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Comment by altairprime | Hacker News Reader

> Surely this will improve user security and trust in the existing Web PKI system in non-Western countries. /s

I recognize that Russia is making this change for MitM spying, but this particular sarcasm seems incorrect. Given Verisign's willingness to bend the knee to Texas courts, one could reasonably lose faith in US PKI issuers such as Digicert. I certainly hope the EU is studying the problem US-controlled EU-trusted issuers — the EU age verification systems hinge critically on them, much less the entire web. So I empathize with the sarcasm, but best not to offer MitM proponents (whether in Russia or the U.S. or elsewhere!) an argument that could be used against your viewpoint.

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>I recognize that Russia is making this change for MitM spying

Nope, they do it primarily out of necessity, because of the mounting pressure on the previously used CAs. The MitM capability is just a nice side bonus.

>So I empathize with the sarcasm, but best not to offer MitM proponents (whether in Russia or the U.S. or elsewhere!) an argument that could be used against your viewpoint.

If browsers truly cared about user security they would've provided reasonable conditions for supporting national CAs:

- Limit its authority only to respective national domain zones.

- Mandate use of Certificate Transparency handled by an independent third party to prevent MitM.

But this debacle only shows that western-controlled (especially financial) systems can be and will be used as a pressure tool, so any large sovereign nation will not trust them as they would in the past. And the taken actions only contribute to further fragmentation of the Internet across national and block borders.

I’d be totally onboard with TLD-locking them to legal jurisdictions they’re comfortable being bound to, except that this would underserve a great deal of the Internet. Don’t really have a great solution yet, either. Perhaps as each TLD operates DNSSEC they could sign authorized issuers by publishing TLD CAA records, which would create some legal zone accountability that’s lacking today (and give the EU a lever by which to cut off U.S. registrars from their zones). But I have no idea how to effect any of that change, and Let’s Encrypt is truly screwed in this model as a worldwide entity. The endgame might actually be “to operate a domain registrar you must be a PKI”, which would ravage the segment and probably permanently kill off Namecheap (one can dream). So, yeah, I agree: I think instead we absolutely will see fragmentation, at both software (PKI) and, eventually, hardline levels, rather than see domain registrars and PKI issuers be forcibly merged by policy.

We should let each country specify trusted CAs the way they specify their DNS signing keys. Or we should just implement DANE already and then the same key serves both purposes and we can delete WebPKI from the world.

>Nope, they do it primarily out of necessity, because of the mounting pressure on the previously used CAs. The MitM capability is just a nice side bonus.

So the West essentially helps Kremlin to control Russian citizens. Why is that? Incompetence or something else?

Allowing Russia to have a TLD is also helping the Kremlin control Russian citizens. Do you recommend that IANA should delete the .ru domain?

How so?

it lets them have websites, where they can impose controls via the internet, obviously. Should we delete .ru?

You are not making sense. What controls? They can only ban your domain name and if they do that, you already have a bigger problem.

It's not a surprise for you, you used you passport when registering the domain name and if you planned to do something Kremlin wouldn't like you could've registered it via a foreign registrar and used foreign hosting.

Contrarily, when you have to install Kremlin's root certificate to access your bank, you are unwittingly allowing Kremlin to quietly MitM any connection you make (without them specifically targeting you) and to avoid that you need:

- to be aware of the problem,

- to install those certs in a separate browser or on a separate device which you'd use only to visit your bank and state services

Just some Nanay Boys wrestling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztstTo3dVp4

>I recognize that Russia is making this change for MitM spying

Not really, banks do this. FSB would love to spy on everyone of course, but all was working fine until the CAs started revoking the certificates recently, directly aiding the FSB. From the article:

>The banks first moved to GlobalSign in 2022. This June, GlobalSign began revoking certificates held by sanctioned Russian companies, and they moved on to HARICA, the Greek academic authority.

>A month ago, HARICA refused to revoke: its issuance is self-service and domain-validated, so its certificates identify a domain and nothing else; it was not, it argued, “the competent authority to make these legal attributions.” However, on July 27, Greece’s eIDAS supervisory body appeared to confirm the disputed certificates had been revoked and referred the case to the national financial sanctions unit.

> I certainly hope the EU is studying the problem US-controlled EU-trusted issuers

cough DE-CIX cough CIA cough

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