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That's not how this works... > How people still think the PKI system is actually delivering security is beyond me. It has its problems, but it's what we've go

by mholt 10y ago

That's not how this works... > How people still think the PKI system is actually delivering security is beyond me. It has its problems, but it's what we've got to work with right now, and it's not as bad as you make it seem. > it's identical to a self-signed cert, since Comodo is a known bad actor now That's not technically true. I dislike Comodo as much as the next person, but this statement is a bit disingenuous, since you're implying that you can trust anyone who generates their own certificate for google.com or yourbank.com more than a CA-signed certificate. There's a reason PKI exists; it's because self-signed certificates by themselves aren't trustworthy in the wild.

bandrami 10y ago
But Comodo can issue a certificate for google.com or yourbank.com They may have, for that matter. Do you check the issuer every time you go to a secure site? Do you trust them to do a better job securing either of those domains than they did with a large telecom in Austria?
- svenfaw 10y ago
  > Do you check the issuer every time you go to a secure site? Your browser does (for high-value sites). That's what certificate pinning and HPKP are for.
  - bandrami 10y ago
    And they have to do that precisely because there are 170 or so entities of various levels of dubiousness that are by default authorized to sign any certificate for any domain, and everybody knows that this is fundamentally a horrible idea. For that matter, since HPKP requires sideband key management, it's A) an admission that PKI doesn't actually work, and B) a pretty clear example of why the CAs are unnecessary If you have pinned certificates you are essentially operating exactly the way 99% of us do with SSH (only rather better because there are several million eyes on high-value certificates), which means you don't need CAs anymore.
    - 45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
      Not quite. Pins are either built into the browser by the vendor, or assigned on first access AFTER a successful server authentication (via the cert). Pins are trusted/verified through another channel. SSH Tofu trust occurs pre server authentication. It has no defense against an ALWAYS mitm. Of course there are far less ALWAYS MITM for SSH than TLS. You have no way of validating the pubkey you have written to known_hosts against anything else.
      - bandrami 10y ago
        Pins are either built into the browser by the vendor Right, sideband, and browsers do it manually for domains they consider "high value". It has no defense against an ALWAYS mitm For that matter nothing does, since at some point I downloaded my OS or browser (wherever my CA store is) to begin with.

by mholt 10y ago

bandrami 10y ago

But Comodo can issue a certificate for google.com or yourbank.com They may have, for that matter. Do you check the issuer every time you go to a secure site? Do you trust them to do a better job securing either of those domains than they did with a large telecom in Austria?

svenfaw 10y ago
> Do you check the issuer every time you go to a secure site? Your browser does (for high-value sites). That's what certificate pinning and HPKP are for.
- bandrami 10y ago
  And they have to do that precisely because there are 170 or so entities of various levels of dubiousness that are by default authorized to sign any certificate for any domain, and everybody knows that this is fundamentally a horrible idea. For that matter, since HPKP requires sideband key management, it's A) an admission that PKI doesn't actually work, and B) a pretty clear example of why the CAs are unnecessary If you have pinned certificates you are essentially operating exactly the way 99% of us do with SSH (only rather better because there are several million eyes on high-value certificates), which means you don't need CAs anymore.
  - 45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
    Not quite. Pins are either built into the browser by the vendor, or assigned on first access AFTER a successful server authentication (via the cert). Pins are trusted/verified through another channel. SSH Tofu trust occurs pre server authentication. It has no defense against an ALWAYS mitm. Of course there are far less ALWAYS MITM for SSH than TLS. You have no way of validating the pubkey you have written to known_hosts against anything else.
    - bandrami 10y ago
      Pins are either built into the browser by the vendor Right, sideband, and browsers do it manually for domains they consider "high value". It has no defense against an ALWAYS mitm For that matter nothing does, since at some point I downloaded my OS or browser (wherever my CA store is) to begin with.