Cryptographers are urging users of a widely employed network protocol to make sure they're running the latest version after discovering a flaw that could allow attackers to read data that's supposed to remain encrypted. All programs that incorporate the OpenSSH implementation of SSH, short for Secure Shell, should make sure they use version 5.2, which provides several countermeasures to prevent the attacks. Other SSH implementations may be vulnerable as well, the researchers from the Information Security Group at the University of London's Royal Holloway said. The attack exploits subtle differences in the way SSH software reacts when encountering errors during cryptographic processing. By directing specially manipulated packets at the application, an attacker has a one in 262,144 chance of recovering 32 bits of plaintext from an arbitrary chunk of ciphertext.
