7 ms·

The comment by Phill Hallam-Baker at the end of the article was the best part!

armada651 5y ago
I never understood why, after finding out that users don't notice the EV security badge, Google/Mozilla decided the best course of action was to remove it completely. Rather the conclusion should've been that the browser gives the user a warning when attempting to submit information to a website that doesn't have an EV security certificate. Or at the very least allow websites to use HSTS to prevent downgrading an EV certificate.
- pjsg 5y ago
  Of course, it wouldn't have helped in this case as it was the third party site that had the bad certificate. That fact is not signalled anywhere. I don't recall anybody (even the most ardent supporters of EV) saying that the browser should warn you if any third party references were not EV.
  - nilsbunger 5y ago
    But EV would give you a way to make a more secure website by hosting all the content yourself
  - dboreham 5y ago
    That doesn't make sense since any content loaded from a second site has the ability to compromise the first. If nobody said that, they weren't thinking hard enough. Browsers already have this kind of transitive security enforcement -- you can't load a page with TLS that then pulls JS via plaintext http.
- lexicality 5y ago
  You think every website with a form on it should have to pay hundreds of dollars per year to certificate authorities?
  - sp332 5y ago
    There should be a quick, visible way for a user to tell the difference between a connection that is merely encrypted and one where the identity of the certificate owner has been vetted. Then the user can decide for any given form whether they are comfortable sending that data over that kind of connection. Sometimes, the alternative to companies paying hundreds of dollars per year is customers losing millions.
  - natpalmer1776 5y ago
    I think if a website with a form on it that involves transferring any sum of money around should pay hundreds of dollars per year to certificate authorities. Not every building needs to implement the security measures of Fort Knox. That doesn't mean that the security measures in-place at Fort Knox shouldn't exist.
natpalmer1776 5y ago
The comment made my whole day. I love it when 'old-guard' engineers who literally built the playground we're on come out to yell at everyone to get off the damn grass. It's a weird combination of inspiring and humbling at the same time. Inspiring to think that this massive ecosystem of interconnected computers was actually made by real people, and humbling because yeah, I should get off the damn grass.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  PHB was there when satoshi dropped the white paper. He didn’t get it at the time. He still doesn’t get it, commenting on the same forum recently. PHB, dude, time to admit you were wrong. Not only does this technology work wildly better than you have claimed, it has more value today than it did 13 years ago, both as a savings device, or a trustless medium of exchange
  - natpalmer1776 5y ago
    I won't claim to have the degree of technical expertise to authoritatively comment on the actual implications of his comment. What I often find most valuable from these kinds of comments is the fact that these risks were acknowledged and either accounted for in the original specs, even if in a flawed manner, or explicitly discounted as being out of scope. What I take away from the comment on the article is that from a security perspective "we're not there yet" even if the cryptocurrency technology is useful, widely adopted, and frankly not going away. I don't think his issue is that cryptocurrency exists, or is being used widely on the world-wide web, but rather that underlying technologies (DNS/HTTPS/PKI) are being taken for granted and used in a manner that they weren't originally designed for.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      EV is expensive bits issued by a trusted third party. Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is expensive bits issued by a non-trusted third party. I don’t see how you can be bullish on the first without being bullish on the second, yet I can see how being bullish on the second can mean bearish on the first. Solutions involving no TTP are better than solutions involving TTP. I like PHB and he has done great things in the field of cryptography. His belief in centralization of public key systems for security runs counter to the cypherpunks who want to decentralize everything despite the costs.
amalter 5y ago
I posted another response off this article and I still don't quite get the gist of his response? > The system we built in the 90s would have protected against this attack. Is "the system" the human to human EV certificate process? There were so many obvious and awful social and technical engineering holes in that process that I find it hard to believe anyone would defend it? Certificate expiration was always a danger. There was a single technical contact that could be spoofed or just walk away with the private key. The wider web audience never noticed the EV annotation, and basic human factors tells you they never would. Heck, we can't get people to notice HTTP downgrade attacks. The only protection is TLS everywhere - which never would be possible with slow and expensive authorization methods. (I suppose it was good business for Verisign though...)

