Did counterfeit SSL cert target Iranians?

SSL fraud
Security researchers have discovered a counterfeit web certificate for Google.com circulating on the internet that gives attackers the encryption keys needed to impersonate Gmail and virtually every other digitally signed Google property.

[...]"While we investigate, we plan to block any sites whose certificates were signed by DigiNotar," a statement issued by Google announced.

Google credited a security feature recently added to its Chromium browser engine with protecting alibo and bringing the bogus credential to public attention.

Mozilla, meanwhile, said it planned to issue updates for Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey shortly "that will revoke trust in the DigiNotar root and protect users from this attack." It invited users who don't want to wait to manually purge the DigiNotar root from their browsers following these instructions.

That means the certificate could be a threat until patches are issued by all software makers that work with SSL certificates. It's unclear how long that will take.

If it's true that this credential is being used to snoop on Gmail users, there's no telling how long it will take to stop the attack.

Read the complete article [HERE].