Watch a Cat Video, Get Hacked: the Death of Clear-Text

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 15, 2014 @08:34AM from the internet-doomed dept.

New submitter onproton writes: Citizen Lab released new research today on a targeted exploitation technique used by state actors involving "network injection appliances" installed at ISPs. These devices can target and intercept unencrypted YouTube traffic and replace it with malicious code that gives the operator control over the system or installs a surveillance backdoor. One of the researchers writes, "many otherwise well-informed people think they have to do something wrong, or stupid, or insecure to get hacked—like clicking on the wrong attachments, or browsing malicious websites...many of these commonly held beliefs are not necessarily true." This technique is largely designed for targeted attacks, so it's likely most of us will be safe for now — but just one more reminder to use https.

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https is useless by bbn · 2014-08-15 08:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

What good is https going to be against the state? You think they can not coerce Verisign et al to hand over a copy of the root keys?
1. Re:https is useless by gameboyhippo · 2014-08-15 08:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Right. And if you have the keys then you can sign your own certificates. Thus allowing Eve to pretend she's Bob.
Re:This is just evil. by mysidia · 2014-08-15 10:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yep, that's called a browser. Arbitrary code is exactly what a webpage or video is.
No. Full stop. A webpage or video is a page which may contain some script language which is to be executed within a certain restricted context pertaining to the webpage domain.
It is code execution, but not arbitrary code execution. A webpage is not supposed to be able to run arbitrary code within the meaning of arbitrary instructions on the CPU; only certain safe instructions within a highly limited scope.