Critical Flaws in PGP and S/MIME Tools – Immediately disable tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email

Researchers found critical vulnerabilities in PGP and S/MIME Tools, immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email.

If you are one of the users of the email encryption tools Pretty Good Privacy and S/MIME there is an important warning for you.

A group of European security expert has discovered a set of critical vulnerabilities in PGP and S/Mime encryption tools that could reveal your encrypted emails in plain text, also the ones you sent in the past.

Pretty Good Privacy is the open source end-to-end encryption standard used to encrypt emails, while S/MIME, Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is an asymmetric cryptography-based technology that allows users to send digitally signed and encrypted emails.

Sebastian Schinzel, a professor of Computer Security at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, warned the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) might actually allow Pretty Grievous P0wnage due to vulnerabilities and the worst news is that currently there are no reliable fixes.

The existence of the vulnerabilities was also confirmed by the researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the organization also recommended users to uninstall Pretty Good Privacy and S/MIME applications until the issued are fixed.

“A group of European security researchers have released a warning about a set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME. EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.” reads the blog post published by the EFF. 

“Our advice, which mirrors that of the researchers, is to immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email.”

“Until the flaws described in the paper are more widely understood and fixed, users should arrange for the use of alternative end-to-end secure channels, such as Signal, and temporarily stop sending and especially reading PGP-encrypted email,” states the advisory.

Schnizel will disclose full details on Tuesday morning at 0700 UTC.

Stay tuned!

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – privacy, hacking)

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