You might remember the article I wrote a couple of weeks back regarding the then recently found vulnerabilities of SSL 3.0 (TLS 1.0). Well, things just got real.
At the time, some researchers even went so far as to say that the vulnerability was only theoretical! Too theoretical to even worry about. The attack is described in detail:
It appears that the popular micro-blogging site Twitter first fell victim to the attack. The Register has the full story:
Now that the attack is in the wild, where are the patches?
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News, Security
CSRF, https, malicious websites, man in the middle, MITM, SSL, TLS
New SSL Security Issues: A vulnerability allowing hijacking of an already connected SSL 3.0 (TLS 1.0) sessions has been disclosed.
SSL technology provides an end-to-end secure communications tunnel used most commonly by the HTTPS protocol. This, most recent, vulnerability allows an attacker to insert text of their choice into the data-stream, even after the secure handshake has occurred. This is another security gap created by the standard’s renegotiation process that is intended to allow a new SSL connection to be established over an already connected SSL session.
SSL renegotiation is most useful in the following situations: when client authentication is required, to use a different set of encryption and decryption keys, or when the server wants to switch encryption or hashing algorithms. For now, some patches have been made available that disable this functionality completely in order to avoid the vulnerability.
It will probably be a few weeks until patches including a reworked renegotiation mechanism appear. Most importantly, a fix has been in the works (by most browser vendors) but it won’t be out until the respective vendors finish their work. So, don’t depend on SSL until your browser is patched.
More Information:
News, Security
https, malicious websites, man in the middle, SSL, TLS
