Security

Vol. 12 No. 8 – August 2014

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Security

Why Is It Taking So Long to Secure Internet Routing?:
Routing security incidents can still slip past deployed security defenses.

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is the glue that sticks the Internet together, enabling data communications between large networks operated by different organizations. BGP makes Internet communications global by setting up routes for traffic between organizations - for example, from Boston University’s network, through larger ISPs (Internet service providers) such as Level3, Pakistan Telecom, and China Telecom, then on to residential networks such as Comcast or enterprise networks such as Bank of America.

by Sharon Goldberg

Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market:
Assessing legal and technical solutions to secure HTTPS

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) has evolved into the de facto standard for secure Web browsing. Through the certificate-based authentication protocol, Web services and Internet users first authenticate one another ("shake hands") using a TLS/SSL certificate, encrypt Web communications end-to-end, and show a padlock in the browser to signal that a communication is secure. In recent years, HTTPS has become an essential technology to protect social, political, and economic activities online.

by Axel Arnbak, Hadi Asghari, Michel Van Eeten, Nico Van Eijk

Certificate Transparency:
Public, verifiable, append-only logs

On August 28, 2011, a mis-issued wildcard HTTPS certificate for google.com was used to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack against multiple users in Iran. The certificate had been issued by a Dutch CA (certificate authority) known as DigiNotar, a subsidiary of VASCO Data Security International. Later analysis showed that DigiNotar had been aware of the breach in its systems for more than a month - since at least July 19. It also showed that at least 531 fraudulent certificates had been issued. The final count may never be known, since DigiNotar did not have records of all the mis-issued certificates. On September 20, 2011, DigiNotar was declared bankrupt.

by Ben Laurie