EFAIL: Keep Calm and Don’t Disable Your Email Encryption
A vulnerability called EFAIL is being widely reported on after new research on the existing, but little-known vulnerability became available. In technical terms, EFAIL can allow a hacker to expose the plain text of some encrypted emails sent using the encryption technologies OpenPGP and S/MIME. In layman’s terms, if an attacker were to exploit this vulnerability, they could read emails that were encrypted (and therefore thought to be “safe.”) As is often the case when security issues are discussed in the media, reactions range anywhere between “So what?” to “We’re all gonna die!” Our job as security experts is to provide balance and help you separate sound guidance from hype.