I never understood why, after finding out that users don't notice the EV security badge, Google/Mozilla decided the best course of action was to remove it completely. Rather the conclusion should've been that the browser gives the user a warning when attempting to submit information to a website that doesn't have an EV security certificate. Or at the very least allow websites to use HSTS to prevent downgrading an EV certificate.

pjsg 5y ago
Of course, it wouldn't have helped in this case as it was the third party site that had the bad certificate. That fact is not signalled anywhere. I don't recall anybody (even the most ardent supporters of EV) saying that the browser should warn you if any third party references were not EV.
- nilsbunger 5y ago
  But EV would give you a way to make a more secure website by hosting all the content yourself
- dboreham 5y ago
  That doesn't make sense since any content loaded from a second site has the ability to compromise the first. If nobody said that, they weren't thinking hard enough. Browsers already have this kind of transitive security enforcement -- you can't load a page with TLS that then pulls JS via plaintext http.
lexicality 5y ago
You think every website with a form on it should have to pay hundreds of dollars per year to certificate authorities?
- sp332 5y ago
  There should be a quick, visible way for a user to tell the difference between a connection that is merely encrypted and one where the identity of the certificate owner has been vetted. Then the user can decide for any given form whether they are comfortable sending that data over that kind of connection. Sometimes, the alternative to companies paying hundreds of dollars per year is customers losing millions.
- natpalmer1776 5y ago
  I think if a website with a form on it that involves transferring any sum of money around should pay hundreds of dollars per year to certificate authorities. Not every building needs to implement the security measures of Fort Knox. That doesn't mean that the security measures in-place at Fort Knox shouldn't exist.

natpalmer1776 5y ago

The comment made my whole day. I love it when 'old-guard' engineers who literally built the playground we're on come out to yell at everyone to get off the damn grass. It's a weird combination of inspiring and humbling at the same time. Inspiring to think that this massive ecosystem of interconnected computers was actually made by real people, and humbling because yeah, I should get off the damn grass.

randomhodler84 5y ago
PHB was there when satoshi dropped the white paper. He didn’t get it at the time. He still doesn’t get it, commenting on the same forum recently. PHB, dude, time to admit you were wrong. Not only does this technology work wildly better than you have claimed, it has more value today than it did 13 years ago, both as a savings device, or a trustless medium of exchange
- natpalmer1776 5y ago
  I won't claim to have the degree of technical expertise to authoritatively comment on the actual implications of his comment. What I often find most valuable from these kinds of comments is the fact that these risks were acknowledged and either accounted for in the original specs, even if in a flawed manner, or explicitly discounted as being out of scope. What I take away from the comment on the article is that from a security perspective "we're not there yet" even if the cryptocurrency technology is useful, widely adopted, and frankly not going away. I don't think his issue is that cryptocurrency exists, or is being used widely on the world-wide web, but rather that underlying technologies (DNS/HTTPS/PKI) are being taken for granted and used in a manner that they weren't originally designed for.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    EV is expensive bits issued by a trusted third party. Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is expensive bits issued by a non-trusted third party. I don’t see how you can be bullish on the first without being bullish on the second, yet I can see how being bullish on the second can mean bearish on the first. Solutions involving no TTP are better than solutions involving TTP. I like PHB and he has done great things in the field of cryptography. His belief in centralization of public key systems for security runs counter to the cypherpunks who want to decentralize everything despite the costs.

amalter 5y ago

I posted another response off this article and I still don't quite get the gist of his response? > The system we built in the 90s would have protected against this attack. Is "the system" the human to human EV certificate process? There were so many obvious and awful social and technical engineering holes in that process that I find it hard to believe anyone would defend it? Certificate expiration was always a danger. There was a single technical contact that could be spoofed or just walk away with the private key. The wider web audience never noticed the EV annotation, and basic human factors tells you they never would. Heck, we can't get people to notice HTTP downgrade attacks. The only protection is TLS everywhere - which never would be possible with slow and expensive authorization methods. (I suppose it was good business for Verisign though...)