From the researchers that brought you BEAST and CRIME comes another attack against Secure Sockets Layer , one of the protocols that's used to secure Internet traffic from eavesdroppers both government and criminal. Calling the new attack POODLE-that's "Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption"-the attack allows a man-in-the-middle, such as a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot or a compromised ISP, to extract data from secure HTTP connections.