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1. Uninstall the CA certficates the browser has pre-installed 2. Create and install own CA certificate 3. Download or create desired server certficates, sign

1. Uninstall the CA certficates the browser has pre-installed 2. Create and install own CA certificate 3. Download or create desired server certficates, sign them with own CA and install them I have not tried 1 but I regularly do 2 and 3. (Usually for monitoring outgoing encrypted traffic.) Anyway, the idea of your comment is spot on, I think. The process whereby users blindly trust browser authors has serious flaws. The user should be the one controlling the list of trusted CAs and servers, not a third party such as ad-supported company or organization distributing a web browser. The more the user (cf. third parties) actively controls what endpoints she will trust, the better. The system should encourage users to be active in managing what certficates they will trust versus passively letting ad-supported web companies do this for them. It is the user who has the greatest incentive to make things right in terms of her own security and privacy. Third parties may help, but they ultimately have their own interests to worry about.

omni 9y ago
How do you know you're not being MitM'd during step 3?
- ethbro 9y ago
  For all reasonable adversary examples shy of panopticon, downloading from multiple physical sites and global proxies and comparing the same roots across downloads should be sufficient, no?
  - omni 9y ago
    Ohhhh gotcha, seems legit. I thought the certs in step 3 were individual site certs, not the roots. Thought he was going for some site-level pinning or something.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 9y ago
> The user should be the one controlling the list of trusted CAs and servers, not a third party such as ad-supported company or organization distributing a web browser. No, they really shouldn't. Security is a ridiculously complex arena, and the amount of knowledge you need to make an intelligent setup on this is considerable. For tech-heads, fine, but the vast majority of people are not tech-heads. If you switched over to this model, we'd end up in the bad old days of Windows XP, where untrained people would advise untrained people to 'just install this package and everything works!' and half the time they'd be installing malware. The right way to do this is 'sensible defaults, that the user can adjust'.
- aseipp 9y ago
  The funniest part of this ongoing debate I see -- to me, at least -- is that the end result is, effectively, one of two options. Given the way we as a society use technology, today: 1) Piss off the like, 10,000 technical nerds who care about this, by having sensible defaults. "We should really teach people to fully manage their CA chain! It sucks I have to spend 20 minutes doing this once a year after spending 10,000 hours learning how computers work." 2) Don't piss them off, but in return, get ready for user-blaming whenever someone messes up, and for your users to be 'responsible' for themselves. "If users were EDUCATED and not so stupid, they'd be able to spend 100 hours understanding the CA system and keep themselves secure!!! Not our fault if you install certificates from Brazilian hackers" I dunno, it's mostly an observation, even if it's something of a false dichotomy, but this always seems to be the way it goes. Technical users simply have vastly different value systems. But honestly, my go-to strategy these days is mostly "whenever most technical people try to give security advice and speak on behalf of most users, almost always: do the exact opposite thing, in order to keep the users secure". Most of us have some variant of Stockholm Syndrome to some extent.
  - JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
