German researchers have demonstrated a technique for breaking the encryption widely used to secure data in online transactions, which they say “poses a serious and truly practical security threat on all currently used implementations of XML Encryption.”
The attack is able to recover 160 bytes of plain-text message in 10 seconds and decrypt larger amounts of data at the same pace, the researchers said.
Although the attack, described in a paper delivered last week at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago, was directed against the XML Encryption standard, it exploits weaknesses in the cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode of operation that is commonly used with many cryptographic algorithms. This makes it likely it could be used against non-XML implementations as well.
Source: XML Encryption cracked, exposing real threat to online transactions
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