company's website is responsible for the theft of customer credit card numbers. An investigation determined private keys for certificates were stolen, allowing attackers to decrypt traffic between…

The correct answer is A. Man-in-the-middle. When attackers steal private keys for SSL/TLS certificates, they gain the ability to decrypt encrypted traffic passing between clients and the server. This is a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack scenario - the attacker intercepts communications that were intended to be private…

Networking

Question

company's website is responsible for the theft of customer credit card numbers. An investigation determined private keys for certificates were stolen, allowing attackers to decrypt traffic between clients and the website. Which of the following types of attacks does this describe?

Options

AMan-in-the-middle
BKeylogger
CZero-day ?
DBrute force

How the community answered

(33 responses)

A
70% (23)
B
9% (3)
C
3% (1)
D
18% (6)

Explanation

When attackers steal private keys for SSL/TLS certificates, they gain the ability to decrypt encrypted traffic passing between clients and the server. This is a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack scenario - the attacker intercepts communications that were intended to be private, and with the stolen private key, can decrypt captured TLS sessions or impersonate the legitimate server. A keylogger captures local keystrokes on a device. A zero-day exploits an unknown, unpatched vulnerability. A brute-force attack systematically guesses credentials. None of those match the described scenario of certificate key theft enabling traffic decryption.

Topics

#man-in-the-middle#SSL/TLS decryption#certificate theft#network attacks

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