man in the middle attack Archives

man in the middle attack

Heart Attack? Fixes For More Critical Holes In OpenSSL

June 5, 2014 Paul Roberts

Just a month after a critical security hole in OpenSSL dubbed “Heartbleed” captured headlines around the globe, The OpenSSL Foundation has issued an other critical software update fixing six more security holes, two of them critical. The Foundation issued its update on Thursday, saying that current versions of OpenSSL contain vulnerabilities that could be used to carry out “man in the middle” (or MITM) attacks against OpenSSL clients and servers. SSL VPN (virtual private network) products are believed to be especially vulnerable. Users of OpenSSL versions 0.9.8, 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 are all advised to update immediately. According to information released by the OpenSSL Foundation, an attacker using a carefully crafted handshake can force the use of “weak keying material in OpenSSL SSL/TLS clients and servers.” That could lay the groundwork for man-in-the-middle attacks in which an attacker positions herself between a vulnerable client and server, decrypting and modifying traffic as it passes through the attacker’s […]

Car Makers, Suppliers Going Their Own Way On Security

June 1, 2014 Paul Roberts

I was surprised to see a big feature story over at CNN.com this morning – given that the security of connected vehicles has no obvious link to LA Clippers owner Don Sterling, the on-going shakeup at the Veterans Administration or a tornado or other natural disaster. Still – there it is: “Your car is a giant computer – and it can be hacked.” The feature, by Jose Pagliery is solid enough – though it doesn’t break much new ground. He mentions the research by Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller at The Black Hat Briefings last year. He also talks to the folks over at Security Innovation. [Want more on security and connected vehicles? Check out our video: Insecure At Any Speed: Are Automakers Failing The Software Crash Test? ] The big take-away: automobiles are rife with old and outdated software and hardware, much of it lacking even basic security features like secure communications […]

History Suggests Heartbleed Will Continue To Beat

April 16, 2014 Paul Roberts

The SANS Internet Storm Center dialed down the panic on Monday, resetting the Infocon to “Green” and citing the increased awareness of the critical OpenSSL vulnerability known as Heartbleed as the reason. Still, the drumbeat of news about a serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL encryption software continued this week. Among the large-font headlines: tens of millions of Android mobile devices running version 4.1 of that mobile operating system (or “Jelly Bean”) use a vulnerable version of the OpenSSL software. Also: more infrastructure and web application players announced patches to address the Heartbleed vulnerability. They include virtualization software vendor VMWare, as well as cloud-based file sharing service Box. If history is any guide: at some point in the next week or two, the drumbeat will soften and, eventually, go silent or nearly so. But that hardly means the Heartbleed problem has gone away. In fact, if Heartbleed follows the same […]

The Heartbleed OpenSSL Flaw: What You Need To Know

April 8, 2014 Paul Roberts

There’s a serious vulnerability in most versions of the OpenSSL technology that requires an immediate update to avoid exposing sensitive information and Internet traffic to snooping. In response, the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC) has raised its InfoCon (threat) level to “Yellow,” indicating that…well…the Internet’s not as safe a place today as it was yesterday, before the vulnerability was released. Here’s what we know right now: + Researcher Neel Mehta of Google Security discovered the vulnerability, which was apparently introduced with a OpenSSL update in December, 2011, but only fixed with the release of OpenSSL 1.0.1g on Monday. + Dubbed “heartbleed” (thank the Codenomicon marketing department for that one), the vulnerability (CVE-2014-0160) is described as a TLS heartbeat read overrun. TLS stands for Transport Layer Security. According to OpenSSL.org, vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software have version numbers ranging from 1.0.1 and 1.0.2-beta. + Codenomicon described the vulnerability as an “implementation problem” […]

IoT Hackers Await Their Killer App

January 7, 2014 Paul Roberts

The next year will see the continued blurring of lines between the worlds of IT security and what we’ve come to think of as the ‘rest of our lives.’ But those who expect to see a large shift in malicious activity to the Internet of Things in 2014 will be disappointed. That, according to a report from the security firm Trend Micro, which argues that Internet of Things malware and attacks are still a ways off – as cyber criminals await a “killer app” that will boost adoption and provide a common platform to attack. The prediction is part of “Blurring Boundaries,” a 2014 outlook report from Trend that argues IoT threats are mostly future-tech. “While we certainly think that attacks on IoT devices and the underlying architecture will be a major area of attack in the future, that future will not be until 2015 and beyond” writes Robert McArdle, […]