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What I care about is the admin interface of my blog. I want that, and only that, to live on a secure connection, for me and only me. I literally just want to be

What I care about is the admin interface of my blog. I want that, and only that, to live on a secure connection, for me and only me. I literally just want to be able to type in the password to my blog so I can post stuff to it. Why does this have to be forced to be such a jump-through-hoops-and-pay-strangers-money thing? Why shouldn't I just make my own cert, note its fingerprint, and call it a day? Why does my browser have to repeatedly go absolutely apeshit over that? And more importantly, if this is really such a massive unbelievable vector that literally every web-connected computer on earth must behave this way, why does SSH still just say "want to trust this key? OK, I'll get out of your way now"?

pfg 10y ago
To put it bluntly: The inconvenience caused to you (and other users who might be able to make an informed decision when facing a certificate warning) is less important than the risk that a non-technical user accepts a certificate mistakenly and falls victim to a MitM attack. Oh, and every browser I'm aware of allows you to import CA certificates, so why not just do that once and get a nice, green lock? I don't know many non-technical users who use SSH regularly, but even for technical users, I doubt too many check the fingerprint, so the TOFU property of SSH is still a problem. That being said, SSH's TOFU is not all that different from the process of installing a CA certificate in your browser so ... just do that.
- merb 10y ago
  > That being said, SSH's TOFU is not all that different from the process of installing a CA certificate in your browser so ... just do that. except that it's 10000 times easier and 10000 times easier to claim that the remote key and the key you just trusted is the same.
jedberg 10y ago
1) if you're doing a certificate just for yourself, you can import it into your browser. 2) I'm pretty sure all the browsers work just like ssh -- where you can accept it once and then it doesn't bother you again.

pfg 10y ago

To put it bluntly: The inconvenience caused to you (and other users who might be able to make an informed decision when facing a certificate warning) is less important than the risk that a non-technical user accepts a certificate mistakenly and falls victim to a MitM attack. Oh, and every browser I'm aware of allows you to import CA certificates, so why not just do that once and get a nice, green lock? I don't know many non-technical users who use SSH regularly, but even for technical users, I doubt too many check the fingerprint, so the TOFU property of SSH is still a problem. That being said, SSH's TOFU is not all that different from the process of installing a CA certificate in your browser so ... just do that.

merb 10y ago
> That being said, SSH's TOFU is not all that different from the process of installing a CA certificate in your browser so ... just do that. except that it's 10000 times easier and 10000 times easier to claim that the remote key and the key you just trusted is the same.

jedberg 10y ago

1) if you're doing a certificate just for yourself, you can import it into your browser. 2) I'm pretty sure all the browsers work just like ssh -- where you can accept it once and then it doesn't bother you again.