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Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#211
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

Here's an approach I've used before successfully. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing. 1. Create your own root Certificate Authority. 2. Create a script using your favorite language and libraries that will create a new certificate for each device something along the lines of "myiotdevice-AABBCCDD.local". The AABBCCDD needs to be some sort of serialized number that's assigned during manufacturing and won't b…

Any device manufacturer that does this should not be allowed to touch anything related to security. It's one thing to have a little article about why they get the big scary security warning and how to add their device's cert as a one-off exception but "let this random IoT manufacturer vouch for any website" is nuts.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#212
post #136
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

It's worrying how they are improving the case for "70%" scenarios, while crippling it for the other 30%, without recourse. It's not even funny any more. What happens with offline LAN? And the ideal IoT devices that we would all want to have? (I mean those we dream about in all IoT HN posts, where the rants typically are that no internet connection should be needed for most of these kinds of devices) What about offlin…

Is it the case that self-signed certs don't work in iOS at all? I'm looking around, and I appear to see tutorials for how to properly configure one in iOS.

https://medium.com/collaborne-engineering/self-signed-certif...

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the default behavior of most browsers? Access an https service with an untrusted tls certificate, the browser throws a warning and offers a way to permanently trust the certificate.

Neither Chrome nor Edge offer a simple way to permanently trust the cert. I’m sure there is a way to do it but they don’t make it obvious. It’s maddening as someone who develops and distributes local network apps with https.

Sounds like you're using Windows, and I believe both ultimately outsource that to the OS, so you'd need to look whereever windows manages certificate trust to find and remove any old trusted certs. HTH.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#214
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

Here's an approach I've used before successfully. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing. 1. Create your own root Certificate Authority. 2. Create a script using your favorite language and libraries that will create a new certificate for each device something along the lines of "myiotdevice-AABBCCDD.local". The AABBCCDD needs to be some sort of serialized number that's assigned during manufacturing and won't b…

So then I have to install a root CA for every random IoT product I buy? Which also entails handing them the keys to my machine, since being a root CA means any certificate they generate will be trusted.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#215
post #172
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

I agree. Am I right - would it be solved by prefering https for all ip addresses except 10.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/24 and 172.16.0.0/16?

> all ip addresses except 10.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/24 and 172.16.0.0/16

I assume you're trying to exclude RFC1918 addressing. As such:

> 192.168.0.0/24

This should actually be: 192.168.0.0/16

> 172.16.0.0/16

This should actually be: 172.16.0.0/12

(10.0.0.0/8 was correct)

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually see the problem. If you're on a local network, there's no practical way to deal with certificates, so use http. Chrome will fall back. Problem solved. If http support ever gets truly removed, I will be very upset. But that hasn't happened, so what is there to complain about?

The problem is that there is no way to deal with certs on a local network, but the OP would like to be able to use https anyways; http might be considered too insecure for their usecase

Make your own CA, install on each computer, install certificates, voila.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#217
I feel like something will be lost when the barrier of entry for the web goes from "Host an HTML site on a domain" to "Obtain a certificate, host an HTML site on a domain configured to use a certificate" but maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. I'm loathe to let a random script modify my nginx config.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#218
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

Here's an approach I've used before successfully. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing. 1. Create your own root Certificate Authority. 2. Create a script using your favorite language and libraries that will create a new certificate for each device something along the lines of "myiotdevice-AABBCCDD.local". The AABBCCDD needs to be some sort of serialized number that's assigned during manufacturing and won't b…

That should work but trusting a root cert from a third party makes be a bit wary depending on how it is done.

If the certificate is scoped to only that domain or to only domains used by that user then I suppose it's OK but there is currently no way to enforce this, that I am aware of, without the user understanding and inspecting the certificate.

Thinking out loud here: It would be neat if browsers supported some form of addresses which are public key hashes like is done in many distributed systems. Maybe, out of caution, it would only be supported on local networks. For ease of use this address could be discovered via QR code or a simpler local dns name.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#219
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the face of it, it sounds simple enough: special treatment when the IP address is an IETF-designated private IPv4 address (e.g. 192.168.x.y). Is there some reason this wouldn't work, that I haven't thought of?

I considered that, but I think at the moment there's no concept of IP address for web certificates, it's all based on domain names as far as I know. It doesn't mean it's not doable of course, but I could understand if it make people uneasy since it means that the same domain and the same certificate would behave differently depending on what it resolves to. It may be an interesting solution to consider though. That w…

> there's no concept of IP address for web certificates, it's all based on domain names as far as I know

Regardless of whether you can or can't issue a certificate with a CN of an IP address, the browser doesn't receive the certificate in isolation, it receives it from an IP address, and can handle certificate validation differently depending on what it's connected to.

This may be a terrible idea for reasons I haven't considered (it probably is), but I can't think of any off head myself right now.

EDIT: this is probably terrible because someone can just stick a MITM proxy on your lan, and poison your DNS to resolve google.com to a RFC1918 address and boom.

Re: Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default

#220
post #136
post #111

I wish there was a solution for those of us who develop web interfaces for embedded products designed to live on LAN, often without any internet access and no well defined domain name. I'm all for HTTPS everywhere but right now for my products it's either: https with self-signed certificate, which basically makes any modern browser tell its user that they're in a very imminent danger of violent death should they deci…

It's worrying how they are improving the case for "70%" scenarios, while crippling it for the other 30%, without recourse. It's not even funny any more. What happens with offline LAN? And the ideal IoT devices that we would all want to have? (I mean those we dream about in all IoT HN posts, where the rants typically are that no internet connection should be needed for most of these kinds of devices) What about offlin…

70% of scenarios? If I were to guess, it would be 70% of your time that your happy with https, and 30% you don't. But its 99.9% or higher in reality.

Also, did you know 80% of facts are made up? XD

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