It's strongly suspected that Iranian hackers were involved in an attempt to muscle the Internet's Secure Socket Layer (SSL), which uses digital certificates to confirm identities, TGDaily reports. A successful hack of the Web's SSL would have allowed Iran to impersonate popular services and products like Google, Yahoo, Skype, Mozilla, and even Microsoft. Comodo, which is one of the firms that hands our certificates, says its computers were hacked into.
"The attacker was well prepared and knew in advance what he was trying to achieve," Comodo said. "He seemed to have a list of targets that he knew he wanted to obtain certificates for, was quickly able to generate the CSRs for these certificates and submit the orders to our system so that the certificates would be produced and made available to him.
"Although they requested nine certificates, we do not know if they received all of these certificates. We know that they definitely received one of the certificates."
This is scary stuff, and as a security expert at Sophos points out, Comodo's security breach puts consumers at risk. A Microsoft Security Advisory points out that "these certificates may be used to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks against all Web browser users including users of Internet Explorer."
Since the attack, Comodo has revoked the certificates.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks