6 ms·

IMO, look for increasing pressure on CAs to unilaterally revoke certificates issued to known malware networks.

dogma1138 11y ago
That won't happen, if anything SSL cert's are easier to get now than ever and with projects like letsencrypt.org it will become even easier. Also many of the malicious adds do not come from malware networks they come from all major ad networks including Google's. You have ads exploiting zero day vulnerabilities in Flash and browsers that not easy to detect, and with the amount of syndication in ad networks you can't effectively blacklist or revoke them. One of the downsides to this whole "letsencrypt" movement and CA's from less "organized" countries being accepted by major browsers and clients is that you will have much more failures in security. SSL was designed around high level of trust and that trust worthy SSL certificates will not be easy to come by, this is why they used to cost so much there was actual inspection and you would get fraud insurance for quite high amounts. Today i won't be surprised if you could get a Google.com cert from some low tier CA in the Philippines which automates the process and it will be valid on large amount of devices. We need a better verification system for SSL and actual policing of certificates including integrating it into DNS, if i ask for Google.com i should get a "cert" entry from the DNS server just as i get the A entry for it, and i don't understand why this isn't the case yet.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Because the main thrust of HTTPS at this point is regaining some privacy from snooping governmental organizations more than it is building a trust chain.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    So having a chaotic system in which SSL certificates are easy to near trivial to get and hence spoof makes it harder for organizations to spy on you?
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      In a manner of speaking. Even a self signed certificate prevents you from passive eavesdropping and traffic injection (a thing we know the US government is doing right now) if not an an active man in the middle (something which may or may not be happening to you on the plain HTTP connections you use every day)
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Passive eavesdropping yes, injection nope since it's not passive to begin with and unless you can explicitly verify it it's pretty useless. SSL works because we assume that people can't issue certificates for websites that they do not control which isn't the case.
        pdkl95 11y ago
        MitM on a self-signed certificates costs more than QUANTUM-style packet races. Please, stop trying to keep the internet in plaintext.
        dogma1138 11y ago
        I'm not trying to keep the internet in plain text, I'm trying to keep the internet a place where i can trust the certificates and not having to worry about a CA in china issuing certificates for the sites i visit because they can be CBA to check. An attack against a self signed cert may cost more then what ever but that wasn't what we were talking about initially either. If you can MITM which they can and can get cheap valid certificates it's game over. And while the NSA might be able to get certificates no matter the case, people have managed to buy certificates for domains they do not own multiple times now. Which puts the ability to MITM real world SSL sessions in the hands of individuals.
        pdkl95 11y ago
        > I'm trying to keep the internet a place where i can trust the certificates That ship sailed a long time ago. While hierarchical PKI has always been a flawed concept (I find it unlikely that you actually trust all of the organizations that firefox/etc ship as trusted roots). Even if you did, as you aid, these "authorities" have signed improper certs. Trying to patch holes in this failed system (such as revoking those improper certs) is yet another foolish attempt to enumerate badness[1]. If you want authentication, you need do your own chain-of-trust instead of assuming ~100 cert authorities will do that for you. > Which puts the ability to MITM real world SSL sessions in the hands of individuals. So we should keep the world in plaintext (by not allowing self signed certs)? Quite a few people besides the NSA already[2] MITM connections. My point is that we absolutely need to raise those costs. Even with the NSA, just because they have the capability to do something doesn't mean you should give up. Make the do the extra work of a MitM attck (even if probably a small amount of extra work in the case of the NSA). Add another categorization if you want. Nobody said you have to treat self-signed certs as secure, just that they need to be used. Privacy from eavesdroppers and authentication are separate goals. [1] http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/ http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

That won't happen, if anything SSL cert's are easier to get now than ever and with projects like letsencrypt.org it will become even easier. Also many of the malicious adds do not come from malware networks they come from all major ad networks including Google's. You have ads exploiting zero day vulnerabilities in Flash and browsers that not easy to detect, and with the amount of syndication in ad networks you can't effectively blacklist or revoke them. One of the downsides to this whole "letsencrypt" movement and CA's from less "organized" countries being accepted by major browsers and clients is that you will have much more failures in security. SSL was designed around high level of trust and that trust worthy SSL certificates will not be easy to come by, this is why they used to cost so much there was actual inspection and you would get fraud insurance for quite high amounts. Today i won't be surprised if you could get a Google.com cert from some low tier CA in the Philippines which automates the process and it will be valid on large amount of devices. We need a better verification system for SSL and actual policing of certificates including integrating it into DNS, if i ask for Google.com i should get a "cert" entry from the DNS server just as i get the A entry for it, and i don't understand why this isn't the case yet.

themartorana 11y ago
Because the main thrust of HTTPS at this point is regaining some privacy from snooping governmental organizations more than it is building a trust chain.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  So having a chaotic system in which SSL certificates are easy to near trivial to get and hence spoof makes it harder for organizations to spy on you?
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    In a manner of speaking. Even a self signed certificate prevents you from passive eavesdropping and traffic injection (a thing we know the US government is doing right now) if not an an active man in the middle (something which may or may not be happening to you on the plain HTTP connections you use every day)
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Passive eavesdropping yes, injection nope since it's not passive to begin with and unless you can explicitly verify it it's pretty useless. SSL works because we assume that people can't issue certificates for websites that they do not control which isn't the case.
      - pdkl95 11y ago
        MitM on a self-signed certificates costs more than QUANTUM-style packet races. Please, stop trying to keep the internet in plaintext.
        dogma1138 11y ago
        I'm not trying to keep the internet in plain text, I'm trying to keep the internet a place where i can trust the certificates and not having to worry about a CA in china issuing certificates for the sites i visit because they can be CBA to check. An attack against a self signed cert may cost more then what ever but that wasn't what we were talking about initially either. If you can MITM which they can and can get cheap valid certificates it's game over. And while the NSA might be able to get certificates no matter the case, people have managed to buy certificates for domains they do not own multiple times now. Which puts the ability to MITM real world SSL sessions in the hands of individuals.
        pdkl95 11y ago
        > I'm trying to keep the internet a place where i can trust the certificates That ship sailed a long time ago. While hierarchical PKI has always been a flawed concept (I find it unlikely that you actually trust all of the organizations that firefox/etc ship as trusted roots). Even if you did, as you aid, these "authorities" have signed improper certs. Trying to patch holes in this failed system (such as revoking those improper certs) is yet another foolish attempt to enumerate badness[1]. If you want authentication, you need do your own chain-of-trust instead of assuming ~100 cert authorities will do that for you. > Which puts the ability to MITM real world SSL sessions in the hands of individuals. So we should keep the world in plaintext (by not allowing self signed certs)? Quite a few people besides the NSA already[2] MITM connections. My point is that we absolutely need to raise those costs. Even with the NSA, just because they have the capability to do something doesn't mean you should give up. Make the do the extra work of a MitM attck (even if probably a small amount of extra work in the case of the NSA). Add another categorization if you want. Nobody said you have to treat self-signed certs as secure, just that they need to be used. Privacy from eavesdroppers and authentication are separate goals. [1] http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/ http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...