Comment by jabbany | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jabbany | Hacker News Reader

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My guess is that if only encryption were the goal, then browsers should trust self-signed certs or at least upon first visit, present the cert and ask whether to trust it in the future. *

Instead the current system depends on some set of built in trusted root certificate that's run by opaque monopolies (at least pre Let's Encrypt) plus a lot of hassle to add self signed certs if it's even supported at all. (IIRC some browsers like Chrome will ignore system trusted CAs in an attempt to "help the user be more secure" ref: https://serverfault.com/questions/946756/ssl-certificate-in-...)

* There is precedent for this, for things like Remote Desktop or SSH where only encryption is the goal, their default behavior is exactly this: confirm upon first access, and remember the approved cert for the future. You do not need to get your server blessed by a CA to connect over ssh :)

Yeah but SSH and RDP aren't used by grandmas that get their wallets emptied by scammers. Forced SSL everywhere is a good thing.

It's bad that it's run by corporations, but it's still a good thing overall. Maybe it should be run by different people(like IDK ICANN over something like the UN)

Again, what's the risk that a first time visit to a site is going to give you a fake certificate?

OTOH SSL has done nothing for preventing phishing, since no CAs actually verify anything beyond you owning the domain.

Well, any time anyone might be loading up a website for the first time in a coffee shop.

Also, “remember this cert forever” (cert pinning) has been an ops disaster for a lot of sites that have tried it. So in practice “the first time” might be more like every week or every month. What the risk that a coffee shop will not serve you a malicious cert once a week?

Also if they do it and you move back to your home connection… the site is broken there because now it’s returning a different one than was pinned (by the attacker!).

There are plenty of ways to improve security but maintain openness.

I think a good idea might be to have TOFU and self-signed only as a fallback. If there was no initial mismatch, and then upate cert periodically.

This amounts to a new "won't someone think of the children?"

All the little green lock icons in the world haven't put a dent in phishing or spoofing.

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