TeLeScope can cause sleepless nights

TeLeScope is a method to eavesdrop on TLS (hence the specific capitalisation in TeLeScope) communications between a virtualised server and a client without leaving any forensic evidence behind.

The attack capability was discovered by Bitdefender, who suggest that a CIO who outsources their virtualised infrastructure to third party providers should assume that all communications can be or has been snooped on by anyone knowledgeable enough to take advantage of the flaw.

“…we decided to publically disclose this in detail, as the social, economic and political stakes of passive traffic monitoring in virtualised environments are overwhelming”, states Bogdan Botezatu, Senior E-Threat Analyst at Bitdefender.

The following Help Net Security article discusses the ramifications in relatively simple language, while Radu Caragea’s whitepaper discusses the method technically.

References:The Help Net Security article – Hypervisor wiretap feature can leak data from the cloud Radu Caragea’s whitepaper – TeLeScope – real-time peering into the depths of TLS traffic from the hypervisor

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Terry

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