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Re: [LUG] ssl cracked

 

Tom Potts wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/30/ssl_spoofing/

http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/

This link lists the certificate authorities trusted by Firefox that
issued MD5 certificates in July 2008.

Looks like Equifax RapidSSL is the only one of significance.

The owners of Equifax usually have a reissue policy - be interesting to
see if it applies here since presumably as soon as the CA's stop issuing
MD5 signed certificates the problem goes away (doesn't look like you
need to reissue the certificates themselves, just stop issuing new ones).

That said the security provided by SSL is pretty limited, since one only
needs control administrative emails for a domain for a short period to
obtain a valid SSL certificate. So great for ensuring the communication
is encrypted from browser to server, but of less value for ensuring the
server is who you thought it was.

The serious bit is the comments on SHA-1 - since MD5 is a minority
thing, but SHA-1 is used everywhere in the SSL architecture. If SHA-1 is
bust the bad guys may well start creating their own certificates (rather
than relying on others to sign them).

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