Attack to Gmail using DigiNotar SSL Certificate: Its effects to gmail users.

Gmail Attack by Hackers

Last Saturday/Sunday, the world-famous emailing system, GMail was attacked by some hackers who mainly targeted the Iranian Gmail users. Attackers could do that because they managed to get (more accurately we can say, they stolen) a valid SSL certificate issued for google.com domain.

Are you thinking that it a big news ? Well you might not be the hundred percent right. The bigger news is still to come. The targeted attack to Gmail system is only the tip of the iceberg. We should be taking some concrete steps to protect ourself before any of us becomes one of the victim in coming days.

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How Deep is the attack ?

It is not the only one certificate which hackers manged to get/steal originally issued to google domain. Security Analysts are saying that hackers have stolen more than 200 SSL certificates issued to several famous web sites.

As per DigiNotar, they revoked the certificate as soon as they came to know that the SSL certificate issued to google.com, actually did not mean for Google. They took almost seven days to identify this hacking attack before they revoked certificate issue to Google.com.

The question here is; are they not following some logging procedure during issuing a digital certificates? Are they not auditing the logs ?  If they would have audited the logs, they could have easily came to know about this hacking attack within a day of issuing the SSL certificate. The SSL issuing CA should understand that they in this market to sell Belief rather than any thing even an SSL certificate.

DigiNotar say that the moment they realized this attack, they revoked the compromised certificate. As per them this is the only certificate which they issued by mistake.   But how can we believe that there is only one certificate issued by them to hacker because they took seven days to identify a single certificate that it has been compromised. They may not be telling us about more or they may still be analyzing most of the other certificate which they issue in recent past.

 

Corrective Actions by Web Browser Companies

Mozilla and Google has already released the patches to their browser which users can download to help them safeguard from this attack. Microsoft has also issued patches for IE and also for Windows 2008 and Windows 7 (few other too) too. But they have not issued any patches for Windows XP and Windows 2003. As per Microsoft they will release it later.

Now a big question is, how much open we are to a future attacks, given the fact that hacker have stolen 200+ digicetal rtificates, which can easily make us fool to think that the site which we are using is what they says. I have no concrete answer here to suggest you about to safeguard yourself.

Check this also on Recent Gmail attack: What action do you need to take.

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