3 ms·

> self signed certificate unless it's explicitly verified is worth less. Of course it's worth less; the point is that it's not worthless, and has greater value

by pdkl95 11y ago

> self signed certificate unless it's explicitly verified is worth less. Of course it's worth less; the point is that it's not worthless, and has greater value than plaintext. > if the attacker can perform a MITM attack Then you communication is still protected from other attackers. > What i do not want to see is people thinking that if we just spam SSL certs and stick them on everything That's exactly the thing that needs to happen. PHK was right when he pointed dout that it would be trivial for Apache to simply generate a self-signed cert on first use if no other cert exists, removing a lot of the plaintext on the the internet. > it will some how help us "some how"? The point was it provides very good protection against passive analytics (aka "eavesdropping", "spying"). > this is the classical definition of security theater. Nonsense, nobody has ever claimed self-signed certificates were "safe", we only said they were better than plaintext. Why would you accept self-signed certificates as any kind of authentication? > self signed certs trains people to just click accept sigh That dialog may be the biggest reason we're still using plaintext. I needs to die yesterday, for the very reason you say: it gives people bad habits. That kind of scary popup needs to be reserved for invalid certificates, which actually warrant that kind of attention. Given BULLRUN's large budget and how easy it is to manipulate software projects[1], it is somewhat suspicious that there just happens to be a scary popup if someone tries to encrypt without caring about authentication. Nobody said anything about giving self-signed certificates any kind of trust. This is about removing plaintext. Unfortunately, there has been culture that badly confuses authentication with encryption (privacy) when they are entirely separate matters. > meaningless to all but the most primitive types of passive sniffing. Which is exactly the set of problems I'm talking about. Why do you want to continue allowing passive sniffing? We can trivially put a stop to this kind of nearly-free eavesdropping, but because those solutions don't address more complicated types of attacks (by design! use authentication when you can!), security people tend to be hostile to the idea. Meanwhile, as the search for a perfect solution continues, incredible amounts of passive sniffing is de facto accepted as the status quo. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk

dogma1138 11y ago
Would you stop putting words into my mouth? I don't think that running plain text services is warranted, but i also do not want to see us rush into a horrible system that will not provide any sufficient protection against surveillance while forming the mindset of people into a false pretense of security. If we want security we should design a better system not force horrid implementation of already bad system. What you are doing is like putting the people that we should moderate the use of antibiotics and anti-malaria drugs because of resistances in the same camps as anti-vaccine nut jobs. I want a better secure Internet, not one that is flooded with out of control certificates and poor implementations which will only make things worse and much harder to untangle in the long run. And no self-signed certificates aren't better than plain text, unless i have received public key / thumbprint of the certificate through a channel I trust and could verify the sender of that information to me a self signed certificate is equivalent of plain text because the moment I have to accept that connection on good faith i cannot trust that the party which I am communicating it is the party I intended to communicate with or that no one else has the key. Under those circumstances I will not transfer any information that I would not transfer over plain text period, if you do so well do it at your own peril.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > I don't think that running plain text services is warranted So stop the fear mongering over self-signed certs so plaintext can simply end. > while forming the mindset of people into a false pretense of security Then stop conflating self-signed certificates with a trust system. I'm talking about a replacement for plaintext; this doesn't affect the handling of authenticated certificates in any way. Since you still seem to not not understand this, let me be explicit: I'm saying we need protect against passive eavesdropping at the network level. I never said you should lie to the use* and claim their connection had any additional security. These fears about a "false pretense of security" are not relevant, as a move from plaintext to opportunistic encryption with self-signed certificates shouldn't be visible to the user. > I cannot trust that the party which I am communicating it is the party I intended to communicate with or that no one else has the key. Obviously. I never claimed otherwise. This isn't relevant, and if you want to protect against this threat model, you obviously need proper authentication (which I recommend whenever possible). Currently a lot communication on the internet has authentication risks AND allows anybody with a packet sniffer to log their data for next to no cost? You to believe it's a bad idea to convert those plaintext situations into something that has the same authentication risks while only betraying the contents to a single eavesdropper, who must be a MitM. There is no technical reason not to do this. As you obviously know because you referenced the certificate warning popup, self-signed certificates are trivially identifiable, so there is no reason to confuse them with normal certificates. Absolutely nothing needs to change in how this is presented to the user, so we aren't creating any sort of false sense of security. > Under those circumstances I will not transfer any information that I would not transfer over plain text period, Good for you. What does that have to do with the fact that much of the internet is still filled with the plaintext of people who don't understand this kind of technical topic? Why are you resisting shielding their communications from passive eavesdropping? This attitude that security must protect against all threats (or at least the treats YOU care about) is a major problem. What do you think is going to happen? It is magical thinking to assume that everyone will suddenly start using full, proper crypto (they can do that right now). We've been trying that for years and the result was a lot of people staying with plaintext.

