4 ms·

You commented on another thread a few days ago (which I also replied to). I still don’t understand your distain for the idea of a 100% encrypted web. Rather t

by cj 3y ago

You commented on another thread a few days ago (which I also replied to). I still don’t understand your distain for the idea of a 100% encrypted web. Rather than saying “does this remind you of anything”, can you tell us what it reminds you of? I guess the issue is, eventually, CA’s can decide not to issue certificates to certain people classified as malicious/nefarious/etc? Can you clearly articulate your position on this point?

Pannoniae 3y ago
What happens when CA's say "you can't get a certificate if you supported <insert ideology here>"? Or "you can't get a certificate if you are racist"? Or "you can't get a certificate if your credit score is too low"? Or "you can't get a certificate if your website contains <pornography/warez/p2p encryption/firearms/anything we don't like>"?
jabbany 3y ago
My guess is that if only encryption were the goal, then browsers should trust self-signed certs or at least upon first visit, present the cert and ask whether to trust it in the future. * Instead the current system depends on some set of built in trusted root certificate that's run by opaque monopolies (at least pre Let's Encrypt) plus a lot of hassle to add self signed certs if it's even supported at all. (IIRC some browsers like Chrome will ignore system trusted CAs in an attempt to "help the user be more secure" ref: https://serverfault.com/questions/946756/ssl-certificate-in-system-store-not-trusted-by-chrome https://serverfault.com/questions/946756/ssl-certificate-in-...) * There is precedent for this, for things like Remote Desktop or SSH where only encryption is the goal, their default behavior is exactly this: confirm upon first access, and remember the approved cert for the future. You do not need to get your server blessed by a CA to connect over ssh :)
- throwawayadvsec 3y ago
  Yeah but SSH and RDP aren't used by grandmas that get their wallets emptied by scammers. Forced SSL everywhere is a good thing. It's bad that it's run by corporations, but it's still a good thing overall. Maybe it should be run by different people(like IDK ICANN over something like the UN)
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    This amounts to a new "won't someone think of the children?" All the little green lock icons in the world haven't put a dent in phishing or spoofing.
  - jabbany 3y ago
    Again, what's the risk that a first time visit to a site is going to give you a fake certificate? OTOH SSL has done nothing for preventing phishing, since no CAs actually verify anything beyond you owning the domain.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Well, any time anyone might be loading up a website for the first time in a coffee shop. Also, “remember this cert forever” (cert pinning) has been an ops disaster for a lot of sites that have tried it. So in practice “the first time” might be more like every week or every month. What the risk that a coffee shop will not serve you a malicious cert once a week? Also if they do it and you move back to your home connection… the site is broken there because now it’s returning a different one than was pinned (by the attacker!).
      - apostacy 3y ago
        There are plenty of ways to improve security but maintain openness. I think a good idea might be to have TOFU and self-signed only as a fallback. If there was no initial mismatch, and then upate cert periodically.
mrd3v0 3y ago
Not to mention the CA could potentially, intentionally or not, leak keys and allow governments, hackers or other interested entities to decrypt traffic. Centralising trust will always be a bad idea, regardless of context.
- johncolanduoni 3y ago
  Most TLS connections these days use cipher suites with perfect forward secrecy so governments won't be able to decrypt the connections without an active MITM attack. Since Certificate Transparency is effectively required for all CAs now, that will leave a paper trail.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Mandating encryption scares me because it limits being able to be seen online to only those with control over DNS. And there's too many countries that have power to mess with their citizen's DNS resolving, and too many ways for domain names to be taken down. This is creating a system filled with more absolutes than there should be. And the people doing the encrypting aren't willing to put in any time or effort for other basic affordances. If we could do opportunistic encryption, which isn't really trustworthy (that it's not being mitm) but has many upsides like letting you know you're still talking to the same people for ex - I think if we had an ever more robustening and not ever narrowing stance for what we could do to encrypt the picture of security happening would be much less scary. But we are letting more and more layers of systems have to be involved, with more chokepoints for governments, in a way that seems ossifying & fragile.
superkuh 3y ago
There are ways to do encrypted web that don't require a corporation to approve your website every 90 days. If Firefox would change it's release binary's build so the http/3 lib linked accepted self-signed certs the problem would be almost entirely mitigated while still retaining the 100% encrypted web (assuming trust on first use is acceptable to you). But these things aren't going to happen when everyone keeps ignoring and downplaying the implications of HTTP/3 support as shipped now and how it creates a handful of content approval gateways like WEI. When HTTP/1.1 is a thing of the past and Firefox won't load any endpoint without CA TLS on HTTP/3 then the fact that there are only a handful of corporate entities you can get a TLS cert from means they'll be an even more tempting target for those that wish to apply pressure and restrict access to whatever topics they don't like. It wouldn't be the first time a CA has been pressured to drop a site and it certainly won't be the last if things go this way. Additionally, it significantly increases the complexity of setting up visitable personal website. There are packages for acme2 and some CAs that can hide this complexity but it is there and does break. It acts as a roadblock to what I see as one of viable contributors to keeping the web open: self hosting. But again, I brought it up because the original linked article suggests Mozilla would never accept something as bad as WEI. With the way FF HTTP/3 is implemented they already have done something similar in outcome. So I do think we need to make noise about WEI (and HTTP/3).

