We have had an email pointing out that:
Wikileaks still uses a broken MD5 hash function for its supposedly
secure SSL connection, that is used to upload sensitive documents to them.In an attack on MD5 published in December 2008, a group of researchers
used a new technique to fake the validity of SSL certificates. US-CERT
of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said MD5 "should be
considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use, and
most U.S. government applications will be required to move to the SHA-2
family of hash functions after 2010. This broken md5 hash function is
however still in use by the https://secure.wikileaks.org/ SSL connection.Take a look by going to: https://secure.wikileaks.org/ and
highlight their certificate, and click View certificate under the
security tab.Then choose the Details tab and check the Certificate Signature
Algorithm, this will show the use of MD5.Background information:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2339
We did welcome this Digital Certificate back in 2008, before the MD5 weakness was demonstrated in public.
See: New SSL digital certificate for secure.wikileaks.org - not before time
There really is no excuse for using a relatively weak cryptographic hash algorithm in the Digital Certificate which is supposed to protect the encrypted SSL/TLS communications internet sessions of the WikiLeakS.org whistleblower leak submission web pages.
Since the the resources of several Government intelligence agencies are very likely to have been deployed against this encrypted traffic, surely WikiLeakS.org can afford to pay for a proper Digital Certificate using an as yet currently unbroken secure cryptographic hash function e.g. SHA-1 or the forthcoming SHA-2 ?
Surely they can spend a few tens or hundreds of dollars , out of the $360,000 raised out of the the target of / $600.000 this year on some proper Digital Certificates ?
Interestingly, the parallel computing resources used to create the MD5 signatures and fake example Digital Certificates, are probably not too different to that used by WikiLeakS.org and their friends to supposedly password guess and decrypt the Iraq Apache helicopter attack video.
If an attacker duplicated the secure.WikiLeakS.org Digital Certificate, something which is obviously possible with the current MD5 hash, but not with the stronger versions which most other SSL/TLS protected websites now use, then they could do a Man in the middle attack on the WikiLeakS.org "secure" content submission system.
One of the potential weakness of this system has always been its vulnerability to Communications Traffic Analysis, since SSL/TLS encryption does not hide the source and destination IP addresses.
SSL/TLS encryption does not hide the amount of data which is transmitted.,so it can be sometimes be very obvious, which IP address uploaded a particular whistleblower leak document, if it is of a characteristic size, on a particular date, which may narrow down the list of suspects for a "leak" investigation.
To be fair to WikiLeakS.org, they used to also offer a much more Communications Traffic analysis resistant encrypted submission method via a Tor Hidden Service:
http://gaddbiwdftapglkq.onion/
but this has not been publicised (presumably as it no longer works) since last Christmas, when the WikiLeakS.org main website was shut down, to beg for money.
Since the WikiLeakS.org activists still refuse to publish a new PGP Public Encryption key, it seems that WikiLeakS.org is now less secure than they used to be.
If your life or even if just your career, might be threatened by exposure as a WikiLeakS.org whistleblower, you should think very carefully before submitting any "whistleblower leak" documents via the currently crippled WikiLeakS.org website.