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

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

#361

Post by xnull2guest »

tptacek wrote: post #347
SilasX wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only "security" derived from unauthenticated TLS presumes that attackers can't see the first few packets of a session Could you elaborate here? With a self-signed cert, the server is still not sending secret information in the first few packets; it just tells you (without authentication) which public key to use to encrypt the later packets (well, the public key to encrypt the private key for later encryption). T…

There are no such attackers.

Do you think that with public key pinning self-signed certs begin to make sense? Also, do you feel that CAs and the PKI system do provide appropriate authentication (this being a cost-benefit rather than a 100%-correctness analysis)?

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

#362

Post by foxylad »

IgorPartola wrote: post #312
dragonwriter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This case should be eliminated. We need to stop publishing stuff over HTTP. Period. HTTP is perfectly fine for information originating on and never leaving controlled, trusted, internal networks, and there is no reason to pay the overhead for HTTPS for those cases. There's other use cases where its probably not worth the (small) overhead for HTTPS.

No it is not. I have talked about this on here before, but I don't mind repeating myself: - Your small blog you publish over HTTP is now opening the door for me, the attacker to mess with any traffic originating from your site. Say you host your resume on your site. I can substitute it with a much less flattering version. Say you host a code snippet. I can add a little obfuscated fork bomb or root kit at the end. Say…

> I can substitute/add/send...

Only if you control any of the infrastructure. If you do, then you can make my life a misery anyway, encrypted or not.

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

#363

Post by orthecreedence »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #31

This seems like a really great step toward an HTTPS web. It will be an immediately deployable solution that can hopefully TLS encryption normal and expected. However, it doesn't do anything about the very serious problems with the CA system, which is fundamentally unsound because it requires trust and end users do not meaningfully have the authority to revoke that trust. And there's a bigger problem: if EFF's CA beco…

Agreed. For all the hoopla, this is basically just like any other CA (but free). Until we have a truly distributed (namecoin-esque) and accepted CA structure, signed certificates may as well be pipes directly to the NSA.

That said, not having to pay some jerk for sending me an email and having me enter a code is really nice. The current CA system is a pitiful excuse for identity verification, and not having to pay for it will be nice.

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

#364

Post by ericd »

seanc722 wrote: post #336
Buge wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a cert on Saturday for $9. It's less than the domain name.

Can get them free for web use. Not sure where he is coming from.

Wildcard SSL certs are ~$100/year. Those have always been much more of a racket, but they're so worth the extra cost to set them up once on your load balancers and not have to think about SSL certs again for 5+ years.

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

#365

Post by sarciszewski »

foxylad wrote: post #362
IgorPartola wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it is not. I have talked about this on here before, but I don't mind repeating myself: - Your small blog you publish over HTTP is now opening the door for me, the attacker to mess with any traffic originating from your site. Say you host your resume on your site. I can substitute it with a much less flattering version. Say you host a code snippet. I can add a little obfuscated fork bomb or root kit at the end. Say…

> I can substitute/add/send... Only if you control any of the infrastructure. If you do, then you can make my life a misery anyway, encrypted or not.

Authenticated and encrypted? That throws a wrench into things.

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

#367

Post by schoen »

lucaspiller wrote: post #352
teamhappy wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I may have misunderstood all of you. Is the audit process itself really that time consuming? I can imagine the amounts of bureaucracy involved, but I can't image this takes much longer than, say, a month or so. Most of the time is probably spent waiting for someone or something, right? I mean we're talking about very capable people here who have done this kind of thing before.

You are lucky to not have had to deal with corporate beuracracy - these things take time :-) At work I'm integrating an API for a mobile operator, it's apparently working and ready to be used however I've been waiting a couple of months to get all the documentation and everything setup. Even once they have the CA it needs to be added to browsers which will take time. Taking into account release cycles of embedded dev…

The CA will be cross-signed, so it does not need to be added to browsers right away in order to be accepted. It will be treated as an intermediate cert, not a root cert, by all mainstream browsers at the outset.

But there is a lot of paperwork to be done, and a lot of engineering to be done, and a lot of things to buy and people to hire, in order to get a CA operating.

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

#368

Post by sarciszewski »

dragonwriter wrote: post #302
chetanahuja wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the proffered reasoning as we all know. But the actual outcome (to quote rufb from this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8625739 ) Encrypted (Certified) COOL GREEN Encrypted (Self-Signed) EVIL RED Unencrypted NOTHING / NEUTRAL CHROME Tell me how the logic works here (for an average user).

> Tell me how the logic works here (for an average user). "Neutral Chrome" is the default state of the web -- the site doesn't assert that it should be trusted, and it shouldn't be, and that's the default state people should have in approaching the web. "Cool Green" is "the site asserts that it has a particular identity and that communication with that identified site is private, and it passes the tests built into th…

Plaintext is zero security.

Self-signed is a low probability of security.

Signed is a high probability of security.

This continuum makes more sense than the current state of affairs.

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

#369

Post by schoen »

acveilleux wrote: post #138
danielweber wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll run a free CA right now. Who wants a cert for microsoft.com? NB: This is a bit unfair, because the existing for-money CAs haven't always stopped someone from registering microsoft.com.

If you can make microsoft.com serve up the correct challenge response, you'll be able to get a cert for them issued by the this project. This isn't a pure rubber-stamping service.

There are also going to be controls to limit automated issuance for domains with existing certs, among other criteria.

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

#370

Post by tptacek »

xnull2guest wrote: post #361
tptacek wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no such attackers.

Do you think that with public key pinning self-signed certs begin to make sense? Also, do you feel that CAs and the PKI system do provide appropriate authentication (this being a cost-benefit rather than a 100%-correctness analysis)?

Yes! Key continuity is a legitimate identity scheme; the only trick is to implement it scalably, so it actually happens, rather than being a fig leaf (an unworkable variant of key continuity already exists in browsers today).

I think the CA system by itself is inadequate, but unlike unauthenticated TLS, actually does provide some security.

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