{"id":264651,"date":"2018-06-15T10:13:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T08:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=264651"},"modified":"2018-06-15T10:14:39","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T08:14:39","slug":"security-flaw-let-attackers-forge-pgp-signatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/264651-security-flaw-let-attackers-forge-pgp-signatures.html","title":{"rendered":"Security flaw let attackers forge PGP signatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Security researcher Marcus Brinkmann has discovered a security flaw in GnuPG which potentially allowed attackers to spoof the digital signatures of nearly any person with a public key, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2018\/06\/decades-old-pgp-bug-allowed-hackers-to-spoof-just-about-anyones-signature\/\">Ars Technica reported<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Dubbed SigSpoof, Brinkmann said the vulnerability has the potential to affect a large part of the web&#8217;s core infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;GnuPG is not only used for email security, but also to secure backups, software updates in distributions, and source code in version control systems like Git,&#8221; said Brinkmann.<\/p>\n<p>Indexed as\u00a0CVE-2018-12020, the flaw affects GnuPG only when it enables its verbose setting, which is typically used in troubleshooting.<\/p>\n<p>While verbose mode was not enabled by default in vulnerable programs, several recommended configurations listed online have it turned on.<\/p>\n<p>With verbose mode enabled, the Brinkmann&#8217;s proof-of-concept <a href=\"https:\/\/neopg.io\/blog\/gpg-signature-spoof\/#proof-of-concept-ii-signature-and-encryption-spoof-enigmail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>attack<\/strong><\/a> works by hiding metadata in an encrypted message which tricks applications to treat it as if the signature has been verified.<\/p>\n<p>Programs like Enigmail and GPGTools then cause email applications such as Thunderbird or Apple Mail to incorrectly show that an email was cryptographically signed.\u00a0All the attacker needs to forge a digital signature is to have a public key or key ID.<\/p>\n<p>SigSpoof has been patched in GnuPG version 2.2.8, Enigmail 2.0.7, GPGTools 2018.3, and Python GnuPG 0.4.3.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/259287-twitter-testing-encrypted-messaging-feature.html\">Twitter testing encrypted messaging feature<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Security researcher Marcus Brinkmann has discovered a security flaw in GnuPG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":72574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51653,51655,51657],"class_list":["post-264651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-gnupg","tag-pretty-good-privacy-pgp","tag-sigspoof"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264673,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264651\/revisions\/264673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}