Details about a new vulnerability related to SSL and TLS, entitled Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption, or DROWN, have surfaced that takes advantage of a weakness in SSLv2.  The most significant impact of this vulnerability to date relates to OpenSSL, which released an update today that addresses this vulnerability, and several others.  The US-CERT published a notification today as well, stating "Network traffic encrypted using an RSA-based SSL certificate may be decrypted if enough SSLv2 handshake data can be collected."   Microsoft IIS version 7.0 and greater is not impacted, as SSLv2 is disabled by default; unless it has been enabled as part of the deployment, which should be identified during vulnerability testing.  

While secure default configurations, patches, and updates will often address the technical shortcomings in applications and libraries, it will not address architectural issues where integrations exist which rely on older encryption methods.  Organizations that rely on SSLv2 for integrations may want to consider an enterprise effort to finally make the move, and eliminate the risk entirely. 

Additional details

DROWN Attack Paper

US-CERT Post

tony d0t carothers --gmail