    >The funniest part of this ongoing debate I see -- to me, at least -- is that the end result is, effectively, one of two options. Given the way we as a society use technology, today Speaking more generally, rather than specifically about CA chains, I respectfully disagree with you there. Imho, what usually happens in a sane world, is that we spend most of the time between these two extremes, in a pendulum as we balance one way, get burned, go back the other way, get burned again and repeat. Im fine with it being that way until someone releases a true ground breaker and redefines what we are balancing. >But honestly, my go-to strategy these days is mostly "whenever most technical people try to give security advice and speak on behalf of most users, almost always: do the exact opposite thing, in order to keep the users secure". I think I understand what you are saying, but that comes across as you cherry picking the bits of a technical persons advice that a layman wouldn't understand. The "exact opposite" is sorta hard to define.
seangrogg 9y ago
While I do think blind trust has serious flaws, I do believe that having "trustworthy enough defaults" is good enough for the average user while making it relatively simple to overwrite those defaults would be nice.
- grandalf 9y ago
  Right now there is a big gap between "trustworthy enough defaults" and "security expert who has the judgment to determine which CAs deserve to be trusted with the most sensitive data". It's easy enough to remove CAs for one's self, the issue is understanding the possible entanglements that might make some of them less trustworthy or more easily compromised. That requires quite a bit of expertise and judgment.
jrochkind1 9y ago
If the system by default without users doing anything said common popular websites were insecure, most users would just learn to click through (no matter how many clicks it took) and generally ignore all security warnings. It's crying wolf. You would have actually decreased overall security. (Or they'd just switch to a different browser without these problems). I understand the intent of your suggestion, and you're not wrong in an ideal world, but mass-market security needs to take actual human psychology of non-technical users into account too.
- 13of40 9y ago
  I think if Chrome started showing alerts that the CA Reddit got it's cert from was sketchy, Reddit would go looking for a new CA. (And maybe given time the world would all end up using the Alphabet CA, which would presumably always have a five star rating....)
ota0004 9y ago
Browsers are primarily in the user fingerprinting business, but I would not be surprised that there is absolutely no incentive nor desire to invest in "security and privacy"(tm) other than to facilitate their main purpose. Let me stress this once again, the main purpose of a modern browser is to enable global, cross-network user tracking so that companies like google can collect data regardless of whether you "accept cookies", use vpns or sign up into one of google apps(which makes that "see what data google has about you" project even more evil).
- icebraining 9y ago
  What's Apple's incentive for doing that?
dotancohen 9y ago
And how would one know which certs to include? Seriously, I've been trying to solve that issue for years. Discussion on Super User (Stack Exchange): https://superuser.com/questions/818065/how-to-know-which-certificates-to-leave-in-my-browser-and-which-to-remove https://superuser.com/questions/818065/how-to-know-which-cer...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- j_s 9y ago
  Does SSLKEYLOGFILE include the server certs or only the session? Apparently, "Chrome stores SSL certificate state per host in browser history" if you can figure out how to access that. https://serverfault.com/questions/279984 https://serverfault.com/questions/279984 In any case: scan the hosts in your web history, and follow the cert chains to the various roots. Not sure if you're asking how or if you're asking whethor or not someone has already implemented something like this that is easy to use.
  - dotancohen 9y ago
    > scan the hosts in your web history That's simple SQL query against the Firefox profile sqlite database. No problem. > and follow the cert chains to the various roots. Doesn't scale. If it can't be scripted, then it can't be done for tens of sites that I regularly visit, and hundreds more that I come across.
    - j_s 9y ago
      Makes sense. What operating systems do you need this for?

