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Excellent. While they're at it, maybe they should stop marking self-signed SSL as more of a security risk than plaintext HTTP.
by fiatmoney 12y ago
Excellent. While they're at it, maybe they should stop marking self-signed SSL as more of a security risk than plaintext HTTP.
- bpatrianakos 12y agoYes! I have 4 sites that I bought an SSL certificate for out of around 20 that run. If browsers wouldn't throw a warning for self-signed certificates every last one of my sites would have been secured from the start, easy. The only thing separating a self signed cert from one obtained from a CA is that the CA has some of your contact info but even then it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to bypass their checks.
- Matheus28 12y ago...and the CA one actually protects you from MITM attacks (assuming your machine doesn't have nasty root certificates installed).
- kuschku 12y agoYou mean nasty root certificates like VeriSign and GoDaddy, which the NSA frequently uses for MitM? You should do the same to those certificates that you did to TURKTRUST, just throw the US CAs out.
- cbr 12y agoThe only thing separating a self signed cert from one obtained from a CA is that the CA has some of your contact info Most CA certs are domain validated these days, which means you have to demonstrate control of the domain to get the cert. it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to bypass their checks It's pretty hard. If you get a CA to issue you a cert for a website you have no control over that's newsworthy and would get serious scrutiny put on that CA. The CA system as it is isn't good, because we have to trust so many different CAs for it to work, but if CAs were widely issuing certs to the wrong parties we'd hear about it more.
- eli 12y agoUh, also the fact that in a MITM situation I can trivially replace your self-signed cert with my own self-signed cert.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoNot with certificate pinning.
- eli 12y agoThat's a very weak security solution. In some situations it's better than not using HTTPS at all, but not by a lot.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoWhy is it "very weak"? It's substantially stronger than ordinary certificate authorities without certificate pinning in many ways. (Namely, an entity out of your control (a certificate authority) being compromised / exploited / coerced doesn't also compromise you.) The weak point is at initial connection (i.e. before you have the certificate pinned, or if the certificate changes legitimately and you have no way of confirming that fact). However, even in this case it is no worse than without pinning. (I wish that HTTPS had a certificate-passing mechanism. I.e. if the given certificate doesn't match the pinned one you contact a site that you have the certificate for already and ask it to give you the certificate it believes is for the site. Do this for the same website with multiple sites and you'll have a good idea if someone is not trying to MITM you. You'd have to have rate limiting, etc, etc, but it would in many ways solve this problem. Unfortunately, it's something that would have to be built into the protocol, or else it would be blocked often enough to not be useful. (ICMP and firewalls, for example))
- eli 12y agoIn the extremely common case of visiting a site for the first time on a new device or user agent, it provides almost no security at all. There are other problems, but that's a pretty big one.
- dustinfarris 12y agoAgree that self-signed SSL certificates are treated as if they were the red-headed step-children of SSL. Perhaps if movements like Let's Encrypt[1] take off, self-signed certs will be a thing of the past. [1]: https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/
- aragot 12y agoWhat is the difference between Let's Encrypt and StartSSL?
- arkx 12y agoI am hopeful that Let's Encrypt will do better than StartSSL's SHA-1 and paid revocation.
- aaronmdjones 12y agoStartSSL will use whatever certificate digest algorithm you used in your certificate signing request. Most openssl.cnf files distributed with Linux OSes set the default algorithm to SHA-1 - that's nothing to do with Startcom. Simply specify an explicit algorithm if you want to get a certificate using that. For example, if you do: $ openssl req -new -sha256 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout foo.key -nodes and give them that CSR, you will get back a SHA-256 certificate. EDIT: They also have a SHA-256 root (in most browsers, though you don't need a second-preimage-resistant digest algorithm for a /root certificate/) and SHA-256 intermediates at https://startssl.com/certs/ https://startssl.com/certs/ - go to the relevant class directory and there is a sha2 directory inside that.
- cbr 12y agoStartSSL's interface is a huge pain. Let's Encrypt is hoping to offer things like modules for Apache and Nginx that make them take care of acquiring certs automatically, though we'll see.
- driverdan 12y agoThey currently are more of a security risk because if you tell the user their connection is secure when it's not (no verification of self-signed certs) you impart a false sense of safety.
- wtbob 12y agoTelling the user nothing would not impart a false sense of safety. Heck, why not mark HTTP as insecure, don't mark self-signed HTTPS, and mark CA HTTPS as 'secure'? Of course, CA HTTPS is not really secure at all, but that's another discussion entirely.
- lstamour 12y agoIf you perform certificate pinning, self-signed can be just as secure. I wish the message was slightly less scary, perhaps saying as SSH does, "you've never visited this site before, do you trust this certificate?"
- coldtea 12y ago(user clicks "yes" and proceeds oblivious)
- baq 12y agoas opposed to unencrypted HTTP?
- Too 12y agoI can teach my computer illiterate grandma simply "never do email unless the address bar is green", she can remember that. As opposed to: Never do email unless unless the address bar is green, except when: - It's the first time you visit the web site - You use another browser - You bought a new computer/tablet/phone, reinstalled your computer etc. - You accidentally cleared your browser history - You are on a public wifi the very first time you visit a web site. - The website changed their certificate since last time you used it. - You happen to be unlucky and even at home you are under a MITM-attack the very first time you visit the page. The last bullet is especially troublesome because even a programmer would have a hard time to judge that one.
- a3_nm 12y agoExactly. Their list indicates "Secure", "Dubious" and "Non-secure" but I think "Non-secure against active attacks but secure against passive attacks", as self-signed HTTPS is, should be distinguished from "Non-secure".
- upofadown 12y agoAgreed. I think there is a possible fix for this issue that won't put grandma's banking account at any greater risk. Put the requested level of security in the URL. So if the resource is httpq:// (or whatever) it means that we don't care if we are subject to MITM attacks and self signed certs are OK. Then when grandma goes to a https;// site and the identity of the site is questionable we can forbid the connection entirely. She could use the httpq:// form if she wanted but the bank could forbid that from their end by simply not accepting such connections (it would likely be implemented as a separate port). Other sites that are willing to trust their user's judgment would just allow both connections. The root problem here is that the current system does not accurately take into account the intent of either the user or the provider. So the browser can not be entirely sure and then has to ask obscure/awkward questions after the fact. Edit: Dunno if there is an easy way for a bank to stop someone from deliberately switching the URL to httpq:// in a MITM situation. So the intent would only be accurately represented for the user sometimes.
- droopybuns 12y agoOh my god yes. I had to install a CA cert in order to be able to just BROWSE the CCC website last month. Chrome's aggressiveness on Self Signed Certs wouldn't even give me to option to accept the risk. I want to browse one website- not add a whole new fucking signing authority to my browser. Google's behavior on this topic makes me feel like half of their security team is manic and regularly falls off their meds. Their company's business model is about monetizing personal details of their users, and they act like they own the only privacy opinion that is right.