Articles

TLS attacks and anti-censorship hacks

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Despite safeguards in TLS 1.3, China is still censoring HTTPS communications, according to a new report. There are workarounds to this. Plus, how TLS can be used as an attack vector.
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The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol emerged as a focal point of attention for the information security world during August as the Chinese government updated its censorship tool, the Great Firewall of China, to block HTTPS traffic with the latest TLS version. The topic got even more attention when security researchers offered workarounds to TLS-enabled censorship and demonstrated potential TLS-based attacks at DEF CON: Safe Mode.

TLS is a widely adopted protocol that enables privacy and data security for internet communications, mostly by encrypting communications between web applications and servers. TLS 1.3, the most recent version, was published in 2018. TLS is the foundation of the more familiar HTTPS technology and hides communications from uninvited third parties, even as it does not necessarily hide the identity of the users communicating.

TLS 1.3 introduced something called encrypted server name indication (ESNI), which makes it difficult for third parties, such as nation-states, to censor HTTPS communications. In early August, three organizations — iYouPort, the University of Maryland and the Great Firewall Report — issued a joint report about the apparent blocking of TLS connections with the ESNI extension in China.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Articles

Hybrid cloud complexity, rush to adopt pose security risks,…

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Organizations rushing to adopt hosted cloud infrastructure alongside on-premises systems might not fully understand or address potential security threats.
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As enterprises race to adopt cloud technology, they also encounter a combination of new possible threats from the rapid and frequently unorganized deployment of different cloud-based technologies. Particular concerns surround the adoption of so-called hybrid cloud technologies, Sean Metcalf, founder of cloud security advisory company Trimarc told the attendees of DEF CON Safe Mode last week.

The hybrid cloud is a blend of on-premises infrastructure combined with cloud-hosted infrastructure (infrastructure-as-a-service, or IaaS) and services (software-as-a-service, or SaaS). The IaaS providers are usually giants such as Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure or Google’s Cloud Platform. Extending on-premises data centers into the cloud basically means the cloud is effectively operating as a virtualization host like VMware or Microsoft Hyper V, Metcalf said.

Because of this effective virtualization, any attacks that are associated with those cloud data center elements are similar to how you would attack VMware and Hyper V “but with the additional overhead of ‘well, it’s hosted by Microsoft or it’s hosted by Amazon, or it’s hosted Google,’” Metcalf tells CSO.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.