Despite many cyber-security advances over the last 20 years, well-known cyber-criminal exploits like phishing still pose pervasive threats. Of the 53, incidents it received in the reporting period, Verizon Enterprise found phishing to be the third most widely used incident action variety at 1, events. Phishing also registered as the top social attack method observed by Verizon Enterprise, a finding which indicates that bad actors continue to abuse technology in order to prey on human weakness.
The misuse of technology can even contribute to the effectiveness of phishing attacks. In this article, I will be focusing on one such technology: wildcard certificates. I will give a few real-world examples of how cyber-criminals exploit the trust organizations have in such certificates, and I will provide some recommendations for protecting your resources from phishing scams.
Using a wildcard certificate on a publicly facing web server increases the risk that cyber-criminals will use the web server to host malicious websites in phishing campaigns. To understand why you must understand a bit about wildcard certificate security.
A wildcard certificate is a public key certificate used by all subdomains within a larger domain. Using wildcard certificates reduces the overall burden on system administrators.
However, from a security standpoint, these certificates open up a can of worms. Any subdomain created for the domain on a web server that uses a wildcard certificate will use the same certificate.
Visitors to the phishing site do not realize that they are on the phishing site because their browsers establish an HTTPS connection using the legitimate wildcard certificate. Surely anyone would recognize the illegitimate website. According to recent research from Venafi, attackers commonly outfit their phishing sites with lookalike domains that are differentiated by just a few characters or even homoglyphs designed to look like the legitimate domain.
Most phishing sites also use long URLs to take advantage of the fact that a user is not likely to scroll through the entire URL. Additionally, the browser truncates the long URL, only showing, for example, the green highlighted part and not the malicious site:.
Setting up a subdomain is exactly how cyber-criminals exploited a wildcard certificate security issue on the Malaysian Police portal in the summer of and used the portal for a phishing attack. In the last five years, malware designed to steal keys and certificates has proliferated, and a thriving marketplace for stolen certificates has sprung up.
Using the stolen wildcard certificate, an attacker would be able to set up a fake website for any Google service and then direct victims to the fake service by poisoning DNS services. Because the attacker is using a stolen wildcard certificate, the victim receives no warning when visiting the fake Google website. In addition to compromising a certificate authority like DigiNotar, attackers can prey upon users with the help of digital certificates in other ways.
The security industry has also at times spotted vulnerabilities that could allow bad actors to spoof SSL servers via wildcard certificates. A simpler option than compromising a CA is to trick a CA into issuing a wildcard certificate for a fictitious company.
Of those issued certificates, 95 percent of them were used for phishing sites. Clearly, attackers are comfortable with using wildcard certificates for phishing email attacks and other attacks. Fortunately, security controls and solutions can help block an attack.
By putting these defenses in place, you increase the effort that a malicious actor must take to compromise your network. Your goal is to make compromising your network so expensive that cyber-criminals would rather focus their attention on someone else. You can make your organization more costly to exploit by avoiding wildcard certificates. Avoid using wildcard certificates on production systems, especially public-facing ones. Instead, you should use subdomain-specific certificates that are rotated often.
Compromised wildcard certificate security can lead to serious repercussions, but, by using short-lived, non-wildcard certificates, you significantly mitigate the impact of an attack. Learn more about machine identity management. Explore now. Venafi Cloud manages and protects certificates. Already have an account? Login Here. You shall not access the Service if You are Our competitor or if you are acting as a representative or agent of a competitor, except with Our prior written consent.
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Watch Now. Search free trial contact us. May 7, David Bisson. What are the risks of using wildcard certificates? Here are some of the ways that cybercriminals can misuse wildcard certificates: Compromised web server. If you are using a wildcard certificate on public-facing web servers, it may increase the risk of cybercriminals using that web server to host malicious sites for phishing campaigns.
Stolen private key. Fake certificates. If cybercriminals trick a CA into issuing a wildcard certificate for a fictitious company, they can then use those wildcard certificates to create subdomains and establish phishing sites.
What makes wildcard compromises so serious? What do you need to know before using a wildcard certificate? As outlined in a previous blog , here are the factors you should consider before you make your choice: Do you understand the security risks?
Do you have a plan for how to limit your use of wildcard certificates to a specific purpose? Do you have controls in place to prevent wildcard certificates from being used as a stop-gap for emergency projects?
Limiting your use of wildcard certificates will help you better control their security. Are you just trying to save time? Are you looking at wildcard certificates because you are finding it too difficult to install or too time consuming to get certificates?
With proper levels of visibility, intelligence and automation, you can avoid wildcard certificates altogether and still end up with a more secure implementation that is just as easy to deploy and much easier to manage.
Are you trying to be more efficient? Do you have a large number of sites hosted on a small amount of external infrastructure? If so, you should have excellent controls in place to make sure the wildcard certificate is not copied and distributed to other systems. Are you only trying to save money? If so, you need to weigh the security risks against the cost savings. You may save money on the initial implementation but spend even more later when an unknown wildcard certificate expires and causes an outage.
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