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Universal SSL

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Universal SSL

#181

Post by eastdakota »

dsr_ wrote: post #125
corobo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your tinfoil's got a hole in it there buddy! But also https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency Could probs do with being a bit closer to realtime but it's more transparent than most hosts/ISPs

CloudFlare has never installed any law enforcement software or equipment anywhere on our network. CloudFlare has never provided any law enforcement organization a feed of our customers' content transiting our network. which is all great, except that the NSA is not a law-enforcement organization. It's an intelligence agency.

I'll state for the records that we've never done any of the above for any intelligence agency either.

And, putting my lawyer hat on for a second, if the NSA (or CIA) wanted to compel us to do something they'd send the FBI. On their own, they'd have no authority to compel anything of any US-based organization.

Re: Universal SSL

#182

Post by [deleted] »

vtlynch wrote: post #145
vader1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course using HTTPS is no guarantee that the site doesn't leak your data in any other way. But never before has it been this easy to create a false sense of security: give the impression that connections to your site are encrypted, while in reality it's plaintext for half of the route. I think this will ultimately dilute the value of HTTPS as we know it, and can only hope that it will lead to the adoption of better…

I agree that this false sense of security is troubling. Many inexperienced site owners will think setting up Flexible SSL with Cloudflare is all they need to do. And it is unclear if the enduser has any way to see if the site they are connecting to is using Flexible or Full SSL. However, in the announcement Cloudflare did say: " Later today we'll be publishing a blog with instructions on how to do that at no cost. On…

[deleted]

Re: Universal SSL

#183

Post by eastdakota »

dspillett wrote: post #118
makomk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SNI isn't the only problem either. Apparently they're using ECDSA-based certificates which aren't generally used and aren't supported by older browsers.

People who are behind the times browser-wise tend to be very behind (IE on XP, Android 2.x/3.x) - so I don't think ECDSA will be much of a limiting factor once you take people who can't access SNI based certs out of consideration.

That's correct. There's an almost perfect overlap of browsers that support ECDSA and SNI.

Re: Universal SSL

#184

Post by zaroth »

daveasdf wrote: post #91

This was indeed a pleasant surprise when I logged into my CloudFlare account. What intrigues me is that CloudFlare missed an opportunity to allow secure self-signed certificates. The new CloudFlare SSL setup allows the origin server to present to CloudFlare's servers either (i) an unverified self-signed certificates; or (ii) a certificate signed by a CA. Neither provides great security. In the former case, a MITM can…

Personally, I was really hoping the backend connection would be secured by spiped, cutting the unnecessary complexity of TLS and certificate validation completely out of it.

That might exclude Windows servers (until someone ports it), and maybe harder in some cases to setup.

Re: Universal SSL

#185

Post by rictic »

moe wrote: post #124
vader1 wrote: post #23

I have very mixed feelings about this. Yes, on the one hand this is great news because a lot of websites who otherwise never would have bothered with SSL can now be protected from snooping or traffic manipulation on your local (possibly very insecure: your neighborhood Starbucks' wifi) network. On the other hand, this completely destroys the premise of HTTPS that you have an encrypted connection to the website you ar…

seeing the padlock will only tell you Seeing the padlock has never told you much interesting to begin with. You have to click the padlock and compare the fingerprint to a known good one. Yes, nobody does that. And that's why SSL in the browser is a red herring (as far as 3-letter agencies are concerned). Why no browser vendor ever tried to fix this basic design flaw is left as an exercise to the reader.

Browser makers and others have been trying to fix this, it is actually harder than it looks. HSTS, certificate transparency, and shipping pre-pinned certs with the browser are all approaches pushed forward by browser makers. As an example of how this is harder than it looks one need only look to DNSSEC.

Re: Universal SSL

#186

Post by ultramancool »

eli wrote: post #162
ultramancool wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Full SSL" is still useless against an advanced attacker as it does absolutely nothing to prevent MITM. Only "Strict SSL" does, which makes sure it's a valid CA-signed certificate. What we need (and what myself and others have requested) is Full SSL with fingerprint checking so you can keep security with a self-signed cert. I honestly think CF should remove flexible SSL and full SSL as options - they're just too vuln…

Will Cloudflare take any self-signed certificate in that scenario? I assumed you'd have to confirm the fingerprint (essentially pinning it) from within Cloudflare interface.

Currently in "Full SSL" mode they take any self-signed certificate. No fingerprint confirmation or even pinning.

I use CF on multiple sites and generally love it, but this is one of their biggest shortcomings - I still need to buy certs if I don't want to get MITM'd.

Re: Universal SSL

#187

Post by brokentone »

One possibly negative outcome of this could be SEO related. In my research thus far, Google has suggested that HTTPS _could_ increase your ranking to a very small degree, but the question is whether they consider this duplicate content.

Re: Universal SSL

#188

Post by yincrash »

ultramancool wrote: post #120
meowface wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good idea as well. In their blog post they discuss how "Full SSL" is much better security than "Flexible SSL", but by not making it a requirement a lot of people won't bother with it.

"Full SSL" is still useless against an advanced attacker as it does absolutely nothing to prevent MITM. Only "Strict SSL" does, which makes sure it's a valid CA-signed certificate. What we need (and what myself and others have requested) is Full SSL with fingerprint checking so you can keep security with a self-signed cert. I honestly think CF should remove flexible SSL and full SSL as options - they're just too vuln…

Can you elaborate on what the attack on Full SSL would be? If you give CF your self signed certificate over a private secure channel, why isn't that still secure?

Re: Universal SSL

#189

Post by arikrak »

This is a major (and long-planned) move on CloudFlare's part. They're going to lose money in the short-term, since the primary reason many small-to-medium-sized sites upgrade to CloudFlare Pro is to get SSL support.

Many other sites will now switch to CloudFlare to get instant (partial) SSL. CloudFlare isn't a charity so they'll need to introduce new features or limits to get people to upgrade to pro. Though they may get enough enough revenue from their partner one-click apps to offset their costs.

Re: Universal SSL

#190

Post by ultramancool »

yincrash wrote: post #188
ultramancool wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Full SSL" is still useless against an advanced attacker as it does absolutely nothing to prevent MITM. Only "Strict SSL" does, which makes sure it's a valid CA-signed certificate. What we need (and what myself and others have requested) is Full SSL with fingerprint checking so you can keep security with a self-signed cert. I honestly think CF should remove flexible SSL and full SSL as options - they're just too vuln…

Can you elaborate on what the attack on Full SSL would be? If you give CF your self signed certificate over a private secure channel, why isn't that still secure?

That would be secure.

What they do is not secure. You never send them your public key, they simply try to connect to you take _any_ self-signed public key without performing any verification, allowing trivial MITM between them and your web server.

I would love to be wrong here, but please show me where you upload your public key. Last time I used full SSL at least there was no such option. No upload of public key or paste of fingerprint, they simply take anything your (or an attacker's) server provides on connection.

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