![]() Once the table is built, the app can locate the decryption key for a specific chat in a matter of minutes, he said. Thomas wrote an app called DecryptoCat that needed just one day to calculate all possible keys. ![]() Using a technique known as a meet in the middle, Thomas was further able to significantly reduce the number of required key guesses by almost half from 2 54 to 2 27. As a result, the number of possible keys generated by Cryptocat was 2 54.15, a number that's far too small to provide adequate protection against crack attacks. The bug stems from programming that confused the difference between strings of digits and an array of integers, according to Thomas's recently published autopsy of the bug. The vulnerability was fixed in Cryptocat version 2.0.42, although developers recommend users update to the 2.1.* branch of the application. Key generation code is one of the most critical parts of a crypto system because it doesn't matter what else you get right if you get that wrong."įor their part, Cryptocat developers thanked researcher Steve Thomas for reporting the bug and apologized for the error. "They didn't understand the data they were working with. "It was simply a matter of what I would call a fairly rookie mistake," independent security researcher Adam Caudill told Ars. Critics said it was hard to excuse such a rudimentary error in an open-source piece of software held out as a way to protect sensitive communications. As a result, activists, journalists, or others who relied on Cryptocat to protect their group chats from government or industry snoops got little more protection than is typically available in standard chat programs. Both sides agree that the effect of the bug was that the keys used to encrypt and decrypt conversations among groups of users were easy for outsiders to calculate. The precise amount of time the vulnerability was active is in dispute, with Cryptocat developers putting it at seven months and a security researcher saying it was closer to 19 months. It does not store any personal data.Developers of the Cryptocat application for encrypting communications of activists and journalists have apologized for a critical programming flaw that made it trivial for third parties to decipher group chats. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. ![]() The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". ![]() The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. ![]()
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