3 ms·
I see these mechanisms are broken — but why? Broadcasting a signed blacklist shouldn't be that hard, given both a wide variety of sites that all want the lates
by gojomo 13y ago
I see these mechanisms are broken — but why?
Broadcasting a signed blacklist shouldn't be that hard, given both a wide variety of sites that all want the latest version to be available, and the example of peer-to-peer networks. Also, 'Google Safe Browsing' reliably, and in a semi-privacy-protecting manner, informs multiple browsers of a blacklist of scam/malware sites.
I can see the problem has some tricky parts to it... but it doesn't seem any parts are thorny, intractable problems.
Have CAs prepare a digest (maybe bloom filter?) of revocations regularly. Sign the hash of this digest, and make the digest available via many redundant paths (mirrors, CDNs, P2P networks). Interested servers – perhaps every server reliant on a certain CA – gossip via headers (or even DNS) about the latest and greatest CRL versions they've seen.
Then browsers can be reasonably sure they've got the latest, or that it's somehow being kept from them (gossip from third parties says there's a signed later one, but all usual sources are unreachable) – without an extra, slow, privacy-compromising poll every new TLS session.
Pirates have no problem flooding the world with fresh media files, against active legally-privileged interdiction efforts, with each such file much larger than all revocations ever. Why can't certificate/TLS professionals and "cyber infrastructure authorities" match that?
- shog 13y agoMaybe instead of failing silently, the browser should cease to function at all if it can't reach its OCSP data source for a public CA, and complain loudly - providing we can make revocation lookups cheap and highly available. It could be available via anycast akin to DNS, or p2p as gojomo suggests. Lots of places use DNS to operate blacklist/RBLs - some with very large datasets which would break the internet if they ever become unavailable.
- gojomo 13y agoYes, if you're so encircled by bad guys that you can't reach any blacklist providers, but have received a gossipy hint (via a leak in the blockade) that there's a new version you don't yet have, blatant alarms should go off. You're no longer on "the internet", you're on some attacker-chosen & time-lagged subset... and you need to know that before connecting to sensitive sites.