Episode 19: Cross-Protocol Attacks on TLS with ALPACA!

TLS is an internet standard to secure the communication between servers and clients on the internet, for example that of web servers, FTP servers, and Email servers. This is possible because TLS was designed to be application layer independent, which allows its use in many diverse communication protocols.

ALPACA is an application layer protocol content confusion attack, exploiting TLS servers implementing different protocols but using compatible certificates, such as multi-domain or wildcard certificates. Attackers can redirect traffic from one subdomain to another, resulting in a valid TLS session. This breaks the authentication of TLS and cross-protocol attacks may be possible where the behavior of one protocol service may compromise the other at the application layer.

Links and papers discussed in the show:

• ALPACA Attack Website

Music composed by Toby Fox and performed by Sean Schafianski.

• ALPACA Attack