported by the browser...
Want to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management? Start Here!

Want to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management? Start Here!

Dec 05, 2024Attack Surface / Exposure Management
Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...
Explained: How New 'Delegated Credentials' Boosts TLS Protocol Security

Explained: How New 'Delegated Credentials' Boosts TLS Protocol Security

Nov 06, 2019
Mozilla, in partnership with Facebook, Cloudflare, and other IETF community members, has announced technical specifications for a new cryptographic protocol called " Delegated Credentials for TLS ." Delegated Credentials for TLS is a new simplified way to implement "short-lived" certificates without sacrificing the reliability of secure connections. In short, the new TLS protocol extension aims to effectively prevent the misuse of stolen certificates by reducing their maximum validity period to a very short span of time, such as a few days or even hours. Before jumping into how Delegated Credentials for TLS works, you need to understand the current TLS infrastructure, and of course, about the core problem in it because of which we need Delegated Credentials for TLS. The Current TLS Infrastructure More than 70% of all websites on the Internet today use TLS certificates to establish a secure line of HTTPS communication between their servers and visitors, ...
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Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari Plans to Disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in 2020

Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari Plans to Disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in 2020

Oct 15, 2018
All major web browsers, including Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox, altogether today announced to soon remove support for TLS 1.0 (20-year-old) and TLS 1.1 (12-year-old) communication encryption protocols. Developed initially as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is an updated cryptographic protocol used to establish a secure and encrypted communications channel between clients and servers. There are currently four versions of the TLS protocol—TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 ( latest )—but older versions, TLS 1.0 and 1.1, are known to be vulnerable to a number of critical attacks, such as  POODLE  and  BEAST . Since TLS implementation in all major web browsers and applications supports downgrade negotiation process, it leaves an opportunity for attackers to exploit weaker protocols even if a server supports the latest version. All Major Web Browsers Will Remove TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 Su...
DROWN Attack — More than 11 Million OpenSSL HTTPS Websites at Risk

DROWN Attack — More than 11 Million OpenSSL HTTPS Websites at Risk

Mar 01, 2016
A new deadly security vulnerability has been discovered in OpenSSL that affects more than 11 Million modern websites and e-mail services protected by an ancient, long deprecated transport layer security protocol, Secure Sockets Layer (SSLv2). Dubbed DROWN , the highly critical security hole in OpenSSL was disclosed today as a low-cost attack that could decrypt your sensitive, secure HTTPS communications, including passwords and credit card details… ...and that too in a matter of hours or in some cases almost immediately, a team of 15 security researchers from various universities and the infosec community warned Tuesday. Here's what the security researchers said: "We've been able to execute the attack against OpenSSL versions that are vulnerable to CVE-2016-0703 in under a minute using a single PC. Even for servers that do not have these particular bugs, the general variant of the attack, which works against any SSLv2 server, can be conducted in under 8 hour...
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

Jan 29, 2016
The OpenSSL Foundation has released the promised patch for a high severity vulnerability in its cryptographic code library that let attackers obtain the key to decrypt HTTPS-based communications and other Transport layer security (TLS) channels. OpenSSL is an open-source library that is the most widely used in applications for secure data transfers. Most websites use it to enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. However, after serious security vulnerabilities were discovered in OpenSSL over the last few years, the crypto library has been under much investigation by security researchers. The latest bugs affect OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, which has been patched in new releases of OpenSSL, versions 1.0.1r and 1.0.2f . The team has patched two separate vulnerabilities in OpenSSL. The " high severity " bug, identified as CVE-2016-0701 , addresses issues in the implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchang...
SSL Encryption — Securing Internet of Things (IoT)

SSL Encryption — Securing Internet of Things (IoT)

