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What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw

EFF: “…you should stop using PGP for encrypted email and switch to a different secure communications method for now. A group of researchers released a paper today that describes a new class of serious vulnerabilities in PGP (including GPG), the most popular email encryption standard. The new paper includes a proof-of-concept exploit that can allow an attacker to use the victim’s own email client to decrypt previously acquired messages and return the decrypted content to the attacker without alerting the victim. The proof of concept is only one implementation of this new type of attack, and variants may follow in the coming days. Because of the straightforward nature of the proof of concept, the severity of these security vulnerabilities, the range of email clients and plugins affected, and the high level of protection that PGP users need and expect, EFF is advising PGP users to pause in their use of the tool and seek other modes of secure end-to-end communication for now. Because we are awaiting the response from the security community of the flaws highlighted in the paper, we recommend that for now you uninstall or disable your PGP email plug-in. These steps are intended as a temporary, conservative stopgap until the immediate risk of the exploit has passed and been mitigated against by the wider community. There may be simpler mitigations available soon, as vendors and commentators develop narrower solutions, but this is the safest stance to take for now. Because sending PGP-encrypted emails to an unpatched client will create adverse ecosystem incentives to open incoming emails, any of which could be maliciously crafted to expose ciphertext to attackers…”

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