The security certificate used by Superfish the installed add-on to Lenovo computers just broke (Cracked).
We have recently reported that the Superfish software used by Lenovo produces a security certificate to re-sign all the security certificates it receives from HTTPS pages, such as bank pages, virtually allowing access to plain text information to traffic between client and server otherwise it would be encrypted.
Several security experts who looked into the matter revealed that the add-on uses the same RSA key (1024 bits) on all devices, meaning that if someone managed to crack it, they would be able to "read" the encrypted traffic exchanged between a user with a Lenovo computer user and a secure services. That's exactly what he did Robert Graham, Chief Executive Officer of Errata Security.
The researcher used a system with Superfish installed by dumping the data generated by the processes into system memory.
After discovering the encrypted private key of the security certificate used by Superfish, and the certificate itself, it tried to verify that the data is protected by a password.
Cracking the password turned out to be a bit more difficult than expected, as it required a modified brute-force program. When Graham had to develop a new brute-force software for the needs of this attack.
Υπέθεσε ότι ο κωδικός πρόσβασης δεν θα ήταν πολύπλοκος, οπότε έδωσε στο πρόγραμμα εντολή αναζήτησης μόνο μεταξύ πεζών γραμμάτων. Σε λιγότερο από 10 seconds, discovered the password which was “komodia.”
The password decrypts the root certificate and could be used in man-in-the-middle attacks against Lenovo users who have Superfish installed on their system.
