4 ms·

End-to-end ecryption doesn't defend against misrouting, although it does mitigate the damages of it. However, with our current CA system, nation level adversari

End-to-end ecryption doesn't defend against misrouting, although it does mitigate the damages of it. However, with our current CA system, nation level adversaries could easily MITM an encrypted connection that they have rerouted through their servers.

mirimir 11y ago
Right, "mitigate" is what I ought to have written. And yes, HTTPS is rather a joke. But what about properly implemented SSH, IPSec or OpenVPN?
- philbarr 11y ago
  Why is HTTPS "rather a joke"? Genuinely curious...
  - ekimekim 11y ago
    Because your client (generally a browser) is configured to implicitly trust a group of companies called "root Certificate Authorities" (root CAs). Now, consider one such company head-quartered in China, or the US. The governments of both countries have the power to secretly demand such a company's keys, then use them to make your client trust whichever endpoint they chose.
    - eli 11y ago
      That's still considerably better than sending unencrypted HTTP over the wire in pretty much every way.
      - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
        Better, but not good enough.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    The security model is broken, just like BGP's is. Root CAs plainly can't be trusted. It's not just that they'll cooperate with governments. See "Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market".[0] [0] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2673311 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2673311
FeepingCreature 11y ago
If you can't trust your cert authorities, you are already rather fucked, routing errors or no.
- jdiez17 11y ago
  Why should I need to trust some vague certificate authority? I'd rather trust DANE/TLSA and DNSSEC. Or something similar. Solving the trust problem in routing would require ISPs to manually whitelist which AS advertisements are valid on any given interconnect - you know something is wrong if Comcast advertises some Virgin Media network, or whatever. Encryption by itself can't solve trust. It can only protect against MITM.

mirimir 11y ago

Right, "mitigate" is what I ought to have written. And yes, HTTPS is rather a joke. But what about properly implemented SSH, IPSec or OpenVPN?

philbarr 11y ago
Why is HTTPS "rather a joke"? Genuinely curious...
- ekimekim 11y ago
  Because your client (generally a browser) is configured to implicitly trust a group of companies called "root Certificate Authorities" (root CAs). Now, consider one such company head-quartered in China, or the US. The governments of both countries have the power to secretly demand such a company's keys, then use them to make your client trust whichever endpoint they chose.
  - eli 11y ago
    That's still considerably better than sending unencrypted HTTP over the wire in pretty much every way.
    - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
      Better, but not good enough.
- mirimir 11y ago
  The security model is broken, just like BGP's is. Root CAs plainly can't be trusted. It's not just that they'll cooperate with governments. See "Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market".[0] [0] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2673311 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2673311

FeepingCreature 11y ago

If you can't trust your cert authorities, you are already rather fucked, routing errors or no.

jdiez17 11y ago
Why should I need to trust some vague certificate authority? I'd rather trust DANE/TLSA and DNSSEC. Or something similar. Solving the trust problem in routing would require ISPs to manually whitelist which AS advertisements are valid on any given interconnect - you know something is wrong if Comcast advertises some Virgin Media network, or whatever. Encryption by itself can't solve trust. It can only protect against MITM.