7 ms·

How do you check the difference between your self-signed cert for your site and my self-signed cert for your site?

by kej 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago
This might help: http://www.coniks.org/ http://www.coniks.org/
MatthewWilkes 12y ago
Considering that's something we can't do at the moment with http I hardly think it's important. If nothing else, using https means purely passive attacks aren't possible. Active attacks are much easier for devices to spot by looking for key changes, too.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  But would you use gmail.com over plain HTTP? Would you use it if it presented a self-signed cert?
  - bandrami 12y ago
    You know gmail.com is one of the domains with known invalid certs signed by browser-supported CAs in the wild, right?
  - MatthewWilkes 12y ago
    No, but check out how XKCD is presented at the moment. It doesn't look like it's secure or insecure, it looks like http. I would happily read webcomics over a self-signed certificate if it was made easy for me. We don't need identity verification on many sites, being resistant to passive eavesdroppers or transient active attackers (such as sites that present different SSL certs when accessed from a public wifi) is a nice to have as they prevent some attacks rather than none.
    - IgorPartola 12y ago
      So you would be OK with your ISP adding popover flash video ads to XKCD for you? Or your boss calling you in, asking why you are reading comics instead of doing useful work?
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        Generally you trust your ISP slightly more than strangers sitting near you. No version of HTTPS has ever hidden what site you were visiting.
        IgorPartola 12y ago
        Really? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript-ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-java... doesn't bother you? HTTPS sure does hide the URL's you are hitting. It may leak the domain name, and you are also resolving DNS entries in the clear, but there's a difference between the Wikipedia entry on puppies and on something more nefarious.
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        Feel free to stop with the strawman attacks at any point. That said, I would prefer comcast ad injection to someone running firesheep. And hiding which comics I looked at for two hours isn't going to help my job very much.
        IgorPartola 12y ago
        No strawman here. I would prefer that nobody but the origin host can deliver content as the origin host.
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        You looked at a position saying it wasn't important, gmail or bank level important, to secure webcomics. You then argued that position was completely okay with having webcomic visits altered. That's a strawman.
jacquesm 12y ago
You're going to end up with similar issues to key-signing, maybe we could have certificate exchange parties or a friend-of-a-friend network passing on certificates from trusted parties. Right now a certificate doesn't mean much anyway, there is hardly any difference between accepting a self-signed certificate or one that has been issued by any one of the CAs for security purposes, it's mostly a feeling, nobody went there to check who ordered the certificate. All it says is that someone paid someone else some money.
- protomyth 12y ago
  or someone is going to stuff the signature in DNS like we seem to do for a lot of other items (e.g. SPF, DKIM)
  - pfg 12y ago
    If you're in a position to MITM a TLS connection, you can most likely also alter those signatures for your target. You would need to use something like DNSSEC as well, relying on a government-controlled PKI [1], which isn't really any better than the current situation. [1]: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/
    - sneak 12y ago
      The current situation is that everyone in the Starbucks can completely monitor all of your plaintext. Self-signed, encrypted, unauthenticated connections are better than plaintext connections.
- kej 12y ago
  A self-signed cert says "I claim to be example.com", while a signed cert says "I claim to be example.com and I previously convinced someone else that I was example.com, too." It's certainly not perfect, but it is a much bigger hurdle for a mitm attacker to get past.
  - bandrami 12y ago
bandrami 12y ago
I rarely care. Even the CA-signed certs are usually for "RL Media Enterprises Inc." or something equally opaque to me, rather than something more meaningful. Bluntly, the refusal of a certain part of the security community to simply secure transport first and then worry about authentication on top of that is both frustrating and mind-boggling.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Bluntly, the refusal of a certain part of the security community to simply secure transport first and then worry about authentication on top of that is both frustrating and mind-boggling. This sounds a lot like the thinking that brought us the TSA. Do something, anything!
  - rjaco31 12y ago
    He's asking to decorrelate the authentication problem with the encryption problem, because at the moment the main problem is that to get encryption (without a big ugly warning), you basically also need to pay a CA for authentication. I really don't see your point with TSA, we're not talking about security theater here.
    - bandrami 12y ago
      Bingo. I have a blog. No ycombinatorer has any idea who I am or whether I'm trustworthy, so a verification from a CA that I am who I claim I am isn't particularly helpful to either of us if I link here. Since you don't know who I am to begin with, presumably you wouldn't trust me with any greater information than you would give to a phisher, since even with a CA-signed certificate I might have nefarious purposes. But with encryption you would at least know that whoever you are in fact communicating with actually sent the message you received and not something else. It's genuinely puzzling to me that so many people obtusely claim there's no value there.
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        If I'm reading your blog, why am I going to "trust" you with any "information" at all? You shouldn't need to prove your identity to publish a blog, and if you need either positive identity, non-repudiation, or encryption, then you need something that 99.999% of your fellow bloggers don't. So to me, the whole thing sounds like a red herring, or rather a Trojan horse for the imposed removal of anonymity from the Web. No one has articulated just what problem is being solved here, but plenty of people have articulated the downside.

