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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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My work runs MITM with corporate certificates, so they can see everything no matter whether it's encrypted or not. If you don't accept the certificates to let them monitor, you can't browse.
Therefore, I just don't use it.
Is that for the VPN, or actually all wifi connections? Not sure how it would be possible for wifi
Corporate networks (especially those utilizing MITM) block vpn access altogether.
You can't reach your vpn server, falling back to plain un-tunneled https. Then instead of dns retuning the true ip, it returns a local corporate ip; you connect to that with https and it serves you a cert generated on the fly for that particular domain signed by a root cert your browser already trusts. Your browser sees nothing wrong and transmits via that compromised connection.
You can usually check for this by connecting via mobile data, taking a screenshot of the cert details, then doing the same on work wifi and compare.
If the cert details change on wifi, your traffic is being intercepted, decrypted, read/logged, then re-encrypted and passed to the server you're trying to reach.
I was talking about work VPN, the thing I connect to every morning to access work's internal services.
I don't see how a 3rd party device connecting to wifi can have https MITM. Otherwise many wifi out there would do it and steal your info.
Can you link to something with more info on how it works? I know how certs work and CAs but not how some random wifi network can hijack that whole trust system. It sounds like it would defeat the whole purpose of https. Thanks in advance.
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/what-is-https-inspection/
https://blog.cloudflare.com/monsters-in-the-middleboxes/
While this has traditionally been achieved by having the end client install a new certificate into their device for the corporations certificate authority, Google and other security firms also offer network appliances that will do this using certificates your device already trusts such as the above Google Trust Services LLC certificate. I've also experienced this 4 years ago with connections intercepted using certs from DigiCert and I'm sure there are others out there.
Https is dependent on a chain of trust, but most end users no little to nothing about it and definitely don't chose which certificates to base that chain of trust on. Instead you're given a set of certificates from the os/software developers and told to trust everything that leads back to those without any idea who has the authority to sign with those certificates.
Theoretically speaking; I could have an insider at letsencrypt who bypasses their check to see if I actually control a particular domain and instead just issues every certificate for any domain I ask for. Your browser wouldn't know the difference, just accepting them as valid certs as they've got the domains you asked for and they're signed by someone the browser trusts.
Google and others sell exactly that service.
WTF?
Depending on the nature of the work and security protocols it isn't the WTF. When you're working, on your work device, on the work network, there is zero assumption of privacy (and there really shouldn't be). The company wants to maintain it's security and so it is ensuring it is aware of things happening on its network.
It's not necessary for everyone everywhere but it has valid use case that isn't some mega shady weird thing.