DigiNotar,
a Dutch certificate authority that was hacked in July, has filed for
bankruptcy.
"Although
we are saddened by this action and the circumstances that necessitated it, we
would like to remind our customers and investors that the incident at DigiNotar
has no impact on VASCO's core authentication technology," said T. Kendall
Hunt, chairman and CEO of VASCO, a U.S. security firm that acquired DigiNotar
in January. "The technological infrastructures of VASCO and DigiNotar
remain completely separated, meaning that there is no risk for infection of
VASCO's strong authentication business."
Hunt added
that VASCO was working with the Dutch government to investigate those
responsible for the hack. VASCO is also planning to announce the financial
damage done.
DigiNotar,
established in 1997, was responsible for creating certificates that validate
Web sites as legitimate. Although the breach traces back to July, DigiNotar
reportedly took weeks to notice and revoked fake certificates without notifying
anyone. A subsequent investigation revealed that DigiNotar certificates might
have compromised the Google accounts of approximately 300,000 Iranians.
What this
means is that when users in Iran and elsewhere navigated to certain Web sites,
they might actually be visiting spoofed sites that stole personal information
when users logged in. In the wake of the DigiNotar digital certificate hack,
Microsoft revoked the trust of five DigiNotar root certificates, followed by
Google, Mozilla, and Apple.
A hacker
known as Comodo Hacker, who got his name thanks to a March hack of Comodo, has
also taken credit for the DigiNotar job. He also claims to have accessed
GlobalSign, prompting the company to temporarily stop issuing digital
certificates.
Chloe
Albanesius contributed to this report.
For more
from Sara, follow her on Twitter @sarapyin.
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