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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ars Technica is reporting that there are critical PGP and S/MIME bugs which can reveal encrypted e-mails [arstechnica.com]. Their advice is to uninstall the plugins, for the time being. More information will be release during the day (Tuesda).

Little is publicly known about the flaws at the moment. Both Schinzel and the EFF blog post said they will be disclosed late Monday night California time in a paper written by a team of European security researchers. Schinzel’s Twitter messages used the hashtag #efail, a possible indication of the name the researchers have given to their exploit.

The EFF also published a warning, attention PGP Users: New Vulnerabilities Require You To Take Action Now [eff.org].

A group of European security researchers have released a warning about a set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME. EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.

The full details will be published in a paper on Tuesday at 07:00 AM UTC (3:00 AM Eastern, midnight Pacific). In order to reduce the short-term risk, we and the researchers have agreed to warn the wider PGP user community in advance of its full publication.

The EFF also gives additional advice on disabling PGP in Thunderbird with Enigmail [eff.org] as well as other mail and mail-like clients.

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