An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have found flaws that can be exploited to bypass hardware encryption in well known and popular SSD drives. Master passwords and faulty standards implementations allow attackers access to encrypted data without needing to know the user-chosen password.

SSDs from Micron (Crucial) and Samsung are affected. These are SSDs that support hardware-level encryption via a local built-in chip, separate from the main CPU. Some of these devices have a factory-set master password that bypasses the user-set password, while other SSDs store the encryption key on the hard drive, from where it can be retrieved. The issue is worse on Windows, where BitLocker defers software-level encryption to hardware encryption-capable SSDs, meaning user data is vulnerable to attacks without the user's knowledge. More in the research paper.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: As recently as Monday, computer servers that powered Kentucky's online voter registration and Wisconsin's reporting of election results ran software that could potentially expose information to hackers or enable access to sensitive files without a password. The insecure service run by Wisconsin could be reached from internet addresses based in Russia, which has become notorious for seeking to influence U.S. elections. Kentucky's was accessible from other Eastern European countries.

The service, known as FTP, provides public access to files -- sometimes anonymously and without encryption. As a result, security experts say, it could act as a gateway for hackers to acquire key details of a server's operating system and exploit its vulnerabilities. Some corporations and other institutions have dropped FTP in favor of more secure alternatives. Officials in both states said that voter-registration data has not been compromised and that their states' infrastructure was protected against infiltration. Still, Wisconsin said it turned off its FTP service following ProPublica's inquiries. Kentucky left its password-free service running and said ProPublica didn't understand its approach to security. "FTP is a 40-year-old protocol that is insecure and not being retired quickly enough," said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., and an advocate for better voting security. "Every communication sent via FTP is not secure, meaning anyone in the hotel, airport or coffee shop on the same public Wi-Fi network that you are on can see everything sent and received. And malicious attackers can change the contents of a transmission without either side detecting the change."

Intel processors are impacted by a new vulnerability that can allow attackers to leak encrypted data from the CPU's internal processes. From a report: The new vulnerability, which has received the codename of PortSmash, has been discovered by a team of five academics from the Tampere University of Technology in Finland and Technical University of Havana, Cuba. Researchers have classified PortSmash as a side-channel attack. In computer security terms, a side-channel attack describes a technique used for leaking encrypted data from a computer's memory or CPU, which works by recording and analyzing discrepancies in operation times, power consumption, electromagnetic leaks, or even sound to gain additional info that may help break encryption algorithms and recovering the CPU's processed data. Researchers say PortSmash impacts all CPUs that use a Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) architecture, a technology that allows multiple computing threads to be executed simultaneously on a CPU core. [...] Researchers say they've already confirmed that PortSmash impacts Intel CPUs which support the company's Hyper-Threading (HT) technology, Intel's proprietary implementation of SMT.

US prosecutors are preparing new charges against a former CIA coder who was indicted earlier this year in June for leaking classified CIA material to WikiLeaks, in what later become known as the Vault7 leaks. From a report: According to new court documents filed late Wednesday, October 31, US prosecutors plan to file three new charges against Joshua Schulte for allegedly leaking more classified data while in detention at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Prosecutors say they first learned of Schulte's behavior back in May, when they found out that "Schulte had distributed the Protected Search Warrant Materials to his family members for purposes of dissemination to other third parties, including members of the media." The prosecution held a court hearing in May and initially warned the suspect about his actions, a warning they found Schulte ignored. The US government says that "in or about early October 2018, the Government learned that Schulte was using one or more smuggled contraband cellphones to communicate clandestinely with third parties outside of the MCC." A search of his housing unit performed by FBI agents revealed "multiple contraband cellphones (including at least one cellphone used by Schulte that is protected with significant encryption); approximately 13 email and social media accounts (including encrypted email accounts); and other electronic devices."

Etcetera writes: Fresh on the heels of the IBM purchase announcement, Red Hat released RHEL 7.6 today. Business press release is here and full release notes are here. It's been a busy week for Red Hat, as Fedora 29 also released earlier this morning. No doubt CentOS and various other rebuilds will begin their build cycles shortly. The release offers improved security, such as support for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 specification for security authentication. It also provides enhanced support for the open-source nftables firewall technology.

