How does https prevent man in the middle? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by bonus_crab@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Say Alice wants to open up an HTTPS connection to Bob through a proxy named Earl.

What prevents Earl from reading alices request, opening a connection pretending to be bob, and then opening a https connection with bob pretending to be Alice , and snooping on the traffic as it passes through ?

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[-] Sigmatics@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The security of HTTPs relies on public key certificates.

I recommend reading up on it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS#Overview

Especially the part after this segment:

Web browsers know how to trust HTTPS websites based on certificate authorities that come pre-installed in their software.

this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023

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