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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> Well it's my lan, and I can decide what I trust and what not.

The browser will still let you choose. It's just changing the default.

> For example in my home network I have different vlans: one for things i reasonably trust, and one for the chinese webcams and iot lightbulbs.

Congratulations, you are the 0.0001%.

> If my router has malware, even if i talk to it over https I'm screwed anyway, I don't think that is something I can fix with https.

Right, but if your lightbulb has malware and your router doesn't yet, then using HTTPS while talking to the router is pretty important.

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> if your lightbulb has malware and your router doesn't yet, then using HTTPS while talking to the router is pretty important.

I agree. So what's the solution you propose?

- Using a self signed CA that you have to install on all your devices?

- Using a trusted by default CA, that makes your internal-only devices depend on an external service (the CA)?

Or something else?

I'm not saying that encrypting the traffic in a LAN is useless. I'm saying that https and the current CA system is not the solution.

> - Using a trusted by default CA, that makes your internal-only devices depend on an external service (the CA)?

This one. Realistically all those devices are depending on external services already.

> This one. Realistically all those devices are depending on external services already.

This is codifying (IMHO) bad practices and a really brittle architecture. Why would you want this? One of the reasons IoT security is a mess is that devices need to talk to internet endpoints instead of staying inside the NATted, firewalled LAN.

I think the NATed, firewalled LAN is an untenable concept: it blurs the line between private and public, a line that security requires making make clear and sharp. If it's connected to a network, it's exposed enough that we should treat it as connected to a public network (which greatly simplifies our threat model); if it's not secure enough for that, it needs to be built as local-only hardware.

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