"TPM 2.0 support has been added incrementally over recent releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, as the technology has matured," Steve Almy, principal product manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Red Hat, told eWEEK. "The TPM 2.0 integration in 7.6 provides an additional level of security by tying the hands-off decryption to server hardware in addition to the network bound disk encryption (NBDE) capability, which operates across the hybrid cloud footprint from on-premise servers to public cloud deployments."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Buried in Apple's latest range of MacBooks -- including the MacBook Pro out earlier this year and the just-announced MacBook Air -- is the new T2 security chip, which helps protect the device's encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data and secure boot features. Little was known about the chip until today. According to its newest published security guide, the chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature that physically cuts the device's microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed. "This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed," said the support guide. The camera isn't disconnected, however, because its "field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed." Apple said the new feature adds a "never before seen" level of security for its Macs, without being quite so blunt as to say: Macs get malware too.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the Russians and the Chinese were eavesdropping on President Donald Trump's personal cellphone and using the information gleaned to better influence his behavior. This should surprise no one, writes Bruce Schneier. From a story: Security experts have been talking about the potential security vulnerabilities in Trump's cellphone use since he became president. And President Barack Obama bristled at -- but acquiesced to -- the security rules prohibiting him from using a "regular" cellphone throughout his presidency. Three broader questions obviously emerge from the story. Who else is listening in on Trump's cellphone calls? What about the cellphones of other world leaders and senior government officials? And -- most personal of all -- what about my cellphone calls?

There are two basic places to eavesdrop on pretty much any communications system: at the end points and during transmission. This means that a cellphone attacker can either compromise one of the two phones or eavesdrop on the cellular network. Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. The NSA seems to prefer bulk eavesdropping on the planet's major communications links and then picking out individuals of interest. In 2016, WikiLeaks published a series of classified documents listing "target selectors": phone numbers the NSA searches for and records. These included senior government officials of Germany -- among them Chancellor Angela Merkel -- France, Japan, and other countries.

Other countries don't have the same worldwide reach that the NSA has, and must use other methods to intercept cellphone calls. We don't know details of which countries do what, but we know a lot about the vulnerabilities. Insecurities in the phone network itself are so easily exploited that 60 Minutes eavesdropped on a U.S. congressman's phone live on camera in 2016. Back in 2005, unknown attackers targeted the cellphones of many Greek politicians by hacking the country's phone network and turning on an already-installed eavesdropping capability. The NSA even implanted eavesdropping capabilities in networking equipment destined for the Syrian Telephone Company. Alternatively, an attacker could intercept the radio signals between a cellphone and a tower. Encryption ranges from very weak to possibly strong, depending on which flavor the system uses. Don't think the attacker has to put his eavesdropping antenna on the White House lawn; the Russian Embassy is close enough.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Factorising numbers into their constituent primes may sound esoteric, but the one-way nature of the problem -- and of some other, closely related mathematical tasks -- is the foundation on which much modern encryption rests. Such encryption has plenty of uses. It defends state secrets, and the corporate sort. It protects financial flows and medical records. And it makes the $2trn e-commerce industry possible. Nobody, however, is certain that the foundation of all this is sound. Though mathematicians have found no quick way to solve the prime-factors problem, neither have they proved that there isn't one. In theory, any of the world's millions of professional or amateur mathematicians could have a stroke of inspiration tomorrow and publish a formula that unravels internet cryptography -- and most internet commerce with it.

In fact, something like this has already happened. In 1994 Peter Shor, a mathematician then working at Bell Laboratories, in America, came up with a quick and efficient way to find a number's prime factors. The only catch was that for large numbers his method -- dubbed Shor's algorithm -- needs a quantum computer to work. Quantum computers rely on the famous weirdness of quantum mechanics to perform certain sorts of calculation far faster than any conceivable classical machine. Their fundamental unit is the "qubit", a quantum analogue of the ones and zeros that classical machines manipulate. By exploiting the quantum-mechanical phenomena of superposition and entanglement, quantum computers can perform some forms of mathematics -- though only some -- far faster than any conceivable classical machine, no matter how beefy.

