2015: The Year Of 'Attacks on Trust'

Looking back over 2015, Venafi Labs captured data on a steady stream of cyberattacks involving the misuse of keys and certificates which threaten the underlying foundation of trust for everything that is IP-based. These “attacks on trust,” as we call them, also show how keys and certificates have become interwoven into many aspects of our business and personal lives. From airline Internet services to laptop software to government certificate authorities (CAs) to apps for your car or your fridge to Google and banking sites, keys and certificates secure all our online transactions.  

Why is this important? If organizations cannot safeguard the use of keys and certificates for communication, authentication, and authorization, the resulting loss of trust will cost them their customers and potentially their business. 

Here is a sample of nine notable security incidents the Venafi Labs threat research team followed:

1.    Gogo dished up Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks

To kick off the year, a Google Chrome engineer discovered that the Gogo Inflight Internet service was issuing fake Google certificates. Gogo claimed it was trying to prevent online video streaming, but this practice ultimately exposed Gogo users to MITM attacks.

2.    Lenovo pre-installed Superfish malware on laptops

Lenovo found that an adware program it was pre-installing on laptops was making itself an unrestricted root certificate authority which allowed for MITM attacks on standard consumer PCs.

3.    CNNIC banned by Google and Mozilla

Google found unauthorized digital certificates for several of its domains issued by CNNIC, China’s main government-run CA, making CNNIC certificates untrustworthy and vulnerable to attack. Google, quickly followed by Mozilla, blocked all CNNIC authorized domains. In a 2015 Black Hat survey, Venafi found that while IT security professionals understand the risks associated with untrusted certificates, such as those issued by CNNIC, they do nothing to prevent them.

4.    St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank breached

The US bank discovered that hackers had compromised its domain name register. This allowed the hackers to successfully redirect users of the bank's online research services to fake websites set up by the hackers.

5.    New SSL/TLS vulnerability logjam exposed crypto weaknesses

Logjam exposed a problem with the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm, which allows protocols such as HTTPS, SSH, IPsec, and others to negotiate a shared key and create a secure connection. Identified by university researchers, the Logjam flaw allowed MITM attacks by downgrading vulnerable TLS connections.

6.    GM’s OnStar and other car apps hacked

A GM OnStar system hack that locks, unlocks, starts, and stops GM cars was made possible because the GM application did not properly validate security certificates. By planting a cheap, homemade WiFi hotspot device somewhere on the car’s body to capture commands sent from the user’s smartphone to the car, hackers could break into the car’s vulnerable system, take full control, and behave as the driver indefinitely. Similar weaknesses allowed hacks in iOS applications for BMW, Mercedes, and Chrysler.

7.    Major CAs issued compromised certificates for fake phishing websites

Netcraft recently issued new research that found fake banking websites using domain-validated SSL certificates issued by Symantec, Comodo, and GoDaddy.

8.    Samsung’s smart fridge hackable through Gmail

A security flaw found in Samsung’s IoT smart refrigerators allowed hackers to compromise Gmail credentials using MITM attacks because the fridge was not set up to validate SSL certificates.

9.    Symantec fired employees for issuing HTTPS certificates for fake Google sites

Several Symantec employees were fired for issuing unauthorized certificates that made it possible to fake HTTPS Google sites. The certificates were found by Google’s Certificate Transparency project.

This list of attacks that leveraged stolen, compromised, and/or unprotected cryptographic keys and digital certificates in 2015 highlights a wide range of potential impacts from attacks on trust, but is by no means a comprehensive list. In truth, many of these attacks go on undetected: cybercriminals use keys and certificates to bypass security controls and hide their actions.

Businesses need to understand that key and certificate management is not just an operations issue; it is critical to securing their networks, data, and trust relationships with customers and partners. The problem is compounded by the fact that most Global 5000 organizations blindly trust the keys and certificates deployed on their networks and use security controls designed to trust these encryption components.

There is an evil force out there in the cyber realm, lurking in the shadows that no one sees until it’s too late. Without the ability to tell friend vs. foe, good vs. bad in the digital realm, our global economy is in a perilous situation -- and this is a problem that’s not going to just disappear. Looking ahead into the New Year and beyond, we’ll only see the misuse of keys and certificates occur more and more, continuing to impact online trust across the globe.