A lone Iranian hacker claimed responsibility over the weekend for an attack on Comodo, a Jersey City, N.J.-based company that issues digital SSL certificates used by websites to validate their identity to visitors.
The attacker was able to generate false SSL certificates for Skype, Yahoo, Windows Live, Google Mail and Mozilla by breaking into websites GlobalTrust.it and InstantSSL.it, a Comodo partner based in Italy. The false certificates could have allowed others to launch phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks by disguising themselves behind counterfeit mirrored versions of the targeted sites.
While Comodo stated last week that the sophistication of the attack indicated that it was based in Iran and state-sponsored, a letter posted on text-sharing site Pastebin and signed by Janam Fadaye Rahbar, claimed that he acted alone and was not part of any state-sponsored political agenda, nor was he affiliated with the Iranian Cyber Army, a hacking group believed to be part of the Iranian government.