A Seattle-area startup is aiming to take on giants such as Google and change the way we do email with a new physical personal email server. From a report: Helm today unveiled its $499 device that lets consumers send and receive email from their own domain, in addition to saving contacts and calendar events. It's a bold bet that aims to provide comfort at a time when privacy and security issues related to personal data hosted by big tech companies in the cloud are top of mind. The idea comes from Giri Sreenivas and Dirk Sigurdson, two entrepreneurs who already sold a security startup and raised a $4 million seed round from top venture capital firms last year.

The device is about the size of a router and looks like an upside-down book placed on a table. It connects to a home network and pairs with a mobile app that lets users create their own domain name, passwords, and recovery keys. Helm support standard protocols and works with regular email clients such as Outlook or the Mail app, with encryption protecting connection between the device and the apps.

Business communications service Slack, which has more than three million paying customers, offers a bouquet of features that has made it popular (so popular that is worth as much as $9 billion), but it lacks a crucial feature that some of its rivals don't: end-to-end encryption. It's a feature that numerous users have asked Slack to add to the service. Citing a former employee of Slack and the company's chief information security officer, news outlet Motherboard reported Tuesday that the rationale behind not including end-to-end encryption is very simple: bosses around the world don't want it. From the report: Work communication service Slack has decided against the idea of having end-to-end encryption due to the priorities of its paying customers (rather than those who use a free version of the service.) Slack is not a traditional messaging program -- it's designed for businesses and workplaces that may want or need to read employee messages -- but the decision still highlights why some platforms may not want to jump into end-to-end encryption. End-to-end is increasingly popular as it can protect communications against from interception and surveillance. "It wasn't a priority for exec [executives], because it wasn't something paying customers cared about," a former Slack employee told Motherboard earlier this year.

Apple has strongly criticized Australia's anti-encryption bill, calling it "dangerously ambiguous" and "alarming to every Australian." From a report: The Australian government's draft law -- known as the Access and Assistance Bill -- would compel tech companies operating in the country, like Apple, to provide "assistance" to law enforcement and intelligence agencies in accessing electronic data. The government claims that encrypted communications are "increasingly being used by terrorist groups and organized criminals to avoid detection and disruption," without citing evidence. But critics say that the bill's "broad authorities that would undermine cybersecurity and human rights, including the right to privacy" by forcing companies to build backdoors and hand over user data -- even when it's encrypted. Now, Apple is the latest company after Google and Facebook joined civil and digital rights groups -- including Amnesty International -- to oppose the bill, amid fears that the government will rush through the bill before the end of the year. In a seven-page letter to the Australian parliament, Apple said that it "would be wrong to weaken security for millions of law-abiding customers in order to investigate the very few who pose a threat." The company adds, "We appreciate the government's outreach to Apple and other companies during the drafting of this bill. While we are pleased that some of the suggestions incorporated improve the legislation, the unfortunate fact is that the draft legislation remains dangerously ambiguous with respect to encryption and security. This is no time to weaken encryption. Rather than serving the interests of Australian law enforcement, it will just weaken the security and privacy of regular customers while pushing criminals further off the grid."

Google on Tuesday unveiled the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, its latest flagship Android smartphones. "For life on the go, we designed the world's best camera and put it in the world's most helpful phone," said Google's hardware chief Rick Osterloh. From a report: The Pixel 3 starts at $799 for 64GB, with the 3 XL costing $899. Add $100 to either for the 128GB storage option. Core specs for both include a Snapdragon 845, 4GB RAM (there's no option for more), Bluetooth 5.0, and front-facing stereo speakers. Also inside is a new Titan M security chip, which Google says provides "on-device protection for login credentials, disk encryption, app data, and the integrity of the operating system." Preorders for both phones begin today, and buyers will get six months of free YouTube Music service.

