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This is just one more reason for using HTTPS everywhere. Doing so prevents ISPs from intercepting and rewriting HTTP traffic. Shame on you, Comcast.
by mrb 14y ago
This is just one more reason for using HTTPS everywhere. Doing so prevents ISPs from intercepting and rewriting HTTP traffic.
Shame on you, Comcast.
- buddylw 14y agoI'm considering going a step farther and just setting up an Openvpn connection to my Linode server.
- ineedtosleep 14y agoI've looked into the costs of VPNs on servers I own vs. a VPN service with unlimited bandwidth limits and the latter always wins. Setup time costs aside, VPN services usually have multiple regions you can connect to and are likely to have more reliable speeds. This is, of course, if you trust these companies enough and [list of security implications].
- philip1209 14y agoA personal license of Umbrella by OpenDNS, which includes always-on laptop and phone VPN, is $20 a year currently. There are also features like Anycast that are not feasible to replicate on a personal server. (disclosure - I start working with OpenDNS soon).
- ben0x539 14y agoIf some interns running a corporate intranet can get a transparent htts proxy, what's stopping an ISP from rewriting your https traffic?
- sjwright 14y agoYour browser, for one. What you describe is the very definition of a MITM attack, regardless of proxy structure. Your bank, for another. Indeed there are far too many parties with an interest in keeping https secure, that you needn't worry about it.
- kbhomes 14y agoBecause using Comcast using an HTTPS proxy to rewrite traffic means that your browser will expect data encrypted with Google's, Facebook's, Chase's, etc. certificate when it actually receives Comcast's proxy certificate. Every HTTPS site would prompt the user about an SSL certificate error.
- yuvadam 14y agoComcast can just as easily MITM your SSL connections, for your safety of course. But that ridiculous, right? Since everyone verifies SSL cert signatures...
- augustl 14y agoThey would either need the private key of the certificate holder (which they don't have), or a certificate signed by one of the roots installed on the system, which they also won't have. I suppose the logical next step is that Comcast requires you to install a "Comcast Internet Helper" program that also installs a Comcast root certificate into the system so they can mitm anything.. But Firefox and Chrome would probably release updates mere hours later, blocking that cert from being used from those browsers.
- cookiecaper 14y agoMost people are going to click through any security warning because they just want to get to the site they wanted to go to. If Comcast does this, it would make EVERY SSL site display the warning, making it utterly meaningless. Alternatively, it's not that outrageous to think that Comcast et al could get certs into the major browsers if they wanted to do so. It's not even implausible to think that at some point, browsers will be legally required to distribute ISP certs to allow for the "safety" of users. If Comcast makes you install a custom application to keep your certs up, it won't matter if Fx and Chrome block each cert within hours, because Comcast can keep generating and pushing new ones out. And, as above, if the ISP is going to fiddle like this, the actual power held by browsers is greatly diminished -- users aren't going to use a browser that doesn't let them browse without nag screens on every page, even if it is "for their own good".
- mattmanser 14y agoI think you're a bit out of touch as those browser warning pages have changed a lot the last few years. It's actually pretty hard to get through those warnings now in most of the browsers.