It's the Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS Tool, or BEAST: The tool is based on a blockwise-adaptive chosen-plaintext attack, a man-in-the-middle approach that injects segments of plain text sent by the target's browser into the encrypted request stream to determine the shared key. The code can be injected into the user's browser through JavaScript associated with a malicious advertisement distributed through a Web ad service or an IFRAME in a linkjacked site, ad, or other scripted elements on a webpage. Using the known text blocks, BEAST can then use information collected to decrypt the target's AES-encrypted requests, including encrypted cookies, and then hijack the no-longer secure connection. That decryption happens slowly, however; BEAST currently needs sessions of at least a half-hour to break cookies using keys over 1,000 characters long. The attack, according to Duong, is capable of intercepting sessions with PayPal and other services that still use TLS 1.0which would be most secure sites, since follow-on versions of TLS aren't yet supported in most browsers or Web server implementations. Read more: Schneier on Security
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