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Venafi Research: 35 Percent of Websites Are Still Using Insecure SHA-1 Certificates and Putting Users at RiskNew research from Venafi® Labs shows that 35 percent of the world's websites are still using insecure SHA-1 certificates. This is despite the fact that leading browser providers, such as Microsoft, Mozilla (News - Alert) and Google, have publicly stated they will no longer trust sites that use SHA-1 from early 2017. By February 2017, Chrome, Firefox and Edge, will mark websites that still rely on certificates that use SHA-1 algorithms as insecure. As a result, web transactions and traffic may be disrupted in a variety of ways:
In addition to the serious impact on user experience, websites that continue to use SHA-1 certificates should expect a significant increase in help desk calls and a reduction in revenue from online transactions. They may also suffer long-term reputation damage. Walter Goulet, cloud solutions product manager at Venafi, commented: "The results of our analysis clearly show that, while the most popular websites have done a good job of migrating away from SHA-1 certificates, a significant portion of the Internet continues to rely on them. According to Netcraft's September 2016 Web Server Survey, there are over 173 million active websites on the Internet. Extrapolating from our results, as many as 61 million websites may still be using SHA-1 certificates." However, the SHA-1 encryption algorithm used by many website certificates is weak and can be easily manipulated. For example, SHA-1 certificates are vulnerable to collision attacks that allow cyber criminals to forge certificates and perform man-in-the-middle attacks on TLS connections. The SHA-2 algorithm solves these problems, but Venafi Labs' research shows that many companies have still not made this update, leaving them open to security breaches, compliance problems and outages that can affect security, availability and reliability. "Our whole online world is predicated on the system of trust that is underpinned by these digital certificates used for authentication and authorization; organizations have an obligation to ensure that only secure certificates are used," commented Kevin Bocek, chief security strategist at Venafi. "Leaving SHA-1 certificates in place is like putting up a welcome sign for hackers that says, 'We don't care about the security of our applications, data and customers.'" Bocek also points out, "The average organization has over 23,000 keys and certificates, according to Ponemon research. But most organizations don't have the tools or visibility to find all of their SHA-1 certificates in their IT environment. This means migration to SHA-2 can be complex and chaotic, and, as a result, many businesses have just stuck their heads in the sand and not completed this migration. Unfortunately, in January there will be nowhere for these businesses to hide. My advice is to get a plan in place now, because it will be even more difficult to fix after the impending deprecation deadline when things start to break." The Venafi Labs research team analyzed data on over 11 million publicly visible IPv4 websites using Venafi TrustNet™, a proprietary database of comprehensive, real-time certificate intelligence. About Venafi Venafi is the market-leading cybersecurity company that secures and protects the cryptographic keys and digital certificates every business and government depends on for secure communications, commerce, computing, and mobility. Venafi provides the Immune System for the Internet® and constantly assesses which keys and certificates are trusted, protecting those that should be trusted, and fixing or blocking those that are not. By protecting the foundation of all cybersecurity-keys and certificates-Venafi prevents them from being misused by cyber criminals. The Venafi Trust Protection Platform delivers an ever-evolving, intelligent response that protects your network, business, and brand. Venafi customers are among the world's most demanding, security-conscious Global 2000 organizations, including four of the top five U.S. banks, eight of the top 10 U.S. health insurance companies and four of the top seven U.S. retailers. Venafi is backed by top-tier venture capital funds, including Foundation Capital, Intel Capital (News - Alert), Origin Partners, Pelion Venture Partners, QuestMark Partners and Silver Lake Partners. For more information, visit www.venafi.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161117005247/en/ |