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Duo Security researchers found a second weak digital certificate on a new Dell Inspiron laptop The fallout from a serious security mistake made by Dell is widening, as security experts find more issues of concern. Researchers with Duo Security have found a second weak digital certificate in a new Dell laptop and evidence of another problematic one circulating. The issue started after it was discovered Dell shipped devices with a self-signed root digital certificate, eDellRoot, which is used to encrypt data traffic. But it installed the root certificate with the private encryption key included, a critical error that left many...

Dell laptops are coming preloaded with a self-signed root digital certificate that lets attackers spy on traffic to any secure website. The reports first surfaced on Reddit and were soon confirmed by other users and security experts on Twitter and blogs. The root certificate, which has the power of a certificate authority on the laptops it's installed on, comes bundled with its corresponding private key, making the situation worse. With the private key, which is now available online, anyone can generate a certificate for any website that will be trusted by browsers such as Internet Explorer and Google Chrome that...

See for example this thread first. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, a large scandal has broken concerning the efforts of unscrupulous, highly-placed individuals to gain access to the private phone records and conversations of dissenters. The rights of these dissenters are guaranteed by law. Does this sound familiar? Are you thinking of the words “NSA interecpt / wiretap program?” If you are, then we are not connecting here. I am speaking of the recent controversy regarding some of the corporate executives at Hewlett-Packard, and their attempts to unearth the source of leaks of corporate secrets (or...