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Comment by drewcrawford | Hacker News Reader

This is a controversial opinion, but I am actually of the view that SSL is structurally unworkable against nation-state-level adversaries. There are too many dark corners and not enough eyes, and you can't dig your way out of complexity with a volunteer standards committee.

I am working on the problem (and by that I mean "it's in private beta"). Mobile is sort of a unique opportunity because a typical mobile app doesn't have the same interoperability requirements as the web more broadly.

However, it's hard to sell, which explains why nobody does it. First it's hard to sell commercially, which you really need if you want it audited by people who know what they're doing. But it's hard to even give it away, because nobody wants to be the test pilot when it comes to security.

Solving this requires a level of cooperation that we may not have as an industry right now. That may mean dark days ahead.

Email in profile, if you want to chat about it

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> This is a controversial opinion, but I am actually of the view that SSL is structurally unworkable against nation-state-level adversaries.

It's not a controversial opinion at all... it's a well known fact. Something that relies on you trusting corporations which are known to answer to their government's gag orders is broken from the get go.

Still, TLS is a great tool if you're not an enemy of the NSA. Security is a game of expectations, remember.

Any service where you also control the client doesn't really benefit from the use of SSL certs issued by trusted public CAs, other than the simplicity of doing things the same way you always have.

Imagine a file storage service accessible via a desktop client, mobile client, API and web. You can't get around using trusted public CAs for API and web, but the desktop and mobile clients could only trust your own CAs with no loss of functionality.

I think the major stumbling block is that the best practices for running a CA aren't well known or broadly disseminated or easy to follow. If you're developing a system that makes it easy to securely manage a signing key, and otherwise do the right things, that would be sweet. Not sure that there's monetization potential there though.

> This is a controversial opinion, but I am actually of the view that SSL is structurally unworkable against nation-state-level adversaries.

Seems like a pretty sensible opinion to me. The entire CA system is full of flaws that can be exploited by anyone with enough money, power or influence.

If you want to verify the identity of an individual you know, independent of the control of the state or corporations, then the best option you have today is to use self-signed certificates and exchange their public keys in-person.

I've done this for sharing information between close friends, and the worst part is that browsers react quite badly to self-signed certificates (the problem is really getting worse - they are essentially telling you who to trust to vouch for the identity of others: faceless and essentially state-controlled entities.)

First, I don't see any controversy in that opinion. I'd go even farther and say it would be very surprising if governments don't have certificate minting abilities to MITM SSL connections.

The only thing that holds them back (even still) is probably risk of exposure. They don't do this except on very high-value targets, at the risk of burning the CA they control.

Modern SSL has two functions: preventing over the wire snooping and anti phishing.

Your points are really valid for the former, but the CA's as big business and government entities seem well placed to counter phishing.

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