Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Florian Philipp <lists@×××××××××××.net>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] This Connection is Untrusted: WAS: Firefox-10.0.1 fails to compile on x86
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:44:24
Message-Id: 4F4BCEB5.7010006@binarywings.net
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] This Connection is Untrusted: WAS: Firefox-10.0.1 fails to compile on x86 by Paul Hartman
1 Am 24.02.2012 18:33, schrieb Paul Hartman:
2 > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Michael Orlitzky <michael@××××××××.com> wrote:
3 >> On 02/24/12 02:45, Florian Philipp wrote:
4 >>>
5 >>> Let's not forget that whenever you are presented with that warning, it
6 >>> could also be a man-in-the-middle attack. Therefore just clicking on
7 >>> "Accept" on every site is about the stupidest thing you can do.
8 >>>
9 >>> I'm unsure how the warning looks when you have previously accepted a
10 >>> normally untrusted certificate on that site and now it is different
11 >>> (which could be an indication of MITM). I hope there is a big red flashy
12 >>> warning but I doubt it.
13 >>>
14 >>
15 >> Not if the certificate is "valid."
16 >>
17 >> The only sane way to handle certificates with parties you've never met
18 >> (i.e. every website) is the SSH method: you accept that, no matter what,
19 >> there's always going to be one opportunity for a man-in-the-middle
20 >> attack. The first time you connect, you save the remote server's
21 >> certificate. If it changes, freak out.
22 >>
23 >> The certificate patrol extension does this:
24 >>
25 >> http://patrol.psyced.org/
26 >>
27 >> With it, self-signed certificates become more secure than CA-signed ones.
28 >
29 > Thanks for the link. The MultiZilla extension way back in the
30 > Netscape/Mozilla/Seamonkey 1.x days treated certificates like this:
31 > you had to approve all certs the first time, even if they were from a
32 > trusted CA and if it ever changed for any reason, it would refuse to
33 > connect unless you approved the new cert.
34 >
35 > It seems to me that's how it should *always* work, in all software
36 > that uses SSL certificates, but I understand wanting to keep it simple
37 > for non-technical users... but those are the very users most at risk,
38 > probably the most likely to use hostile wifi networks (in my mind,
39 > hostile is anything other than the router I control at my house).
40 >
41 > Additionally http://perspectives-project.org/ or
42 > http://convergence.io/ can help you in establishing the initial trust
43 > and are an attempt at eliminating the need to trust CAs at all.
44 >
45
46
47 Just a small follow-up: A neat server-sided trick I didn't know until
48 now is HTTP Strict Transport Security [1]. It prevents users from
49 clicking away SSL warnings and prevents mixed content.
50
51 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security
52
53 Regards,
54 Florian Philipp

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Re: [gentoo-user] This Connection is Untrusted: WAS: Firefox-10.0.1 fails to compile on x86 Michael Orlitzky <michael@××××××××.com>