In the 1990s, the U.S. government forced encryption companies to sell low-grade encryption techniques to companies to keep trade secrets from being sold to other countries.

This lack of strong encryption led to various attacks being easy to pull off, and the newest attack, named FREAK, was spotted by computer scientists earlier this week.

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A FREAK (Factoring RSA Export Keys) attack is capable of intercepting a data packet and acting as a "man in the middle". It allows the attack to read all of the information without any overlaying encryption.

This attack could be used to gain sensitive information on bank details and other private information, simply by having access to the company's backend networking. This is something the U.S. government already has available through the NSA back-door networks with several leading internet companies.

Even though stronger encryption is still technically illegal, several internet companies have tried their hardest to create new encryption much stronger than what the U.S. government or any other party can break.

The attack might not have been widely used by hackers, but it allows governments and internet service providers an easy way to gain all of the network information, even if the internet company uses encryption.

TagsFREAK attack, security flaw, U.S. Government, encryption, encrypted link