5 ms·
It is good, but it is annoying that it came out before we were able to properly lock down domains to cert authorities via DNS. It used to be that a malactor had
by 3pt14159 8y ago
It is good, but it is annoying that it came out before we were able to properly lock down domains to cert authorities via DNS. It used to be that a malactor had to buy a new cert when they owned part of your backend if they weren't able to get your private keys.
Now they can just use Let's Encrypt.
- schoen 8y agoCan you clarify what restrictions you'd like to see in place? I didn't quite follow this, but if you can describe what you want to see, I might be able to describe a way to do it or request that it be created.
- 3pt14159 8y agoIt's fine now, following CAA records is now mandatory, but prior to 2017 we didn't and even now most websites don't use it. CAA should be mandatory in a Let's Encrypted world because it's now trivial to create a HTTPS cert. It no longer requires stolen credit card details.
- schoen 8y agoThanks. I'm also hoping that some day there will be a direct domain-registrar-to-CA authentication protocol of some sort!
- eldridgea 8y agoMore from the authoritative DNS servers than the registrar but with DNSSEC enabled, DANE[0] is a pretty good system. Google deemed the failure rate of ~2% too high but I hold out hope that banks and other high value targets will use DANE in tandem with the traditional HTTPs CAs and use something like HSTS except instead of requiring HTTPS for a particular domain, will require DANE. Maybe something like viewing your account will accpet a CA signed cert, but an actual money transfer goes through a subdomain that required DANE. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Na...
- schoen 8y agoSure, I was thinking about authentication for certificate issuance purposes (where Let's Encrypt already enforces DNSSEC validation for all issuance-related DNS lookups where DNSSEC is present on a zone—in fact, invalid DNSSEC signatures aren't an uncommon reason for issuance problems). But DANE enforced by clients would also be quite valuable for preventing problems due to CA misissuance, or for the problem recently highlighted by security researchers that someone might deliberately allow a domain to expire while still possessing long-lived certificates for names under that domain.
- SahAssar 8y agoIIRC Let's Encrypt are more strict in their validation (HTTP, DNS and SNI) than the least onerous authorities before them. The difference is that they are automated and free, but I don't think that I can get any cert I couldn't get before (either for payment or free).
- 3pt14159 8y agoNo you are not correct and I've been downloaded by people that don't know the history of DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA), which became required in 2017. Let's Encrypt launched 2016, which meant that unless you were doing HPKP with long pin times and had traffic that already had hit your endpoint, if someone was on your gear (but lacked your private key) they could impersonate you for free and with no messing around with stolen credit cards to CAs. To verify for Let's Encrypt—contrary to what you recall—all you are required to prove is that you can set a specific value at a path for the domain you are responsible for. DNS verification is an option; but few use it. Let's Encrypt has meaningfully reduced the barrier for certificate forgery. Every startup should set CAA headers now, but few do. It's still good that Let's Encrypt exist but it has its drawbacks.
- sleepychu 8y agoThis is really a drawback of the browser though, right? Let's Encrypt is about making traffic https not giving you strong verification of the other party. It's right there in the name! The browsers do show some things for better verified certificates e.g. "YOUR BANK LTD." on a banks cert, "Secure" on hacker news/My page secured with let's encrypt. So controlling traffic on the domain is really sufficient for the promise that LE is trying to make to you which is "When I accessed this domain, the entity that owns this key controlled the traffic. I don't really know anything about the entity." If you think that presents a vulnerability then it's because you're equating https with entity verification (and I don't blame you because the browsers have trained us to do this)
- 3pt14159 8y agoUnfortunately the "YOUR BANK LTD" certs have a major drawback: No obscure / arbitrary subdomains. It's why Google doesn't use them. And I agree with your conclusion HTTPS is better than HTTP, but it doesn't mean we're talking with whom we think.
- icebraining 8y agoStartSSL already existed.