What They’re Not Telling Us about the French Government’s Spoofed SSL Certificates

What They’re Not Telling Us about the French Government’s Spoofed SSL Certificates

In case you missed it, there was a bit of a row in the usually staid Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) world when the Government of France was caught red-handed spoofing some of Google’s Web sites with forged SSL certificates. The French claimed it was “human error,” and the mistake “had no consequences on the overall network security.” Sacrebleu!

The dustup, however, was not confined to Google. Microsoft indicated that the breach was possibly far wider, impacting Google Chrome on Windows, among other apps. Microsoft rushed out a fix, but not for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Sorry, all you Windows XP users out there – that secure Google site might not be from Google at all, and nobody is going to do anything about it.

Not only does this faux pas raise the stakes for Google’s Certificate Transparency project, but it also points out something far more sinister. After all, the NSA and Iran have also spoofed SSL certificates with compromised Certificate Authorities. In fact, it’s a relatively straightforward hack. So here’s the question: we know about France, the NSA, and Iran, but who is copying this attack that we don’t know about? After all, we only know about the ones that were caught. Where the French go, so goes the world. Can we trust PKI at all anymore?

Share the Post:
XDR solutions

The Benefits of Using XDR Solutions

Cybercriminals constantly adapt their strategies, developing newer, more powerful, and intelligent ways to attack your network. Since security professionals must innovate as well, more conventional endpoint detection solutions have evolved

AI is revolutionizing fraud detection

How AI is Revolutionizing Fraud Detection

Artificial intelligence – commonly known as AI – means a form of technology with multiple uses. As a result, it has become extremely valuable to a number of businesses across

AI innovation

Companies Leading AI Innovation in 2023

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been transforming industries and revolutionizing business operations. AI’s potential to enhance efficiency and productivity has become crucial to many businesses. As we move into 2023, several

data fivetran pricing

Fivetran Pricing Explained

One of the biggest trends of the 21st century is the massive surge in analytics. Analytics is the process of utilizing data to drive future decision-making. With so much of

kubernetes logging

Kubernetes Logging: What You Need to Know

Kubernetes from Google is one of the most popular open-source and free container management solutions made to make managing and deploying applications easier. It has a solid architecture that makes

ransomware cyber attack

Why Is Ransomware Such a Major Threat?

One of the most significant cyber threats faced by modern organizations is a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks have grown in both sophistication and frequency over the past few years, forcing

data dictionary

Tools You Need to Make a Data Dictionary

Data dictionaries are crucial for organizations of all sizes that deal with large amounts of data. they are centralized repositories of all the data in organizations, including metadata such as