Question

The messages exchanged between two services are kept confidential by using symmetric encryption. The security specialist is quite strict about making sure that no attacker is able to intercept and decipher messages sent between these two services. As a result, periodic audits are conducted in order to ensure that shared keys are always kept confidential. A single shared key has been in use for quite some time now. The security specialist was confident that all keys were well guarded, but just recently their security was compromised. How is this possible given that the shared key was never lost?

Accepted Answer

Because the same shared key was used for a long time, attackers were able to obtain the key by comparing messages sent between the two services.

Answer

Symmetric encryption is not intended for long-term use. It needs to be replaced with asymmetric encryption after some time.

Answer

The attackers somehow figured out which encryption algorithm was used. As a result, they were able to decipher the messages.

Answer

The shared key was decoded by the attackers using algorithms from related private keys used during prior message exchanges.

The messages exchanged between two services are kept confidential by using symmetric encryption. The security specialist is quite strict about making…

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