Warning about using older GnuTLS versions

Michael Catanzaro <[email protected]> Tue, 07 Jan 2020 13:53:01 -0600
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnome.apps.epiphany,gmane.comp.gnome.desktop
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi,

In light of recently-published chosen-prefix attacks on SHA1 [1], I 
caution that it is no longer safe to use Epiphany, or any other 
WebKitGTK-based browser, or libsoup, or any applications based on 
libsoup, or any other applications using GLib's networking facilities, 
in combination with GnuTLS versions older than GnuTLS 3.6. GnuTLS 
versions prior to 3.6 will accept certificates that use SHA1 
signatures. It is now both possible and economically-feasible to forge 
these signatures. Your secure connections can no longer be trusted to 
be secure when using these older versions of GnuTLS.

Notably, this affects Ubuntu 18.04, which still uses GnuTLS 3.5, and 
all derived distros. Many other distros are also affected.

Michael

[1] 
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/pgp-keys-software-security-and-much-more-threatened-by-new-sha1-exploit/