by cj 3y ago

Pannoniae 3y ago

What happens when CA's say "you can't get a certificate if you supported <insert ideology here>"? Or "you can't get a certificate if you are racist"? Or "you can't get a certificate if your credit score is too low"? Or "you can't get a certificate if your website contains <pornography/warez/p2p encryption/firearms/anything we don't like>"?

jabbany 3y ago

My guess is that if only encryption were the goal, then browsers should trust self-signed certs or at least upon first visit, present the cert and ask whether to trust it in the future. * Instead the current system depends on some set of built in trusted root certificate that's run by opaque monopolies (at least pre Let's Encrypt) plus a lot of hassle to add self signed certs if it's even supported at all. (IIRC some browsers like Chrome will ignore system trusted CAs in an attempt to "help the user be more secure" ref: https://serverfault.com/questions/946756/ssl-certificate-in-system-store-not-trusted-by-chrome https://serverfault.com/questions/946756/ssl-certificate-in-...) * There is precedent for this, for things like Remote Desktop or SSH where only encryption is the goal, their default behavior is exactly this: confirm upon first access, and remember the approved cert for the future. You do not need to get your server blessed by a CA to connect over ssh :)

throwawayadvsec 3y ago
Yeah but SSH and RDP aren't used by grandmas that get their wallets emptied by scammers. Forced SSL everywhere is a good thing. It's bad that it's run by corporations, but it's still a good thing overall. Maybe it should be run by different people(like IDK ICANN over something like the UN)
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  This amounts to a new "won't someone think of the children?" All the little green lock icons in the world haven't put a dent in phishing or spoofing.
- jabbany 3y ago
  Again, what's the risk that a first time visit to a site is going to give you a fake certificate? OTOH SSL has done nothing for preventing phishing, since no CAs actually verify anything beyond you owning the domain.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Well, any time anyone might be loading up a website for the first time in a coffee shop. Also, “remember this cert forever” (cert pinning) has been an ops disaster for a lot of sites that have tried it. So in practice “the first time” might be more like every week or every month. What the risk that a coffee shop will not serve you a malicious cert once a week? Also if they do it and you move back to your home connection… the site is broken there because now it’s returning a different one than was pinned (by the attacker!).
    - apostacy 3y ago
      There are plenty of ways to improve security but maintain openness. I think a good idea might be to have TOFU and self-signed only as a fallback. If there was no initial mismatch, and then upate cert periodically.

mrd3v0 3y ago

Not to mention the CA could potentially, intentionally or not, leak keys and allow governments, hackers or other interested entities to decrypt traffic. Centralising trust will always be a bad idea, regardless of context.

johncolanduoni 3y ago
Most TLS connections these days use cipher suites with perfect forward secrecy so governments won't be able to decrypt the connections without an active MITM attack. Since Certificate Transparency is effectively required for all CAs now, that will leave a paper trail.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Mandating encryption scares me because it limits being able to be seen online to only those with control over DNS. And there's too many countries that have power to mess with their citizen's DNS resolving, and too many ways for domain names to be taken down. This is creating a system filled with more absolutes than there should be. And the people doing the encrypting aren't willing to put in any time or effort for other basic affordances. If we could do opportunistic encryption, which isn't really trustworthy (that it's not being mitm) but has many upsides like letting you know you're still talking to the same people for ex - I think if we had an ever more robustening and not ever narrowing stance for what we could do to encrypt the picture of security happening would be much less scary. But we are letting more and more layers of systems have to be involved, with more chokepoints for governments, in a way that seems ossifying & fragile.

superkuh 3y ago

There are ways to do encrypted web that don't require a corporation to approve your website every 90 days. If Firefox would change it's release binary's build so the http/3 lib linked accepted self-signed certs the problem would be almost entirely mitigated while still retaining the 100% encrypted web (assuming trust on first use is acceptable to you). But these things aren't going to happen when everyone keeps ignoring and downplaying the implications of HTTP/3 support as shipped now and how it creates a handful of content approval gateways like WEI. When HTTP/1.1 is a thing of the past and Firefox won't load any endpoint without CA TLS on HTTP/3 then the fact that there are only a handful of corporate entities you can get a TLS cert from means they'll be an even more tempting target for those that wish to apply pressure and restrict access to whatever topics they don't like. It wouldn't be the first time a CA has been pressured to drop a site and it certainly won't be the last if things go this way. Additionally, it significantly increases the complexity of setting up visitable personal website. There are packages for acme2 and some CAs that can hide this complexity but it is there and does break. It acts as a roadblock to what I see as one of viable contributors to keeping the web open: self hosting. But again, I brought it up because the original linked article suggests Mozilla would never accept something as bad as WEI. With the way FF HTTP/3 is implemented they already have done something similar in outcome. So I do think we need to make noise about WEI (and HTTP/3).