Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web • Hacker News Board

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#271

Post by brians » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:28 PM UTC

justcommenting wrote: post #210

schoen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four things: (1) You can do the attack you describe today with existing CAs that are issuing DV certs because posting a file on the web server is an existing DV validation method that's in routine use. (2) There is another validation method we've developed called dvsni which is stronger in some respects (but yes, it still trusts DNS). (3) We're expecting to do multipath testing of the proof of site ownership to make…

agree completely and it's worth noting that i don't have a solution to the issues i mentioned, either. leveraging other (potentially-insecure) paths to establish trust might help further enhance confidence in authenticity; e.g. verification using something like the broad-based strategy of moxie's perspectives (except via plaintext) or maybe through additional verification of plaintext on the site as fetched via tor o…

It was quiet, and indeed uncertain, at that point. For myself, I'm extremely excited about the "Let's Encrypt" project's opportunities for experimentation: bringing the marginal cost of certificates to zero should have great effects on Web and Mail services, but should also have something to say about S/MIME and other client-cert uses.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#272

Post by justinschuh » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #270

ghshephard wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't help with google though - anybody who tried to fake a google cert would be caught by chrome within a few seconds. There is a lot of value associated with owning a browser. Enhanced security is just one of them.

You speak as if the power of NSLs has a functional limit - it doesn't, which is what makes the entire concept so dangerous. There's nothing stopping the requirements from being "mint us a certificate according to these specs" and additionally "okay, now pin this certificate in your browser".

You might want to read up on what an NSL actually is, since you and the GP are clearly very confused.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#273

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

cweagans wrote: post #266

dangrossman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of services create dynamic subdomains in the form of "username.domain.com". To offer SSL on those domains without a wildcard certificate, you'd need to obtain a new certificate and a new IPv4 address every time a user signs up. You also need to update configuration and restart the web server process.

You don't need a new IPv4 address for each cert. That's for Windows XP. Just stop giving a shit about XP and use SNI. Problem solved.

Try telling that to any business. XP's marketshare worldwide is between 10-20% according to some metrics (cursory google result: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....)

There are very few companies out there that are okay with serving 1/5th of their potential customers an error page, and for good reason.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#274

Post by duskwuff » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:33 PM UTC

xxdesmus wrote: post #228

belorn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of abuse where you thinking about? If the domain is hijacked, you simply repossess the domain and request a new certificate and the old one is revoked.

As in, revoking a cert for a known C&C box, or a confirmed spammer, confirmed box serving an exploitkit, confirmed phishing domain (such as my-apple-ikloud-verify.foo) Basically, my assumption is they won't want to be providing certs to known bad actors. So I'm curious who is going to own the abuse handling for the CA.

Is that really something a SSL CA should be responsible for? I'd argue it isn't. An SSL certificate is proof of identity (and even that only in a very limited sense), not of legitimacy.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#275

Post by justinschuh » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:35 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #106

iancarroll wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA has no CA. The only attack they really have is brute force or server compromise - both of which undermine pinning.

NSA has NSL (national security letters with gag orders). There are CAs in the US. Mission accomplished.

I'm now curious. Explain to me how an NSL fits into the scenario you're implying.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#276

Post by higherpurpose » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:41 PM UTC

> Let's Encrypt will be overseen by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), a California public benefit corporation. ISRG will work with Mozilla, Cisco Systems Inc., Akamai, EFF, and others to build the much-needed infrastructure for the project and the 2015 launch

What's Cisco's role in this? I'm quite worried about that. It has been reported multiple times that Cisco's routers have NSA backdoors in them, from multiple angles (from TAO intercepting the routers to law enforcement having access to "legal intercept" in them).

So I hope they are not securing their certificates with Cisco's routers...

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#277

Post by icebraining » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #176

icebraining wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, there's no reason why a fridge couldn't have a signed cert tied to some dynamic DNS (e.g. . . ).

True, but on many small networks, you aren't addressing the embedded device by a FQDN. All these appliances should let you change the cert on them, but you still need that initial connection, and at smaller organizations (or households) the certs will never ever be changed. I used to work on embedded security projects so I care about this; I also realize that's a small portion of the market. I'm okay with making the…

True, but on many small networks, you aren't addressing the embedded device by a FQDN.

Why not?

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#278

Post by fixermark » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

"With a launch scheduled for summer 2015, the Let’s Encrypt CA will automatically issue and manage free certificates for any website that needs them."

'Automatically?'

So we're replacing owning people by snooping on their HTTP traffic with owning people by directing them to fake websites digitally signed by "m1crosoft.com"?

... actually, yes, that is kind of an improvement.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#279

Post by geofft » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

Tossrock wrote: post #207

lowglow wrote: post #3

Free CA? This is cool. Why this wasn't done a long time ago is beyond me. (Also please support wildcard certs) An interesting thing happened at a meet-up at Square last year. Someone from google's security team came out and demonstrated what google does to notify a user that a page has been compromised or is a known malicious attack site. During the presentation she was chatting about how people don't really pay atte…

Google is a CA, and they sign their own certs as "Google Internet Authority G2" under SHA fingerprint BB DC E1 3E 9D 53 7A 52 29 91 5C B1 23 C7 AA B0 A8 55 E7 98.

They're subordinate under another CA (GlobalSign), and presumably contractually obligated to only sign their own certs. GlobalSign offers the following service to anyone willing to pay the sizable fee, undergo a sizable audit, comply by the CA/Browser forum rules, and only issue certs to themselves:

https://www.globalsign.com/certificate-authority-root-signin...

There are a few other vendors that I've seen offer similar services.

Re: Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

#280

Post by Animats » Tue, Nov 18, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

AlyssaRowan wrote: post #264

Animats wrote: post #216

The EFF has a bad track record in this area. The last time they tried something to identify web sites, it was TRUSTe, a nonprofit set up by the EFF and headed by EFF's director. Then TRUSTe was spun off as a for-profit private company, reduced their standards, stopped publishing enforcement actions, and became a scam operation. The Federal Trade Commission just fined them: "TRUSTe Settles FTC Charges it Deceived Cons…

Regarding your first paragraph, I agree: all CAs need continuing scrutiny. Certificate Transparency, for example. Regarding the rest of your post, however, I'm calling bullshit. You give very bad advice. Deploy TLS on every website . Deploy HTTP Strict-Transport-Security wherever you can. The sites people visit are confidential, and yes, are not protected enough at the moment. (That will eventually improve, piece by…

kindly cite

Black Hat 2009, "Why TLS Keeps Failing to Protect", Moxy Marlinspike, slide 42: https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-14/materials/us-14-Delignat...

Basic concept: 1) find target site A with shared SSL cert. Cloudflare gets shared SSL certs with 50+ unrelated domains. 2) find vulnerable server B in a domain on same cert. (Probably Wordpress.) 3) attack server B, inserting fake copy of important pages on site A with attack on client or password/credit card interception. 4) use DNS poisoning attack to redirect A to B.

All it takes is one vulnerable site out of the 50+ on the same cert.

The whole shared-cert thing is a workaround for Windows XP. Cloudflare does it because they're still trying to support IE6 on Windows XP, which doesn't speak Server Name Identification, and they don't have enough IPv4 addresses to have one per customer.