The Pixel 3 and 3 XL both feature larger screens than last year's models thanks to slimmed down bezels -- and the controversial notch in the case of the bigger phone. The 3 XL has a 6.3-inch display (up from six inches on the 2 XL), while the regular 3 has a 5.5-inch screen (up from five inches). Overall, though, the actual phones are very similar in size and handling to their direct predecessors. Google has stuck with a single rear 12.2-megapixel camera on both phones, continuing to resist the dual-camera industry trend. But it's a different story up front. Both the Pixel 3 and 3 XL have two front-facing cameras; one of them offers a wider field of view for getting more people or a greater sense of your surroundings into a selfie. [...] A new Top Shot option will select the best image from a burst series of shots. Like Samsung's Galaxy Note 9, it will weed out pictures that are blurry or snaps where someone blinked. Super Res Zoom uses multiple frames and AI to deliver a sharper final photo even without optical zoom. There's another interesting feature on the new Pixel handsets: To help you avoid calls from scammers, Google is adding Call Screen to the Pixel, a new option that appears when you receive a phone call. Whenever someone calls you, you can tap a "Screen call" button, and a robot voice will pick up. "The person you're calling is using a screening service, and will get a copy of this conversation. Go ahead and say your name, and why you're calling," the Google bot will say. As the caller responds, the digital assistant will transcribe the caller's message for you. If you need more information, you can use one of the feature's canned responses, which include, "Tell me more," and "Who is this?" There is an accept and reject call button that's on-screen, so you can hang up or take the call at any time.

An academic study published last month shows that despite years worth of research into the woeful state of network traffic inspection equipment, vendors are still having issues in shipping appliances that don't irrevocably break TLS encryption for the end user. From a report: Encrypted traffic inspection devices (also known as middleware), either special hardware or sophisticated software, have been used in enterprise networks for more than two decades. System administrators deploy such appliances to create a man-in-the-middle TLS proxy that can look inside HTTPS encrypted traffic, to scan for malware or phishing links or to comply with law enforcement or national security requirements.

[...] In the last decade, security researchers have looked closely at the issue of TLS inspection appliances that break or downgrade encryption. There has been much research on the topic, from research teams from all over the world. But despite years worth of warnings and research, some vendors still fail at keeping the proper security level of a TLS connection when relaying traffic through their equipment/software. Academic research [PDF] published at the end of September by three researchers from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, shows that network traffic inspection appliances still break TLS security, even today.

A new encryption bill that's expected to be passed in Australia is facing strong opposition from tech heavyweights. A new group called "Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet" has been formed by Australian industry, technology, and human rights groups to persuade the country from passing the bill, reports ZDNet. "The membership of the new alliance consists of Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, Access Now, Ai Group, Australian Information Industry Association, Amnesty International Australia, AMTA, Blueprint for Free Speech, members of Communications Alliance sans NBN, DIGI, Digital Rights Watch, Future Wise, Hack for Privacy, Human Rights Law Centre, Internet Australia, IoT Alliance Australia, and Liberty Victoria." The Guardian also notes that Google and Facebook are part of the group. From the report: The Bill is currently before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, with a minuscule three-week window for submissions closing on Friday, October 12 and a hearing set for Friday, October 19. The proposed legislation would allow the nation's police and anti-corruption forces to ask, before forcing, internet companies, telcos, messaging providers, or anyone deemed necessary, to break into whatever content interception agencies want access to.

"This Bill stands to have a huge impact on millions of Australians, so it is crucial that lawmakers reject this proposal in its present form before we sleepwalk into a digital dystopia," said board member of Digital Rights Watch and alliance spokesperson Lizzie O'Shea. "The rushed processes coupled with the lack of transparency can only mean that expert opinions from Australia and abroad are being disregarded, and deep concerns about privacy erosion and lack of judicial review have simply been tossed aside."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. government investigators have lost a case to force Facebook to wiretap calls made over its Messenger app. A joint federal and state law enforcement effort investigating the MS-13 gang had pushed a district court to hold the social networking giant in contempt of court for refusing to permit real-time listening in on voice calls. According to sources speaking to Reuters, the judge later ruled in Facebook's favor -- although, because the case remains under seal, it's not known for what reason. The case, filed in a Fresno, Calif. district court, centers on alleged gang members accused of murder and other crimes. The government had been pushing to prosecute 16 suspected gang members, but are said to have leaned on Facebook to obtain further evidence.

