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> I don't like that mindset that an unverified certificate is somehow not better or even worse (see browser UIs) than no encryption Of course it's worse when t

> I don't like that mindset that an unverified certificate is somehow not better or even worse (see browser UIs) than no encryption Of course it's worse when the user thinks the connection is encrypted when he actually has no idea who he's talking to. What kind of attack do you have in mind where someone can sniff on the data but not tamper with it? And how should a browser explain this situation to the user? No, the mindset that an unverified certificate is better than no encryption is very dangerous.

trashfindhunter 6y ago
> Of course it's worse when the user thinks the connection is encrypted when he actually has no idea who he's talking to. If a website previously using a self-signed certificate switches to plain HTTP - how will that help me verify the identity of the server the next time I visit? By removing the self-signed certificate, not only am I still unable to verify the identity of the server, but now my traffic is in plaintext for anyone on the local network to trivially intercept (in addition to whatever stranger I'm sending it to on the other end). I understand your sentiment, and I know the slippery slope that you are referring to when you say that it's a dangerous mindset to be okay with unverified certificates. Unencrypted communication however, is not a solution to that problem.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  > Unencrypted communication however, is not a solution to that problem. Could you point out who you are responding to who said that unencrypted communication is a solution to the problem? This strikes me as a straw man argument.
- jackewiehose 6y ago
  > but now my traffic is in plaintext for anyone on the local network to trivially intercept If they are able to trivially intercept your network traffic they are probably also able to modify it (=> hijack untrusted HTTPS) or what scenario am I missing here? Of course unencrypted communication isn't a solution if your goal is to have secure communication. But so isn't untrusted communication. Either it's secure or not. You can't have something in-between. The browser would have to display an icon that says "This connection is secure but actually we don't really know so maybe it isn't". What are you supposed to make of such information?
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    So, a big concern which drove much of the adoption of HTTPS and other security technologies for the Internet is mass public surveillance, often justified as for "national security" purposes. The NSA for example is known to just suck up all the traffic it can get and put it in a pile for later analysis. Maybe your mention of "Make a bomb in chem class tomorrow" was just a joke to a close friend about how much you hate school, and maybe an analyst will realise that and move on when they see it, but civil liberties advocates think it'd be better if that analyst couldn't type "bomb" into an NSA search engine and see every mention of the word by anybody in your city in the last six weeks. I agree. Americans tried just telling the NSA not to collect this data, but the whole point of spooks is to do this stuff, short of terminating the agency they were always going to collect this data, it's in their nature. So the practical way forward is to encrypt everything. Any TLS connection can't be snooped. Only the participants get to see the data. The NSA isn't going to live MITM every single TLS connection so even with self-signed certificates the effect is you prevent mass surveillance. A targeted attack will MITM you, no doubt, and so that is the reason to insist on certificates, but it's wrong to insist as you do that there's no benefit without them.
    - jackewiehose 6y ago
      > it's wrong to insist as you do that there's no benefit without them. Ok, that wasn't really my intention. I was stating that a false sense of security is worse than having (knowingly!) no security at all. So yes I agree, you're generally better off even with untrusted encryption but that doesn't help in practical terms with our current situation of HTTPS in web-browsers. Maybe it would have been better if web-browsers would have just silently accepted self-signed certificates while still showing the big red warning about an insecure connection. I guess that will be solved with QUIC/HTTP3.
      - trashfindhunter 6y ago
        > a false sense of security is worse than having (knowingly!) no security at all. Agreed. If you know that you are insecure you're less likely to pass sensitive information over the connection. IMO the culprit is browser behavior. For instance, when visiting unencrypted HTTP sites in Chrome you may or may not notice an unobtrusive, greyed out "Not Secure" label in the URL bar. Visit your own self-signed certificate dev site though, and Chrome will give you an error wall with nothing to click, and you have to type "thisisunsafe" to pass (the page does not tell you that typing "thisisunsafe" will get you through). Perhaps the reasoning is that if a site is served unencrypted it shouldn't be serving sensitive information, whereas an invalid certificate is an easy indicator of something amiss... but wow, talk about obtuse. Your concern is definitely valid though, and I'm concerned about it too.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> What kind of attack do you have in mind where someone can sniff on the data but not tamper with it? Passive collection, where you search through the accumulated data after the fact.

