Security Advisory: SecureDrop and the EFAIL Vulnerability
Today, security researchers disclosed vulnerabilities, collectively called EFAIL, in how the decryption and display of PGP-encrypted emails are handled in multiple email clients (see EFAIL website, EFAIL paper). SecureDrop submissions are not sent via email, and can only be decrypted on the air-gapped Secure Viewing Station, so the content of ... Read More
How the Spectre and Meltdown Vulnerabilities impact SecureDrop Users
Based on publicly available information and our current understanding of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, both vulnerabilities require an adversary to have arbitrary code execution capabilities on the host. Given that SecureDrop’s Application and Monitor servers do not allow arbitrary code execution, these vulnerabilities appear not to be directly exploitable ... Read More
We found a vulnerability in the SecureDrop installation process. Here’s how we’re fixing it.
On the evening of Monday October 16th, just as the SecureDrop team was about to head home for the day, two of our engineers, while doing some testing for a new version of SecureDrop expected to be released the following week, discovered a serious vulnerability in the SecureDrop code. Read More
Security Advisory: Do not scan QR codes submitted through SecureDrop with connected devices
We have recently become aware of attacks attempting to exfiltrate data from the SecureDrop airgapped Secure Viewing Station. These attacks come in the form of QR codes that journalists must scan with an internet-connected device such as a phone. The QR code contains a link that sends exfiltrated data from the airgap environment to an attacker. Read More
How the Tor traffic confirmation attack affects SecureDrop users
On Wednesday morning, the Tor Project published a security advisory detailing an attack against the Tor network that appears to have been trying to deanonymize users. SecureDrop, our open-source whistleblower submission system, is heavily reliant on Tor and uses the anonymity network to facilitate communication between whistleblowers, journalists, and news organizations. For this reason, we wanted to clarify how the attack affects users of SecureDrop. Read More
How the recent Tails operating system vulnerability affects journalists and SecureDrop
On Wednesday afternoon, vulnerability and exploit research firm Exodus Intelligence disclosed a security vulnerability that would allow an attacker to deanonymize a user of Tails, the operating system that many journalists rely on to communicate securely with sources and that we have written about before. Tails is also integral to SecureDrop, our open-source whistleblower submission system, so we wanted to clarify if and how the vulnerability affects users of this system. Read More
SecureDrop and the OpenSSL vulnerability
Today a serious vulnerability was reported on OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f: CVE-2014-0160, or Heartbleed. SecureDrop runs as a Tor Hidden Service, which we also know is affected. As such, this affects all properly configured instances of SecureDrop, and steps should be taken immediately to mitigate disruption of SecureDrop running services. Read More