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Let's be clear: the SSL/TLS protocol specifies no certification structure. This structure was built by the members of CAB in the relatively distant past. It /
by ctz 15y ago
Let's be clear: the SSL/TLS protocol specifies no certification structure. This structure was built by the members of CAB in the relatively distant past.
It /is/ possible to use TLS to make a genuinely good secure web. Unfortunately at the moment there isn't a strong enough economic reason to fix the current certification structure -- while fundamentally broken, it isn't broken enough in practice yet.
Something like an large ISP-level compromise of banking services using mis-issued certificates would probably incur some action.
- dredmorbius 15y agoIt's not sufficient to defend crypto in theory without considering how it's used in practice and what real-life threats exist as a result. That's been one of the key themes in Bruce Schneier's work since Applied Cryptography. In that book he laid the foundations for strong crypto. In his subsequent works, he's shown that strong crypto, inappropriately applied, isn't secure, and that security bogeymen, particularly those against which we take countermeasures which are both ineffective and expensive (and not just in financial terms) are themselves more potent risks than the real threats we face. The real tragedy is in crippling ourselves and spending treasure fighting the phantoms while ignoring real threats and dangers.