SSL v3 and TLS v1 are subject to a serious exploit, according to a recently published attack mechanism (called BEAST).  This sounds foundation-shattering and kind of scary. When people see this, as when we did, the first panicky questions that arise are:

• What is really affected?
• How serious is it?
• What can I do to protect myself?
• How does the BEAST attack actually work?

After researching this issue, we have digested what we have found and produced this article to answer all of these questions for you.

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Creating a web site that has “secure” components requires more than slapping together some web pages and adding an SSL Certificate.  All a certificate really does is create a thin veneer of security — one that does not go very far to protect whatever sensitive data necessitated security in the first place.  In fact, naive attempts at security can ultimately make the data less secure and more likely to be compromised by creating an appetizing target for the unscrupulous.

So, beyond paying big bucks to hire a developer with significant security expertise, what do you do? Start with this article — its purpose is to shed light on many of the most significant factors in secure web site programming/design and what you can do to address them.  At a minimum, reading this article will help you to intelligently discuss your web site security with the developers that you ultimately hire.

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