Microsoft Warns Of Two Apps That Installed Root Certificates Then Leaked the Private Keys (zdnet.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft has issued a security advisory this week warning that two applications accidentally installed two root certificates on users' computers, and then leaked the private keys for all. The software developer's mistake means that malicious third-parties can extract the private keys from the two applications and use them to issue forged certificates to spoof legitimate websites and software publishers for years to come.

The two applications are HeadSetup and HeadSetup Pro, both developed by German audio hardware company Sennheiser. The software is used to set up and manage softphones -- software apps for making telephone calls via the Internet and a computer, without needing an actual physical telephone. The issue with the two HeadSetup apps came to light earlier this year when German cyber-security firm Secorvo found that versions 7.3, 7.4, and 8.0 installed two root Certification Authority (CA) certificates into the Windows Trusted Root Certificate Store of users' computers but also included the private keys for all in the SennComCCKey.pem file.

Comments

Never confuse evil with stupidity

[Viol8]

The 21st century MS is far more of the latter as all their decent programmers and team leads upped and left years ago.

WTF

[DarkOx]

The entire point of 'APPS' are to sandbox stuff so the rest of the system is not compromised by a bad app. Android manages to fail in some ways with actual vulns where a evil app can send malformed messages to other apps etc. However by and large the permissions model works for single user devices.

Serious question for MS why in the world can an app modify the system trusted roots? Why is that even possible? Seems like the sort of thing that only a first party signed tool should be permissioned to do!