97
what if the hacker provided the public key for https connection?
(www.youtube.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
97 points (92.9% liked)
Technology
59197 readers
848 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It is indeed true that some CAs have seriously misbehaved; however, browser builders are rather strict on the presence of the CAs they trust. Misbehaving or even simple errors are reasons for getting kicked out, after which certificates signed by those CAs are now no longer valid.
The certs are still valid.
They are just not implicitly trusted
You are technically correct, best kind of correct
That can be helpful if a transgression is noticed, and it's not orchestrated by a higher authority (e.g. government), and the damage isn't already done.
Of course, browser builders are vulnerable to influence, attack, accidents, questionable judgment, and blind spots just as certificate authorities are.
I agree, it’s far from perfect.
I'm somewhat skeptical. What if LetsEncrypt decided to misbehave tomorrow? Would the browsers have the guts to shut it down and break all sites using it?
Yes, they will. We’ve seen it before in mostly less serious cases: Diginotar, Türktrust, Symantec, etc. As brittle as the CA system can be, when there is real enough trouble, CAs do get revoked.
Not the browser companies. The parent CA would revoke Let's Encrypt's certs and publish that revocation in the certificate revocation list. When the browser (software, running on your system) downloads the new CRL, they will automatically stop trusting LE.