SHA1 sunset will block millions from encrypted net, Facebook warns

Funny thing is: the device is sufficient for the use. It's attached to a DSL connection that's far slower than it, and largely ties together a small number of client systems which communicate exclusively with the Internet gateway (no local traffic).

Oh, and the folks who own the system itself would have absolutely no idea of what any of the items in your second sentence mean, or what they'd matter to them (if the features mattered at all to them, which they in fact don't). There's no GigE on the property. If they had a Web-only system they'd probably be ahead of the game (less shit to go wrong), and wireless bands supported work fine with devices connecting to it.

Point is, there's a piece of perfectly _suitable_ and _usable_ hardware that's running just fine at the job for which it was originally intended, but the manufacturer's abandoned it.

Something I strongly suspect we'll be seeing rather more of in the coming age of the Internet of Broken Things That Spy on You.

But, say you've sold me: what's a decent replacement. And a Free-Software based ROM to put on it (I'd like to put extensive blocklisting on the gateway device itself).

> A wrt54g doesn't have gigabit ethernet

You say this like GigE is required in every situation that might need a router. It really comes across like "that guy" who talks down at the (e.g.) Prius owner because they aren't driving a turbo-charged V8 (as if every person driving a car should be required to have one).

Well you've got a good point actually however the parents statement (that I was replying to) does say this which requires a bit more tech literacy, eh:

"Gladly the router was open to dd-wrt"

On a fun note not sure if you remember the old "Get Netscape Now!" icons that were at the bottom of nearly every 90's webpage which, to your point, was as if someone visited your site and would actually pause to download and install a new browser (over dialup no less) if it didn't render correctly. [1]

[1] http://sillydog.org/netscape/now.html

It's not "just because someone else has and thinks I should too".

Your 25-year-old car probably emits a lot more harmful substances into the air than recent cars do, so someone could argue that you are actually harming others by continuing to drive it.

Similarly, one could argue that your use of computing devices that only support outdated cryptography is harmful to other people, because it makes it difficult for everyone else to upgrade to more secure algorithms. You might not be directly forcing anyone else to make any particular choice, but your choice contributes to the perpetuation of an insecure ecosystem, just like your car contributes to air pollution in your neighborhood.

Don't worry. Everyone has upper-middle class levels of income to be constantly replacing everything that they own. It all works out in the end. /s

Do cars get twice as fast and twice as efficient every few years? Computer technology isn't made to last, because the advance simply is (still) too fast for that.

Luckily with phones the support cycles seem finally to get longer, just like they have gotten with computers.

My point isn't that you should need to replace your router every 5 years, not by any means.

My point is that routers don't (for some unknown reason) typically ship with automatic self-updates. The company could just as easily ship a firmware upgrade to fix your SSL issue (why is the burden on you the owner to switch to dd-wrt?) But if that doesn't happen, should the fact that some router companies refuse to upgrade to the latest standard stop us from encrypting the web?

I think no. And I think having to upgrade my router for that cause is an okay tradeoff.

Facebook's proposal is that only organizations that are a) demonstrably using this technique and b) validated at a higher level than automatic domain validation be allowed to get new SHA-1 certs. This means that an attacker will have to identify themselves fairly strongly in order to conduct a collision attack. It is a vast improvement from anyone being able to register a random new domain name and get a SHA-1 cert for it. It's probably not a huge roadblock for a superpower's well-funded intelligence agency, but I think that the threat model is not primarily about protecting against them.

I agree about the political part of the issue, but on the other hand, the SHA-1 deprecation is one of the most proactive things the CA/Browser Forum has done. Having it go not quite perfectly is still a vast improvement from reactively deprecating things only when they are fully insecure.

> 2. It sends the message to companies that deadlines can be ignored because they'll be pushed back at the last minute. This will make it difficult to deprecate insecure practices in the future.

Alas, we already more or less live in this world. If old standards were burned down without remorse more regularly, I'd think we'd see many things done differently. "But think of the pacemaker in the children's hospital" has unfortunately been the order of the day for quite some time.

I'm personally on your side of the argument and against Facebook's stance, but this statement is strictly speaking not true. At worst, it will be equivalent to protection provided by an encryption scheme without authenticating the other party and it defeats passive attackers. That's not quite as bad as sending plaintext (in practice, it is much much better when it applies to the internet broadly: cf. firesheep).

P.S. that's basically the state of SMTP encryption, which is quite sad.

It isn't _completely_ broken. That is why FB is still advocating for a two tiered approach (SHA2 when possible, SHA1 everywhere else). SHA1 hash collisions are indeed now within the range of well funded governments, but it is not within the range of your average script kiddie to find possible collisions. To prove my point, I'd ask you to find an arbitrary Root CA cert which uses SHA1 hash and attempt to clone it. I think you'll find that this takes still a considerable amount of effort and/or it is completely out of reach.

I should be clear that SHA1 shouldn't be used for cryptographic purposes that require high amount of trust, but for your average everyday FB status updates it is probably fine when coupled with other protections.

I suppose because this is a concept that doesn't need a test of truth anymore to be proven. It is accepted and easy enough to be verified mathematically.

Alas, random serial numbers are only a "SHOULD" in the Baseline Requirements, and not all CAs use them.