Several readers note that Secunia recently posted an advisory for users of Apple Safari and Konqueror Embedded. Apparently, the Web browsers fail to validate the Common Name of a SSL certificate. “This makes it possible to spoof SSL sites, so that users can’t trust the authenticity of a SSL website. SSL serves two main purposes; one is to ensure the authenticity of the server, which you are communicating with, the other is to provide encrypted communication. The authenticity part is completely broken when the Common Name isn’t verified, since the user can’t know if he is communicating with the host in the address bar. Exploitation of this requires that a malicious person is able to perform DNS spoofing. Internet Explorer and Netscape suffered similar vulnerabilities a few years ago.”
