[WarpCast] Communicator Security Flaw - 5/16/00 |
Network Trace for OS/2 - Turn any OS/2 machine into a network probe. - Take a trace on any segment in the network, in minutes. - A software-only, hardware-independent implementation. http://www.goldencode.com/ntrace.html ********************************************************************* Source: Roberto Salomon (rfs@goldencode.com) Moderator: Trevor Smith (feedback@warpcast.com) ------------------------------------------------------- CERT has issued an advisory regarding the improper validadion of SSL sessions by Netscape Versions prior to 4.72. The text is at: http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-05.html I tested it on my machine with the latest drop of Netscape 4.6.1 with 128 bit encryption and it presented the flaw. The same test on a 40 bit encryption version of Communicator did not present the error. In order to check if your version presents the problem follow the steps: 1 - Add the following line to your hosts. file: 204.198.134.88 www.verisign.com 2 - Close all Netscape sessions 3 - Open netscape and access https://www.verisign.com. This will show a screen with a warning. This is the expected behaviour. 4 - Access https://www.thawte.com. Netscape will access the page normally since the IP address you added to your hosts. file is theirs. 5 - Access https://www.verisign.com once more. If your copy of Netscape has the bug, it will load Thawte's page as if it were Verisign's and with no error messages. Apparently the 40 bit encryption version of Communicator for OS/2 does not have the flaw, although further tests would have to be done in order to prove this. ------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, unsubscribe, or for more information on WarpCast, visit: http://www.warpcast.com/ -------------------------------------------------------