91–100 of 115 posts
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Your argument is like saying that we shouldn't discuss guns since any criminal could just realize that guns kill people and start killing people.
I think his argument is more aligned with "responsible disclosure". Or it's the difference between knowing the ingredients to Coke vs. the recipe.
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Unfortunately SSL's PKI is a fundamental part of how people use it. That said, I would agree with you if you were to say that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TLS protocol spec itself, aside from it being probably a bit more complex than we really really need.
The browser PKI is not a fundamental part of how SSL/TLS is used in non-browser applications. For instance, enterprise software that uses TLS routinely rely on static access lists (for instance, of digests of self-signed certificates) to authenticate connections. The reason browsers have the crazy PKI model is that browser SSL/TLS has to scale to the entire Internet and allow new sites to come online with only days o…
But you have to admit the general default for SSL is the PKI implemented in web browsers. Even too often in non-web applications, unfortunately.
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It is perfectly possible to use TLS without relying on Verisign. Nothing in the protocol depends on Verisign. The protocol was built in such a way that you can run your own CA, or run no CA at all and have your system manually manage self-signed certificates. Browsers won't run without the Verisign/Thawte CA system. That's not an SSL/TLS problem; that's a browser problem. Browsers exist in a complicated ecosystem inv…
Hell, for DOD systems on secure networks, you're required to remove all of the non-DOD root CAs. No DigiNotar or GoDaddy or the hundreds of others allowed.
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I don't see how this is different (even after reading the blog above), other than reducing the initial input list of CAs. Today, if a CA gets hacked, I pull them out of my trust-chain. Either way, I have to pay attention. Help me understand how it solves this, because I do think SSL is currently quite broken and would like to see a solution.
In this case DigiNotar is being removed from browsers because nobody that lives in Mountain View happens to visit sites signed by DigiNotar. And aside from being Dutch, they're also unusually small (they only made 100k in revenue from certificate sales this year). This is not the common case. There was a very similar incident with Comodo in March, and they weren't removed. This is because Comodo certifies some non-ne…
Right now, I trust the browser/OS vendors with the ability to black-list individual CAs (or white-list, as the case may be). In the "trust agility" model, I just have to choose somebody else I trust, right?
Maybe as a technical person who spends time in the security world, I can figure out who that should be, but isn't the average person going to find themselves in the same situation (trusting the browser/OS provider)?
Perhaps the better way to phrase this question is thus: How does this prevent 1/4th of the SSL Internet from going down when Comodo gets hacked?
Just by having a forged SSL Certificate for ssl.google-analytics.com how can they supply their javscript ? The request still goes to the google servers and not to any evil-democracy-suppressors.gov.ir So sure if they could reroute the request to their servers evil things could be done. But they can NOT. Or am i missing something ?
Of course they can reroute traffic. All they have to do is * Force every ISP/Telco within their borders to add fake google.com entries to their DNS servers. and/or * Force every ISP/Telco to transparently proxy all DNS traffic and provide fake replies for google.com queries You can even make it easier: Just hijack IP routing at the borders, such that IP traffic to 209.85.149.99 (and all other google networks) are not…
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Of course they can reroute traffic. All they have to do is * Force every ISP/Telco within their borders to add fake google.com entries to their DNS servers. and/or * Force every ISP/Telco to transparently proxy all DNS traffic and provide fake replies for google.com queries You can even make it easier: Just hijack IP routing at the borders, such that IP traffic to 209.85.149.99 (and all other google networks) are not…
If they can reroute traffic, why can't the exchange the certificates in downloaded versions of Firefox?
Paging tptacek, please come to the white courtesy phone and explain that SSL is the greatest thing since sliced bread. ;-)
Colin, I'd like it if you're stop muddying the waters about my take on SSL/TLS. I am not a fan of the HTTPS/TLS CA system. You know I'm not. I am a "fan" of TLS, as much as anyone can be a fan of a protocol. Most if not all of the smartest crypto protocol people in the world have taken shots at TLS. Roughly once every 3-5 years, one of them finds a new vulnerability in TLS, which, when fixed, makes the protocol stron…
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In this case DigiNotar is being removed from browsers because nobody that lives in Mountain View happens to visit sites signed by DigiNotar. And aside from being Dutch, they're also unusually small (they only made 100k in revenue from certificate sales this year). This is not the common case. There was a very similar incident with Comodo in March, and they weren't removed. This is because Comodo certifies some non-ne…
I can appreciate that, I'm just not sure I understand how that will happen. I don't have a direct trust relationship with the vast majority of the internet, so I need to put my trust in somebody else I have a closer relationship with. Right now, I trust the browser/OS vendors with the ability to black-list individual CAs (or white-list, as the case may be). In the "trust agility" model, I just have to choose somebody…
Trust agility ensures that clients have the ability to make these trust decisions easily. A client does not necessarily have to be a user, it could still be the browser/OS vendors. For details on how Convergence works, in order to answer your question of how it prevents 1/4th of the SSL internet from going down when Comodo gets hacked, the best reference is (unfortunately) still the presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Wl2FW2TcA
Paging tptacek, please come to the white courtesy phone and explain that SSL is the greatest thing since sliced bread. ;-)