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Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

On the contrary, the vast majority of the time, when one is using SSL, they're using it because they want encryption, rather than identification.

The certificate system surrounding SSL is a complete mess. It does virtually nothing other than trigger false positives for people who who haven't paid the appropriate "security partner."

The very rare person who is actually using SSL for identification rather than just to establish an encrypted TCP connection, and therefore cares about certificates, can change the default.

PS: I know the standard response to this, that encryption without identification is useless, because without identification your counter-party might be Eve. In reality, in the real world, that doesn't happen. MITM attacks are extremely rare. And the real Eves on the net (phishers) can easily obtain signed certificates that will fool pretty much any end user.

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Not to pick on you per se, but this reasoning is often seen in relation to SSL (or encryption in general) and is dangerously wrong.

Encryption without identification and authentication of your communication partners is useless. You may very well end up with a very secure link with the wrong communication partner (google 'man-in-the-middle-attack').

I agree that the (public) CA system is a mess, however especially with machine-to-machine communication it is very easy to generate, sign and use your own certificates. And contrary to popular belief, self-signed certificates are not any less secure than public CA signed ones. Both have their own use-case though.

If someone cares I'll be happy to explain the above points in more detail.

I now see your 'PS' (perhaps added while I was adding my comment?) - however I cannot follow the argument you make.

IF you assume that MITM-attacks are rare, you probably also assume that traffic snooping is rare (which is after all a form of a MITM-attack). If that's the case, why use encrypted communication channels at all?

Security is never perfect - it always is about adding layer upon layer to make the bar high enough that the remaining number of adversaries becomes more manageable.

Spoofing a site that is not using SSL is trivial. Using SSL with public CA signed certificates significantly raises the bar. Not to the 'perfect' level, but enough to make a real difference. Not checking the server certificate throws you back to the 'trivial' level.

I agree with the original poster

"IF you assume that MITM-attacks are rare, you probably also assume that traffic snooping is rare (which is after all a form of a MITM-attack)"

Well, no! You can snoop traffic without being the MITM (WiFi, local network snooping, etc). Snooping is much more easier.

As you said, security is never perfect, and 'security implementers' less so.

If the other part of the communication uses a self signed certificate (or signed by "Bob's SSL") well, I can try to convince them to change, but it will be hard.

Sure, I'll never accept a self signed key from my bank or e-commerce, but there are several other uses.

And when using APIs to connect to https you should be able to tell it to ignore the certificate, it doesn't matter, way more often than the opposite, unless you don't trust your ISP.

If you are in the position to passively sniff the traffic, you're almost always also in the position to redirect and modify the traffic.

The only thing you're protected against with encryption sans authentication is passive sniffing. If that's all you care about, fine, do realize however how limited the protection is you gain.

If MitM attacks are so rare, why bother encrypting your traffic in the first place? Packet-snooping attacks are also "extremely rare" by most metrics, so why protect against one but not the other?

Either go all the way on security, or be obvious about not having any. Appearing secure when in actuality you're not is the worst option.

Packet-snooping attacks are also "extremely rare" by most metrics [...]

Really? NSA boxes in AT&T (and presumably other) switching stations suggest that for US traffic it's extremely common.

'Packet-snooping attacks are also "extremely rare"'

I think they're pretty common, even for fun and recreation (http://codebutler.com/firesheep). I know I could start reading people's emails in Starbucks with what's on my laptop now and the knowledge in my head, but if I wanted to mount a MITM attack I would need to do some research.

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