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> For the first, I don't know what to tell you. If they aren't qualified to know when security must exist, they are not likely qualified to implement it. ...wh
by kerkeslager 6y ago
> For the first, I don't know what to tell you. If they aren't qualified to know when security must exist, they are not likely qualified to implement it.
...which is why numerous high-quality implementations already exist.
There isn't a way to say this without risking offending you, but if you can take it for what it is, I think you would benefit from it: you have posted a few examples in this thread where you think no one would care about encryption, and there are people posting here saying they do care about encryption in those cases. It might behoove you to approach this with a bit of humility and acknowledge that you are one of the people who isn't qualified to know when people need/want security, and your opinions are borne from that fact.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI think there are people who care about just about everything. Let's make those certificates expire every month. Also without a way to say it without risking offending someone: the tinfoil hat brigade can make everything grind to a halt. People can have concerns, and they can be very invested in those concerns, but they can be so concerned that I don't know if I could ever satisfy them. They could be concerned about what operating system that HTTPS-serving software runs on, and their set of requirements might be such that I cannot run anything.
- kerkeslager 6y ago> I think there are people who care about just about everything. True. But I'm not one of those people. You'll note that there are a few of your examples which I haven't objected to. That's because I don't have objections to all of your examples. > Let's make those certificates expire every month. I get your point--people do ask for excessive security measures sometimes. But as an aside, the point of frequent certificate expiration has nothing to do with security. It's to encourage automation of renewals.
- at_a_remove 6y agoAnd with that dreadful menuing system I described above, there was no way to automate that. I had even considered using Expect! So the encouragement has resulted in a detriment to me: more work. Oh, for a little choice! But the one-size-fits-all parade marches onward.
- cycloptic 6y agoYeah it is more work. If you're a sysadmin, that is your job and it's why you get paid. You're welcome to choose another job if it's too much work for you.
- at_a_remove 6y agoYes, it is more work. And doing it doing it once every month instead of once a year is yet more work. But is it valuable work? Does that work accomplish anything? Or is that effort wasted when I could have been doing other things? I was not a sysadmin -- I kept trying to avoid that, but got sucked in, as a programmer (my title), with the reasoning I have been doing "web stuff" for a long time, as well as the sysadmin duties that were required for setting up websites "back in the day." I could have been programming and solving real problems on a more permanent basis, but here I am, carrying water with a hole in the bottom of the bucket. Once the DevOps wand got waved, I got out. If people are truly concerned about security, even the much-disliked sysadmin duties foisted upon me could have had the time more wisely spent then flipping certs around.
- kerkeslager 6y ago1. I am extremely skeptical of your claim that cert renewals couldn't be automated. 2. Nobody here is saying that you need to renew your certs every month. Just because some completely different person asked for something that didn't provide any value, doesn't prove that what anyone here is saying is incorrect.
- at_a_remove 6y agoOkay, be skeptical. I didn't want to void our support contract over finding out. Would you come to my rescue if I did? First the certs need to be renewed every three years. And some browsers want to raise warnings if they're past a year old. And Let's Encrypt is down to three months. Just waiting for the next click of the ratchet.
- Karrot_Kream 6y agoThis feels like a no-true-scotsman argument. A true security-minded person understands the benefits of TLS, and if you don't, then you're not qualified to understand security.
- kerkeslager 6y agoI'd view it as more tautological than that. "If you don't understand security then you don't understand security" isn't really controversial.
- at_a_remove 6y ago"If you have not yet attained Buddhahood, you cannot understand the value of enlightenment." is also a non-controversial tautology, but it also doesn't leave any room for anyone to do anything else.
- kerkeslager 6y agoIf you're being paid to secure a system, there isn't room for you to not secure the system.
- at_a_remove 6y agoThe most secure system, naturally, being one that is turned off with its network connection desoldered. At last, nirvana!
- kerkeslager 6y agoSo clever! But, obviously we're talking about making a good-faith effort to secure servers while allowing them to provide their intended functions. Refusing to implement HTTPS because you don't know how to use Certbot isn't that.
- at_a_remove 6y ago