AMSTERDAM (AP) — Attackers who hacked into a Dutch Web security firm have issued hundreds of fraudulent security certificates for intelligence agency Web sites, including the C.I.A., as well as for Internet giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the Dutch government said on Monday.
Experts say they suspect the hacker — or hackers — operated with the cooperation of the Iranian government, perhaps in attempts to spy on dissidents.
The latest versions of browsers including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox are now rejecting certificates issued by the firm that was hacked, DigiNotar.
But in a statement on Monday, the Dutch Justice Ministry published a list of the fraudulent certificates that greatly expands the scope of the July hacking attack that DigiNotar acknowledged only last week. The list also includes certificates that were sent to sites operated by Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Skype, AOL, the Tor Project, WordPress, and by intelligence agencies like Israel’s Mossad and Britain’s MI6.
DigiNotar is one of many companies that sell the security certificates widely used to authenticate Web sites and guarantee that communications between a user’s browser and a site are secure.
In theory, a fraudulent certificate can be used to trick a user into visiting a fake version of a Web site, or used to monitor communications with the real sites without users noticing.
But in order to pass off a fake certificate, a hacker must be able to steer his target’s Internet traffic through a server that he controls. That is something only an Internet service provider, or a government that commands one, can easily do.
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