7 ms·

So if my entire website goes over ssl, could they still read or alter the secret content if they mitm by forging a certificate if the certificate is not pinned?

• MichaelSalib 13y ago
  For a small website, sure. But it would be noticeable at the origin if you knew what to look for: all of the sudden your usual distribution of client IPs would be replace by a much smaller set of NSA IPs. And there's no way they could scale it up to deal with google or facebook. They'd have to put start buying dozens of datacenters around the world and a vast amount of bandwidth. And they'd need to be able to hijack an enormous amount of traffic. Honestly, it seems like buying up zero-day exploits and putting malware on people's computers would be oh so much easier and much much cheaper.
  • duskwuff 13y ago
    > But it would be noticeable at the origin if you knew what to look for: all of the sudden your usual distribution of client IPs would be replace by a much smaller set of NSA IPs. That's not a safe assumption. Given that this is the NSA we're talking about, it's probably within their capabilities to transparently MITM all connections to your server.
    • MichaelSalib 13y ago
      Sure, if we're talking about a small number of users. But this isn't going to scale and it doesn't seem very cost effective.
• MichaelSalib 13y ago
  If the federal government deploys its full weight against you, there's really not much you can do. Directed against one individual, then sure, an active MITM attack is feasible if you don't have cert pinning. I doubt it is cost effective though when compared to just filing a national security letter with the companies you're communicating with or putting malware on your box or installing a keylogger or just plain locking you in a room and beating you with a rubber hose until you tell them what they want to hear.