For years, privacy advocates have pushed developers of websites, virtual private network apps, and other cryptographic software to adopt the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic key exchange as a defense against surveillance from the US National Security Agency and other state-sponsored spies. Now, researchers are renewing their warning that a serious flaw in the way the key exchange is implemented is allowing the NSA to break and eavesdrop on trillions of encrypted connections. . The cost for adversaries is by no means modest. For commonly used 1024-bit keys, it would take about a year and cost a "few hundred million dollars" to crack just one of the extremely large prime numbers that form the starting point of a Diffie-Hellman negotiation. But it turns out that only a few primes are commonly used, putting the price well within the NSA's $11 billion-per-year budget dedicated to "groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities." . Experts in privacy are raising alarms over a vulnerability in the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol, which could enable the NSA to intercept and read encrypted communications.. Diffie-Hellman, Encryption Flaw, NSA Eavesdropping, Network Security. . Dave Wreski
Security biz RSA has reportedly warned its customers to stop using the default random-number generator in its encryption products - amid fears spooks can easily crack data secured by the algorithm.. All encryption systems worth their salt require a source of virtually unpredictable random values to create strong cryptographic keys and similar things; one such source is the NSA-co-designed pseudo-random-number generator Dual_EC_DRBG, or the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator, which is well known for being cryptographically weak: six years ago it was claimed that someone had crippled the design, effectively creating a backdoor [PDF] so that encryption systems that relied on it could be easily cracked. The link for this article located at The Register UK is no longer available. . RSA cautions users about relying on the NSA's compromised random-number generator, essential for maintaining strong encryption measures.. RSA Encryption, Dual_EC_DRBG, Cryptographic Security, Random Number Generation, Secure Algorithms. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Russian encryption specialist ElcomSoft has discovered flaws in Nikon's systems for ensuring that images have not been tampered with.. The flaw in Nikon's Image Authentication System creates a means to produce forged pictures that would successfully pass validation checks. The security weakness uncovered by ElcomSoft revolves around cryptographic shortcomings in how the secure image signing key is handled by Nikon digital cameras. The shortcoming created a means for researchers to extract the original signing key from a Nikon camera. This, in turn, facilitated the creating of manipulated images with a fully valid authentication signature, as explained in greater detail here. The link for this article located at The Register UK is no longer available. . Canon's Photo Verification vulnerability enables counterfeit photos to be validated, threatening digital authenticity.. Nikon Image Security, Authentication Flaws, Tampering Risks, Cryptographic Weaknesses. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
The MD5CRK project seeks to prove empirally that MD5 is a hash algorithm that exhibits the not-so-cryptographically-sound property of collisions. This has already been proven theoretically, but nobody really paid attention, so this distributed computing project was created. . . . . The MD5CRK project seeks to prove empirally that MD5 is a hash algorithm that exhibits the not-so-cryptographically-sound property of collisions. This has already been proven theoretically, but nobody really paid attention, so this distributed computing project was created. While many people think hash algorithms are just used to create entries in /etc/shadow, MD5 is used in many applications of cryptography -- from SSL to IDS software to digital dignatures. This is despite published weaknesses and better (and freely available) drop-in replacements. . The MD5CRK project seeks to prove empirally that MD5 is a hash algorithm that exhibits the not-so-cr. md5crk, project, seeks, prove, empirally, algorithm, exhibits, not-so-cr. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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