trashfindhunter 6y ago

> Of course it's worse when the user thinks the connection is encrypted when he actually has no idea who he's talking to. If a website previously using a self-signed certificate switches to plain HTTP - how will that help me verify the identity of the server the next time I visit? By removing the self-signed certificate, not only am I still unable to verify the identity of the server, but now my traffic is in plaintext for anyone on the local network to trivially intercept (in addition to whatever stranger I'm sending it to on the other end). I understand your sentiment, and I know the slippery slope that you are referring to when you say that it's a dangerous mindset to be okay with unverified certificates. Unencrypted communication however, is not a solution to that problem.

kerkeslager 6y ago
> Unencrypted communication however, is not a solution to that problem. Could you point out who you are responding to who said that unencrypted communication is a solution to the problem? This strikes me as a straw man argument.
jackewiehose 6y ago
> but now my traffic is in plaintext for anyone on the local network to trivially intercept If they are able to trivially intercept your network traffic they are probably also able to modify it (=> hijack untrusted HTTPS) or what scenario am I missing here? Of course unencrypted communication isn't a solution if your goal is to have secure communication. But so isn't untrusted communication. Either it's secure or not. You can't have something in-between. The browser would have to display an icon that says "This connection is secure but actually we don't really know so maybe it isn't". What are you supposed to make of such information?
- tialaramex 6y ago
  So, a big concern which drove much of the adoption of HTTPS and other security technologies for the Internet is mass public surveillance, often justified as for "national security" purposes. The NSA for example is known to just suck up all the traffic it can get and put it in a pile for later analysis. Maybe your mention of "Make a bomb in chem class tomorrow" was just a joke to a close friend about how much you hate school, and maybe an analyst will realise that and move on when they see it, but civil liberties advocates think it'd be better if that analyst couldn't type "bomb" into an NSA search engine and see every mention of the word by anybody in your city in the last six weeks. I agree. Americans tried just telling the NSA not to collect this data, but the whole point of spooks is to do this stuff, short of terminating the agency they were always going to collect this data, it's in their nature. So the practical way forward is to encrypt everything. Any TLS connection can't be snooped. Only the participants get to see the data. The NSA isn't going to live MITM every single TLS connection so even with self-signed certificates the effect is you prevent mass surveillance. A targeted attack will MITM you, no doubt, and so that is the reason to insist on certificates, but it's wrong to insist as you do that there's no benefit without them.
  - jackewiehose 6y ago
    > it's wrong to insist as you do that there's no benefit without them. Ok, that wasn't really my intention. I was stating that a false sense of security is worse than having (knowingly!) no security at all. So yes I agree, you're generally better off even with untrusted encryption but that doesn't help in practical terms with our current situation of HTTPS in web-browsers. Maybe it would have been better if web-browsers would have just silently accepted self-signed certificates while still showing the big red warning about an insecure connection. I guess that will be solved with QUIC/HTTP3.
    - trashfindhunter 6y ago
      > a false sense of security is worse than having (knowingly!) no security at all. Agreed. If you know that you are insecure you're less likely to pass sensitive information over the connection. IMO the culprit is browser behavior. For instance, when visiting unencrypted HTTP sites in Chrome you may or may not notice an unobtrusive, greyed out "Not Secure" label in the URL bar. Visit your own self-signed certificate dev site though, and Chrome will give you an error wall with nothing to click, and you have to type "thisisunsafe" to pass (the page does not tell you that typing "thisisunsafe" will get you through). Perhaps the reasoning is that if a site is served unencrypted it shouldn't be serving sensitive information, whereas an invalid certificate is an easy indicator of something amiss... but wow, talk about obtuse. Your concern is definitely valid though, and I'm concerned about it too.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> What kind of attack do you have in mind where someone can sniff on the data but not tamper with it? Passive collection, where you search through the accumulated data after the fact.