Researchers found that some 36 percent of websites that use SSL or TLS protocols, including government ones, are vulnerable and could be tricked into setting up a connection through weak encryption keys, also known as the export-grade key or 512-bit RSA keys – the design was approved by the US government for export overseas some three decades ago.
“The export-grade RSA ciphers are the remains of a 1980s-vintage effort to weaken cryptography so that intelligence agencies would be able to monitor. This was done badly. So badly, that while the policies were ultimately scrapped, they’re still hurting us today,” cryptographer Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins University wrote in a blog explaining the threat of the attack.
