According to papers released by French and US researchers, the flaw dubbed FREAK could leave thousands of websites open to attacks if the problem is not patched.
A research paper said the flaw comes from a class of deliberately weak export cipher suites introduced under the pressure of US government agencies to ensure that the NSA would be able to decrypt all foreign encrypted communication.
Researchers said the flaw stems from US government-imposed standards for encryption in software that was exported, a short-lived effort to allow the US to be able to access software exported to unfriendly regimes.
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