Press / Media

The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT in Darmstadt has discovered serious flaws in the TwitterKit for iOS 3.4.2 that can result in account abuse and data loss. The TwitterKit is an end-of-life software library that is no longer updated but is still used in apps. The Fraunhofer researchers urge app developers to stop using the TwitterKit for iOS app developments and to replace it in existing apps. Technical details about the vulnerability can be found here: www.sit.fraunhofer.de/cve.

Hackers can access sensitive data and services also via telephone devices: Most companies use VoIP telephones that are integrated into the company network. Security researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology have found a total of 40 partly serious vulnerabilities in these VoIP telephones. Attackers can misuse these gaps to intercept calls, deactivate the telephone or gain further access to the company network via weak points in the device. The VoIP telephones producers have by now closed these vulnerabilities. Users are strongly recommended to install the appropriate updates of the device’s firmware. Further technical details on the vulnerabilities can be found at www.sit.fraunhofer.de/cve . The researchers presented the results of their investigations at DEFCON, one of the world’s largest hacker conferences.

The second round of the Hessian-Israeli Partnership Accelerator (HIPA) was concluded with a final event on the panorama floor of the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt/Main. Three German-Israeli teams presented their research results to around 80 guests from international politics and the financial and cyber security sectors, including Sandra Simovich, Consul General of the State of Israel, Dr. Stefan Heck, State Secretary in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, and Jörg Hessenmüller, COO and member of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank AG.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is collaborating globally with excellent partners to create synergies for research and to build bridges to regional markets. With this in mind, two new Project Centers were opened in Israel on May 21 during a ceremony at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The “Fraunhofer Project Center for Cybersecurity at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem” and the “Fraunhofer Project Center for Drug Discovery and Delivery at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem”. The two Project Centers combine the expertise of the Israeli partners from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) with the competencies of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB and are the first project centers of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Israel.

A research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT in Darmstadt, Germany, has found a way to issue fraudulent website certificates that are used to ensure trustworthiness of Internet domains. The team lead by Dr. Haya Shulman has shown that the weakness in the domain validation can be exploited in real life and that the security of Internet infrastructures needs to be improved. To do so the researchers have informed Web CAs (Certificate Authorities) and suggest a new implementation that Web CAs may use to mitigate the attack. Further information at https://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/en/dvpp/

Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) has enabled a new open source software stack. It makes work easier for developers who want to use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 – a standardized hardware-based security solution for securing industrial, automotive and other applications such as network equipment.