omni 9y ago

How do you know you're not being MitM'd during step 3?

ethbro 9y ago
For all reasonable adversary examples shy of panopticon, downloading from multiple physical sites and global proxies and comparing the same roots across downloads should be sufficient, no?
- omni 9y ago
  Ohhhh gotcha, seems legit. I thought the certs in step 3 were individual site certs, not the roots. Thought he was going for some site-level pinning or something.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

vacri 9y ago

> The user should be the one controlling the list of trusted CAs and servers, not a third party such as ad-supported company or organization distributing a web browser. No, they really shouldn't. Security is a ridiculously complex arena, and the amount of knowledge you need to make an intelligent setup on this is considerable. For tech-heads, fine, but the vast majority of people are not tech-heads. If you switched over to this model, we'd end up in the bad old days of Windows XP, where untrained people would advise untrained people to 'just install this package and everything works!' and half the time they'd be installing malware. The right way to do this is 'sensible defaults, that the user can adjust'.

aseipp 9y ago
The funniest part of this ongoing debate I see -- to me, at least -- is that the end result is, effectively, one of two options. Given the way we as a society use technology, today: 1) Piss off the like, 10,000 technical nerds who care about this, by having sensible defaults. "We should really teach people to fully manage their CA chain! It sucks I have to spend 20 minutes doing this once a year after spending 10,000 hours learning how computers work." 2) Don't piss them off, but in return, get ready for user-blaming whenever someone messes up, and for your users to be 'responsible' for themselves. "If users were EDUCATED and not so stupid, they'd be able to spend 100 hours understanding the CA system and keep themselves secure!!! Not our fault if you install certificates from Brazilian hackers" I dunno, it's mostly an observation, even if it's something of a false dichotomy, but this always seems to be the way it goes. Technical users simply have vastly different value systems. But honestly, my go-to strategy these days is mostly "whenever most technical people try to give security advice and speak on behalf of most users, almost always: do the exact opposite thing, in order to keep the users secure". Most of us have some variant of Stockholm Syndrome to some extent.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  >The funniest part of this ongoing debate I see -- to me, at least -- is that the end result is, effectively, one of two options. Given the way we as a society use technology, today Speaking more generally, rather than specifically about CA chains, I respectfully disagree with you there. Imho, what usually happens in a sane world, is that we spend most of the time between these two extremes, in a pendulum as we balance one way, get burned, go back the other way, get burned again and repeat. Im fine with it being that way until someone releases a true ground breaker and redefines what we are balancing. >But honestly, my go-to strategy these days is mostly "whenever most technical people try to give security advice and speak on behalf of most users, almost always: do the exact opposite thing, in order to keep the users secure". I think I understand what you are saying, but that comes across as you cherry picking the bits of a technical persons advice that a layman wouldn't understand. The "exact opposite" is sorta hard to define.

seangrogg 9y ago

While I do think blind trust has serious flaws, I do believe that having "trustworthy enough defaults" is good enough for the average user while making it relatively simple to overwrite those defaults would be nice.

grandalf 9y ago
Right now there is a big gap between "trustworthy enough defaults" and "security expert who has the judgment to determine which CAs deserve to be trusted with the most sensitive data". It's easy enough to remove CAs for one's self, the issue is understanding the possible entanglements that might make some of them less trustworthy or more easily compromised. That requires quite a bit of expertise and judgment.

jrochkind1 9y ago

If the system by default without users doing anything said common popular websites were insecure, most users would just learn to click through (no matter how many clicks it took) and generally ignore all security warnings. It's crying wolf. You would have actually decreased overall security. (Or they'd just switch to a different browser without these problems). I understand the intent of your suggestion, and you're not wrong in an ideal world, but mass-market security needs to take actual human psychology of non-technical users into account too.

13of40 9y ago
I think if Chrome started showing alerts that the CA Reddit got it's cert from was sketchy, Reddit would go looking for a new CA. (And maybe given time the world would all end up using the Alphabet CA, which would presumably always have a five star rating....)

ota0004 9y ago

Browsers are primarily in the user fingerprinting business, but I would not be surprised that there is absolutely no incentive nor desire to invest in "security and privacy"(tm) other than to facilitate their main purpose. Let me stress this once again, the main purpose of a modern browser is to enable global, cross-network user tracking so that companies like google can collect data regardless of whether you "accept cookies", use vpns or sign up into one of google apps(which makes that "see what data google has about you" project even more evil).

icebraining 9y ago
What's Apple's incentive for doing that?

dotancohen 9y ago

And how would one know which certs to include? Seriously, I've been trying to solve that issue for years. Discussion on Super User (Stack Exchange): https://superuser.com/questions/818065/how-to-know-which-certificates-to-leave-in-my-browser-and-which-to-remove https://superuser.com/questions/818065/how-to-know-which-cer...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
j_s 9y ago
Does SSLKEYLOGFILE include the server certs or only the session? Apparently, "Chrome stores SSL certificate state per host in browser history" if you can figure out how to access that. https://serverfault.com/questions/279984 https://serverfault.com/questions/279984 In any case: scan the hosts in your web history, and follow the cert chains to the various roots. Not sure if you're asking how or if you're asking whethor or not someone has already implemented something like this that is easy to use.
- dotancohen 9y ago
  > scan the hosts in your web history That's simple SQL query against the Firefox profile sqlite database. No problem. > and follow the cert chains to the various roots. Doesn't scale. If it can't be scripted, then it can't be done for tens of sites that I regularly visit, and hundreds more that I come across.
  - j_s 9y ago
    Makes sense. What operating systems do you need this for?