Brian Acton, a founder of WhatsApp, which he (along with the other founder) sold to Facebook for $19 billion four years ago, has grown tired of the social juggernaut. He left the company a year ago, and earlier this year, he surprised many when he tweeted "#DeleteFacebook", offering his support to what many described as a movement. He had started despising working at Facebook so much, that he left the company abruptly, leaving a cool $850M in unvested stock. He has also invested $50 million in encrypted chat app Signal. In an interview with Forbes, published Wednesday, Acton talked about his rationale behind leaving the company and what he thinks of Facebook now. From the story: Under pressure from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to monetize WhatsApp, he pushed back as Facebook questioned the encryption he'd helped build and laid the groundwork to show targeted ads and facilitate commercial messaging. Acton also walked away from Facebook a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested. "It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don't want to do," Acton says. "It's better if I get out of your way. And I did." It was perhaps the most expensive moral stand in history. Acton took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door -- the decision cost him $850 million.

He's following a similar moral code now. He clearly doesn't relish the spotlight this story will bring and is quick to underscore that Facebook "isn't the bad guy." ("I think of them as just very good businesspeople.") But he paid dearly for the right to speak his mind. "As part of a proposed settlement at the end, [Facebook management] tried to put a nondisclosure agreement in place," Acton says. "That was part of the reason that I got sort of cold feet in terms of trying to settle with these guys."

It's also a story any idealistic entrepreneur can identify with: What happens when you build something incredible and then sell it to someone with far different plans for your baby? "At the end of the day, I sold my company," Acton says. "I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day."

Facebook, Acton says, had decided to pursue two ways of making money from WhatsApp. First, by showing targeted ads in WhatsApp's new Status feature, which Acton felt broke a social compact with its users. "Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy," he says. His motto at WhatsApp had been "No ads, no games, no gimmicks" -- a direct contrast with a parent company that derived 98% of its revenue from advertising. Another motto had been "Take the time to get it right," a stark contrast to "Move fast and break things." Elsewhere in the story, Acton has also suggested he was used by Facebook to help get its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp past EU regulators that had been concerned it might be able to link accounts -- as it subsequently did.

Update: Facebook Executive Hits Back at WhatsApp Co-founder Brian Acton: 'A Whole New Standard of Low-Class'.

An anonymous reader quotes Softpedia: Purism announced Thursday that its highly anticipated Librem Key security key is now available for purchase as the first and only OpenPGP-based smart card to offer a Heads-firmware-integrated tamper-evident boot process for laptops. Developed in partnership with Nitrokey, a company known for manufacturing open-source USB keys that enable secure encryption and signing of data for laptops, Purism's Librem Key is dedicated to Librem laptop users, allowing them to store up to 4096-bit RSA keys and up to 512-bit ECC keys on the security key, as well as to securely generate new keys directly on the device. Librem Key integrates with the secure boot process of the latest Librem 13 and 15 laptops...

Designed to let Librem laptop users see if someone has tampered with the software on their computers when it boots, Librem Key leverages the Heads-enabled TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip in new Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptops. According to Purism, when inserted, the security key will blink green to show users that the laptop hasn't been tampered with, so they can continue from where they left off, and blinks red when tampering has occurred.
Purism's web site explains: With so many attacks on password logins, most security experts these days recommend adding a second form of authentication (often referred to as "2FA" or "multi-factor authentication") in addition to your password so that if your password gets compromised the attacker still has to compromise your second factor.

USB security tokens work well as this second factor because they are "something you have" instead of "something you know" like a password is, and because they are portable enough you can just keep them in your pocket, purse, or keychain and use them only when you need to login to a secure site.

