New TLS Attack Takes the S out of HTTPS

Mar 11, 2014

Vulnerability affects many Linux web servers

How safe is your encrypted web session?
 
Security experts have uncovered a bug in the GnuTLS library that would allow an attacker to launch a man-in-the-middle attack to hijack a secure connection with a web server that is using the (HTTPS) protocol. According to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (CVE-2014-0092), "lib/x509/verify.c in GnuTLS before 3.1.22 and 3.2.x before 3.2.12 does not properly handle unspecified errors when verifying X.509 certificates from SSL servers, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof servers via a crafted certificate."
GnuTLS is an open source library that provides applications with access to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) services. The GnuTLS package is used widely throughout the Linux world and is included by default with many popular Linux distributions. The GnuTLS project advises users to "upgrade to the latest GnuTLS version (3.2.12 or 3.1.22), or apply the patch for GnuTLS 2.12.x." 

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