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http://n-gate.com/software/2017/ http://n-gate.com/software/2017/ gives some pointers. I'll summarize them in my own words as: 1) a CA can issue an illegitimat

http://n-gate.com/software/2017/ http://n-gate.com/software/2017/ gives some pointers. I'll summarize them in my own words as: 1) a CA can issue an illegitimate certificate (gives four links where that's happened), and "cross your fingers and hope transparency and oversight works" for CAA records 2) difficulties of determining a competent certificate authority. 3) size still gives clues about content (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14070130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14070130 ), so you still have some information leakage, which means you have to worry about your threat model to figure out if something like padding frames is worthwhile 4) speaking of threat model, do you really think your phone, or the phones of your users, don't include certs that lets the telco/government/etc. do #1? FWIW, found that link from comments after jwz's recent posting about problems updating from letsencrypt using certbot on CentOS. - https://web.archive.org/web/20210118183806/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/01/wtf-certbot/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210118183806/https://www.jwz.o... . FWIW, my web site has been around for 20 years, serving static files mostly containing a blurb about my services, my blog, and various writings and source code I've developed and released. I still can't figure out why I should care to switch to https. I can't figure out any relevant threat model to justify the work or worry about possible failure cases. Eg, "Let's Encrypt warns about a third of Android devices will from next year stumble over sites that use its certs" - https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/06/android_encryption_certs/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/06/android_encryption_ce... . (Updated earlier this month: Let's Encrypt "developed a new certificate chain that will prevent incompatibility with these devices to allow more time for them to age out of the market.") FWIW, my phone is 10 years old.

naf77 6y ago
The threat model is malicious injection, not (some)information leakage. > my web site has been around for 20 years, serving static files mostly containing a blurb about my service, my blog, Your http website will be used for malicious injection, it doesn't matter how deep it is in the long tail. Are you ok with that? Can you take minimal measures to protect me, the user, from getting a malicious injection? Regarding rogue CAs, most modern OS (Android, Windows) report back malicious chains to their mothership, quickly detecting and eliminating rogue CAs. It's not the wild west anymore.
MrRadar 6y ago
The reason to do it is because while HTTPS is not perfect (especially when it comes to certificates), the attacks against unencrypted and unauthenticated plaintext HTTP (as I outlined in my other post) are incredibly trivial in comparison. The main point of HTTPS-only is to make the attacks significantly harder and more costly to execute and easier to detect when they do happen. We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Are you comfortable with ISPs injecting ads into your blog? [1][2] > FWIW, my phone is 10 years old. I'm curious, which phone is this and what do you use it for? The oldest phones I keep in somewhat regular use are a Moto X (8 years old) and a Moto E (6 years old) which I maintain service on using free service providers (which require I use their service at least once each month or my service will be discontinued). When I turn those phones on each month to place a call with them, they take at least an hour to download and install app updates before I can even start using them. On the Moto E I've had to uninstall most apps because the internal storage has been nearly exhausted just by installing the latest updates for the bundled apps. On both phones even just bringing up the keyboard after I select a text field takes multiple seconds and any kind of multitasking is out of the question. I could not imagine trying to use either of those phones on a daily basis. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-a-banner-ad-for-hs-ok/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-a-banner-ad-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/8ry1k4/does_your_isp_inject_malware_ads_in_the_websites/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/8ry1k4/does_your_isp...
- eesmith 6y ago
  I read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825188 but didn't understand how the threat models apply. > Firstly it prevents MITM attacks that inject Javascript (or other) payloads into web pages which can be used e.g. for DDoS attacks If someone nefarious wanted to MITM my web site, the easiest would be to spoof DNS so it went to some other host, and do the MITM that way. Your ISP could do that to you, no? While more people could spoof the http connection than spoof the DNS, what's the threat model? If it's the Great Firewall then all users behind it are also using their DNS. Which is why (as I understand it) you also need things like 'integrity' in your links in order to avoid the attack you describe. Not simply switching to https. > Are you comfortable with ISPs injecting ads into your blog? [1][2] They aren't injecting ads into my blog. They are injecting ads into your transfer of files from my site. Why are you using an ISP which does that? > You can still track which sites a user connects to, but you can't see which pages they access or the contents of those pages Again, what's the threat model? I'm pretty sure simple traffic analysis would be enough to figure out, based on download size and number of additional requests made, which pages are downloaded. While there are ways to mitigate that, it's not as simple as moving to https to prevent anyone from figuring out what my users are accessing on my site. So, do I give my users a false sense of security by switching to https? It depends on the threat model, doesn't it? > I'm curious, which phone is this and what do you use it for? Does it make a difference? It's meant to underline the point I made that not everyone has new hardware. The question for you is, how many people and devices will I block by switching to https-only? Will poor people using second-hand computers be able to access things? Will old Docker images with scientific projects on them stop working when the embedded certs age out? I have an implicit promise that if you could access URL X using method Y then you will always be able to access URL X using method Y. Why should I break that promise. To be sure, I also have a site behind https. Among other things, it serves pip-installable packages. Which is why different threat model than my static blog site. (It also doesn't have the a 20 year old implicit promise.)