A number of Slashdot users have shared a leaked Google video from Breitbart, revealing the candid reactions of company executives to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016. The Guardian summarizes: In an hour-long conversation, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, chief executive Sundar Pichai, and executives Kent Walker, Ruth Porat and Eileen Noughton offered their reflections on the election, sought to reassure employees about issues such as immigration status and benefits for same-sex partners, and answered questions on topics ranging from filter bubbles and political polarization to encryption and net neutrality. The executives' reactions ranged from the emotional to the philosophical to the purely pragmatic. Porat appeared near tears in discussing her open support for Hillary Clinton and her father, who was a refugee. Walker discussed global political trends toward nationalism, populism and xenophobia. Pichai noted that the company was already "thoughtfully engaging" with Trump's transition team. While Breitbart argues the video shows evidence of Google's inherent bias against Republicans, Google says the executives are simply sharing their "personal views" and that it has no political bias. It does beg the question, should politics be discussed in the workplace? Longtime Slashdot reader emil writes in response to the video: [...] Disregarding the completely inappropriate expression of partisan views in the workplace, the video claims that "history is our side." These executives appear to have forgotten the incredible tumult in the distant past of the U.S. The last election was not an electoral tie that was thrown into the house of representatives (as was the election of 1800). The last election did not open a civil war as happened in 1861 when Lincoln took office. The last election did not open war with Great Britain, and will likely not precipitate a new set of proposed constitutional amendments to curb presidential power as did either of James Madison's terms in office (War of 1812, Hartford Convention). There may be a time for tears, and a time for hugs, but that time cannot be in the workplace. Most Fortune 500 employees took the news of the latest president elect with quiet perseverance in their professional settings regardless of their leanings, and it is time for Google to encourage the same. "At a regularly scheduled all-hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season," Google said in a statement. "For over 20 years, everyone at Google has been able to freely express their opinions at these meetings. Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products. To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Researchers at KU Leuven have figured out a way to spoof Tesla's key fob system, as first reported by Wired. The result would let an attacker steal a Tesla simply by walking past the owner and cloning his key. The attack is particularly significant because Tesla pioneered the keyless entry concept, which has since spread to most luxury cars. This particular attack seems to have only worked on Model S units shipped before June, and in an update last week, Tesla pushed out an update that strengthened the encryption for the remaining vehicles. More importantly, the company added the option to require a PIN password before the car will start, effectively adding two-factor to your car. Tesla owners can add the PIN by disabling Passive Entry in the "Doors & Locks" section of "Settings."

The attack itself is fairly involved. Because of the back-and-forth protocol, attackers would first have to sniff out the car's Radio ID (broadcast from the car at all times), then relay that ID broadcast to a victim's key fob and listen for the response, typically from within three feet of the fob. If they can do that back-and-forth twice, the research team found they can work back to the secret key powering the fob's responses, letting them unlock the car and start the engine.

An anonymous reader writes: "A team of security researchers has raised the alarm about some cryptography-related issues with the newly released WebAuthn passwordless authentication protocol," reports ZDNet. "The new WebAuthn protocol will allow users of a device -- such as a computer or a smartphone -- to authenticate on a website using a USB security key, a biometric solution, or his computer or smartphone's password." But researchers say that because WebAuthn uses weak algorithms for the operations of registering a new device, they can pull off some attacks against it.

"If converted into a practical exploit, the ECDAA attacks discussed in the article would allow attackers to steal the key from a [server's] TPM, which would allow attackers to effectively clone the user's hardware security token remotely," Arciszewski, one of the researchers, told ZDNet. "The scenarios that follow depend on how much trust was placed into the hardware security token," he added. "At minimum, I imagine it would enable 2FA bypasses and re-enable phishing attacks. However, if companies elected to use hardware security tokens to obviate passwords, it would allow direct user impersonation by attackers." Attacks aren't practical, and experts say the root cause relies in badly written documentation that may fool some implementers into supporting the old algorithms instead of newer and more solid ones. The FIDO Alliance was notified and has started work on updating its docs so it won't look like it's recommending ECDAA or RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5. "PKCS1v1.5 is bad. The exploits are almost old enough to legally drink alcohol in the United States," Arciszewski said.