Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Attention anyone using Microsoft Outlook to encrypt emails. Researchers at security outfit SEC Consult have found a bug in Redmond's software that causes encrypted messages to be sent out with their unencrypted versions attached.
You read that right: if you can intercept a network connection transferring an encrypted email, you can just read off the unencrypted copy stapled to it, if the programming blunder is triggered.
The bug is activated when Outlook users use S/MIME to encrypt messages and format their emails as plain text. When sent, the software reports the memo was delivered in an encrypted form, and it appears that way in the Sent folder – but attached to the ciphered text is an easily human-readable cleartext version of the same email. This somewhat derails the use of encryption.
"This has been a rather unusual vulnerability discovery," the SEC team said in an advisory on Tuesday.
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/11/outlook_smime_bug/
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 15 2017, @08:21AM (2 children)
It's bad because the sender is tricked into wasting processor cycles generating an encrypted version, when he could have just sent the unencrypted mail as is. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:49AM
That's good for the economy. Win-win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:25PM
I'm sure those cycles are just used for something benign like facial recognition or dark web searches for missing children, why do you hate America?!