How do you check the difference between your self-signed cert for your site and my self-signed cert for your site?

by kej 12y ago

How do you check the difference between your self-signed cert for your site and my self-signed cert for your site?

higherpurpose 12y ago

This might help: http://www.coniks.org/ http://www.coniks.org/

MatthewWilkes 12y ago

Considering that's something we can't do at the moment with http I hardly think it's important. If nothing else, using https means purely passive attacks aren't possible. Active attacks are much easier for devices to spot by looking for key changes, too.

IgorPartola 12y ago
But would you use gmail.com over plain HTTP? Would you use it if it presented a self-signed cert?
- bandrami 12y ago
  You know gmail.com is one of the domains with known invalid certs signed by browser-supported CAs in the wild, right?
- MatthewWilkes 12y ago
  No, but check out how XKCD is presented at the moment. It doesn't look like it's secure or insecure, it looks like http. I would happily read webcomics over a self-signed certificate if it was made easy for me. We don't need identity verification on many sites, being resistant to passive eavesdroppers or transient active attackers (such as sites that present different SSL certs when accessed from a public wifi) is a nice to have as they prevent some attacks rather than none.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    So you would be OK with your ISP adding popover flash video ads to XKCD for you? Or your boss calling you in, asking why you are reading comics instead of doing useful work?
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      Generally you trust your ISP slightly more than strangers sitting near you. No version of HTTPS has ever hidden what site you were visiting.
      - IgorPartola 12y ago
        Really? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript-ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-java... doesn't bother you? HTTPS sure does hide the URL's you are hitting. It may leak the domain name, and you are also resolving DNS entries in the clear, but there's a difference between the Wikipedia entry on puppies and on something more nefarious.
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        Feel free to stop with the strawman attacks at any point. That said, I would prefer comcast ad injection to someone running firesheep. And hiding which comics I looked at for two hours isn't going to help my job very much.
        IgorPartola 12y ago
        No strawman here. I would prefer that nobody but the origin host can deliver content as the origin host.
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        You looked at a position saying it wasn't important, gmail or bank level important, to secure webcomics. You then argued that position was completely okay with having webcomic visits altered. That's a strawman.

jacquesm 12y ago

You're going to end up with similar issues to key-signing, maybe we could have certificate exchange parties or a friend-of-a-friend network passing on certificates from trusted parties. Right now a certificate doesn't mean much anyway, there is hardly any difference between accepting a self-signed certificate or one that has been issued by any one of the CAs for security purposes, it's mostly a feeling, nobody went there to check who ordered the certificate. All it says is that someone paid someone else some money.

protomyth 12y ago
or someone is going to stuff the signature in DNS like we seem to do for a lot of other items (e.g. SPF, DKIM)
- pfg 12y ago
  If you're in a position to MITM a TLS connection, you can most likely also alter those signatures for your target. You would need to use something like DNSSEC as well, relying on a government-controlled PKI [1], which isn't really any better than the current situation. [1]: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/
  - sneak 12y ago
    The current situation is that everyone in the Starbucks can completely monitor all of your plaintext. Self-signed, encrypted, unauthenticated connections are better than plaintext connections.
kej 12y ago
A self-signed cert says "I claim to be example.com", while a signed cert says "I claim to be example.com and I previously convinced someone else that I was example.com, too." It's certainly not perfect, but it is a much bigger hurdle for a mitm attacker to get past.
- bandrami 12y ago

bandrami 12y ago

I rarely care. Even the CA-signed certs are usually for "RL Media Enterprises Inc." or something equally opaque to me, rather than something more meaningful. Bluntly, the refusal of a certain part of the security community to simply secure transport first and then worry about authentication on top of that is both frustrating and mind-boggling.

CamperBob2 12y ago
Bluntly, the refusal of a certain part of the security community to simply secure transport first and then worry about authentication on top of that is both frustrating and mind-boggling. This sounds a lot like the thinking that brought us the TSA. Do something, anything!
- rjaco31 12y ago
  He's asking to decorrelate the authentication problem with the encryption problem, because at the moment the main problem is that to get encryption (without a big ugly warning), you basically also need to pay a CA for authentication. I really don't see your point with TSA, we're not talking about security theater here.
  - bandrami 12y ago
    Bingo. I have a blog. No ycombinatorer has any idea who I am or whether I'm trustworthy, so a verification from a CA that I am who I claim I am isn't particularly helpful to either of us if I link here. Since you don't know who I am to begin with, presumably you wouldn't trust me with any greater information than you would give to a phisher, since even with a CA-signed certificate I might have nefarious purposes. But with encryption you would at least know that whoever you are in fact communicating with actually sent the message you received and not something else. It's genuinely puzzling to me that so many people obtusely claim there's no value there.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      If I'm reading your blog, why am I going to "trust" you with any "information" at all? You shouldn't need to prove your identity to publish a blog, and if you need either positive identity, non-repudiation, or encryption, then you need something that 99.999% of your fellow bloggers don't. So to me, the whole thing sounds like a red herring, or rather a Trojan horse for the imposed removal of anonymity from the Web. No one has articulated just what problem is being solved here, but plenty of people have articulated the downside.