by pdkl95 11y ago

dogma1138 11y ago

Would you stop putting words into my mouth? I don't think that running plain text services is warranted, but i also do not want to see us rush into a horrible system that will not provide any sufficient protection against surveillance while forming the mindset of people into a false pretense of security. If we want security we should design a better system not force horrid implementation of already bad system. What you are doing is like putting the people that we should moderate the use of antibiotics and anti-malaria drugs because of resistances in the same camps as anti-vaccine nut jobs. I want a better secure Internet, not one that is flooded with out of control certificates and poor implementations which will only make things worse and much harder to untangle in the long run. And no self-signed certificates aren't better than plain text, unless i have received public key / thumbprint of the certificate through a channel I trust and could verify the sender of that information to me a self signed certificate is equivalent of plain text because the moment I have to accept that connection on good faith i cannot trust that the party which I am communicating it is the party I intended to communicate with or that no one else has the key. Under those circumstances I will not transfer any information that I would not transfer over plain text period, if you do so well do it at your own peril.

pdkl95 11y ago
> I don't think that running plain text services is warranted So stop the fear mongering over self-signed certs so plaintext can simply end. > while forming the mindset of people into a false pretense of security Then stop conflating self-signed certificates with a trust system. I'm talking about a replacement for plaintext; this doesn't affect the handling of authenticated certificates in any way. Since you still seem to not not understand this, let me be explicit: I'm saying we need protect against passive eavesdropping at the network level. I never said you should lie to the use* and claim their connection had any additional security. These fears about a "false pretense of security" are not relevant, as a move from plaintext to opportunistic encryption with self-signed certificates shouldn't be visible to the user. > I cannot trust that the party which I am communicating it is the party I intended to communicate with or that no one else has the key. Obviously. I never claimed otherwise. This isn't relevant, and if you want to protect against this threat model, you obviously need proper authentication (which I recommend whenever possible). Currently a lot communication on the internet has authentication risks AND allows anybody with a packet sniffer to log their data for next to no cost? You to believe it's a bad idea to convert those plaintext situations into something that has the same authentication risks while only betraying the contents to a single eavesdropper, who must be a MitM. There is no technical reason not to do this. As you obviously know because you referenced the certificate warning popup, self-signed certificates are trivially identifiable, so there is no reason to confuse them with normal certificates. Absolutely nothing needs to change in how this is presented to the user, so we aren't creating any sort of false sense of security. > Under those circumstances I will not transfer any information that I would not transfer over plain text period, Good for you. What does that have to do with the fact that much of the internet is still filled with the plaintext of people who don't understand this kind of technical topic? Why are you resisting shielding their communications from passive eavesdropping? This attitude that security must protect against all threats (or at least the treats YOU care about) is a major problem. What do you think is going to happen? It is magical thinking to assume that everyone will suddenly start using full, proper crypto (they can do that right now). We've been trying that for years and the result was a lot of people staying with plaintext.