Aug 06, 2015
Internet of Things (IoT) with the purpose of providing convenience to the users enabled every object in the universe to be as smart as a whip. By assigning IP address to all sorts of devices, ranging from household appliances, machines, medical devices and sensors to other day-to-day objects, and putting them all together on a standardised network is a common Internet of Things (IoT) practice. Is Internet of Things Secure? In my previous articles, I gave you a glance of the most vulnerable smart cities that are increasingly adopting devices connected to the Internet in an attempt to add convenience and ease to daily activities. By 2020, there will be more than 45 Billion Internet-connected devices that will transform the way we live and work. The bottom line: As the number of IoT enabled systems increases, the complexity of handling them increases; leading to an introduction of new risk and vulnerabilities associated with them. Security of Internet of...
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate

Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate

Jul 09, 2015
The mysterious security vulnerability in the widely used OpenSSL code library is neither HeartBleed nor FREAK, but it's critical enough to be patched by sysadmins without any delay. OpenSSL Foundation released the promised patch against a high severity vulnerability in OpenSSL versions 1.0.1n and 1.0.2b, resolving a certificate forgery issue in the implementations of the crypto protocol. The critical vulnerability could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, virtual private networks, or e-mail servers, and snoop on encrypted Internet traffic. The vulnerability, ( CVE-2015-1793 ), is due to a problem lies in the certificate verification process. An error in its implementation skipped some security checks on new, untrusted certificates. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could circumvent certificate warnings that enable them to force applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate Certificat...
OpenSSL to Patch Undisclosed High Severity Vulnerability this Thursday

OpenSSL to Patch Undisclosed High Severity Vulnerability this Thursday

Jul 07, 2015
Attention Please! System Administrator and anyone relying on OpenSSL should be prepared to switch to a new version of the open-source crypto library that will be released this Thursday 9th July. OpenSSL is a widely used open-source software library that provides encrypted Internet connections using SSL/TLS for majority of websites, as well as other secure services. The new versions of OpenSSL crypto library, versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p , address a single security vulnerability classified as "high severity," the OpenSSL Project Team announced on Monday. There isn't more details about the mystery security vulnerability available yet, except for the fact that the security vulnerability doesn't affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 series. "The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the forthcoming release of OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p," developer Mark J Cox announced in a mailing list note published yesterday. "These releases will be ...
LogJam — This New Encryption Glitch Puts Internet Users at Risk

LogJam — This New Encryption Glitch Puts Internet Users at Risk

May 20, 2015
After HeartBleed , POODLE and FREAK  encryption flaws, a new encryption attack has been emerged over the Internet that allows attackers to read and modify the sensitive data passing through encrypted connections, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of HTTPS-protected sites, mail servers, and other widely used Internet services. A team of security researchers has discovered a new attack, dubbed Logjam , that allows a man-in-the-middle (MitM) to downgrade encrypted connections between a user and a Web or email server to use extremely weaker 512-bit keys which can be easily decrypted. Johns Hopkins crypto researcher Matthew Green along with security experts from the University of Michigan and the French research institute Inria has discovered LogJam a few months ago and published a technical report that details the flaw. Logjam — Cousin of FREAK Logjam encryption flaw sounds just like FREAK vulnerability disclosed at the beginning of March.  ...
13-year-old SSL/TLS Weakness Exposing Sensitive Data in Plain Text

13-year-old SSL/TLS Weakness Exposing Sensitive Data in Plain Text

Mar 28, 2015
The most popular and widely used encryption scheme has been found to be weaker with the disclosure of a new attack that could allow attackers to steal credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data from transmissions protected by SSL ( secure sockets layer ) and TLS ( transport layer security ) protocols. The attack leverages a 13-year-old weakness in the less secure Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) encryption algorithm , which is the most commonly used stream cipher for protecting 30 percent of TLS traffic on the Internet today. BAR-MITZVAH ATTACK The attack, dubbed " Bar-Mitzvah ", can be carried out even without conducting man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) between the client and the server, as in the case of most of the previous SSL hacks. Itsik Mantin, a researcher from security firm Imperva, presented his findings in a research titled, " Attacking SSL when using RC4 " at the Black Hat Asia security conference Thursday in Singapore. Bar Mitzv...
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