FASTCOMPANY:
E-Commerce Security Is Broken, Vulnerable, Says Hacker Conference Founder
BY Kit EatonLots of code excitement will spring from the Black Hat hacker conference this week, but already a huge controversy is erupting: Black Hat's founder thinks SSL--the security code making much of online commerce safe--is broken.
SSL, Secure Sockets Layer (and its successor Transport Layer Security) is a Net-based security protocol that ensures communications between computers is safe and unhackable--essentially so that no one can "listen in." It works like this: A server and computer connect together and say hello, digitally. This bit is unsecured. The two machines exchange a "key" which unlocks a private line that only they can communicate on.
These private exchanges are the basis of safe e-shopping, including credit card transactions. On the server side the site's owners can be certain they're speaking to a genuine customer, who's data can be trusted (to an extent).
So when Black Hat's keynote speaker Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat and DEFCON, says that "SSL is broken," it's big news. Moss alleges that it's been 13 years since the first hacker conference, and that it's still not safe to do e-commerce. Moss wasn't much more specific than that, but the implication is that hackers can easily breach SSL, and thus expose millions of supposedly secure transactions to potential thieves. [Read the rest]
posted by: gqjournal
Comments