Syrian Government Trying To Swipe Social Networking Passwords?
from the hamfisted dept
You may recall reports a few months ago from Tunisia, that indicated the government there had used a form of a man-in-the-middle attack to get usenames and passwords and access Facebook accounts of certain political opponents. It appears that Syria is trying to do the same thing. Reports have come out that Syria, via the Syrian Telecom Ministry, has kicked off a large man-in-the middle-attack on the HTTPS version of Facebook's site. While the EFF notes that the attack is amateurish, that doesn't mean it won't snare a potentially large number of people:The attack is not extremely sophisticated: the certificate is invalid in user's browsers, and raises a security warning. Unfortunately, because users see these warnings for many operational reasons that are not actual man-in-the-middle attacks, they have often learned to click through them reflexively. In this instance, doing so would allow the attackers access to and control of their Facebook account. The security warning is users' only line of defense.Either way, I'm a bit surprised that governments are using and promoting such ineffective means of spying on the populace. Of course, hopefully, this helps teach people to not just click through potential warnings, but also to get a better sense of how to keep their own computers secure and how to avoid such attacks.
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Filed Under: man in the middle, syria
Companies: facebook
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> Unfortunately, because users see these warnings for many operational reasons that are not actual man-in-the-middle attacks, they have often learned to click through them reflexively.
"D'oh."
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saw this coming
To make this attack work less obviously, they need to spoof not only the certificate but also the certificate authority (CA). Diverting traffic from the legitimate site into their honeypot makes that easier. That sounds like the kind of border router protocol hacking China is implicated in.
The arms race between freedom and censorship on the internet is only just warming up.
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