4 ms·

DANE would be better than LE, but weirdly the massive companies building browsers don't want to provide support. Spooky! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-base

by hkt 1y ago

DANE would be better than LE, but weirdly the massive companies building browsers don't want to provide support. Spooky! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Na...

aaomidi 1y ago
You’re just moving your root of trust to DNS then? With certificates we’re doing multi perspective validation. DNS root of trust is silly. DNSSEC is not a proper root of trust
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  DNS is already the root of trust, certificates are domain-validated. We currently just depend on both DNS and an unelected group of random companies Google has decided jump through their arbitrary hoops often enough. If your domain register or DNS provider is compromised in any way, all of the bullcrud the CA/B demands of certificates is entirely meaningless, the bad actor can legitimately request certificates.
  - aaomidi 1y ago
    This is what multi perspective helps with. It doesn’t mitigate every single attack. But think about what DANE is for a second. If a bad actor is MITMing your connection to some endpoint, they certainly can MITM your DNS queries too.
    - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
      Multi-perspective helps prevent MITM, it doesn't provide any better security than your domain and DNS provider's security. It's just another layer to patch over the bad idea of CAs in the first place.
      - crote 1y ago
        It's a completely different attack scenario. DANE isn't going to be of any value when an attacker is sitting between the end user and their ISP - which was already the requirement for compromising the TLS connection in the first place - as they could just strip DNSSEC and fake the DANE records.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
DANE is not a good idea. It makes DNS the CA. DNS doesn't have any stringent security requirements to its design or operation, as CAs do. It depends on a problematic protocol (that, among other things, limits the ability to deal with different operational and failure modes). And just because a nameserver provides a record, doesn't mean an authorized domain owner wanted that record to be an authorized secure transport. (not to mention, it would force people choose domain TLDs based on political positions, rather than, say, a desire for an easy to remember name) It's weak security and introduces more problems than it solves. If we're going to get rid of CAs, we should consider a better solution, not a worse one.
- xorcist 1y ago
  No, it doesn't. It makes the registrar the CA. Which makes sense, they already authorize who owns which domain. They should absolutely do so cryptographically in some fashion. What's weird is that the major registrars never even tried to enter the PKI business. It would have made sense. It would even have hastened the adoption of much needed TLS extensions.
  - 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
    The registrar is not equivalent to a CA in DANE. - A CA validates requests, signs CSRs, publishes cert revocation, issues certificates and trust anchors. - A registrar in DANE merely passes a DS record you created to the TLD, along with the promise that this record was created by the domain zone owner. It's basically the validation step. Nothing to do with establishing or securing data, key/record management, etc; they're a glorified FTP tool. I'm in favor of registrars getting more involved (since they are the authority on who controls a domain), but only with a completely different design. I have suggested many times that CAs establish an API to communicate directly with Registrars to perform the validation step, as this would eliminate 95% of attacks on Web PKI without introducing any downsides. So far my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. And since the oligopoly of browser vendors continue their attacks on system reliability (via ridiculous expiration times) without any real pushback, I don't see it changing.

by hkt 1y ago

aaomidi 1y ago

You’re just moving your root of trust to DNS then? With certificates we’re doing multi perspective validation. DNS root of trust is silly. DNSSEC is not a proper root of trust

ocdtrekkie 1y ago
DNS is already the root of trust, certificates are domain-validated. We currently just depend on both DNS and an unelected group of random companies Google has decided jump through their arbitrary hoops often enough. If your domain register or DNS provider is compromised in any way, all of the bullcrud the CA/B demands of certificates is entirely meaningless, the bad actor can legitimately request certificates.
- aaomidi 1y ago
  This is what multi perspective helps with. It doesn’t mitigate every single attack. But think about what DANE is for a second. If a bad actor is MITMing your connection to some endpoint, they certainly can MITM your DNS queries too.
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    Multi-perspective helps prevent MITM, it doesn't provide any better security than your domain and DNS provider's security. It's just another layer to patch over the bad idea of CAs in the first place.
    - crote 1y ago
      It's a completely different attack scenario. DANE isn't going to be of any value when an attacker is sitting between the end user and their ISP - which was already the requirement for compromising the TLS connection in the first place - as they could just strip DNSSEC and fake the DANE records.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

DANE is not a good idea. It makes DNS the CA. DNS doesn't have any stringent security requirements to its design or operation, as CAs do. It depends on a problematic protocol (that, among other things, limits the ability to deal with different operational and failure modes). And just because a nameserver provides a record, doesn't mean an authorized domain owner wanted that record to be an authorized secure transport. (not to mention, it would force people choose domain TLDs based on political positions, rather than, say, a desire for an easy to remember name) It's weak security and introduces more problems than it solves. If we're going to get rid of CAs, we should consider a better solution, not a worse one.

xorcist 1y ago
No, it doesn't. It makes the registrar the CA. Which makes sense, they already authorize who owns which domain. They should absolutely do so cryptographically in some fashion. What's weird is that the major registrars never even tried to enter the PKI business. It would have made sense. It would even have hastened the adoption of much needed TLS extensions.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  The registrar is not equivalent to a CA in DANE. - A CA validates requests, signs CSRs, publishes cert revocation, issues certificates and trust anchors. - A registrar in DANE merely passes a DS record you created to the TLD, along with the promise that this record was created by the domain zone owner. It's basically the validation step. Nothing to do with establishing or securing data, key/record management, etc; they're a glorified FTP tool. I'm in favor of registrars getting more involved (since they are the authority on who controls a domain), but only with a completely different design. I have suggested many times that CAs establish an API to communicate directly with Registrars to perform the validation step, as this would eliminate 95% of attacks on Web PKI without introducing any downsides. So far my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. And since the oligopoly of browser vendors continue their attacks on system reliability (via ridiculous expiration times) without any real pushback, I don't see it changing.