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Swiss researchers crack OpenSSL e-mail encryption

Researchers at a Swiss university have cracked the technology used to keep people from eavesdropping on e-mail sent over the Web, but US experts said on Thursday that the impact would likely be minimal.

Serge Vaudenay of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne found a way to unlock a message encrypted using Secure Socket Layer protocol technology, according to a posting on the research institute's Web site.

However, US cryptography experts said it was not the version of security that most consumers use to shop online.

Rather, it is a version that only affects e-mail, is limited in scope and not widely used, said Avi Rubin, who is technical director of the Information Security Institute at Maryland's Johns Hopkins University.

In addition, an attacker would have to be in control of a network computer located in the middle of the two people communicating over which the messages were flowing, Rubin said.

He said patches are already available to fix the hole, which affects one particular mode of OpenSSL.
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