naf77 6y ago

The threat model is malicious injection, not (some)information leakage. > my web site has been around for 20 years, serving static files mostly containing a blurb about my service, my blog, Your http website will be used for malicious injection, it doesn't matter how deep it is in the long tail. Are you ok with that? Can you take minimal measures to protect me, the user, from getting a malicious injection? Regarding rogue CAs, most modern OS (Android, Windows) report back malicious chains to their mothership, quickly detecting and eliminating rogue CAs. It's not the wild west anymore.

MrRadar 6y ago

The reason to do it is because while HTTPS is not perfect (especially when it comes to certificates), the attacks against unencrypted and unauthenticated plaintext HTTP (as I outlined in my other post) are incredibly trivial in comparison. The main point of HTTPS-only is to make the attacks significantly harder and more costly to execute and easier to detect when they do happen. We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Are you comfortable with ISPs injecting ads into your blog? [1][2] > FWIW, my phone is 10 years old. I'm curious, which phone is this and what do you use it for? The oldest phones I keep in somewhat regular use are a Moto X (8 years old) and a Moto E (6 years old) which I maintain service on using free service providers (which require I use their service at least once each month or my service will be discontinued). When I turn those phones on each month to place a call with them, they take at least an hour to download and install app updates before I can even start using them. On the Moto E I've had to uninstall most apps because the internal storage has been nearly exhausted just by installing the latest updates for the bundled apps. On both phones even just bringing up the keyboard after I select a text field takes multiple seconds and any kind of multitasking is out of the question. I could not imagine trying to use either of those phones on a daily basis. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-a-banner-ad-for-hs-ok/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-a-banner-ad-... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/8ry1k4/does_your_isp_inject_malware_ads_in_the_websites/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/8ry1k4/does_your_isp...

eesmith 6y ago
I read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825188 but didn't understand how the threat models apply. > Firstly it prevents MITM attacks that inject Javascript (or other) payloads into web pages which can be used e.g. for DDoS attacks If someone nefarious wanted to MITM my web site, the easiest would be to spoof DNS so it went to some other host, and do the MITM that way. Your ISP could do that to you, no? While more people could spoof the http connection than spoof the DNS, what's the threat model? If it's the Great Firewall then all users behind it are also using their DNS. Which is why (as I understand it) you also need things like 'integrity' in your links in order to avoid the attack you describe. Not simply switching to https. > Are you comfortable with ISPs injecting ads into your blog? [1][2] They aren't injecting ads into my blog. They are injecting ads into your transfer of files from my site. Why are you using an ISP which does that? > You can still track which sites a user connects to, but you can't see which pages they access or the contents of those pages Again, what's the threat model? I'm pretty sure simple traffic analysis would be enough to figure out, based on download size and number of additional requests made, which pages are downloaded. While there are ways to mitigate that, it's not as simple as moving to https to prevent anyone from figuring out what my users are accessing on my site. So, do I give my users a false sense of security by switching to https? It depends on the threat model, doesn't it? > I'm curious, which phone is this and what do you use it for? Does it make a difference? It's meant to underline the point I made that not everyone has new hardware. The question for you is, how many people and devices will I block by switching to https-only? Will poor people using second-hand computers be able to access things? Will old Docker images with scientific projects on them stop working when the embedded certs age out? I have an implicit promise that if you could access URL X using method Y then you will always be able to access URL X using method Y. Why should I break that promise. To be sure, I also have a site behind https. Among other things, it serves pip-installable packages. Which is why different threat model than my static blog site. (It also doesn't have the a 20 year old implicit promise.)