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You have a moral obligation to use crypto

blog.easydns.org

1–10 of 92 posts

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#2
Safari can't verify the identity of the website "blog.easydns.org".

The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be "blog.easydns.org", which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#3
post #2

Safari can't verify the identity of the website "blog.easydns.org". The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be "blog.easydns.org", which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?

As usual, misconfiguration causing scary warnings, useless to the end user, but the connection is still encrypted.

I really wish we'd divorce the identity assurance part of PKI from the encryption part. I have no idea how it would be done, but.

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#4
post #2

Safari can't verify the identity of the website "blog.easydns.org". The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be "blog.easydns.org", which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?

As usual, misconfiguration causing scary warnings, useless to the end user, but the connection is still encrypted. I really wish we'd divorce the identity assurance part of PKI from the encryption part. I have no idea how it would be done, but.

HTTPS Encryption is virtually useless without the identify verification part. Anyone can run a valid HTTPS server with a self-generated public key. Anyone could then place a MITM, and without the identity bit, you're just as compromised.

If we had dropped the identity bit, every ISP would be running a MITM proxy, because they want control. Already, plenty of businesses enable poor hygiene by including transparent squid proxies that strip SSL.

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#6
post #2

Safari can't verify the identity of the website "blog.easydns.org". The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be "blog.easydns.org", which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?

As usual, misconfiguration causing scary warnings, useless to the end user, but the connection is still encrypted. I really wish we'd divorce the identity assurance part of PKI from the encryption part. I have no idea how it would be done, but.

Encryption without identity assurance really doesn't mean anything though--one might be a victim of a MITM attack.

The issue is that XPKI is _really_ easy to get wrong, but there are alternatives.

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, misconfiguration causing scary warnings, useless to the end user, but the connection is still encrypted. I really wish we'd divorce the identity assurance part of PKI from the encryption part. I have no idea how it would be done, but.

Encryption without identity assurance really doesn't mean anything though--one might be a victim of a MITM attack. The issue is that XPKI is _really_ easy to get wrong, but there are alternatives.

What are the alternatives?

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, misconfiguration causing scary warnings, useless to the end user, but the connection is still encrypted. I really wish we'd divorce the identity assurance part of PKI from the encryption part. I have no idea how it would be done, but.

HTTPS Encryption is virtually useless without the identify verification part. Anyone can run a valid HTTPS server with a self-generated public key. Anyone could then place a MITM, and without the identity bit, you're just as compromised. If we had dropped the identity bit, every ISP would be running a MITM proxy, because they want control. Already, plenty of businesses enable poor hygiene by including transparent squ…

Could you run your own CA?

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTPS Encryption is virtually useless without the identify verification part. Anyone can run a valid HTTPS server with a self-generated public key. Anyone could then place a MITM, and without the identity bit, you're just as compromised. If we had dropped the identity bit, every ISP would be running a MITM proxy, because they want control. Already, plenty of businesses enable poor hygiene by including transparent squ…

Could you run your own CA?

You can but you'd need to convince browser vendors to add your CA to their list of trusted CA's in order to get rid of the security warning.

Re: You have a moral obligation to use crypto

#10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you run your own CA?

You can but you'd need to convince browser vendors to add your CA to their list of trusted CA's in order to get rid of the security warning.

Can you add a CA to firefox manually yourself? It looks like you can.
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