5 ms·

What I meant was there are mechanisms that let you determine that a DNS answer is correct. I won't say more regarding this matter because you know a lot more a

What I meant was there are mechanisms that let you determine that a DNS answer is correct. I won't say more regarding this matter because you know a lot more about cryptography than I do. What do you think the best solution for this kind of problem is? PGP?

tptacek 15y ago
I literally think 99.999% of the problem with HTTPS/TLS is UI. The UI for certificate management and validation is virtually unchanged since the 1990s. More importantly, Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Microsoft --- however well they mean --- are not appropriate stewards for the security of the whole fucking Internet. We need the secure UX required to outsource CA management to trusted third parties that unskilled users can reasonably choose among. Back to DNSSEC: What we do not need to do is take this extremely complex policy problem and bake it further into the Internet's infrastructure, so that only the greybeards at the IETF and the product managers at the five largest software companies in the world get to make choices about the Internet's security model. Today's HTTPS debacle was brought to you by a policy mistake. When we originally deployed HTTPS/TLS, we did not understand enough about the forces acting on us to make totally safe policy decisions. What we need is more flexibility and more thought, not the exact same system we have now baked into one of the core protocols on the Internet.
- tlrobinson 15y ago
  Have you written about possible solutions? I'd be interested to hear them.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Wouldn't it be neat if there was a dialog somewhere in your browser that gave you the option of trusting anything Colin Percival trusted, or anything that the EFF trusted?
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Seems like an awesome plan, but making it scale requires a lot of work. In this system, how do banks ensure their site shows up as secure in people's browsers? How do random sites of varying popularity? Actually, for many people their bank seems like a good start for the trust chain; visit them in person and get the information you need for your trust root. And unlike the certificate companies, banks have end-users as their customers, not people who want certificates.
      - bigiain 15y ago
        Startup opportunity? I'd consider subscribing to a few services that provided plausible claims to properly curate lists of ssl cert fingerprints for at least the majority of my security-critical domains. Even if it were just limited to the major internet properties (start with google/yahoo/amazon/paypal/twitter/facebook/etc), and add in major (and minor) banks, government institutions... If someone started up a service claiming to have telephoned the appropriate security people at those places and confirmed the cert fingerprints via non-internet/real-world-confirmable means, I'd certainly consider paying a few tens of dollars a year for that... Especially if it integrated nicely with a browser/os plugin.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        So start with the CAs, and then allow your friends and their friends and the EFF to subtract from that set.
        JoshTriplett 15y ago
        A blacklist-based approach seems like a bad idea for security.
        tptacek 15y ago
        Blacklists are bad in authorization scenarios. But we're talking about authentication and trust.
    - 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

I literally think 99.999% of the problem with HTTPS/TLS is UI. The UI for certificate management and validation is virtually unchanged since the 1990s. More importantly, Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Microsoft --- however well they mean --- are not appropriate stewards for the security of the whole fucking Internet. We need the secure UX required to outsource CA management to trusted third parties that unskilled users can reasonably choose among. Back to DNSSEC: What we do not need to do is take this extremely complex policy problem and bake it further into the Internet's infrastructure, so that only the greybeards at the IETF and the product managers at the five largest software companies in the world get to make choices about the Internet's security model. Today's HTTPS debacle was brought to you by a policy mistake. When we originally deployed HTTPS/TLS, we did not understand enough about the forces acting on us to make totally safe policy decisions. What we need is more flexibility and more thought, not the exact same system we have now baked into one of the core protocols on the Internet.

tlrobinson 15y ago
Have you written about possible solutions? I'd be interested to hear them.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Wouldn't it be neat if there was a dialog somewhere in your browser that gave you the option of trusting anything Colin Percival trusted, or anything that the EFF trusted?
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Seems like an awesome plan, but making it scale requires a lot of work. In this system, how do banks ensure their site shows up as secure in people's browsers? How do random sites of varying popularity? Actually, for many people their bank seems like a good start for the trust chain; visit them in person and get the information you need for your trust root. And unlike the certificate companies, banks have end-users as their customers, not people who want certificates.
    - bigiain 15y ago
      Startup opportunity? I'd consider subscribing to a few services that provided plausible claims to properly curate lists of ssl cert fingerprints for at least the majority of my security-critical domains. Even if it were just limited to the major internet properties (start with google/yahoo/amazon/paypal/twitter/facebook/etc), and add in major (and minor) banks, government institutions... If someone started up a service claiming to have telephoned the appropriate security people at those places and confirmed the cert fingerprints via non-internet/real-world-confirmable means, I'd certainly consider paying a few tens of dollars a year for that... Especially if it integrated nicely with a browser/os plugin.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      So start with the CAs, and then allow your friends and their friends and the EFF to subtract from that set.
      - JoshTriplett 15y ago
        A blacklist-based approach seems like a bad idea for security.
        tptacek 15y ago
        Blacklists are bad in authorization scenarios. But we're talking about authentication and trust.
  - 15y ago